Aghast View interview

Interview with Fabricio Viscardi of Aghast View
Originally published by the now defunct newempire.com
2000/2001
by Evan South



1.) Phaseknox seems to be a complete 180 from your
previous effort Carcinopest. More polished, smoothe,
less harsh, etc. Comments?


Well, basically you´ve said it all... It is really a
more polished release in which we spent more time in
the production... Denis spent a lot of time trimming
the vocal effects and the arrangementes as well, we
began working with Pro computer editing, but we still
need to develop our skills on that...There are many
thing to explore in post production and a lot to learn
from mistakes and experiments... The album is
comprised of 11 tracks that reflect our current sound
and ideas.
We´ve gathered influences from many electronic roots
as trance , industrial , tekno and of course we kept
the main EBM sound, which is whtt we stand for. I
think Phaseknox is an album that can be apprecciated
by a wider variety of electronic music fans, not only the
harsh rivetheadz.


2.) Another difference is Phaseknox contains more
instrumentals. It is almost a 50/50 split between the
songs with words and instrumentals.
Was this planned, or did words just not fit in with
some songs?

Nah...We did it like that...Some of the tracks were
written to be solely instrumental pieces, such as the
anthemic "glass waves" or the ambient like "slider".
These tracks are complete without need of vocals.
They just flow like that.


3.) People may not know that there was almost a
3-4 year gap between the writing of the last two
albums. Although Carcinopest came out in 1998, the
material had been around since 1996. By the time it
came out, did you worry that it may have sounded
dated, and people may think the new material is
similar?

Well, we had a certain worry that it should sound a
little bit dated, yeah, but it came out as a really
well accepted album and it built a strong reputation
for us, though some people thought we are too harsh
EBM by only listening to carcinopest and not the other
works we´ve done... The new material is there to
prove we are not an overly biased band on the aggro
side.


4.) When you look back over the years at your
original material off of  Nitrovisceral, Vapor Eyes,
etc., how do you feel you've changed and
developed as artists? Would you ever re-record and
modernize any of the older material for re-release?

In the beggining we were much more of a group of
"revolted" young guys wanting to make some real pissed
off elctronic music with pissed off lyrics...we had
only harsh indystrial/EBM influences and we didn´t
have that much on equipment, we had a lot of effort
and rage. As time passed we evolved as people and as
musicians, we´ve worked with a lot of bands, remixing
many stuff and we learned to like other types of music
and not only the hardestcore of industrial music.


5.) Are there plans yet for Phaseknox to be
licensed in Europe, like Carcinopest was on Zoth?

Yes, there are, but we prefer not to speculate on
that at this moment.


6.) Will there be remixes off of Phaseknox, like
the Truthhead remix cd, or another limited box set?

Box, nah...people don´t seem to want this kind of
release anymore. We are already working on new tracks
and there will be some remixes too, done either by
us and other great bands out there.


7.) What is next for Aghast View? Remixes, more
original material, compilation appearances, remixes
for other artists?

A little bit of everything I think...We´ve just done
a remix for the new Lights Of Euphoria single "fortune
teller" and we will soon remix the new material from
Diverje, which kixx ass. We are as I said before
writing new stuff as well as we plan on releasing
a EP later this year.


8.) Will we see another Biopsy release in the near
future?

I would prefer to say in the future, not so near. We
really don´t know when we will begin writing the new
Biopsy album, we need to check that out...But we do
have solid plans on continuing with Biopsy!


9.) Final thoughts/comments?

Thanx for the questions and all the best for you and
all people who took the time to read this out...

dsbp.cx