Cured
Leper is a band from Southern Germany that plays a very nice death
metal, Serpent Grinder had the opportunity to make this interview.
Enjoy!
Serpent Grinder :
Please introduce
all the members of the band and their parts
Cured Leper:
Gag (20) - vocals;
Tom (22) - guitar; Julian (18) - bass; Eli - fill-in drummer
Serpent Grinder: What are the band
influences?
Cured Leper:
Some of our
musical influences are Mortification, Encryptor (vocals), Bolt Thrower,
Metanoia, basically death metal in general. There are some black metal
influences here and there too (Horde, Immortal), but we're currently
cutting down our music to plain death metal with some melody.
Lyrically our influences are the Bible, Jesus and the things he has done
for us. Our daily life and current events (news) are also an influence
sometimes.
Serpent Grinder: Where is the band
from?
Cured Leper:
We are from
southern Germany, very close to the border to Switzerland and France.
Serpent Grinder: What styles do
you play?
Cured Leper:
On our demo CD the
music is a mixture of death, black and doom metal and everything is
quite slow there. At the moment we're re-working all our songs and
writing new ones too of course. Our style has changed to old-school
death metal with some melodic parts and without many doom and black
influences. The songs are much faster now than before. Of course those
influences are still there a bit, especially in the older stuff, because
it's impossible and also a bit stupid to completely re-write a song just
to make sure it's 100% death metal. We're just trying to play straight
death metal now without many other genres mixed into it.
Serpent Grinder:
Is the band christian and what
are the main topics in your lyrics?
Cured Leper:
Yes,
we are a Christian band and want to spread the gospel of Jesus with our
lyrics. Our current drummer is not a Christian, though, and thus heīs
only filling-in until we find a Christian death metal drummer in our
area. Heīs a cool friend helping us out and he doesnīt have problems
with our messge.
The main topics are the forgiveness we receive through Jesusī blood,
Godīs amazing grace and his never ending love. The band name, Cured
Leper, actually means that we all are healed from spiritual leprosy,
which is sin, because Jesus loves us and died for us on the cross.
Walking in Jesusī footsteps and following him also appears very often,
also topics like pain and the toughness of life. And sometimes we also
talk about the corruption and falsehood of mankind. They all need Jesus
in their lives!!
Serpent Grinder: How
successful is your band?
Cured Leper:
At
the beginning the local reactions to our music were quite bad. Most of
the Christians that heard us said that the music is ok, "but the vocals
are so evil and demonic". This has changed a bit over the years, thank
God. People seem to finally understand that we're all
about Jesus and that we don't do satanic music in any way.
The reactions to our "Demo ī05" were all pretty good, especially the
Christian metal fans who bought it liked it quite a lot, despite of the
rather bad sound quality. Also non-metal people and non-Christians that
heard and bought it liked the demo a lot in a certain way.
And when we play live almost everyone that is there watching us likes
our stuff, even if they arenīt into death metal normally.
Also, Nordic Mission from Norway got interested in us and is selling or
demo CD through their distro, which is really cool.
Serpent Grinder: Are you
persecuted in any way because you're christian?
Cured Leper:
Many
non-Christians canīt understand how we can be Christians and play death
metal, they think all Christian music should be nice and peaceful and so
on. And as said before, some Christians canīt understand that either
because they think death metal is evil and
satanic, period. They think it sounds evil, so it must be evil, and they
canīt accept us playing that music, even though they know our message
and intention.
But there hasnīt been any real persecution yet because weīre still
pretty unknown, but Iīm sure weīll face some bigger problems when we get
more well known. The devil doesnīt do much against Christian people as
long as they shut up and donīt talk about Jesus in public, but as soon
as they really stand up for Christ he attacks. Iīm pretty sure he wonīt
leave us in
peace either, actually he has tried to stop us with lots of internal
band problems already since we first started, but with the holy armor of
God we are able to defend us against his attacks.
Serpent Grinder: What plans do you
have in the future?
Cured Leper:
As we finally
found a fill-in drummer that really knows how to play death metal after
a month-long search, we want to rehearse the old and new stuff and
create something really brutal and aggressive. We intend to play a
couple of gigs soon to get more famous in our area, and we plan to
record a second, better demo CD soon too, which will hopefully be
capable of making us interesting for some label, because our big wish is
to release a really good album (or more if God wants us to, of course)
with international distribution to spread Jesus in the world.
Serpent Grinder: Describe your
latest album or demo?
Cured Leper:
Our demo is simply
called "Demo ī05" and has 5 songs on it that run for almost half an
hour. As said before, it is a mix of death, doom and black, which is
unintentional in many passages, we only realized that later. It was
recorded by a friend from our church for
free, but the recording quality isnīt as good as it could have been,
unfortunately. We are not satisfied with it despite of all the nice
reactions.
People can buy the demo CD from us for 4 plus shipping and from Nordic
Mission Distro for
5 I think. It is a home-made CD-R, we burned all the CDs ourselves, but
it has a pro-copied cover and inlay, a round sticker on the CD itself
and lyrics and photos to access on your computer.
Serpent Grinder:
Where do you usually tour or perform?
Cured Leper:
Until now we have
only played very few gigs in our area, no tour or anything similar yet
at all. But now that we have a good drummer filling in weīll hope fully
be able to perform more often.
Maybe weīll play a mini-tour with our friends from Henoch (melodic black
death from Belgium) someday, weīve talked about that some time ago but
itīs nothing definite yet. Hopefully weīll be able to make that real one
day!
Serpent Grinder: Any last Comments?
Cured Leper:
Thanx a lot for
your interest in the band and for this opportunity to do this interview,
itīs been a great pleasure!! God bless you and your zine!!!
www.myspace.com/curedleper
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