BENEDICTION Bassist Talks About Upcoming Album

Vassil Varbanov of Bulgaria's Tangra Mega Rock recently conducted an interview with BENEDICTION bassist Frank Healy. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Tangra Mega Rock: To begin with, the world is avid to get your new album. When is it going to be ready?

Frank: We'll go in the studio on November 21 with a guy called Scott Atkins. He's the partner of Andy Sneap, who did our albums "Grind Bastard" (1998) and "Organised Chaos" (2001). The CD will be out at the end of March 2008 on Nuclear Blast Records, as always.

Tangra Mega Rock: It's been six years since your latest effort "Organised Chaos" came out. Why did it take you so long to start working on a new record?

Frank: We're just incredibly lazy, he-he... No, we had problems with drummers that we weren't happy with. After Neil Hutton, who played on most BENEDICTION albums, originally left in 2005, we were using stand-in drummers live. However, Neil's back now and he'll record the next album as well. We've been using Nick Barker a bit live, but he's too busy at the moment, so we're gonna stick to what we consider the best BENEDICTION line-up.

Tangra Mega Rock: They say you guys are monsters on stage.

Frank: Monsters? Does it mean we're bloody ugly or something?

Tangra Mega Rock: I don't know, ha-ha!

Frank: I know we've got a reputation of being essentially a live band. When we're on stage there's no choreography or something — we're just playing and enjoying it with the fans. In a live situation you've gotta have a really good reason to go after BENEDICTION, because we're quite aggressive. The whole stage belongs to us. We are the band of the day on any show, any festival, anywhere. No matter whether we're at the bottom or top of the bill, we play as if we are the headliners. We're totally into the music.

Tangra Mega Rock: In death metal you can often find lyrics based on religious topics. However, Benediction is a bit apart of this tendency. What is your attitude towards religious topics in music?

Frank: It's everybody to their own, you know. I might not tell other bands what to play or sing about, and I don't really care. We're not a political or religious band in any way, and we don't want to preach anything to anybody in any ways.

Tangra Mega Rock: Finally, could you give us some more details about your upcoming album?

Frank: It's called "Killing Music" and it should contain 12 tracks. We'll start recording on November 21 and it will be out in the end of March on Nuclear Blast, which we've been with nearly as long as the label's been alive — 17 years. We're good friends, and we can still talk to the boss Markus Staiger. Our relationship with him has always been good, and we're not gonna let him down with this album. It's gonna tear his head off in the office!

The entire interview is available in text and audio format at this location.

Video footage of BENEDICTION performing a new song, entitled "Killing Music", at the Up From The Ground festival — which took place August 24-25, 2007 in Gemünden, Germany — can be viewed below.