So let's start at the begining with some intros... How did you meet each others in the band? When did you discover grind? And what the hell made you want to start a grindcore band?

Santi – Hector, Ivan and Luis know each other since ages ago!! I met them sometime between 2001/2002 when I was going to their old bands shows, and finally getting drunk with them!! They were about to start a grindcore band and I jumped to their rehearsal and started to sing!! As easy as that!! My first contact with Grindcore was when I was 14 and went to an old friend house and we watched the Napalm Death’s “Live Corruption” VHS, I was totally blown away and I bought the Harmony Corruption CD and Brujeria´s Matando Gueros. Some months later I got from a friend the “Symphonies of sickness” recorded on tape, and I couldn’t believe how sick and dark that album was.  Being in a Grindcore band was totally natural for me since I fuckin love this music, in my teen days I only played in shitty bands and “never to be done” projects, so to find the proper people to do a Grindcore band was a blast!!

Hector - Like Santi said I know Ivan and Luis from a lot of years ago, from the school times. I discover the grindcore/death metal music by a friend’s brother that on that time  was an extreme music freak, and I remember him listening the Napalm Death “Scum” and the Morbid Angel “Domination”; in that days it was their new album and we were waiting all day in front of the TV waiting for that viva channel to put this new Morbid Angel videoclip "Where the slim live" hahaha !!! I started to play guitar with these guys in a death metal band but it sucked, and next I played in more bands and in 2001 we created Nashgul.
I think that I started to play grindcore because it was an extreme, fast and intelligent style, you can find political, social and millions of different grindcore styles; not like a lot of brutal death bands that only talk about corpses, cocks, blood and stupid things.

How do the rehearsals go? What kind of place do you play in? What's your composing process? Who writes
the songs/or the lyrics in general......

Santi - We usually rehearse 1 or 2 times per week, we rehearse in a nice and cheap place with some other local bands. Sometimes we’re so fuckin busy that we cannot rehearse in some weeks, that’s the main reason we’re so fuckin slow doing new songs!! Hector is the one who brings tons of riffs and we work on them together, I write the lyrics and  I’m starting to bring some riffs too hehehe

Hector - We will start to rehearsal more often now, I was touring with my other band and it was a really chaos for the Nashgul rehearses. We have 9 songs now for our forthcoming LP and probably next year we will release it, but we want to make the things ok, no hurry. Our composing process??? I usually have some riffs and we talk about them and work on them.

Where did you get the band name Nashgul from? What does it mean to you?

Santi – It’s a song from a very unknown Death Metal cult band that nobody will know here, we’re so fuckin “True people”, u know??? Hahahaha, just kidding…our bass player is a total Tolkien freak and he got the name since a lot of years ago….(before the movies were made, u know as I told you before we’re so fuckin “true”)

What's the Nashgul release you're most satisfied with so far?

Hector - I don’t know....probably the Humanicidio CD because it was delayed a lot of times because we were working so much on the design and finally it was awesome. About the rest of splits i think that the Antihero LP is so old now, but the Antihero songs still kick asses!! The Sewn Shut split EP I like it so much, music and design ; and the From The Ashes EP the cover is fucking great, and I love this guys ,our Swedish brothers.

Santi – Probably the split with Sewn shut, ´cos I really like our songs on that split and for me it was an honour to share a piece of vinyl with one of my fuckin favourite bands!! Of course I enjoy their side of the split a lot, what a piece of obscure death/grind madness!!! I also love the “Humanicidio” CD (in which the split with SS is included) and the other seven inches. The only Nashgul stuff I don’t like is our split with Antihero, it was our first recording and it’s so shitty.

out!!!

You have a new full length album coming up... WHat can you say about it? Is it gonna be all new songs (compared to the split ep's) Which label will release it?

Hector - I´m so proud with the new Nashgul stuff. I think the music is a mix of grindcore/death metal/punkcrust mosher haha !!  and lyrics are more political zombifier. All the songs will be new and its probably that we will record one cover or something like that. We have to talk with Tom from Power It up Records and another Spanish label of a friend that wants to help us to release it.

Santi – We got 8 or 9 songs for the new album, and I think it’s our best stuff ever…it’s old school Grindcore with a touch of death metal (autopsy/nihilist) and crust (discharge/wolfpack). We’re being so fuckin slow de-composing the album for the reasons I mention above, but you know I think it’s going to be a good work. It will be released through Power it up records in CD and we don’t know which label is going to release the LP yet, we have to record first, so there is no hurry about this.

Do you have any more split Ep's lined up too?

Santi – No really, there is some talking with some bands about this, but nothing for sure yet…first we have to finish our full-length, and then Satan will say.

Hector - We will make more splits but no at this moment, it’s impossible for us.

Your lyrics are in a very social/political vein yet you seem to use alot of horror imagery too... Usually people don't seem to lo see the 2 things mixed, what's your opinion? Also is there any special reason for writing lyrics in spanish, or is it just more comfortable for you?

Santi – Yeah! We’re all old school horror freaks!! So it’s natural for us to bring these influences to our music and imagery. Also the state of the world is worse than any horror film, it looks like a mixture between “Day of the dead” and “Last man on earth” in which the thoughtful persons are like the Vincent Price character haha
We sing in Spanish because it’s the easier way for us to communicate our feelings!! But we got and we will do again some lyrics in Galician and English if we feel nice expressing ourselves in these idioms.

Hector - Yeah I think that it’s the perfect mix. We are living so fucking hard years, works, oppression, more and more strong laws and this thing only makes a small part of the society be angry. Always the same shit, I think that there are 2 big machineries that make this place worst: the State and the pigs who work defending it = the police man/woman. Fuck them, we have a lot and serious problems with them and I only want to say: "fuck state, cops on fire!” We love horror movies and I think that a zombie rampage could be the best way to destroy the system and the human race, living in a horror-anarchy; but don’t worry about that, in 10 years we will be extinct.

Your cover artwork have a very special look to them... Who's the the artist doing them? Has he also worked for other bands? Will you keep using his stuff in the future?

Santi – Luis, our bass player, is actually the man behind our artwork. He’s a professional drawer and designer so the choice is clear. He did some other work for bands like From the ashes and some other local bands. I love when I band uses a draw for their cover, and not a shitty Photoshop thing or a fuckin photo downloaded from internet, so if any band/label is interested in his work, you can get in touch with him at sendonluis@yahoo.es

 
Spain seems to be have some of the finest grind bands active right now! Does that seem that way to you too? What are your favorite spanish bands? Any underrated/new spanish bands deserving some attention?

Hector - I don’t think this is true. Probably now the people started to listen this bands but Machetazo, Haemorrhage, Looking for an answer are playing since a lot of years ago .There are awesome bands here , the ones I mentioned and  some another grindcore bands like Freaknation, Gruesome Stuff Relish, Ras, Unsane Crisis. Other cool bands: Horror ,Anti-Playax, Moho, HellDivision, Hongo ,Cementerio Show(rip),Ekkaia, Destierro, Karnvapen Attack...millions of punk, crust, hardcore bands.

Santi – Oh yeah!! There are not many grindcore bands in Spain, but the only few are real good!!!  My fave ones are Machetazo, Looking for an answer, Haemorrhage, Disturbance Project, Gruesome Stuff Relish, Altar of giallo, Ras, Tu Carne and Unsane Crisis!!

Can you tell me about this Yugular side band of yours, that project sounds most interesting to me!!! You also seem to have other projects in the band... Is it difficult finding the time to do all of them?

Santi – Yugular is a project formed with 3 members of Looking for an answer with me singing. We already got the songs for our first Mini-CD to be released through No Escape Records from Australia. We have to record them sometime soon, but you know they live in Madrid and I live almost 600 kms away from there, so we have to set up the dates for the recording yet. It sounds like a heavy mixture between traditional goregrind with heavy death metal. Very aggressive yet funny!!! Be aware!!!! Also I got a doom metal band with Rober from Machetazo named El dia de los muertos (Day of the dead in Spanish), but we don’t rehearse since months ago, who knows, maybe it will resurrect sometime soon!!!

How much have you been touring so far? What places did you go to? What's your favorite show/memory?

Santi – We usually to do more weekend shows rather than touring, mostly due to the lack of time and lack of good offers to do a nice tour. Anyway we toured across Germany last year and we played in some other countries like Czech Republic (Obscene Fest), Belgium, Portugal or Holland (Bloodshed Fest). We would like to tour next year, let’s see what happens!! Hector and Ivan toured through Europe with Black Panda and Hongo and I toured with Looking for an answer when I sang with them in their 2005 summer tour, so now is the time of Nashgul to do it!!!

Hector - Yeah I was touring Europe with Black Panda and next year will be the Nashgul year. We have a interesting idea and we don’t know...probably we will make it. One of my favourite Nashgul shows was here in our city in our old squat "Thunderdome" the reunion show of Ekkaia they did not play in 3 years and it was a really fucking chaos night with a lot of friends, 300 people during a Thursday in the air, dancing, moshing....The pics from the Humanicidio cd are taken from this show.

You seem t be into horror movies... So....... what are some of your favorite horror movies & favorite non-horror movies? Favorite directors? Why movie would you compare the band Nashgul to?!!!!

Santi- Yeah, I fuckin love horror movies, my house is filled with old VHS´s and DVD’s, I love to collect horror movies since ages ago, and I’m proud of my little collection!!! I’m really into the classics:  Universal, Hammer, Amicus…..Amando de Ossorio´s Blind Dead movies, Let the sleeping corpses lie, Horror Express, The Wicker man (1973), Texas Chainsaw Massacre, George A. Romero dead trilogy, some Jess Franco, some Paul Naschy…I love Italian stuff: Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, Joe D’Amato, Umberto Lenzi, Bruno Mattei and I¨m really into their zombies, cannibals, giallos, exploitation, sexploitation…. all kind of sick stuff. Jorg Buttgereit, early John Carpenter, 80´s slasher movies, The Exorcist,  Phantasma saga, Hellraiser, Evil Dead movies…uffff, too much to mention!!!!
Like in music, I like all kind of different styles, some non-horror movies that I love are: Taxi Driver, Conan the Barbarian, Planet of the apes saga, Dirty Harry, old Star Wars saga, The Godfather, The seventh seal, The deer hunter, Scarface, Apocalypse now, old 50´s Sci-Fi, Spaghetti Westerns, David Lynch, Monty Python, Mel Brooks, Russ Meyer …ooh, I’m going to stop, the readers are sleeping already!!!!!!

We can be compared to The Omen, cos´ all kind of strange things happen when we’re around.  We’re the children of the beast!!! hahaha

Hector - I´m a Mad Max trilogy freak. With Black Panda we made a tribute LP and Nashgul we have one song called Mad Max and in the forthcoming album it will appear the 2 part.

What are the 5 most influencial bands/albums to you/or Nashgul?

Santi –

Repulsion – Horrified
Napalm Death – “F.E.T.O.” and “Mentally murdered”
Carcass – “Symphonies of sickness”
Entombed – “Left hand path”
Autopsy – “Mental funeral”

Hector -

Assuck - Misery Index
Metallica - ...and justice for all
Napalm Death - Scum
Terrorizer - World Down fall
Dissection - Storm Before Calm

What's your current playlist?

Santi  -

Electric Wizard – “Witchcult today”
Abscess – “Horrorhammer”
Verminous – “Impious Sacrilege”
Looking for an answer – “Extincion”
Damnation – “Destructo evangelia”
Nominon – “Recremation”
Bombstrike – “Born into this”
Sir Lord Baltimore –  “Kingdom come”
Nick Cave –  “The boatman’s call”
The Coffinshakers – “We are the undead”
Reverend Bizarre – “So long suckers”
Berenice Bleeding – “Demo 07”
…and for some strange reason I cannot stop listening to the Chris Isaak song “Blue Hotel”!!

Hector -

I can’t stop listen to this:

Death Breath - "Stinking Up the Nigh"
Skitkids - "Besoket vid krubban"
Drudkh - "Estrangement"
Freaknation - "s/t"
Toxic Holocaust - "Hell on Earth"
Testament - "Practice what you preach"
Looking for an Answer - "Extincion"
Inepsy - "No speed limit for destruction"

That's all I've got! Thanks for going through this boring question hell!!!

Santi – No fuckin boring at all dude!! I really had a nice time answering this interview!! Thanks for the interview, your support and the Blue Holocaust CD!! Hope to meet ya soon and drink some nice French wine till I puke my last guts out!!! Hail & Kill brother of grind!!!!! Yeeeeeha!!!!!!!

Hector - Thanks for your time and your interest, for more info about Nashgul you can go to www.myspace.com/nashgul or email us to nashgulcore@yahoo.es.
Thanks again and "Grind The Fucking System"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!