GOREFEST Frontman Says Band Will Tour U.S. In The Fall

Karma E. Omowale of the FourteenG e-zine recently conducted an interview with GOREFEST frontman Jan Chris de Koeijer. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

FourteenG: Do you think you'll tour the U.S. this year?

Jan Chris: "There has been talk of the possibility of us opening for MORBID ANGEL in April but we had to turn that one down unfortunately because we do consider GOREFEST as a hobby kind of. You know we all have our jobs and we never want to give up our jobs anymore really for it. We just couldn't do first a European tour then going directly into a U.S. tour. So hopefully we are aiming for September to come over."

FourteenG: What is the greatest challenge that you feel the band has been able to overcome in order to get you where you are at this point in your career?

Jan Chris: "The biggest point we had to overcome? Oh god! I don't know! [Pauses] Things went really smoothly. I guess the biggest point in the very, very early days was to get gigs. [Voice softens as humility takes a hold] Yeah, I mean we had an easy ride, almost. Even when we did the demos and I'm pretty sure you remember CARCASS?"

FourteenG: Yes.

Jan Chris: "You know by pure luck or it always being at the right spot at the right moment, we could open up like five dates for them and you know get you big exposure and things just started to roll. Once we did the second album, we got the big gigs like Dynamo [Open Air festival], stuff like that and toured the U.S., at that point touring the U.S. and Dynamo that was like your biggest dream of every European metalhead. We had a really, really great time.

"Chuck [Schuldiner, late DEATH mainman], may he rest in peace. One of the nicest guys around! He most definitely was. You know people…for some reason he had the name of being a very difficult person. And people warned us, 'Oh, don't go out because he'll cancel every third gig'…and bullshit like that. He was the nicest, nicest person. At that time, he had Gene [Hoglan] on drums Steve DiGiorgio on bass; it was a great band then and a great bunch of people that I see, basically every summer and that I consider as friends."

FourteenG: Now as far as the cover art [of the new album, "La Muerte"] is concerned, it's quite striking; it's very befitting of the lyrics. How do you want the viewer to feel after viewing it?

Jan Chris: "Oh, that's a difficult one. I reckon it is pretty eerie, it's not a very cheerful cover."

FourteenG: No, not at all.

Jan Chris: "Neither are the lyrics. I have no idea, really; pick it up…"

FourteenG: …and form your own opinion.

Jan Chris: "Yeah! The reason we wanted this cover — it's kind of old-school as well; it's from 1994. We've had this cover for like ten years and we never used it at that time. I always stuck with it and actually stumbled across it when I moved about a year ago. It was like, 'Wow! Yeah, I forgot completely forgot about this!' The reason we wanted to use it is because everybody's using these computer animated covers and this is actually a real painting."

FourteenG: Oh!

Jan Chris: "It's about 30 x 30 inches; it's a painting that we got from MID back in 1994. He also did our cover artwork for our second album. Somebody on Blabbermouthsays that I think one of the wives is doing a 'How to do Photoshop' course or something because obviously they didn't like the cover. It's like, 'Fuck, it's a painting!' That was basically the reason why we wanted to use it. We'll probably use him for the next album as well. It's just makes us stand out from the crowd, really."

Read the entire interview at www.fourteeng.net.