Southampton’s thrash bastards Desolator play “hyper speed, beer-fuelled, energetic thrash metal”. When they’re not at the bar, they’ll be bringing the mosh to a filth-peddling venue near you. ZT risked whiplash and liver failure to find out more…
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Tell us about the origins of the band – how did you guys get together?
Me and Sam met through a mutual friend, so we played together for a while before we met Felix. I was out drinking, and this bastard in a Tankard shirt was asking me where the metal was. Once I found out he had just started playing bass we met up for a jam, after meeting Felix at the train station carrying a crate of beer he was in the band before he even played a note! Through months of meeting up purely to drink and thrash we somehow landed our first gig a year later at Full Thrash Assault ’11.
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What’s Desolator’s style of metal all about?
No nonsense thrash metal. We just purely want to play what we want and have a good time. Isn’t that the whole point of metal, to have some fucking fun?
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What are your influences?
Jamie – I’m a huge fan of German thrash, bands like Kreator, Darkness and Exumer, you can’t go wrong. Newer bands like Violator and Rezet step it up a notch, just makes me want to play harder and faster.
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Felix – Tankard and punk. Motorhead are my biggest influence on bass, makes me wanna turn the bass up as fucking loud as possible.
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Sam – Overkill, Testament D.R.I. and Dark Angel are my main influences, Gene Hoglan, Bill Ward and John Bonham are my favourite drummers of all time and made me pound the drums hard as possible.
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You’ve recently released your first demo – how/where was it recorded? How can we get hold of it?
It was recorded and mixed in 15 hours at Untapped Talent studios in Southampton. We took all of our shit down there in a trolley! Most of it was recorded live and all the solos and vocals were recorded in one take. We were too busy playing Golden eye on the N64 to get involved in the mixing and when we did it was just Felix getting the bass turned up over and over again. It’s available for free download, or you can buy a physical CD at a show or online also. It’s the first time any of us have recorded anything, and the fact thrashers like it too is fucking amazing.
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What are your thoughts on the resurgence of thrash, particularly in the UK?
It’s fucking amazing! Thrash metal is what heavy metal is all about, having fun, not giving a shit what anyone else thinks and riffs faster than you’ll ever live to be! It’s sick to play gigs with just thrash bands all over the UK, everyone’s like one big family and we are all up for the massacre!
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Where do you see yourselves in the UK scene?
Passed out at the bottom of the bar.
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How’s Southampton for metal?
Haha, it’s a real thrash haven! Only joking, it’s terrible. If you’ve got a trendy haircut and a 7 string guitar strapped under your chin you’ll fit in well here. To be fair we have had a few incredible gigs with our brothers in arms, Death Head. We played our first headine show with them, constant stagediving and circle pitting and everyone was soaked in beer . Oh, and Felix ended up in A & E.
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Speaking of which, you guys keep busy with lots of live dates – any memorable shows? Where can we catch you next?
Definitely Full Thrash Assault was the most memorable show. It was our first time playing live ever, the whole thing was filmed and broadcast live, we were lucky to pull it off because we didn’t even have a single song written when we were asked to play! Sharing a stage with bands we look up to like Adenicide, Bludvera and Rezet was mind blowing! Oh, we did a show in Brighton with Crypsis and Meansteed with an open bar, we were fucked before we even sound checked.
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Our next show is in London with Necroriser in January, it’s looking to be a fuckin great show.
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You cover ‘Troops of Doom’ and ‘Empty Tankard’ – why did you choose these songs?
Troops was an easy choice, it’s fast, savage, and was the first song we could play together. All 3 of us are huge Tankard worshippers, and every thrash maniac knows the words to it. If we were watching a band that covered Empty Tankard we would go absoutely mental. We just play what we would want to see at a show!
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Your live shows are good, headbanging fun with no bullshit and plenty of energy. Would you say this is reflective of your personalities? If so, why?
Yeh it does! Just listening to thrash makes us go mad, we always have that energy wether we are playing a gig or not. You can’t just sit around when theres this fucking amazing riff attacking your senses! Nothing’s forced, we are totally genuine on stage.
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Do you have any goals or anything you want to achieve with Desolator?
To get an album recorded next year, and play a gig in Germany supporting Adrenicide and Rezet! We just want to establish ourselves as a thrash band, to keep playing shows wherever we can and write more songs.
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It’s a bit of a clichéd question but what are your favourite beverages (as if we couldn’t tell already)?
SPACE BEER! What can I say, we’ve got beer brains. We genuinely love beer, over our faces, in our hair, over our guitars, our drums, our clothes, in our cereal, in our whiskey. Everywhere beer can go, it will go.
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A final, fun question now, similar to the previous one and relating to Tankard: how far, in any way, would you go for a beer?
Into space to kill the bastard alien that stole my Space Beer and my stash of magazines. I WANT IT BACK!
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