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Building a rapport

With an all-new lineup, Decapitated hits the road before making an album



Bryan Birtles / <!-- e --><a href="mailto:bryan@vueweekly.com">bryan@vueweekly.com</a><!-- e -->

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Having reformed in late 2009, two years after a bus crash that claimed the life of the band's drummer and put its singer in a coma, Poland's Decapitated is headlining this year's touring metal festival, Summer Slaughter. Vue Weekly spoke with guitarist and band leader Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka about the band's reformation and its upcoming plans.



Vue Weekly: This time around it's a whole new band. Can you tell me a bit about getting to know each other on the road?



Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka: We've had a great time with the new lineup. In the last couple of weeks we've started to do really nice shows and everyone's really happy. I think everyone's starting to really enjoy listening and watching the shows. This tour is the last step to build the band again—we started in February and after Summer Slaughter we'll stop touring and start to concentrate on doing a new recording, so everything's all right right now.



VW: Have you been writing songs while on tour?



WK: Not really. We've had a lot of time on tour but for me it's not possible to do a new riff or a new song on a tour bus, so after the tour I'll find some free time from everything and concentrate on making new music. We have studio time booked on the 25th of January so there's still a lot of time to do it.



VW: It's been a while since your last album, 2006's Organic Hallucinosis—do you think the themes of your work and the way you write will shift?



WK: We have a new lineup—the last album was recorded four or more years ago, so it'll definitely be something different and we'll see how it happens. I can't say too much about the new songs right now but for sure it'll be Decapitated and you'll be able to see it's the same band, but we always do different albums and this one will be different for sure compared to the other albums. I think it'll be not just blast beats and double kick and maybe some more slow stuff and different sounds, but I don't know, we'll see.



VW: Is it weird touring without a new album?



WK: It's not a problem to play old stuff and I can't see that people aren't satisfied about that. For me you can play shows, you can do tours even if you don't have a new album—it's more about doing a good show, playing good stuff even if you don't have any new songs it's still all right.



There was a plan; I didn't want to go into the studio with a new lineup, a totally fresh lineup—first we had to do a tour. Then after a lot of shows we'll do a new recording because we don't know each other. We had to practise together.



VW: Has the tour built the chemistry you were looking for?



WK: Oh yeah, definitely. It's starting to be a real band. Since February we've been doing a lot of shows and right now it's starting to look like a normal band and not like four dudes trying to play together and not knowing how to do it. I think after this tour we have two more weeks playing together and then after that this band will be ready to make songs together.



VW: The tour is getting a lot of good reviews. You must be happy about that.



WK: This tour has been amazing, every show is great. I can see that people are enjoying it very much and that's amazing. There's so many good people, good crew, good company, so we have good fun, good times.



VW: How does the scene compare between here and Europe?



WK: It's similar. Here it's a bit of a different thing, different music than in Europe. In Europe the metal is concentrated on folk-metal bands and stuff, guys going on the stage wearing skins, looking like fucking vikings and stuff like that, but in the US—especially on this tour—there's lots of technical stuff, like jazz bands and jazz musicians. It's a bit like opera or stuff like that.



With the crowd it's the same—if we have a good show the crowd reaction is the same.



VW: Is touring with so many other bands a more fun way to tour than by yourselves?



WK: It's a festival and it's good with all these bands playing, I can't complain. We have a great crew, great bands. We don't care about too much—all the bands are great guys, we don't have any problems with anybody and we're having a great time here. It's cool, especially that almost every show has been sold out and without all these bands it would be not that good. I'm really happy about it.



VW: What kind of stuff can people look forward to in the show?



WK: Like usual we'll just do a crazy fucking performance—we play as good as possible every night and try to do a nice metal show. That's it. V