How The Evil Dead manage to look fucking cool
The Evil Dead make music to drink with the dead and toast with the living. Based in Buenos Aires (Argentina), The Evil Dead mixes thrash metal, heavy metal and old school rock 'n roll with a triple guitar attack and hellish vocals. Making a unique style that they refer to as "Skeleton Boogie", something between a music style and a life style. By mid 2011, the band signed with Rising Records for the release of their first album "Pronounced(The Evil Dead)". To follow up this album I had a little chat with Michel and Alejandro add some comments too.
Please give us a short introduction of yourself?
Hi my name is Michel Regueiro, I'm 26 years old and I play guitar and backing vocals in The Evil Dead and I'm currently answering this interview from Finland where I'm staying before coming back to rehearse with the band back home.
And the 2nd obligated question is to say something about the other guys…
We have Santiago Giusti on bass, Santiago Botalla pounding on the drums, Federico Franco on Guitar and my brothers Ian and Alejandro on guitar and vocals.
What was the moment when you decided to start the band? Long time dream or just a quick decision? Or has it something to do with the 3 brothers?
I got bored of playing with my old band and just met this drummer that wanted to jam on some classics, so I brought Ian along and we jammed old Metallica, Destruction covers and had a lot of fun. After a few weeks the band was officially formed, at the beginning I was singing and playing guitar but wasn’t really into it and Alex who was acting as our “manager” (getting us beers and arranging rehearsals) asked if he could take a shot at the vocals, it worked fine and 2 weeks later (with Santiago now in the band playing drums) we headed down to Studio 666 to record our “Old n0 7” demo.
And looking at the line up we see 3 guitar players? Why this? Couldn't make a decision?
The reason we started using 3 guitars was because in my old band this guy called Franco used to play bass and we had a lot of fun with him, so we just invited him over to play with us and when he started soloing on our songs he blew us away. So he was asked to join and from then we always tried to have a 3 guitar lineup.
Using 3 guitar players is nothing new as it has been done before by Leatherwolf or even Iron Maiden but what is the advantage with 3 axemen?
I guess it's not new, everyone thinks that we took the idea from Iron Maiden but actually it was more inspired by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I was really into Skynyrd and loved what they did with the guitars, advantages are obviously, a bigger and heavier sound, be able to do more harmonies and counter parts which really add more colour and personality to the sound. Besides it looks fucking cool haha Guitar Army!
Your style is named Skeleton Boogie which I like. Why mix rock'n'roll with metal? Why not argentina folk with metal?
It’s a cool name that Alex coined for us, Skeleton Boogie, Electric Evil Metal whatever you want to call us we are The Evil Dead and we are here to stay!
Mixing rocknroll with metal just came naturally, not many bands do it right and rock has turned into such shit that we needed to do something about it, rocknroll is the devils music after all and should be like that. We fucking hate when crap like Coldplay gets called “Rock”.
Mixing argentinian folk… some bands here do it but it's just boring to me.
What makes a good Skeleton Boogie song anyway? What is the criteria to record a song? Who comes with the ideas? Or is there a dictator in the band?
It has to absolutely fucking rock from start to finish and be completely memorable, we only save the best riffs and ideas to make the songs as best as possible because we don’t want any fillers on the albums. Well, since I make most of the music and decisions I guess I'm the dictator in the band, but everybody contributes of course with some riffs or arrangements and Alex takes care of all the lyrics.
Speaking about dictators, Argentina has not a clean history so is this helping you with the lyrical inspiration?
Alejandro: True, we don't have the cleanest sheet around. I guess that most people in Argentina have had their lives affected in some way by all these coups d'états and revolutions. They haven't influenced our lyrics directly (at least not yet) but they made us understand the darker side of the human condition a bit better.
And what about stealing the soccer world champion 1978 from us? When will they admit that it was a bribe…
Alejandro: Stolen? What about Rensenbrink's post? We didn't steal that :)
Based in South America, is it easy to find an audience for the music? Are there many fans around? Any feedback from US, European or Asian people?
Yes and no, nowadays the scene is more open minded in regards to music but there will always be those idiots that just want to listen to the classics or covers of the classics and disregard new and excellent bands.
Yeah we got quite good feedback from the US and specially in Europe, haven’t heard from Japan yet but we know the album is available there through HMV, Amazon and other record stores…
Or do you think it is easier now with the internet to spread your music across people?
Once again yes and no, might be easier to spread the name and get known but there is so much competition and oversaturation of shitty bands that it's difficult, also because of downloading record sales have gone to the shitter…
And what about playing shows? Argentina is a big country to play. Easy for you to travel across the land? Other countries or even step on a plane?
We have played around 70 shows in Argentina, toured a lot around the Buenos Aires province and did some gigs in the north also. We would like to play around the south of the country too but haven’t been able to do so yet, it’s a very large country and the distances are long and traveling is expensive but with some efforts it can be done.
As for other countries we were supposed to go on a Brazilian tour early this year but that fell through because the promoter was utter shit, right now we are discussing with booking agencies for our first European tour next year.
Being a band of 6 people doesn't it get crowdy on little stages?
You can bet your ass it does but we always manage somehow and even move around on stage, I hate bands that stand still. Entertain me you assholes!
South American people are called passionate, do you notice this at gigs? Does the crowd react and are you playing for people who know you or new ones?
Yeah this is true, people go wilder in gigs and life in general, maybe its because of the weather or the crazy gene pool that we have :P
We always have friends and followers at our gigs but always make new fans that get mesmerized not expecting the storm we brew up on stage.
And called passionate I wonder about the hot behind the stage stories after the show…
Oh oh… ha ha a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell you know!
Of course we have had our share of crazy backstage moments such as girls, fist fights, drinking, drugs, managers going crazy all of a sudden, stuff getting broken, puking through windows, and many more but I guess you will have to wait for the unauthorized biography!!
Being in a band doesn't pay the bills so what are you doing in daily life? Work, family or hobbies?
At the moment only two of us are actually employed while the rest bum out and do what we can with little odd jobs, 'changas' we call it here.
Life outside the band is mainly going drinking and thinking what to do next with the band…
If oversea fans would like to visit you, can you give them a sleeping place? And what would you show them when doing a sightseeing?
What a weird question… ha ha would be fine I guess, they can sleep at the rehearsal room at night. Women might get better accommodation perhaps :P
As for sightseeing probably cool bars and maybe some parks as we have a lot of green places in Buenos Aires and also to eat some motherfucking good meat!
What else can you tell about Argentina than Bife de lomo, soccer or Maradona?
Beautiful women, milanesa napolitana, Patagonia, Messi, Carola Del Bianco, empanadas, V8 first metal band in Latin America, killer wine, killer whales, awful government, happy and melancholic people, tango, snow and glaciers in the south/jungle and desert in the north, Manu Ginobili, huge Simpsons fans, widest avenue in the world, Fernet Branca with Coca Cola, great pizza and pasta, Buenos Aires the Paris of the south and the city that never sleeps,etc…
Anything to add to this interview? Or just some shameless self promotion?
Thanks for the interview its great to be featured in BRUTALISM.com!
European tour coming next year and around that a new album, we have patches in stock right now and t-shirts coming soon.
Looking for a label to press vinyl!