I - Hells ! What's up ? Promotion of the album is going fine ? What are the feedbacks ?

NUYT: Hello, we’re doing fine, thanks. Reviews are coming in from all over the world and they all seem to be very positive so you won’t hear me complaining. 

II - What the fuck is your band's name? Who did find it ?

PUI: Around 1998, when Koen, Stoffel and I started this band we wanted a bandname in our local dialect, so “Uufflakke” was born. It’s a delicious recipe, made from boiled pigheads and it tastes really well with mustard and a piece of bread, it’s still very popular overhere. Only problem, people from outside East-Flanders didn’t understand Uuflakke, so we decided to translate it in English, Headmeat. 

III - How will you describe your last album to us ? 

PUI: Well, some sort of mix of death metal with unconventional keys would describe it nicely I guess. If you take 2 shots Immolation or Morbid Angel, 1 shot Gojira, some Autopsy, Gorefest, Mr. Bungle and lots of Necrophagia and Nocturnus and shake it all together, you’ll get a nice blend of what the latest release stands for. 

IV - There's a big difference between the MCD and the album. Can you explain this "evolution"? Who gets this idea with the synths ? 

NUYT: We were already playing some time with the thought of adding something extra to our music and Nieke is a good friend of us, so a choice wasn’t very hard to make. And the keys make the music more interesting, mysterious in a way. Although probably there are still people who think that keyboards and synths don’t belong in death metal. We try to prove them wrong, we can use keys without sounding cheesy and gay. 

V - Pui is good musician : playing drums, later bass and later guitar. Is it trying to make a putsch ? Try to get the place of lead singer ? Why all this movements ? 

PUI: Hehe, well thanks but you never heard me play the drums haha. Around 1998 I was still playing in black metalband When Autumn Ended but I wanted to play death metal as well, so we started Headmeat. Drummers are pretty hard to find overhere so I took the place until another local band Faustian Moon split up, so we took their drummer, their guitarist started to sing with us and I started to play the bass. A year later yet another local band Morto Perpet split up so we took their bass player, Stoffel left and I took his place as guitarplayer and did second vocals. I have no intention to become the lead singer hahaha. 

VI - Your lyrics seems to deal with typical death metal themes : violence, pain…Can you talk a bit longer about the texts? What is about the text in your own language ? 

NUYT: Yes, on the previous releases so far, most of my lyrics deal about these themes indeed. I use them as a sort of an exhaust pipe to vent my anger about such things as religion, pain, violence. But I got a bit bored to write gory and anti-christian lyrics all the time so nowadays my newer lyrics are a bit more personal written, in a metaphorical kind of way. I guess I made my peace with god after all, haha. About the song Boern’ Weelei, for the people who don’t understand Flemish, boern’weelei is our local dialect for a little rural road between two pieces of land mostly used by peasants to put their cows on or raise their crops. You know, the local countryside stuff. How evil is that ? Haha. 

VII - "Consumed by fire" seems to deal with religion…tell me more about…And what the state of the religions in your country ? 

NUYT: “Consumed by Fire” deals about the life after death issue seen from the angle of different kinds of religion. What will you find after you’ve past away? Will there be an afterlife or just nothing? Lights out, done? Later in the song, it evolves somewhat into my vision that I have of death. I’m an atheïst so, if I’m gone, I’m gone. No afterlife for me, haha.

Here in Belgium, mostly everybody is a christian but there are only a few who are real catholics. Most of the churches only have old people in them on sundays so it’s becoming a dying race, hehe. And ofcourse the islam has become a big issue too since all that shit that’s going on in the Middle East and stuff. But I’m not going to discuss all that here ‘cause I could write a whole fucking book about this. Maybe I should draw some cartoons to make it easier, hehe. 

VIII - There is a big "dark" feeling in the album, quite close to black metal at some moments. Can you imagine to become a black/death band for the next release ? 

NUYT: We like to call ourselves an “Unsane Dark Death Metal” band. So yes, there is a dark atmosphere represented in the album. Just the way we like it. I don’t know if we will become a black/death band but we do like to use other musical influences into our music. In the new songs that we’re making, there are some black influences again, even stoner and doom. We even play with the thought of adding some electro in it as well. We’ll see what the future brings. But, we’ll mainly stay a death metal band I guess. We only want to keep our music interesting, not like the average brutal running of the mill death metal band that you hear a thousand times and you get bored with after hearing three songs. 

IX - The cover's artwork is really killer (the one of the MCD was killer too). Who did it? Did you participate or give some indications for it ? 

NUYT: It’s been done by Pepijn from the band Welkin. They are good friends of us and we were happy with the cover of “Destructive Entitlement” so we decided to let him do the one for our full lenght too. I told him the name of our album “Mass Sociogenic Illness” and gave him some background information about the title and some directions of how I would like to see the cover. And again he did a fantastic job I must say. 

X - How did you get a deal with Baphomet? Are you satisfied wit them? No one in Europe was able to give you a decent deal ? 

PUI: We just send out the promos of the mini and Baphomet gave the most interesting deal. If we look at the Belgian metalscene it seems that we should be gratefull to be on a label which pays our pressing, studio and distribution. Baphomet Records is an American label with only a few releases a year so it’s extremely small. Luckily Baphomet has a deal with Red Stream which has a good distribution and promotion. We met the owner Killjoy once when they toured in Europe with Necrophagia and he’s a very short but very friendly guy. He is extremely motivated but he has way too much on his mind. He sings in Necrophagia, Gorelord, Wurdulak, Viking Crown, Enoch and The Ravenous to name a few, directs movies and clips, has the label and has to take care of his family. He’s constantly on the road to record, tour, direct etc … It’s hard to get in contact with him but almost everything goes through Red Stream now.

XI - Don't you think your music is a bit apart with the structures you've developed? A bit too surprising for the basic metalhead? What are the main idea when you're composing ? 

NUYT: We’re aware of the fact that we’re not an easy band to listen to but like I said before, we want to keep the music interesting and to give it an extra touch. I know that there are people who think that keyboards and effects don’t belong in death metal. But hey, I don’t force anyone to listen or to like our music. But I have to admit, you got to be somewhat openminded to listen to our music, simple as that. 

XII - What are your influences : musical or extra musical ?

PUI: I mentioned some influences above but we all listen to lots of different styles. That all reflects in the music I think, from Frank Zappa up to Cock And Ball Torture. The latest bands who gave us interesting new views are Gojira and Akercocke, truly brilliant music. Extra-musical I think life in general and good movies, mostly comedy stuff and horror. 

XIII - It seems you've used a sample from a british series…What kind of series? Why didn't you use samples from horror movies ? It would be more in the ambiance of the album… 

PUI: Hah, a lot of people take wild guesses where our samples come from and a lot of them think they come from British series but they don’t. We mostly just take samples from the movies we watch in the studio when someone records his lines. On the mini we had samples from Freaks and Dumb ‘n Dumber. Now we used samples from Braindead and Meet The Feebles, two pretty “unknown” but hilarious movies by Peter “LOTR” Jackson. There’s a sample from Ace Ventura 2 as well. Every metalband uses horror movies so it’s nice to something more original, although Braindead has been used a million times before. Maybe we should use British series cause The League Of Gentlemen, The Office, The Young Ones, … are of the best stuff ever made. 

XIV - Production is really great : how much time did you work on studios? Do you think nowadays bands can make music without a good production? I mean…everybody is always praying good sound etc. but in fact don't give a fuck about music itself. That's why we have crappy shits album with huge sounds…because people are just interesting in the "good" production. Agree or not ? 

PUI: I totally agree. I write for a magazine as well and we receive 300 metal cd’s every month, including loads of crap. Ten years ago, almost every cd which got released was good stuff, cause they got filtered through various labels. Now everyone can record in fine studios and release the stuff on a cd-r. That’s why we first released a demoTAPE in 2001, a lot of bands forget such things. We spent 11 days in the studio and we’re pretty satisfied with the result, it’s massif and not too polished as well. 

XV - Seeing your photos, you're not taking yourselves seriously. Don't you feel that nowadays metal heads are too fucking serious? Especially on black metal when they think they are fucking elite, talking shits with their so highly theories on forums… 

NUYT: Yeah indeed, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, life is already too damn serious in my opinion. We’re not the kind of metalheads that will kick your butt if you stare too long at us. We’ll probably will date your sister instead, haha. No, I think for 95% of all those black metal dudes it’s just an act. And they’re right because come on, do they really think that Dani from Cradle Of Filth thinks of himself that he’s a vampire?I think not. For the other 5%, there are some real world-improvers out there and you can recognize them from afar. And they can keep their theories for themselves or they can talk to the hand, ‘cause the face won’t listen, haha. 

XVI - You've done two clips ; are you satisfied with them? Why don't you wait to have a real budget to do a better video clip with big tits and gore? And are you fan of tuning (hehe we mostly can see your tuned cars in the clip of the album) ??

NUYT: Yeah, we are pretty satisfied with them. Especially the latest one for the song “Perfect Murder Sequence”. We know it’s all low budget filming and stuff but we see it as an nice little extra for all the fans. Ofcourse we would like to shoot a video with a bigger budget and all. Maybe if we find a bigger label in the future, who knows... About tuning cars, I like a nicely subtile tuned car. Some nice rims, a little spoiler,... Not the over the top -2 fast 2 furious- alike tuned cars, that’s just pathetic. It’s better to have an ugly car and a powerfull engine with lot’s of horsepower than a car that looks like a fucking fluorescent colourbook with no spirit at all. 

PUI: The cars weren’t ours, we could use them from some friends who are in the Flemishh Opel Club. The clip includes 5 Opel Mantas, beautifully tuned and some of the nicest cars I’ve seen in our neighbourhood. 

XVII - I suppose you've tested the new songs on stage : how did the listeners perceive the passages with keys? Do you plan to tour out your country? Which bands do you like to tour with ? 

NUYT: Most of the reactions we’ve got so far were all positive, people say that the keys give an extra dimension to the band. Although you still have people who say that they liked our demo “Homicidal Intent” from back in the days that we were a grindcore band, better. It’s all a matter of personal taste I suppose.

We would love to do a tour ofcourse and if I could choose with what band, I’d say Necrophagia. Or some other friended band from Belgium like Welkin, Suhrim,... would be nice too. But I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t any of the bands I named. There are tons of great bands to tour with. A tour is a tour hey. 

XVIII - Do you know some French death metal bands? Do you like our scene ? 

NUYT: Ah, the mighty Gojira! They fuckin’ blow every other band of the stage !

Other French bands I like are; Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition, Ultra Vomit, Gronibard, Arkhon Infaustus, Mutiilation, Sylvester Staline, ... 

PUI: I gotta say that the French simply blew me away the last two years. GTI is one of the most innovative bands I heard recently but Psykup and Klone do great stuff as well. I have a song from Pitbulls In The Nursery and I want their cd as soon as possible. ??? is so Meshuggah that it’s cool as well. 

XIX - We just know few names from metal in Belgium (Aborted, Mystica, Enthroned, Plague…). Tell us the good UG bands that you have in your country. Have you some Belgian zines? Have you an active metal scene ? 

NUYT: Well, where to begin... Good Belgian bands are; Welkin, Suhrim, Axamenta, Leng Tch’e, Kruagre, Fleshmould, Battalion, In-Quest, The Difference, Days of Betrayal and a whole bunch I forgot. Check out deathmetal. 

PUI: We have two paper metalzines, Rock Tribune and I write for Mindview. There are some Belgian zines as well but indeed, deathmetal.be is the most important. 

XX - Are you proud that your country is represented in the world by Benoit Poelvoorde ?

PUI: I thought we were represented by Marc Dutroux hahaha. Funny thing is, I just bought C’est Arrivé Près de Chez-Vous, and it still is one of the coolest movies ever. He’s a fantastic actor but I need to see some more of his work, oh yeah, noone can talk as fast French as him and he’s extremely funny. 

XXI - Ok guys, this the end…thanks for your patience hehe…last words for you. 

NUYT: Thanks for this interview! We surely hope to kick some ass on stage in France in the near future. Make it happen! Respect !

Contact :
http://www.headmeat.com/