"Forca sinistra....forca macabra!"
Taken from Radiation Sickness #2, this interview was conducted with drummer Otto "Antitese" Itkonen over the summer of 2006. Forca Macabra has been spreading their thrashcore madness for 20 years now and have yet to disappoint me, whether it is their earlier hardcore efforts or their more recent metallic offerings...these guys mean business! Check out their homepage for more information.
Radiation Sickness: First off...how is everything going today??
Forca Macabra: Well howdy Jim, thanks for asking, things are cool. Judas Priest are on the turntable. It's my day off so I'm taking it easy, just dropped some 150mg of Tramadol and drink beer so it's good. Sorry for also being a bunch of slackers with the reply but looks like all of us forgot and in the end we even lost this set of questions. Ha ha! Anyway now it's just me alone giving the answers as if we try again to get everyone together it's gonna take fucking ages...
RS: You'd just completed another Brazilian tour a few months back, how did that end up going? It must be pretty surreal to play with some of the bands that inspired you to form. I was surprised to hear of some of the older bands that were still going, especially the metal ones...give some good tour stories...
FM: Uh, well it was wicked to see Chakal for example. Those were certainly old geezers but still on top of things. They played a punishing set of Brazilian thrash with some modern touchers here and there. The vocalist was really charasmatic on the stage. Well, we also played six gigs with Lobotomia who were really nice and crazy guys and musicwise of course our dream come true. They sound really superb, both the older and newer songs! They said they will record a new album sometime soon actually, and now the original guitar player Adherbal is back with them again, excellent!!
Well I guess the craziest and weirdest stories in Brazil were related to that strange machismo society, you know where men are superior. So you get to see and hear a lot of bullshit about hookers, groupiest, etc. It's a man's world out there, sadly. Of course we had some fun parties along the way. The beer is good and you got to drink a lot to stay sane. Also the coke is dead cheap which was great news for some of us in Finland you spend 150 bucks for a gram if you're lucky enough to find one!
RS: What type of venus did you play in Brazil? You'd toured there before, so I imagine you're pretty well known there, did you get a lot of good reactions from the crowd?
FM: We got just great, great responses. The shows were all even bigger and better than the first time round. We usually played in halls, but also at some smaller bars. There were normally 100-200 people but there were a couple of bigger shows. It's also funny as we were always booked as the headliners, even if we played with some old legends. Oh wait, acutally I do think we did support Coléra in Sao Paulo, but otherwise it was always us as the headliners. And as we like to get wasted it's damn annoying to play at 4am!!! Sometimes we had passed out way before than and only woke up to play...
RS: A new LP is going to be out soon, give some information on this upcoming record...
FM: It's twelve songs plus an instrumental, and entitled "Aqui é o Inferno" (translated "The Hell Is Here"), it has also groovy artwork by Japanese artist Sugi (Selfish, Deathside, Warhead...) which means it's not gonna look like your typical Forca album: be prepared!! Soundwise it's somewhere between the album "Caveira da Forca" and our rowdier/earlier recordings. It's fast thrashcore, and should appeal to all of our old fans and will probably attract also a bunch of new fans because there is some more depth to the material this time. The songs are also really good, at least most of them in my opinion. I think the album will not be boring even if you played it many times over as there's some subtle variation sprinkled all over it...hopefully this album will give us a push forward. More gigs and tours. Oh, and in the USA it's gonna be released by Black Water from Portland, hopefully early 2007. European pressing by Agipunk.
RS: In recent years your sound has gotten a lot more metal influenced, and the lyrics are less directly socio-politically oriented. Have you gotten any negative reaction from this? I mean a lot of people will look at metal as macho and having a commerical attitude.
FM: Well, no one as ever called us commercial which is rather obvious because we are really fucking laidback about money, etc. "commercial issues". We lose money on everything we do. Also, we do most of the things revolving around Forca by ourselves, such as booking, promotion, distribution, even releases from time to time...so you could say it's pretty DIY although I have grown to dislike that title. Also about music I guess it's less than ten people who've actually complained us being too much "metal" or "commercial sounding" as we are still definitely the same band we used to be. I mean we have played 16-17 years now with three same guys so I guess it's obvious some changes will take place but we really are still the same silly kids with silly ideas how to write urgent music. But as for the lyrics, well, our lyrics have changed, that's for sure, but it's more thanks to the people who've written them for us. The new album has about three of the songs with lyrics by someone outside the band! I made two lyrics for it, and the others our vocalist. Naturally, this reflects also to the variety of the topics the lyrics deal with...
RS: You've done a lot of covers through the years, which ones are your favorite to play and are there any more plans to continue with the "A Raiz de Todo o Mal" cover series?
FM: Yea, we certainly love to play covers! I guess we have always liked the songs by our heroes Armagedom and Lobotomia the best. But also some thrashers such as "Mundo em Alerta" by Taurus" or "Furia" by Anthares are amazing to do live. Or slower, droning numbers such as "Cavaleiro Negro" by Metalmorphose. We just wish our own songs were that good!! Oh, besides, "Furia" will be included on the upcoming album...
Anyway, as for other cover releases, I guess something will come up. We have recorded some stuff in studio earlier, such as a cover by Besthoven (for their tribute!) the above mentioned song by Taurus, some other Brazilian metal covers such as Metalmorphose and Ratos de Porao among others, and even a song by MG15 (from Spain) but we are not sure if we will release those anywhere...
You know, the title "a raiz de trodo o mal" means "the root of all evil" so that's how we wented to express our gratitude for some of the big influences we have. Actually Javier of Armagedom will visit us again the next weekend, we are very close friends with this superhero from Brazil, haha!!
RS: You have done a few different record labels over the years, are there any releases still available and what new projects are you working on?
FM: I am working on a 6-way comp.LP called "Ecos do Submundo", it´s put together by Glauco of Neurose Urbana and it has six new, urgent Brazilian raw punk bands. I will also do a 12" by Eristetyt that will include their two first ep´s and the 1989 demo tape on one slab. It´s fucking amazing, Finnish 82-style hardcore that never got the recognition they deserved, the best band of Finland of that era, and influential for me when I was a kid...OK, then I am putting out the new Creepy Crawlie 12"ep, which is gonna be great I know! Then there´s been some talks about some japanese hardcore as usual. And yeah possibly also a 7"ep by Sekunda. And probably more stuff, there´s always something going on. But the pressings are small so you gotta be quick to catch any one of my releases! Now I have still available some copies of the Kuolema new 10-song 7" and the Katie Katty 7" which is ripping all-female japcore. 5USD postpaid anywhere, please order and support my habit, ha ha!
RS: You're playing in two other bands that I know of at the moment and both are fairly legendary, those being Kuolema and Kansan Uutiset. Are these bands recording new stuff or just playing now and then? What else does Forca Macabra members do, musically...
FM: Kuolema is actually the most active of "my" bands. Forca bass player play also in Kuolema, by the way. So...we play a lot of gigs, write new songs all the time, even rehearse once or twice a month –as opposed to Selfish or Forca Macabra who rehearse once or twice in six months!
Kansan Uutiset is just a fledgling yet, we have only one new song. On the gigs we play that and then a bunch of old songs. But the vocalist (an original member) says he don´t wanna do more gigs before we have more new material. You know, flogging a dead horse, or something, he don´t want it... But we will play with Terveet Kädet in two weeks, it´s a gig I organized...
Kuolema and Forca play actually gigs quite often together. Kuolema also joined the Forca´s Brazilian tour, as well as the recent short trip to the UK. (The UK-trip was outright mad!!!! Nearly everything fell apart coz of our stupidity, aka drinking.... but we managed to play the gigs perfectly which is eventually all that matters, I guess?) Well, as for the other bands... The vocalist plays drums in Rytmihäiriö, who are now getting bigger, they signed a semi-major label! He´s busy with that... And then there is a band called Pedro Anthares Group. It´s the Forca Macabra line-up with a different drummer. They play 80´s thrash metal like Dark Angel, Destruction, Onslaught, Exodus, and so forth. It´s a fucking great band I think and they will have an album out next year by some label from California. Maybe they were called Old School Metal Recs or something... Yeah and you can check out all those bands on Myspace if you care...
RS: Any good news to report on the Finnish scene?
FM: Well, I guess so. A lot happening all the time. Ha ha, even Cro-Mags came to play a gig in Helsinki a week ago. But it was not a huge success, less than 300 people showed up. Lot of "old timers" though, seems like Cro-Mags is unknown for the current generation of the US-hardcore enthusiasts. I did like them though... "Best wishes" is great metalcore!
There is a bunch of new(er) hc/punk bands I might recommend to check out: Kieltolaki, Kyklooppien Sukupuutto, Creepy Crawlie, The Carnival, Kylmä Sota....probably more. All in all the Finnish scene is ace as all the "different" flocks hang out together -the scene is really united. I guess only groups not accepted are racists, homophobes, or very violent types...
RS: When I saw Forca Macabra, Taurus (vox) was passed out drunk long before the show had even began. Give a good drunken story from FM's colourful history...
FM: Well, that´s one of them. Why don´t you tell it here to us, to everyone? What did you see? Ha ha!! As for similiar stories, yeah I am afraid there is a long line of fuck ups by too much drinking.... Once we went to Sweden (again w/Kuolema!) and I got totally fucked up before the gig and couldnt play at all but just kicked the drum set down from the stage, hurled the snare drum almost at someone innocent, then passed out on the stage. Funny thing is that some beautiful local blonde came to nurse me (coz I´d cut myself too) after all that havoc. Are women just crazy? Well, the other time we went to play a festival in Belgium. It was a one-off show so the organizers paid for the flight from Finland to Belgium. OK, our vocalist got so drunk he passed out and we couldnt play that festival, which was another humiliation. Once our guitar player fell down the stage with the amp stacks coz he was so drunk, and then our vocalist smashed that poor guitarist´s electric guitar to smitherings and passed out too. Yeah and we have used a big bunch of fireworks on the stage too. Making fun of the silly metal antics with fake blood, burning plastic crosses, bringing military stuff on the stage.... so yeah we are childish....sometimes dangerous for ourselves and the crowd...
RS: What are some underrated Brazilian HC bands (past or present) that you'd recommend people to check out? FM: The past bands are obvious for most readers I guess, but some lesser known great bands were for example Ruidos Absurdos (the best!), Lepra, Ultima Chance, Rad Esquerda, Fogo Cruzado, Psykoze, ETC, Hino Mortal, SP Caos, Lixomania, Passeatas, and so on.....Of the new bands I´d encourage to check out Sociofobia (we wanna make a split ep with them!), WC Masculino, Terror Algum, and maybe some others... It´s also great news that Skarnio is back! They are rehearsing again and we have been in touch with them. Of course we have a dream to play with them next time in Brazil! And also bring Lobotomia over to Europe the next year, hell yeah!!! By the way, if someone didn´t know Skarnio "gave" us the name: we took Forca Macabra off their song "Forca sinistra" where is a line "Forca sinistra, forca macabra..."
RS: What's the story about the promo video clip for "Os Quatro Cavaleiros" on the MCR video?
FM: The story, well, a friend was in a school and he could use the school cameras and other equipment and make a video for free so we made a video. I guess you noticed too, that it´s not me playing drums there, ha ha?! Yeah, while they were shooting I was in Japan on a Selfish tour and they used a substitute. Also the bass player is not really our bass player, he was a random friend who they used coz there was noone else around, ha ha! So there you see how serious we are about things like that.... Kuolema has also a pretty fucking cool videoclip, it possible to download on our webpage http://www.kuolema.biz/
RS: List your top 5 Cogumelo Records releases, and what makes them kick so much arse..
FM: Cogumelo´s, huh? Allright I guess the best has to be the Warfare Noise volume one, that compilation LP is just so fucking brutal!! Super-fast & tight, raw thrash with a certain hc/punk-feel to it, you agree? Then of course the Sepultura/Overdose split LP, and the 2 first Lp´s by Sepultura, all great thrash! Then the 1 st Sarcofago LP of course, it´s sick!
Other really great labels were Fucker Records (MX, Cova...), Devil Discos (Korzus, Anthares...), Ultra-Violence Records (Genocidio, Skarnio...), Heavy Records (Overdose, Azul Limao...), Rock Brigade (Vodu, Vulcano, Viper...), and especially Baratos Afins (the SP Metal compilations, Harppia, Alta Tensao, Centurias, etc.).
RS: Last words and future plans
FM: Many thanks for the interview, Jim. We wish to have more interviews and contacts. Please keep them coming in. Check out the web http://www.forcamacabra.com/, and the Myspace. Direct hotline to me, the drummer-boy: http://us.mc1619.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=ottoitkonen@gmail.com -I have usually stuff for distribution if you need a shirt or some records for example. We also hope to tour the States again in 2007 so wish us luck and see you there, fuckers!
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By the way, if you are an enthusiast for Brazilian metal make sure to check out the great site Metaleros, which extensively covers metal in South/Central America!! My only gripe is that their is not much coverage or more brutal deathlike bands such as Sarcofago, Holocausto etc...mostly sticking to tradiational HM and thrash...but still excellent. Check out this classic Sepultura pic, in their pre-poser days!
