Can you give a brief introduction to Dismantled?
Dismantled is something that got into my lungs in 2000 and ever since, something keeps building up inside of me and making me spit out what I feel into the open in the form of garbled music mixed with words. This mainly involves computers and synthesizers and some sort of social anxiety to keep me agitated enough to spend time with all that and shape it into something that feels synthetic and cold and yet passionate enough to have a meaning. Somehow, this has gained a small but devoted audience and here I am doing an interview.
Lets go back a bit in history and talk about the “Standard Issue” album, how do you look back on it?
It was what I felt was the right thing to do at the time and expressed what I felt was true about the music industry around me and the music climate at hand. Unfortunately, I think there was too much sarcasm or it was too abrasive to be marketable. So it’s kind of an ambiguous work of electro-pop-industrial that’s out there, kind of floating around and making a statement but not really being pursued by anyone. From that whole album, I love the statement “Breed To Death” however and that’s what it says on the big banner left over from tour that’s covering my window as we speak. Everytime 5AM hits, the morning light shines through and the skull on the “Breed To Death” banner is the only thing that keeps things dark and grounded with a big sarcastic grin staring right at me. I think I can go to my grave knowing that this one phrase I wrote will always remain true. No matter where I am or what I do, that stands to me the most out of all the qualities life has to offer. There’s nothing the world would rather do differently than keep breeding to death and that’s true not just for the people but their ideas as well. It’s all a cesspool and the only way to win is to become a disease and spread until you’ve used up every resource imaginable and die off. I’m a passive observer to the spectacle and have been watching it unfold around me and using the tension that comes from it to fuel my fire. The more years pass, the more I’m forced to witness and it never ceases to amaze me how many rules can be bent in favor of “Breed To Death--” there’s just a unlimited amount of situations that I’ve been in where that statement was the only thing that mattered when it was really supposed to be all about the “music.” But there are no surprises left in the world so all I can do is have the chorus for my new song “Insecthead” off the new album go “I think I’m gonna have to fuck my way out of this mess. Can you help me out?”
What were your expectations on the albums, did you set goals?
I feel like every album I set out to do is just an experiment, at first it was to imitate Front Line Assembly and from then on I realized that I can go farther and farther in developing my sound and that has got me where I am now, for better or worse. I keep exploring and challenging myself which is probably not a great selling point but it keeps me interested in doing what I’m doing and that’s mostly just me sitting in a room and being isolated and focused on one solid thing. And that’s been real hard right now as I’ve felt I got lost in social connections and relationships to value that isolation. I feel like I finally have enough built up to make something that I can make a statement with but still, writing an album right now is tougher than ever for me right now because of the people around me hounding me for attention and myself also seeking out that attention. This is normal in every respect except for the fact that I’m sensitive enough to view society as just insects looking for blood to suck but dressed up and spitting words and mannerisms to make it seem very polite and decent. So I just end up feeling overwhelmed and sidetracked all the time and just forced to cut myself open and get all that tension out—which is the best it can get in terms of making music for me because me feeling secure and stable doesn’t get me anywhere in terms of expressing myself and is probably the reason I feel “When I’m Dead” is my weakest work to date. So I’m going to make up for it and right now I feel that having some guitar is necessary to describe my emotional state, there’s just some levels electronics can’t reach. I’m not going to go overboard with this and it won’t be on every song but I’m excited to have something more to work with. Jon Siren, the Dismantled drummer is also going to be heard more on this album than before. I think I’m really putting out all the stops on this one and just jamming the accelerator to see how fast I can go before I crash and burn.
The album was a big success but failed in the USA, you must have given this a lot of thought, why do you think it was a big success in Europe and not in the USA?
Well, I was actually born in Russia so my way of thinking and ideas are still more European in some ways than American. Maybe that’s why? But you know what, after being on tour with Combichrist and seeing how their marketing machine works, I have a better understanding of why things fail or break out. I think it’s a very slow learning curve that I will have to keep putting effort into. I’m going to get to explore that even more when I travel with them on their bus to tour Europe this late July which I’m very excited about because it’s going to be as chaotic of a scene as it can get for me. Our dates with them are July 26th though August 8th mostly in the UK and we will also be joining Skinny Puppy for GothicFest in Holland July 30th. All it comes down to is… How many of you do I have to kill to get on top of this ugly hill? And a lot of marketing strategies and and trial and error. Sex and violence seems to sell the best though and that’s what I’m into exploring at the moment so this is definitely good news for the American market.
To quote Frank Zappa “Does humor belong in music” what is your opinion on this since you made a sarcastic statement on the current music climate?
Once in a while it works. But the problem is.. The only thing people have are their emotions and so the most important thing for them a mirror of themselves to latch onto. So singing about how I can’t relate to the listener is probably not a real novel idea in a song. A lot of people were upset thinking the song Breed To Death was about them but I was actually glad that I provoked them to think about something. This time, I really am over the sarcasm and just want to focus on my hollow experience of putting my trust into people and dealing with the cesspool that comes from that trust. At some point, I started realizing that pretty much all of the words coming out of people’s mouths don’t really have any substance behind them except to make you feel a certain way and manipulate you into acting a certain way. The more I realized it, the more I saw how diseased the process was and it was truly a case of stronger personality swaying a weaker one. I just started seeing people as insects preying on each other and all the trends in music and advertising being worthy of a virus infecting the world. Watching TV and seeing how all the people out there sell people these fake emotions and the way they open their mouth and blink their eyes at you really made me look past that flesh and opened my eyes to a great void filled with insects buzzing and spreading their wings at any every chance they get. The only thing you can possibly do in the world is use someone or let yourself be used. I’d rather explain that as “Kill Or Be Killed,” which is a new song on the upcoming album. I’ve also got songs with lyrics about violence, sex, fuel trucks, cocaine, ropes covered with mud, insects, paranoia, beating the shit out of people and carving “manipulator” into your throat... in whatever order you choose. And all of it will be from the very bottom of my heart, no sarcasm involved at all. I think I’m ready to start a new religion!
The last album you recorded was “When I’m dead” after which you left Metropolis, why leave such a great label?
Metropolis didn’t like When I’m Dead and passed on it. Frankly, listening to it now, I think they were partly right about that. That album was all about making Dependent’s deadline for the closing of their label… And we all know how that ended up, it seems that neither them nor Dismantled really stopped going. So looking back at When I’m Dead my heart was just in too much of comfortable place doing it and nothing came down hard and “pushed” the songs out of me, which is very important for my creative process. Although I still love some of the tracks on that album like Simple Machines, Start Digging, Under The Flood, and The Living Dead. But now I’m back with them and am going to deliver the new album… when my mind fragments itself enough to finish it. I felt like I was waiting for all the stability and carefree to wash away so I could get back to that cold, empty place where writing albums is easy because of the weight pushing down on you. So right now emotionally, I’m much more ready to complete this new album than anything I did on When I’m Dead. I just need the right time and the right place to focus all my energy and San Diego isn’t the best place for that. I always get distracted and end up wasted at an aferparty or more recently, jamming with Dave, the guitarist for The Killers at his pad. The latter was probably one of the coolest things that ever happened to me in my life but it definitely scatters my mind away from where it should be focused and that is to burn all the fuel I’ve got here and make the heaviest Dismantled album of all time. It’s going to happen but the problem is.. It’s all up to me and getting that motivation back is not easy.
When recording “when I’m dead” was the lack of success in the USA, in the back of your head. How did you deal with this?
I think success is sometimes the first or last thing you think about when making an album. It switches so many times because you have to be true to yourself but then you have to please the label. You can always say “Fuck it” and just do whatever you feel is right but it’s going to creep up on you. I’m still living in the shadow of my first album being the most successful album to date and how many releases have I done since that? It’s a tough hustle but the thing that always keeps you grounded is when you’re by the microphone and you know what you’re screaming about comes straight from your gut and nothing else matters. That’s been the case with a new song I have called Excess, there’s a line that screams “I’m just an insect in an empty world, wish I had a million mouths, I’ll suck you off till I’m dead and you’re dry.” There’s nothing more satisfying that playing that vocal over and over in my Sonar session. And ultimately, what you feel in your gut is what other people will feed off and that will be the most important thing to determine your success. I think I can do that enough times on this album where someone who’s listening will be able latch onto it and feed off my experiences so the less cryptic I get, the better. I’m more exploring how the body works on this album rather than the mind.
At this moment you are working on a new album called “Hate is coming” what can you tell us about the new album?
“Hate is coming” is just a statement I made, the real title of the album is “The War Inside Me.” There’s also a song on the album called “The Whore Inside Me” that we’ve been playing live on the Combichrist tour. I’m really excited about this one because I feel like there’s been a lot of stability and stagnance in my life over the past 5 years and that has now come to an end. Strangely enough, the same time that ended is the same time when the earthquakes in San Diego began and the aftershocks haven’t stopped since. I still remember running out of the house when the walls wouldn’t stop shaking and that inspired me and somehow calmed me into believing that the world was never meant to be stable. So I’m definitely excited to explore that raw instability and ugliness and it soothes me that everything can collapse at any moment. That is the same way I see my new album, just a clusterfuck of words and detuned harmonies that capture something raw, insect-like, and drenched with mud but passionate and emotional as hell. And I’m happy to sacrifice myself and explore fucked up social situations just as long as they push me enough to get this raw human sewage out of me. Everything is an experiment and the way I react to the world and the people around it is the best experiment of all because the more dysfunctional it gets for me, the better I can lash out. I’ve been in enough situations where chaos ruled. I’ve been punched in the mouth before, arrested for a DUI and I was able to see addiction up close and personal on my own bathroom floor as well as witness someone you think you’ve built a bridge with completely abandon you and let you down at the worst moment—the most wretched thing out of everything I’ve just described. There was a showcase that I played in Portland, OR for my other band Aerodrone that ended up crashing and burning because our long-time guitarist failed to show up on time and I had an agent who was trying to sell us be completely white with anger and screaming at me while the weather changed in minutes from being uneventful to a complete hellhole of rain and clouds that beat down so hard, I was convinced that the world was going to crack open and I would go straight down to hell. That really woke me up and gave me the energy to throw myself out there with the new material. Even the slower songs on this album will be fucked up enough where you’ll be thinking “what’s gotten into this guy?” and that’s exactly what I want to portray right now. I’ve got a whole lot of scorched earth to cover on this new album.
In what way has the sound of Dismantled evolved on the new album?
It’s definitely more upfront and brutally aggressive. I finally use some more of the current sounds out there like Massive, Vanguard and the Nord Lead. It’s definitely going to a groove oriented heavy electro dance album but I want it to go beyond that and really be as angry and abrasive as I can get, nothing to suggest any sort of sympathy or peace. That’s why I’ll even been using guitars on a couple of songs as well as live drums. I want to show a real, clenched human side that’s still drenched in electronics but is not just mood music like I feel my past works have been. I want this to really get out there and kick you in the teeth and show everyone how fucked up things can really get. All I’m doing is putting up a mirror to the ant-hill society has created and show them that every function in it is just a disease that found a justifiable way to exist. Not just anyone can be a lawyer, you have to have some sort of dysfunction that lets you allow yourself to be hollow enough to represent people who you know have done wrong but want to twist the facts in their favor. That’s why I say, “don’t trust this skin, I’m not a person, I’m a fucking disease.” And there’s a whole lot more of where that came from.
Is the album again build around a certain theme or is it a collection of songs?
There’s one moment where I saw someone passed out on the bathroom floor, twitching after a bout with drinking. What I saw in those eyes at the time must have been the same thing that those with power to create religion saw when they made their heaven, hell, and all the depictions of demons and sinners. All that dogma just to keep all that human ugliness at bay. So in the new album I want to explore that instability and vacancy that I saw in those eyes and focus and explore on what it means to me. Time and memory don’t mean much and all the familiar faces you know are as good as insect’s wings beating right next to you. At any second, they can be gone. And to me that’s a very erratic, unhinged view of society and I think the only way to respond is to be violent and unpredictable in your own way. So I think the album will definitely be circular in the same way the nine circles of hell are although there will be nothing to do with religion on it. But there will be a lot of pulling of ropes, spreading yourself as wide as you can to whoever you can get to pay attention, and just realizing that everything is drenched in mud and no matter how hard you can try to clean it, there will always be a whole lot more to come. I’ve spent several years with a person who went through phases of addiction where there were moments of clarity and moments where society forced down its rules to keep them sober and functioning, but none of that mattered and time eventually won. And it was just interesting seeing how everything that society pushes down on you to try to do the right thing ends up just being all about how strong someone’s will is to do what they want to do.
Do you always create the songs on your own, at what point do the other members give their feedback on it? How important are they for you when it comes to songwriting?
I’ve been burned a few times letting people have control and I always felt Dismantled is what I truly felt from the start that was purely my own invention coming from a state of total isolation and I don’t want to taint that as I’ve learned the hard way in the past. Some people can get away with balancing their day out. I’ve tried that but the only real way to truly focus on my sound is to become enveloped in it and that requires me to be a recluse. So I do have live members that contribute at times to recorded songs but it’s not anything more than that. I am very proud of our live show right now and think it’s the tightest it’s ever been, we have TZA on keyboards that has to be seen to be appreciated and we have Jon Siren wailing on the drums. We also will probably add a guitarist at some point to the lineup. In fact I’m talking to Rotny from Psyclon Nine right now to see if he’ll play guitar for our music video for “The Whore Inside Me.” I’m going to keep my fingers crossed.
Who will you take with you this summer?
This summer we’re touring with Combichrist in Europe starting July 26th in Paris through August 8th. I feel like we never got a chance to properly tour Europe and I’m kin d of taking a chance and going out there before any new material has been put out there because I feel like we still have so much back-catalog to share with everyone. But we are definitely the underdogs as we will be playing right before Rabia Sorda and Combichrist and will have a 30 minute set. So if you want to catch us, come early! But we will be playing a healthy mix of everything we have had in the past as well as some new songs. Other than that we will also be playing a festival in Holland supporting Skinny Puppy as well as playing with bands like Destroid, Mindless Faith, and We Got This Far, who will also be joining us for a Belgium gig July 31st. I encourage everyone to buy plenty of merch from us because we really aren’t guaranteed a return for this trip out there and need help from the fans making it all work.
Besides Dismantled you also play in Aerodrone and No.Not.Never, what is the current status of both acts, are they still alive?
Yes they are still alive. No Not Never actually has a cover of Cold Hearted Snake that’s waiting to be released. Aerodrone have a remix by Apoptygma Berzerk as well as others in the works and the new single Ready To Love has been mixed by Mark Needham who’s also done The Killers… But everything must be on hold until I get this new Dismantled album done, I have too much hate to spew.
Why do you have these sideprojects, many musicians have their sideprojects these days, can’t you put all your ideas into Dismantled?
I already tried putting all my ideas into Dismantled. That album was Standard Issue. If you break it apart, you’ll get some Aerodrone in there too and that’s what a lot of people were complaining about. I’ve gotten better at it though. Dismantled is who I am even though I have other interests but ultimately what drives me is my dysfunction in fitting into society. I’m always attracted to the opposite person than who I am and that’s why I’ve probably only dated girls I’ve met through Aerodrone, because I saw something in them that I lacked in myself. What makes people go “this is unhealthy” is the only way I can be doing what I’m doing now. And I’m happy with whatever it is because I consider myself just another instrument in society, channeling what I observe into something others can raise their eyebrows over and be drawn into. Maybe my biggest mistake was not thinking of aliases for each different project I’m in other than Dismantled.
Any last words for the readers?
Don’t forget to come see us live this late July with Combichrist in Europe. We play early so don’t miss us! Also check us out with Skinny Puppy July 30th at GothicFest in Holland as well as our headlining Belgium show with We Got This Far July 31. See all our dates on the Facebook over at www.facebook.com/dismantled and buy our merch at http://www.dismantled.org/store .