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By: Richard Collins
Dragged Into Sunlight are a rather mysterious extreme metal band who formed in 2006. Since then they have gained a reputation for being one of the most ferocious and terrifying acts on the planet both live and on record. They checked in for a few words with Richard Collins before they head off on a huge jaunt around Europe.
(((o))): Have you guys started writing any new material? How is it shaping up compared to Widowmaker? Will we see a new full length in 2015?
DIS: We are working on something right now. There have been a few incarnations. We usually know when the music ‘feels’ right for us and we hope to have a working title soon.
Every record is a different beast, there would be very little point in creating the same record again. Much like Widowmaker, the new material adorns yet another mask. There are many bands whose final record can be confused for their first, it is all very circular and routine, the same would be of little or no reward for Dragged Into Sunlight. Ambition is everything.
It is difficult to decipher whether the new material pushes aggression like Hatred for Mankind, where that experience is like a fist through your teeth and a boot clamp on your neck, perhaps an apt description moving forward is ‘bitter’. =It is a record that would never want to live in the shadows, a different taste so to speak. The music feels and tastes relentlessly bitter and after an introduction, it starts burning, you want to listen, like a glutton for punishment. There are some Austere and Dillinger Escape Plan records with the same effect, it’s almost an unappreciated flavour to extreme music nowadays.
(((o))): You recently toured Japan, how was it? How does it compare to touring Europe and the States?
DIS: Politeness is embedded into Japanese culture by norm. Dragged Into Sunlight is not a softly spoken band, that said, it thrives on the friction between extreme culture and the norm and that is none more present than in Japan.
The friction is embedded from the days of a vicious punk scene, harder and faster, with so much energy. Of course it has positives and negatives, like any country, but with regards to extreme music in isolation, Japan takes the next level. That is what we are about and there existed a common ground between us on that basis. Bands to check out are: Endon, Nola, Butcher ABC and Zothique. All are recommended listening if you feel like taking nail guns into public places.
(((o))): Your music is fucking terrifying, how do you go about achieving this?
DIS: It is simply a retching of collective frustration and misfortune. A very primitive truth. Sometimes the truth is fucking ugly.
(((o))): You are like a ferocious mix of death metal, black metal and even doom. What kind of bands do you all listen to?
DIS: Recently we have been listening to Adversarial, Dead Congregation, Slowly We Rot, Thy Light, Grieved, Hexis, Abigor, Narjahanam and Myrkskog. We constantly listen to Melvins, Iron Monkey, Incantation, Black Cobra and Rudimentary Peni. It changes. That is the beauty in extreme music, there are so many different flavour and cultures.
(((o))): I really dig ‘Part 1’ on Widowmaker, however some regular Dragged Into Sunlight fans might not. What was the thinking and story behind that track?
DIS: Third party perception is of no concern. It is what it is. The part is hideously lonely, personally and collectively, it invokes and comprises particularly dark times. Whatever that story is, we are sharing music and music is an art, like the mind’s eye, it is a matter of interpretation.
(((o))): Your live shows are very dramatic, how does it feel being on the stage with all the smoke and lights etc? Do you feel the same levels of excitement as the crowd?
DIS: Suffocating. Like every breath could be the last. Each show is an exorcism of sorts and a release of negative misplacements. As for excitement, perhaps.
(((o))): You have the feel of a jam band when you play live, are you ever jamming or is it all meticulously planned?
DIS: Dragged Into Sunlight began playing to the walls and it will end playing to the walls. Each step is meticulously planned as we move with a single and unspoken mindset. If that comes naturally, then so be it.
(((o))): You have toured Japan and played festivals like Maryland Deathfest and are arguably one of the country’s biggest extreme metal bands. Did you ever expect to be this successful when you first formed the band?
DIS: No. We did this without expectation other than doing what we felt needed to be done. It is that simple. The key is integrity and the will to make music without boundary.
(((o))): Name some of the best bands you have ever shared the stage with.
DIS: Today Is The Day, Rwake, Weedeater, Akercocke, Soilent Green, 11Paranoias, Repulsion, Neurosis and MAKE.
(((o))): Name 3 bands every member of Dragged Into Sunlight think fucking rule!
DIS: Incantation, Deathspell Omega and Ramesses.
(((o))): What are your plans for 2015?
DIS: Smoke more. See Agoraphobic Nosebleed at Maryland Deathfest.
