Korpse: Surviving The Insufferable
Savage. Uncompromising. A quartet who ply their sonic trade in unbridled death metal destruction. Ladies and gentleman – you’re cordially invited to take a jaw-clenching leap into the blackened world of KORPSE. Speaking to Distorted Sound from his home in the Netherlands, founder and drummer Marten van Kruijssen is thoughtful and collected in his delivery, as we delve into a myriad of questions and he shares his subsequent thoughts on exactly what lurks beneath new release Insufferable Violence. An unequivocal bowel cleanser when it comes to its no nonsense content, album number three is the epitome of chaotic punishment.
Clocking in at just thirty-eight minutes, the four-piece succeed in unleashing ten tracks more akin to a ceaseless torment as old school death metal clashes mercilessly with dank, slam-inflected breakdowns, inhuman gutturals and racing blasts of goregrind. Make no mistake, an easy ride this is not. It’s an uncomfortable listen. But according to Marten, this was always the mindset going into the record – its modus operandi being the creation of the most brutal and extreme music possible. But this is far from mindless, skull-rattling noise because, as the drummer reveals that there are in fact, several stories beneath the filth.
“Every song has a message. And although we don’t have lyrics for every song, we certainly have a theme. And every theme comes from a real story,” Marten divulges. “Topics are all related to either human violence or the inflicting of that suffering on to other humans. Some of humanity’s biggest atrocities are found in day to day life. For example, the track entitled Final Lesson – it’s about a teacher that got bullied by all his pupils. And then one day, he was so desperate that he decided to jump off the roof of the school during lesson hours. It was him delivering a final lesson to the kids – this is what you made me do.”
From political division and economic downturns to racial hatred, sexual violence and gender discrimination, there are certainly enough current-day issues to pull from when it comes to song-writing inspiration. Seventy percent of which van Kruijssen will provide himself. “The news will usually serve up the most horrible and violent stories that humanity produces. And then sometimes, someone from the band will send me a topic,” he explains. “Our vocalist [Sven van Dijk] sent me the story behind Self Preservation – it’s a story of a woman who wasn’t allowed to divorce her man due to her culture. One night she grabbed her daughter and tried to get away, but her husband caught her – and punished her by pouring molten metal or acid over her face. She turned blind so she couldn’t run away any more.”
Do you think it’s more important to focus on maintaining and conveying that sense of reality via your music rather than choosing to write about fantastical subject matter like sci-fi? “If you want to have a message in your music, then actually put one in there you know? I’m not interested in the big sci-fi journey shit. I wanna do something real. I wanna do something unique ‘coz no one else does,” Marten states emphatically. “All of these stories are examples of just how horrific humanity can be. By putting them in this music, I hope that people will go on to read them themselves and see just how fucked up they are. Then hopefully they’ll think ‘you know what? Maybe I will try to be a bit nicer’ and they’ll be grateful for what they have. Because they could have been born in a country where if you get raped as a 14-year old girl, you’re the one who gets stoned to death. Because you brought shame upon on the family name, not the rapist. I hope that people realise that we should all just be nicer and kinder to one another. That’s the ultimate goal.”
And the theme of pushing boundaries doesn’t begin and end with KORPSE‘s musical content. Which one will immediately notice when their eyes fall upon the album’s arguably provocative cover art. And while there’s a long history of death metal bands – CATTLE DECAPITATION, CANNIBAL CORPSE, EXHUMED to name a few – who have used near-the-knuckle or violent and grotesque imagery, its less about the bog-standard shock factor and more an expression of humanity’s inherent darkness. “Yes, the art is the most brutal and graphic we could find. But it’s not meant to be like ‘oh check us out – we have the most gruesome shit going on here’,” Marten insists. Do you hope it’ll serve as a means of getting fans, new and old, to try and glimpse beyond the bloody surface? “I hope so. And I hope they like it. Personally, if I see something very extreme such as this then I tend to ask and look into things,” Marten says. “Unfortunately, I know that a lot of people don’t do any research on things that they’re shocked and are judgemental with it. I can’t help them with that.”
As our conversation draws to a close, there’s just enough time to get the founder and drummer’s take on that so-called third album argument. With their debut, a band will set out their stall and then prove they’re more than just a ‘flash in the pan’ affair on their follow-up. And with Insufferable Violence, he remains quietly confident in its ability to push KORPSE towards their creative peak. “I mean, I do hope that number three could be ‘the one’. But it certainly won’t stop us regardless. We’ll always try and make what we create better. But I guess the third album is more defined – you know better what you’re doing since your first. We’ve got Unique Leader backing us up so that’s quite a huge thing already. It was always the goal to make this one the next big step in our career. We’re ready for anything.”
Insufferable Violence is out now via Unique Leader Records.
Like KORPSE on Facebook.
