Now we live in a worldyard of sound clones, dozens of bands that copy and imitate another bands, even monkeys well trained they can copy, but to create something new is a thing for courageous people! ONE STEP BEYOND is one of that courageous band, they create a kind of impossible mix with prog, jazz, Industrial, Hip Hop and GRINDCORE, strange, very strange but very interesting too!!! The band comes from the AUSTRALIA but they don't resemble AC/DC! KREPUSKULUM interviewed "MAD MATT" (bass, vocals, fx, beat programming).

 

KREPUSKULUM: The idea to create ONE STEP BEYOND appeared in 1997. Talk to us about the band´s history and about the crazy proposal of the band.

MAD MATT: Basically to begin with myself and our axemaster Jeremy were playing in a grinding Death band back in early “97, just going through the motions that thousands of bands were and still are going through until it hit a point where I had to do my own thing and get far away from that band, I gave Jeremy the option to join me and he took it. After a couple of years fucking about, we added Justin on vocals and the line up has been steady since. The basic idea for the band was to just throw all my influences into a predominately extreme context and hope for the best. The more that was written the more eclectic it got and the more original it became. At first it seemed like a crazy idea and that people wouldn’t dig it, but somehow I think we made it work and the response has been incredible, greater than we ever could have hoped for. I think the key to it is that we play all styles our own way, we don’t try to play reggae like Bob Marley did, grind like Carcass did or funk like Parliament did, we tailor everything to our sound and hopefully it works.

The heavy metal world is an universe of some radical fans, they hate strange mixtures and abominate genres like nu metal. What do you think about this kind of people? Is ONE STEP BEYOND´s music destined for the  metal fans?

I think every music scene is filled with these people. They’re kind of traditionalists who cling to the first couple of albums by the first couple of bands they heard in the style and generally they are too lazy to think any harder about music to enjoy anything new. This is all cool, I mean not everyone has the time to listen to and appreciate hundreds of bands and not everyone wants to. What bugs me is that people often confuse open mindedness with selling out, which to me is absurd. It’s like they dig themselves into a musical rut and they’re too afraid to listen to anything their peers may deem inappropriate, it’s all peer pressure and insecurity. To me selling out is just not being true to yourself, not your peers. People should just listen to what they like, not what people tell them to like. Regarding ONE STEP BEYONDS’ fanbase, I think we transcend any one scene, and I think it is the true music heads rather than just the metal heads that dig us, and many metal heads are true music lovers, so I guess many metal heads dig our shit. I am definetly not trying to appease any established scene with our music. I would rather create a scene around us than conform.

The music of the band sound like a curious mix of Funk, Punk, Jazz, Ska, Industrial, Hip Hop and Grind, but in our opinion the GRIND aspect is the very impressive mark of your music. Do you agree with us? Are you a GRIND band with new elements? Do you agree with us?Are you influence by this bans?   Which are your other influences?

Grind is definitely the axis of our music. It’s the reference point that we most often return to for establishing consistency in our sound and of course the vocals are almost entirely death grind styled. People could call us a grind band with new elements but I think even our grind parts are not very traditional. I’m waiting for someone to coin a phrase to describe our music, most people are lost for words as there is nothing established yet to categorize us with. I am definitely influenced by a lot of grind acts, there are many great ones, but I’m equally influenced by a lot of Jazz, Hip-Hop(but not much of the gangsta stuff), Dub, Techno(not the pop shit), Rock, Death, Fusion, Stoner, Funk, Industrial, Doom and Prog music. I just love it all.

 

Are you influence by dozens of bands?  Could you name some of them for us (bands and albums)?

 Some of my peak favorite and most influential albums in all styles are:

Suffocation – pierced from within

Living Colour – times up

Public Enemy – It takes a nation of millions…

Sunny Day Real Estate – how it feels to be something on

Material – hallucination engine

Fishbone – Reality of my surroundings

Macabre – sinister slaughter

Human Remains – using sickness as a hero

Vernon Reid – mistaken identity

Infectious Grooves – sarsipius ark

Suicidal Tendencies – lights .. cameras.. revolution

Axiom Dub – mysteries of creation

DJ Shadow – endtroducing

Napalm Death – fear, emptiness, despair

Autopsy – fiend for blood

Miles davis – kind of blue

…..this list could go on indefinitely, there’s just too much great music out there.

Do you like traditional grind bands like AGATHOCLES, PIGSTY, NAPALM DEATH?

I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing Pigsty or Agathocles, but I worship all Napalm Death from Scum to Order of the Leech, the Mentally murdered EP is probably my favorite grind release ever. They always play what the fuck they want and never bow to traditionalists. Other grind lords I worship are Terrorizer, Carcass, General Surgery, Atrocity (American), D.V.C, Discordance Axis, Brutal Truth, Blood Duster, and of course the mighty Repulsion 

The album "Life Imitates Art" is an universe of atmospheres and mid-tempos, should be difficult to mix so much infuences in a music. Talk us a little about the process of composition of the album and about the musical formation of the members of the band.

Basically it got to a point where we had about 25 songs and they really had to be documented. We picked out about 15 that seemed to show as many of our colours as possible, then set about constructing an album. A few songs were dropped just to make it a more focused and balanced product. I was very important with this that we show as much of what we play to the listener as we could and that the album kept people constantly guessing, I didn’t wasn’t to release a safe predictable album. So many bands these days especially in extreme metal put out albums featuring 10 versions of the same songs, so you hear the first track and you might as well have heard the rest of the album. Some bands do this every album they release, like Mortician or Cannibal Corpse. They put out album after album with endless versions of the same song, it’s a great song and I love those bands but how many times can you hear it? I lose interest too quickly. This is a very safe and complacent thing to do and this is not what we do, I’d much rather challenge the listener and I think a lot of people are up for that challenge. A lot of people are looking for that new thing in music and I think we are a part of it. I always loved the way Brutal Truth would just throw in some weird shit to break up their albims, it would make their extreme parts sound all the more punishing which in turn made the weird parts sound weirder. Hopefully our songs feed of  each other in a similar fashion.

 

Some lyrics of the band bring a positive message, that escapes a lot from the general proposal of the bands of the genre that be very nihilistic. Do you think a positive message combines with aggressive sound?

 I think a lot of extreme hardcore has proven that a positive message can combine with aggression in music. We are not like some weak Christian band in this sense, I am closer to Satanism in my self belief, but I am strongly against all forms of religion. Our lyrics range from Gore to social satire to drug shit to positivity and  more, so they are as varied as the music, but I would like it very much for people to walk away from us in a positive frame of mind, for people to feel good about what they are or what they do rather than to think that the world is fucked and everyone should die or some shit like that. I think the world is a fantastic place once you overcome all the bullshit people throw at you and that is what I want to communicate in our songs. We kind of offer advice on how you can deal with negative shit, not that I’m an expert of anything, but people might read something they can relate to in us and feel good about it. This may be in our mad serial killer shit or in our positive message shit, as long as people can sense the fun we have in making this music.

 

Talk to us a little about the underground metal scene in Australia today. Do you give many gigs?

There is a thriving metal scene throughout our country, our population would probably be dwarved by that of Brazil, but we have many bands nationwide. The problem here is that the scene is very incestuous, many musicians play in 2 or 3 bands as there are not enough members to go around, I play in several bands myself with ONE STEP BEYOND being the main focus. There is a massive shortage of good extreme drummers in particular. We gig probably monthly on average but we are poorly paid, we'd be lucky to earn$50 U.S. per show. Average attendance in our city would be 60 - 120 people for aussie bands and 200+ for international, so the scene is not huge but it exists. Some bigger Aussie extreme bands you may have heard are Bloodduster, Destroyer666, Sadistik exekution and Alchemist, all of whom are very worth checking out if you haven't already. There are many more good bands waiting to be discovered though, I'm sure you'll be hearing from them soon. 

 

The music of ONE STEP BEYOND is very creative and inovative, is it being difficult for you to get a recording label  interested in your material?

We have had trouble getting labels interested before but now we have been getting some fantastic press worldwide which is turning heads a little more. We released the album ourselves and are urgently seeking distribution assistance worldwide, so if anyone in Brazil is interested in helping us get the album in local stores please get in touch. We do extensive promotion out of our own pockets but it is very hard to get independent music in shops. We have some deals in negotiation in a few countries but we haven't found anyone in South America as yet. For the next album we would like label backing but if no appropriate offers are made we will produce it all ourselves again and work through distros. We are not so desperate to be signed that we will accept any offer.