Whenever I’m in need of some demented, mechanized gore; Catasexual Urge Motivation will always be on the top of the playlist. Their “Encyclopedia of Serial Murders” is my permanent reference. Briefly changing the name to Vampiric Motives before using the C.U.M monicker again, this is one fine interview. Hello Tomoaki. How’s your sickening bizarre life there?
Greetings Shah. My life has been quite ok but it is not as sick as you consider. Yeah, sometimes I watch porn movies but not every night.
C.U.M has released the debut CD “Encyclopedia of Serial Murders” in Sept ’96. How’s the response? Tell the readers something more about it.
Sure, it does. The response is really sick as we wanted. Every sick mother fuckers loved it very much. Unfortunately, we haven’t received all the responses from people we sent the promo yet. And because of label’s support to promote the CD as he, Frank the label’s owner, is really busy with his life and stuff. As far as I’m concern, we did really good job for the promotion work by ourselves instead of the label. So, time will tell. Well, the CD contains some older songs from our ’95 demo, split 7” ep’s, ’96 demo, and many new songs of course. It seems that everyone thinks it’s a grindcore album but we think it’s a death gore Metal with huge grindcore influence. The sound maybe caused it but we don’t care. We are not as good as we’re just now playing. 22 tracks of pure brutal and sick grinding death gore Metal in 61 minutes long. Very heavy sound and ultra sick puking vocals on it. Faster than the speed of light. Groovy as fuck. Check it out.
You released the CD on DELIRIA PRODUCTIONS from Germany. Why did you choose this label? This is the second time you made a deal with them, so how do they treat C.U.M?
Yes, it was the second time he released our stuff on his label. First one was “Satsujin Live” studio live tape ’96 anyway. We choose this label because Frank is my personal friend before the release. He really loved us from the beginning. It’s a simple reason that he wanted to release it and we agreed. DELIRIA PRODUCTIONS is still a very small label that only cares for grind, HC, noise, experimental stuff. Not so many releases on the label yet, and it was the first CD product of the label. We really thank him for the release.
You’ve planned to release the “Fantasy Wants Victim…” on V RECORDS, but it is cancelled. Any problem?
We didn’t cancel it. V fucking RECORDS refused it. The label offered to many bands for CD’s but nothing has been released yet. Andrew of the label is a liar. Don’t trust him and forget the V RECORDS’ name. In the beginning, V RECORDS wanted us an MCD consists of our ’96 demo. But we changed it to full length album consists of unreleased materials. “Fantasy Wants Victim…” album was a compilation stuff consists of never released tracks recorded back in ’95 and ’96. The album was screwed up now. So nobody will release it at the moment. We used a couple of tracks for our next cassette EP’s which will be out soon (or out by now I think).
C.U.M consists of you and your brother, Yuzin. Is it convenient enough to have only two members? Do you try to keep it that way?
Yes, we are. It has been really good enough to have only two human beings in the band. I used to play in a band before with four other guys but I was sick and tired of that line-up. I want to control everything. This way we have a really good relationship between me and my brother. There’s less argument, less fight. We used to listen to the same kind of music and we know what we want to play. There’s no room left in the band.
You’re also using a drum-machine instead of a real drummer. I personally think that without a real drummer the sound produced is a bit ‘hollow’, if you know what I mean. Maybe there’s no drummer that could provide the pace and speed that you prefer huh?
Thanks so much that we are a ‘hollow’ band, ha. We use it because we have huge Industrial music influence. Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Godflesh, Pitch Shifter, Dead World, Gore Beyond Necropsy etc. used machine and we are the same. Why not? They’re pretty cool bands and we followed. We never have searched any human drummer for the formation. We want to be different. We’re not a rock n’ roll band. There’s no room left for a human drummer, either. I like machine sound. But we haven’t reached the top yet but maybe someday.
You recorded your debut CD at the Meat Fuck Semen Studio. I bet that it’s owned by you. By the way, the production is quite good too for what it is.
Thank you so much. Yeah, it’s my room! I used to play in the real studios before but I didn’t get the sound I really wanted there. And the cost of using a studio is really high here in Japan. So, we decided to record all the materials by ourselves using my own room with an 8 track recorder and some effects. I’m not satisfied with all the records being released but they’re all fine so far. I’m always thinking about tomorrow. Future brings hope, as far as I know I think so. Next recording will be our second album that will be stronger than ever. With the same studio and technique of course. Our sound is getting better and better.
The time-gap between each of your releases is quite short, I must say so. Is it because you have too many songs?
It is because of labels’ request. They wanted from us some new songs and we recorded them for that. I’m responsible for song-writing but most of the songs (70%) are not as good as I wanted. Actually, it’s really easy for me to write a typical grind/death songs that we did in the past (the 70% I mean). Other songs that I’m really pleased with are not very easy to write. It’s getting harder to write good songs for me. But I will try, I will try to write as many good songs that I want. We have some other unreleased tracks that didn’t see the daylight but they’re crap. We have to take much time to compose a good song. I write the songs for me, for my enjoyment. If you like the songs, that’s cool.
You also have another band in the name of C.U.M FEATURING CYBER E.M.F that has recorded an Industrial album “Cyber Gore”. What’s the differences since the line-up is the same? Just the musical concept?
It’s not another band. It’s the industrial side of C.U.M. All songs (except one) were released under C.U.M monicker before on the CD, tapes. We re-arranged the songs to very Industrial direction using gigantic Industrial rhythm and mood. Because, to prove that we have huge Industrial influence. No one did that Industrial meet Gore before, but we did this already. Epoch making stuff. The line-up is the same. Sure, it has to be called musical concept, an Industrial album. I think I already talked about the formation. Hey, anyone who’s interested to release it, get in touch.
I’ve noticed that your song-titles are quite long and dealt with hyperperversitygorelustmurder type of topics. How do you able to write such lyrics? Where do you get your inspiration from? Do you stay in contact with any serial killer?
You’re right. They’re very long for a title. Some of the songs have the same content as the title, some may not. All the lyrical contents is my brother’s responsibility. I don’t know why they’re so long. That’s maybe because he wants to be different than other band’s boring short titles and lyrics. Yes, there are lyrics in Japanese sometimes. They’re long because he said what he wants to say in a long title, and lyrics (sentences). That’s enough space for him to say something about serial murder. There’s no inspiration as we know very much about killing and murder. “Murderous Philosophy”, if you ask me. I don’t need to get in touch with any serial killers because we are the serial murders.
Sorry but I have to admit that I don’t find too much originality from bands of this genre. Am I right, Tomoaki?
I think so too. Who cares about originality. We need brutality. I’m sure that Internal Bleeding, Cryptopsy, Torture Crypt, Deranged and lots more bands copying Cannibal Corpse but they’re really big in the scene because they are all very brutal. I couldn’t find any single piece of originality in them. But every brutal death Metal fanatics like them so much, why? If we play that kind of music, we can be very big? We don’t want to be like them but we need brutality. Hey, lyrical element shouldn’t be an originality. The music that is being played is the main thing. If you want an originality, listen to NOT death Metal and grind. Death, black, doom, grind, noise, industrial, experiment, sound like all the same to me. There’s no original bands today. We don’t follow the originality. All we need is the brutality.
I think grind death Metal is quite popular there in Japan, but I think it might be overcrowded with those. A phenomenon? Which bands stand apart from the rest?
You’re totally misunderstood. It’s not really popular here at all. Phenomenon? Bullshit! We’re the only band who plays grind death gore Metal in Japan. 99% of bands here are playing boring grindcore, hardcore, crustcore, noisecore, grindnoise. There’s no band who plays pure death Metal. I don’t give a shit and don’t care what will happen to the Japanese scene. We, C.U.M, don’t belong to the Japanese scene. And I know nothing about grindcore and noisecore scene. I don’t care if you say S.O.B is your favourite band because we hate them. We hat 100% of Japanese grind stupidity. No one stands out. I think we have now loads of enemies but we don’t care. We care for us.
There’s also a cover of “Defiling the Grave” from the gods Impetigo in the album…
It’s one of my favourite Impetigo songs. Why not? We covered some Impetigo songs before because they’re the only band that influenced us. Also the song is/was Stevo’s favourite. Stevo told me via email after he listened to our CD. How cool, isn’t it? We don’t have influential bands now. Some of our older songs remind you of somebody because they’re too old and we didn’t have ourselves at the time. However, time has changed. We learned how to be like ourselves. I didn’t listen to death/grind stuff for almost a year now. So, who might inspire me in those days?
You’re also doing this Corporal Arts ‘zine and now it is RIP and you made another called The Banned…
I quit everything related with fanzine for some time now. We’re concentrating on band’s activity. I lost interest to help bands. And I don’t listen to death/grind so much now, how can I do this?
I give you the honour to devour some ultrasikkgore messages to close this interview then.
Thanks much for this great interview. I mean it. You’re honest. I like this kind of interview. Well, I used to say ultrasickgore messages before but I quit. People seem to misunderstand when I say like that because they think I’m a moron or something. I just would like to say goodbye and see you soon again.
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