"Awaiting"
CORRUPTED speak about the delays in releasing the "Devils Breath" EP
"It's not just us," Anto said. "You'll often hear a big band announce a single is coming out next month, and then it's the following month before it does. It's just problems and circumstances that all bands have to go through."

I was back in the Underground Rehearsal studio, interviewing CORRUPTED and asking them about the CD release which, to date, [late August, 2001], had still not become available to the general public. It was Elmo's birthday on the previous night, and neither he nor Morgan were on time. Some swapping of mobile phones later, we heard that they were on the way. The interview went ahead with Anto, Scooby, and D.G.

Q. You were in the Trackmix studio, Clonsilla, Dublin, in the first week of July. How did that go, and did it meet your expectations?

Anto: "It more than met our expectations. Mick Richards was really helpful and gave us loads of ideas. He mixed it perfectly and it just went really well. Nearly four songs were done straight away, drum and bass-wise."

D.G.: "I found it really frustrating, because the studio was like a fuckin' sweatbox... There was no air-conditioning, or anything..."

Scooby: "It was, like, the hottest day we ever got!"

D.G: "You're playing and the sweat's rolling off you and you're getting really frustrated when you're doing the guitar part for the fucking thirteenth time...! And the strings are filthy, cos your hands are sweating and all..."
Q. Morgan lost his voice after the Sunday gig, didn't he?

Anto: "Yeah, he really did..."

D.G.: "He was on a strict regimen of Niamh's magical herbal tea, or some mad stuff!"

Anto: "He didn't start doing vocals until the fourth day, like. We had one day to try and get all the vocals done. It was handy that the drums and all were down the first day... that we didn't have to keep going back and playing the drums. We were all on top form though."

D.G.: "I was kind of scared that Morgan wouldn't be able to sing, cos on Monday he couldn't even talk!"

Q. Listening to the recording, Scooby tended to play a little slower than some of the live gigs....

D.G.: "That's cos Mick Richards had the stick out at him, beatin' him to slow down...!" [Laughs]

Q. Did Scooby find it difficult to take instruction...?

Scooby: "The only difficult thing was trying to come up with a solo to put down on paper. When I play at a gig, I just improvise as I go along... [General laugh] Yeah... It was hard to take instruction. But I learned bits and pieces from it that I still use."

D.G.: "That 'Devil's Breath' solo is one of the best I've heard Scooby play. It's cool."

Q. We've heard about the CD... The Website has had a CD giveaway competition... So where's the CD???

D.G.: "It's cost us, basically in or around £1,000 to get the CD recorded, right? Which... I don't know how the fuck we saved it up! It'll cost £750 for the printing of it..."

Scooby: "That's going to be more, because that printing was only for the cover... it was only two-colour. The front of the cover was colour, and the rest of the cover two-colour. But we want full colour."

D.G.: "I don't think we should. I think we should just do black and white inlay on the inside... Black and white photos, you know? We shouldn't be spending all that money until we're doing the actual album!"

Q. Do you think the band sometimes aims a little high...?

D.G.: "Yeah! [Laughs] We're saying, like, we're trying to save up more money to get a better booklet, but I think the fans just want the fucking CD to stick in their bloody player!"

Scooby: "That's now, but after a while, like, the booklet will look better. You don't want them to turn around after they've finished listening to the CD and say, 'That looks cheesy. Black & White!'"

Q. As an initial CD, do you think it's necessary to go the whole hog and be as professional as possible?

Scooby: "Yeah, you should always go and make it look as professional as you can!"

Anto: "That's what we try to do at our gigs: try to be as professional as we can and put on a good show for our fans."

D.G.: "I'm just getting really impatient, that's all!" [Laughs]

Scooby: "There's no point in just taking the easy way out, just cos you're impatient." [General laugh]

Q. Let me ask you this. The CD was initially going to be a six-track recording. Then it was going to be a four track, with a single to follow. Now it's a five track again....

D.G.: "It might be a six track, cos I want to go in and re-record 'Solitude' with Scooby."

Q. That kind of confusion, though, about what the CD is about, does the band think that might be a symptom of general disorganisation in the band?

D.G.: "No, I think it was just a case of the way things worked out. We recorded "Solitude" at the very, very, very end on the Friday and our ears were bolloxed... wrecked, you know? Me and Mick didn't even notice the guitar I was playing was bang out of tune. We would have had that song on the reel with an option to stick it in and make it a five or six track. But we didn't. So we said we're going to have to do a four track. We wanted to released 'Awaken' as a single, but then we decided not to. Then Mick came back to us and said we could go back and record 'Solitude' again, for free, as it hadn't worked out. If we get the chance, we will. I think it's just the way the situation worked out, like."
Q. Do you think there's anything you might have done differently, had you known then what you know now?

Anto: [Laughs] "We would have had more money!"

Scooby: "Definitely... There's all this running around now, trying to get money together..."

D.G.: "We would have liked to have recorded Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday... Taken the weekend off, then we could have come in after the weekend off and ask ourselves, 'Right. Does that sound really good, or what?'"

Q. But you're now having a gig, on average, every 11 days or so. Where are the proceeds from those going??

D.G.: "What proceeds!?"

Scooby: "The only gigs we're getting paid for is the BLAST gigs. So far, that's all we've been saving towards the CD. And it's paying off the bills we have to pay, you know, like the Website, teeshirts, stuff like that..."

Anto: "So we're not actually making money, as such. It's just to tide us over to the next stage..."

D.G.: "I don't think [that] now, at the moment, a band in our situation can really be going, 'Why aren't we getting paid for the gigs we're doing?'"

Q. There was a query on the Treasureisland forum... Someone suggested that if you stopped handing over all your money to Bruxelles [a Dublin pub], then perhaps the money might be saved a bit quicker...

[General laugh]

D.G.: "Two or three of us go out to Bruxelles as the weekend. We do put in a lot of our own money towards other things as well. Like we bought the teeshirts out of our own money, which really fuckin' killed us. I think it's very inaccurate to say that we give all our money to Bruxelles..."

Anto: "And you couldn't say it about me, cos I haven't been out in about three months!"

Q. Have you anything to say to people who, at this stage, are as frustrated as you are, waiting on this mythical CD to appear?

Anto: "Just stick with us. It's going to get done..."

D.G.: "I'd like to thank the fans. When the CD does come out, we were thinking of organising a free gig for them as a thank you."

Q. Do you think not having a CD for people to listen to at home has caused a drop in interest among fans?

Scooby: "I reckon it has. There's been so many times after a gig we've been asked 'Where is the CD?' It happened at the last gig on a Monday. A load of people came up to me and said, 'I hear you have a CD out. Can we buy it?' And I had to say 'No. We haven't got it out.'"

Anto: "That pisses us off as well. As much as fans, we're frustrated we've no CD."

Q. Do you think that CORRUPTED is in danger of becoming "just another Dublin band?"

D.G.: "No, I don't think so, because we're trying to arrange a tour at the moment. I was hoping we'd start off in Dublin, then go to Belfast, Galway, Limerick, Cork. We want to get out, you know? There's people that come up to see us every time we're playing, like. That's pretty cool, so we want to take it down to them.."

Anto: "..to their doorstep."

Q. Do you think you're concentrating enough on getting out of Dublin?

Scooby: "We've only just come up with the idea."

D.G.: "We haven't really time to concentrate on that at the moment cos we're scratching and saving to get the CD out. That's our main focus. Once we have that CD we want to play everywhere, all over the country."

*****

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Other Interviews:

CORRUPTED in interview in the Underground Studio, Sunday 10th June, 2001
&
An Exclusive backstage interview with the band prior to their May 12th gig at BLAST, Temple Bar Music Centre, in Dublin.

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