How was the band formed in its beginnings?

Hi Frederico, this is Leon Macey (guitars/drums) from Mithras here!

In 1998 the band i was in previously had split up, and my family moved hundreds of miles away to the other end of the country. I tried (unsucessfully) to find a drummer to play with, and in the end I got fed up and moved back here. I had been in contact with Rayner (bass/vocals) while I was away and when I moved back we formed IMPERATOR in early 1999, with a drummer called Justin Joyce.

That lineup recorded "Gods among men" our demo cd that was released in september 1999. After then we realised that for this sort of music you needed a really really good drummer, and our old drummer wasn't into it so i took over (i had been playing in some cryptopsy type bands on drums). We then got Steve Crompton for live guitars, and i was the band's main drummer.

Why did you change your name from Imperator to Mithras?

When we formed, we knew of an old cult polish band called IMPERATOR, but they were defunct, so we thought we would be ok using the name since the band was dead. But then they reformed!

We were contacted by someone who knew the band who told us to change our name, which we were happy to do as we didn't want to share a name with anybody.

We wanted to have a name that still has some kind of historical meaning, and Imperator meant "Emperor in times of war in ancient Rome", and Mithras is a hidden ancient Roman god.

What can you tell me about the MCD "Gods among men"? Do you still like it?

It is great in terms of music/guitar playing, but the vocals weren't too good, and the bass drumming of our old drummer was very bad!

We basically learnt from the experience, and all our recordings since then have been much better. It's still a great cd and i love some of the guitar solos.

In terms of playing, we have all improved as musicians and the drumming is much better on our new cd, and it will be 1000 times better on the album! The production now is as good as it is possible to get from a portable studio (which all of our recordings were recorded on).

The music on "Dreaming in splendour" is much more varied and incorporates all the band's trademark elements better than previous recordings ever did.

Do you agree in that the English metal scene is nowadays closer to gothic and dark music than to death metal?

Yes i do!! There aren't that many death metal bands here (and even less good ones), and it's certainly not an overly popular form of music here in England!

There are still some good death bands such as us, Throne of nails (who i play tour guitar for), Akercocke, Gorerotted and some others.

Due to the nature of england there are a lot of darker bands so yes!

Why did you decide to record as a lead guitarist and drummer for "Dreaming In Splendour"

Well firstly i write ALL the music for Mithras on guitar.

The guitar playing has lots of my trademark odd playing and techniques, and in such isn't really playable by anyone else. It was allways our intention that i would play the guitars, as well as the other guitarist at the time.

Steve Crompton hardly played anything on "Dreaming in splendour" at all, he played the right hand side Rhythm guitar on the first track "Vae solis", and 1 solo in each song, that was it.

As far as drumming goes, there is no-one else that i know of in the UK who could have played the drumming!

There are some snare parts in there that are incredibly fast, faster than anything by Morbid angel (but the production doesn't exactly make them obvious unfortunately!). We would like to get a fulltime drummer so i can play guitar live but there is no-one!

Have you found a record label that is interested in producing and promoting your recordings?

YES! Thankfully we have just signed a deal with "Golden lake productions" which we will soon announce for our first album! They seem really keen and its going well so far!

Has the new album been recorded? How are the new songs on it?

We are recording the new album, as yet untitled in June/July for 2 weeks we hope.

The songs that were on "Dreaming in splendour" are all on there, as well as 5 other songs and 2 instrumentals. The songs are mostly fast, with absolutely loads of double bass drumming, but there are loads of different textures and themes throughout.

Well due to our problem with line-ups we have only played a handful of gigs!

We played a few gigs in 2000 with Throne of nails, and it was great, we blew a lot of people away.

We recently did our last show with Steve and our new guitarist in Bradford and we destroyed the place!

Did the music of Mithras change when Steve Crompton entered the band?

Well as he never wrote any music it didn't change at all.

He was originally more into Suffocation, and recently he got into Yngwie Malmsteen.

It seems to me that in your music you have some thrash metal influences. Am I right? Which bands have influenced you?

Yeh for sure! In the old days i was really into Slayer and VIO-lence, so those guys started me off on guitar!

My main drumming inspiration is Pete Sandoval from Morbid angel, he is a killer drummer!!

Nowadays, bands like Bal-sagoth, Nile, Morbid angel and Emperor inspire us and keep pushing the boundaries of what you can do with extreme metal.

Do you have plans of touring to support the new release?

We will hopefully do a small tour (of sorts) at various dates around the U.K firstly, once we have sorted out our new line-up.

I would seriously like to tour all over the world with Mithras, but due to the other member's commitments we can't at present.

Any final words?

Yes, thanks very much for this interview and support Frederico! Anyone into brutal death like Nile, Morbid angel with a twist should check out our coming album, and visit our website at:-

Interviewed by Federico Marongiu

Gods Among Men - demo CD (1999)

Dreaming in Splendour -MCD (2000)

Leon Macey - guitar, drums

Rayner Coss- bass/vocals