The minute after I listened to BARBARIK TORTURE’s debut full-length album “Obsessions of a Compulsive Mind”, I wanted to know more about the band. Since I didn’t find much on the web, I decided to contact them myself. So, here is the interview with BARBARIK TORTURE.
Hi guys, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. You come from war-torn Ukraine. I hope you and your families are as well and safe as possible under such circumstances. How do you manage rehearsals and album recording in the current situation?
Thank you for having us, man! Yeah, the situation is now pretty bad and getting worse, from what I can see. When the whole shitshow started, we kinda were in the middle of a very unsure position for a while. We didn’t even have songs or anything, just were jamming and learning the new styles, so nothing really was to lose. So we did not play for some time at all. We waited for a couple of months, as we thought, we were going to get drafted. We didn’t, so. A bunch of us got together again in Summer 2022. My homie Oleg and I found a new place, and then with our drummer Sania and a few other dudes made a new place into a rehearsal base. We made so much of those rehearsal places, so it took us, like, 3 days to build it and about 4 days more to make everything look decent and start making some noise.
We just work, rehearse, make songs, sleep, repeat. Not without some fun time, you know, but still, any of us can get drafted at any moment, so there is no point in not doing the only thing, you really want to do.
You were formed in 2022, the same year the Russian invasion of your country began. Was this your response to it? Introduce yourselves in the best (or worst :D) light.
Well, this band pretty much IS the response. Life was already pretty tough before and then bam! Fucking WAR! Whadaya do? Start a death metal band, of course. Some of our lyrics describe our exact feelings to these maggots, and other very soulless, and very wealthy people, that have something to do with this disaster. I don’t want to go all politics, cause it’s all bullshit, and all of them are fucking liars, and that is their job to lie to your face, and then fuck you up. As for Russia, their government and armed forces have been at it for a very long time, doing the same stuff to other countries, not so long ago. So fuck them, they deserve every brutal death lyric bar to happen to them. Слава Україні!
This year, you have managed to release an EP and a debut full-length album. Is there a rush, or do you want to share your music with a wider audience as often as possible?
There definitely was a Rush. I was listening to Fly By Night the whole time. Hahahahaha 🙂 So yeah, our guitar player Denys was turning 18 and it is a drafting age. So he had to go to Europe to his family, cause if he didn’t, they wouldn’t let him after 18. We figured it out pretty late, so during April we did that EP. Our homies Oleg Vynnyk, Bohdan Dorundiak, and Serhiy Lypchuk help us enormously in recording, so shout out to them, love these dudes.
Then in, like, 15 days we recorded an album and did the gig with the mighty SCHIZOGEN, Odessa maniacal duo SQUAT APART, and local technical dudes MINDMATH. Then Denys went to Europe. He was mastering album and sending us demos, we were adding some ideas, and that’s how it happened.
I definitely want to share music, we are now only on YouTube, Bandcamp, and those few cassettes, but now those are small steps, we probably gonna make more tapes and other stuff, share BT on Spotify and other platforms soon, so stay tuned, make more tapes and other stuff.
You released the album through the Ukrainian DIY label Deepswarming Bloodmagik. Is there a plan for a physical release of “Obsessions of Compulsive Mind”? Have you received any feedback from people who have listened to it?
Our homie Yegor from Mulification owns that label, so we kinda blended in well, although our covers are the reddest things in the roster of album covers on the label, hahahahahaha) I love all those bands, so it was cool to jump on that blunt-force trauma train. We released 20 cassettes and they were sold in, like, a day, so we gonna make more. Also, homie from Bathoryhead distro and the band ZOMBIE ATTACK helped us to make t-shirts, that were sold in 3 days as well. So it is rad we are thankful for the support, you guys are the best.
The album is a mix of death metal and grindcore, with occasional hints of doom. What were the primary influences while making this album? Are there any non-musical influences that inspire your music?
Our drummer always liked death metal, I always liked grindcore. When we were young, we played hardcore punk. Then we played stoner/sludge/doom in the band Joeage, with Dima, who is now also our bassist, great guy, great bass player, we wanted to play with him since the beginning of BARBARIK TORTURE. The bad thing is, we only played only like a few weeks and one show as a full band, hahaha. So we like ELECTRIC WIZARD, SLEEP, BUZZOVEN, EYEHATEGOD and stuff like that. But, you know, DEICIDE, obviously, SUFFOCATION, CANNIBAL CORPSE is still cool, VORUM, DEVOURMENT, DISGORGE, and other tunes of that nature.
Non-musical? War, for sure. Life in general, is rough and tough like leather. Death of loved ones, betrayal, deception, all this shit, we are all going through throughout life. I almost died a bunch of times, so, yeah, that too. News, man! News is craaaazy! Just open any criminal news website and go through some articles!
Tell me something about the themes that inspired your lyrics and where you find them?
At some point, me and Denys read this story about some crazy fucker from the Khmelnytsk region, that tortured and raped his cow (for real, dude!). This was the most fucked thing, we heard in some time, so we figured, that the person who does it is, in fact, Skotoyob (cattle fucker) and for some reason, it was very funny, and we decided to make this new song with him, so after that Denys actually joined to the band.
Our lyrics are about mind collapse, deicide (pun intended), drug addiction, extreme violence, and other things of that nature. We put songs in the album in the order, they were written, so, if in the beginning we didn’t even know what to do, by the end, we were very sure, how it should sound. To me, it kinda sounds like it’s like some insane fella is getting more ferocious every minute.
Who was responsible for the LP cover artwork? How important is that aspect to you?
I drew the logo and found this MRT photo on some medical public page some time ago, fucked with colors a little bit, and there was this red crushed skull. My girlfriend Vera composed the whole thing, and. So the details of the cover is me, and the composition is Vera, check out her work on @electrictorture.
Is there a chance we might see you live somewhere soon?
Well, you see, our borders are closed. As that post-rocker dude said: ‘We are all trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.’ So, not till the end of the war, I think, if everything goes more or less okay, you know.
Any new bands worth mentioning that we don’t know about? Besides BARBARIK TORTURE, of course. 😀
Hell yeah! NECROPSY DEFECATION, SCROBICULLUS, VUBAR, CRYPTOPXIA, VORACITY, ZOOFAGUS, MULIFICATION, KERATH (these are my homies from our hometown Kalush, fucking insane grindcore with all kinds of crazy experimental shit, check ’em out :), and many more. Death and grind are flourishing currently in Ukraine literally and musically, the correlation is definitely there. 😉
Top 3 Ukrainian beers?
Kalus’ke was, and still is one of the best, Opillia also was great, then it kinda was bought by some bigger company, and it got shitty for a while, now it is great again, and ARSENAL FUCKING STRONG IS TO RULE THEM ALL!!!!
Message to the old and new fans?
Thank you, you are great unless you do some of that shit we describe in our songs, then send us your story, and we’ll write a song about it. It was a joke. 🙂 All, that was heard in this album was performed by professionals, please don’t try this at home.
Живели!, Nenad, for having us, hope we meet someday, drink a bunch of beers, and tell each other some real stories, if you know what I mean. 🙂 Have a great day you and everyone who found and read this till the end.
Cheers to all the homies, you know who you are, if you are reading this, everyone who helped us along the journey of this record. You are the best.
Будем глеки!
Follow BARBARIK TORTURE:
Bandcamp: https://dpswrmngbldmgk.bandcamp.com/album/obsessions-of-compulsive-mind-lp
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzDSViIrWdU&t=936s
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbarik_fucking_torture
