Interview with Maurice Swinkels, vocalist from the band Occult

 

How is "Rage to Revenge" doing in the underground up to now?

Very excellent, there is nothing to complain at all, many see it as album of the month,

even album of the year, so we get good respond.

How difficult was to do the new songs without Rachel in vocals after all this years?

I only have to do these vocals on stage while the CD still contains Rachel´s voice, its not

that hard, it feels great being only frontman after all these years, our performance got

much more powerful

 

Why did you decide to join Painkiller Records?

He was intrested and it is a small label, I more prefer a smaller label than a bigger label

where you are one out of million

How different is "Rage to Revenge" from "Of Flesh and Blood"?

Oh a lot, on "flesh and blood", our old guitar player Leon wrote all the songs, we kicked him out since he wanted to sound like Dream Theater, on "Rage to revenge", the other guitar player Richard wrote all the riffs, those albums just sound totally different in that case

It seems that thrash metal has surfaced a lot in your music on "Rage to Revenge"...was this done consciously or it just happened that way?

We are mainly influenced by the elder gods, Slayer, Old pestilence, Kreator, old Sodom and Destruction, Necrodeath, Assassin, Exhumer etc..etc...thats what we wanna play, Thrash metal in a aggressive style.

How was the european tour with Dark Funeral?

It sucked!! hehe, there is not much to say, although the bands were awsome on this tour, but it was just the arrangement and all that shit

 

How did Occult´s music change when Leon was fired from the band?

Richard took over music writing and you can hear his style compared to "Flesh and blood".

Why do you think that album after album Occult´s sound is getting heavier?

?!?! is that so!? no idea, we change studios everytime also, maybe its the studio!? The next

album will be in the same vein as "Rage to revenge"

"Rage to revenge" is not a song, so there are no lyrics, "Rage to revenge" is actually against all those who were backstabbers, some fucking assholes who betrayed some individual, who claim to be playing aggressive metal but are not!!

Any final words?

OCCULT WEBSITE: www.occult.nu