Mangled Interview

1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the band?
Mangled began as an aggressive reaction to obnoxious "metal" trends that were dominating Atlanta and the surrounding cities at the time. There were tons of us really in to the old school, but there weren't that many shows happening catering to that, and the ones that were happening were kind of sparsely attended because there weren't many local acts to properly support them.
There wasn't much happening in the way of extreme metal bands that were fast, gross, or really high-energy, so we started one. We like to make nasty noise that sounds like horror movies and inspires moshing and headbanging.

2.How would you describe the musical sound that is presented on the recordings?
We aim to blend the overwhelming, extreme sounds of gore and medical-themed metal with a heavy dose of thrashy speed and tongue-in-cheek punk rock fuckery.
We personally like to call this hybrid "Gore Punk", or "Sewer Metal". We don't write with the intention of emulating any certain sound, we just write what we think sounds bad ass. This 7" is by far the heaviest, most brutal stuff we've recorded. Its fast, its heavy, its kind of weird, its the audio equivalent of nausea.

3.What are some of the lyrical topics and subjects the band explores with the music?
I'd be lying to you if I told you we wrote about anything more profound than creatively killing people in horrible ways and playing with their guts. We've always set a lot of our songs down in a subterranian sewer lair, and write them out a bit like horror vignettes stemming from that concept.

4.What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'Mangled'?
It was short, violent, memorable, easy to draw a logo for, a cool Cannibal Corpse song, and no one was using it at the time.

5.What are some of the best shows that the band has played over the years and also how would you describe your stage performance?
We have played a ton of shows that stick out in my mind as unforgettable. The inaugural Blood of the Wolf fest in Lexington KY was a blast. Any shows we've ever played in Philly have been unbelievably fun.
But my all time favorite show was an Atlanta house show with Ghoul in 2012 ... Absolute chaos! By the end of the night the PA was fried and the basement looked like a goddamned slaughterhouse.
Our live performance is as energetic as we can make it. We ham it up, wear the blood-soaked butcher's aprons, we fucking headbang.
95% of the time we are able to get any room pumped up and violent and we just feed back and forth off of that energy. We grab people, kick front row chests and yell in your face.
We don't have a budget for any gimmicks or stage productions, we just firmly believe that if you are going to play a live show then standing around like boring assholes is just a waste of everyone's time.

6.Do you have nay touring or show plans for the future?
We will definitely be doing some shows to promote Involuntary Organ Donor.

7.The 7 inch is coming out on 'Boris Records', can you tell us a little bit more about how you came in contact with this label?
We had all known Sam [Leyja] who operates Boris for a while through local shows. The man is somewhat of a legend- killer artist, great musician, and enthusiastic supporter of the underground. Whenever our band starting really picking up, he approached us about recording a release for Boris, which at that point had only released a single by Spewtilator, our guitarist Rafay's other band.
That ended up being our first vinyl release "Sewer Metal". Since then Boris has gone on to release a seriously kick ass catalogue of releases, mostly Atlanta based, but even stuff out of South America.

8.On a worldwide level how has the feedback been to your music by fans of extreme metal?
I don't really know how we are recieved worldwide. We seem to get a lot of support thrown at us from all over the globe. Someone told us they were playing Sewer Metal at a bar in Italy. We have a ton of support in our hometown and on the East Coast it has been incredibly rad everywhere we've gone.

9.What is going on with some of the other bands or musical projects these days that some of the band members are a part of?

10.Where do you see the band heading into musically during the future?
I don't imagine any giant difference in direction than you'll find on this release. We sound like we meant to when we started, but even since recording these songs we are constantly upping the ante in brutality, nastiness, and skill... just honing our craft. Any change of style past that would probably result in something not quite "Mangled"

11.What are some of the bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?
We wear our more obvious influences on our sleeve- Carcass, Impaled, General Surgery, Haemorrhage, Repulsion, but that is really only a fraction of what makes our overall sound. I personally worship The Accused. We all love the Razorback Records roster from like 2002 with early Ghoul, Frightmare, Blood Freak, Engorged, etc. John, Rafay, and I listen to a shitload of thrash metal and crossover stuff. Death and thrash metal classics that go without saying- Cannibal Corpse, Vio-Lence, Demolition Hammer, Sepultura, Cryptopsy, you know the drill. But the honest truth is we spend way more time listening to old Metallica and W.A.S.P. records than anything else.

12.What are some of your non musical interests?

13.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts?
Buy our record, support your own local labels, and don't talk shit on each other in the underground!

www.facebook.com/Mangled-270014239690739

http://www.boris-records.com/