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Interview
Deutsche VersionInterview mit Slough Feg (29.05.2009)
HH: Hello from Germany! These days you've released another brillant Slough Feg-Album which will make metalheads go ape all around the globe. Furthermore you're about twenty years in the buisness now. What does your resume of Slough Feg's two decades in Metal look like?
Mike: You want me to write out a resume? I don't think I got into heavy metal to write resumes - we have seven albums, that's our resume. But that's not what it's about, it's about experience, the experience of playing this music. I've never experienced a "good time" or "enjoyment" in life. Only greater or lesser experiences of tedium. Interviews on the scale rate about an... well...
HH: Do you have any plans for the next twenty years yet?
Mike: Yes, I plan to get older and older and balder and not able to become erect. There are more remedies for one of these than the other. I'll do what ever comes to mind musically, whatever does not bore me to death. And what is going on in music right now mostly bores me to tears, so I'll have to entertain myself as the years go by.
HH: About Ape Uprising: what's your opinion on the record? Is there anything you'd have liked to do different or are you completely content?
Mike: It sucks. It's terrible, if I could stop it from being pressed right now I would!! No, actually I'm quite fond of it. I kind of like it, I can still listen to some of the songs without wanting to vomit, but soon I'll be totally sick of it and I'll have to do another album so I can have something to listen to besides the Beatles and Twisted Sister. And I'm getting sick of Twisted Sister already (it only took 25 years).
HH: Prior to its release, you streamed the whole record online altough you're quite a traditional band, releasing all of your albums on vinyl as well as on compact disc. What do you think about the "modern" ways of selling and promoting Heavy Metal Music via the Internet?
Mike: I don't really care. I don't think anyone's buying it from the internet, I think everyone just downloads it for free. If not, someone owes me a shitload of money. But I don't care because no one makes money off records anyway, especially not me. So I'm not losing much if people download my stuff for free. This is never going to end, so I don't care.
I like vinyl anyway, and you can't downlad that. As long as people are listening to it I don't care.
HH: Are you going to do some touring (especially over here of course) or festival shows as well?
Mike: Yes. We're doing some stuff around here (San Francisco bay) in June/July, then we go tot he midwest for four or five shows in August, and then the northwest in October, and then in early 2010 to Norway and England. Short trips.
HH: Since Hardworlder, there's been a change of drummers and guitar players. In which way did this affect ist successor?
Mike: You tell me. What do you think? Do you like the drums better? I do. I don't know if there's much I can say about it that would be interesting to your average reader. We got a new drummer, his name is Harry. He's nice.
HH: Very roughly said, you're new record is about monkeys. How come you've chosen exactly this kind of animal?
Mike: Totally randomly. Some bands run out of ideas after five or six albums, like, perhaps IRON MAIDEN!!!!!! They put out these great albums years ago and then for the last twenty years or so they put out these shitty albums with rediculous titles "No Death For The Dying" "No Cookies For Yanick" or whatever. So I'm not saying we're much different, other than the fact hat we're not rich and don't have some useless shmuck on third guitar running up and down the stage looking like he just one the "Maiden air guitar-contest". But you run out of ideas after a while, so I didn't know what the hell to write about and I heard about these monkeys - one was an Arangatan and the other was a gorilla, and they broke out of a zoo, one in the Netherlands and one in Okinawa. They started throwing things around and biting peole and dragging women by their hair, and they did it during the same week. I thought it was great, so I wrote a song about it. Rather silly, but at least entertaining.
HH: The Apes you deal with seem to be pretty pissed off by their "white cousins", as one of the songs is called. Is it all about the old story of man feeling supreme to animal beings, although being even more "savage" himself?
Mike: Its more about an HP lovecraft story called "Arthur Jermin". He and his family carve out tunnels underground and live there, and evolve into albino apes.
HH: My personal favourites on the record are erspecially "Simian Manifesto" and "White Cousins". Which are your favoured songs and why?
Mike: Those are my favorites also. I think they are the best ones. I think the next album will be about vampires and boredom. Bored Vampires.
HH: Why did you put the new single "Nasty Hero" behind the outro? It appears to be not linked directly to the story of the album.
Mike: It's not. Several of the songs are not about apes. Only four are about apes actually. Nasty hero is not a single though...? Its about a really bad movie. Kind of a pop number.
HH: The last words to our human (and simian) readers are yours...
Mike: Don't try to carpet the whole world with metal----just whear steel slippers!!
When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means the sun is about to set...
HH: Thanks a lot for the interview!
Fab