GEN of Genitortures
Renowned for their status as agents provocateur of the underground hard rock and industrial metal scenes, the latex defining and pop-culture defying Genitorturers return with the Nov. 3, 2009 release of Blackheart Revolution [G-Force/MVD Entertainment].
The outfit’s fifth studio release, Blackheart Revolution is a mesmerizing blend of infectious riffs and riotous overtures that lay the sexually-charged foundation for frontwoman Gen, the master of turbo-charged ceremonies and erotic rituals. The Genitorturers live spectacle returns to the road fall 2009 with dates in the U.S and 2010 will include stops in Australia, Europe, UK and South America!
Chris- How is the tour going so far?
Gen- Going good. The tour has just gotten underway. We did some flying around Halloween. We are typically in demand around Halloween. Oddly enough this year we brought the devil to Salt Lake City.
Chris- How did that go over?
Gen- It was Amazing. Apparently that’s the one night that they just want to cut loose.
Chris- I guess being restrained more normally would be all the more reason for them to vent on Halloween!
Gen- Yes, all the more reason to celebrate on Halloween. For us in Tampa everyday is closer to Halloween. We have a big kind of Goth, industrial, dark metal culture in Tampa, so we get to experience Halloween on a daily basis.
Chris- You were a part of Gothtoberfest?
Gen – yes.
Chris- How did that go?
Gen- It was alright. I think they overstretched their idea what it was based on, trying to charge $70 for 2 days of tickets. I told them going into it, I thought it was a very poor decision. It would cost between 35 to 40 dollars just to come see us on our night. I didn’t know that until after we had literally booked the thing. (Plane flight and everything) Those kinds of ticket prices don’t really make sense to me. The people that came and saw us had a great time, we had a great show, but I think a lot more of our diehard fans would’ve been there if the tickets would’ve been reasonable.
Chris- Your new album just came out ‘Blackheart Revolution’. How would you compare it to your previous albums?
Gen- I think it’s the best body of work that we have ever put forth. Its definitely the strongest, best musicianship, best playing, best production. I think it is a well put together record for sure, very very proud of it.
Chris- Did you go into creating the album with certain ideas of what you wanted to accomplish?
Gen- We had a very big goal going into it. We wanted to create our own Welcome to My Nightmare in the sense that of having a record that would really speak to our fans, and have all the elements that caused us want to play music to begin with, and inspired us. It’s not the genre, because we are a very genre defining band. I don’t mean a specific type of style music. I mean more the inspirational elements like attitude, aggression, and feeling, and the feeling we wanted to get across, and In order to do that we really wanted to take each song as an entity into itself. This is not a record where, lets do all the bass tracks today, lets do all the vocals another day. We produced each song separately, and produced each song unto itself, using different players, and different instrumentation, just to give each song its own character. A lot of times you sit down and listen to a record, at least for me, with a lot of modern rock kind of stuff, and some metal stuff, it just sounds very homogenized, like when you hear song one, and song four, yeah it’s the same guitar solos, and after I hear about song four I have heard the record. Honestly some of the albums I grew up listening to ‘Highway to Hell’, and ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’ would be a good example of what we wanted to create. In fact Bob Ezrin is a great producer, and one of the things he did with Alice was, he brought out all this dynamic behind the story, and he knows in order to tell a good story, you can’t stay at ‘11’, you have to be at 2, than over to 4.
Chris-You guys put on such a production, when you write your songs do you think of how its going to play out performance wise?
Gen- No, really the music gives birth to the performance. We write our music; mostly we are inspired to write a song, the song than ties into a conceptual thing of a storyline, it goes along with my character, and how my character is evolving throughout the albums and years kind of like Harry Potter. The show comes out after it is completed, than bringing that inspiration out on stage.
Chris- I wasn’t sure what came first
Gen- yeah….the chicken or the egg. It’s always the music. The music is the foundation, not the other way around. Its not like we need a song for this performance, its always the music first.
Chris- How would you describe your music to someone who hasn’t heard it before?
Gen- It’s definitely a mixture. It’s definitely aggressive, dark, and sexy. Those things are the 3 pervasive elements. In terms of a particular genre, it has metal undertones, industrial elements, punk elements. It has all those things, but it is none of those things.
Chris- Sometimes its better not to have so many subgenres, and be considered just rock
Gen- Yeah, like a big rock record, also for us it’s about what we like and what we listen to and trying to bring out the things that inspired us to play music to our fans, because its real and heartfelt. It’s what we love, and that doesn’t lie. It’s not like a band thinking ok we’re going to be a Goth band, we are going to wear this kind of thing, or we are going to be a metal band. We are just going to be ourselves. I am so bored with any genre of music. I find all of them outrageously mundane.
Chris- It seems like some of it just comes out like a machine and sounds mass produced.
Gen- That’s the thing about taking the time to make a good record, a lot of people are under a contract to shit out a record within a certain amount of time, and you know honestly the music suffers. There’s a lot of stuff that comes out now that just sucks. It comes out like its not really deep feeling or thought. You can tell that its just been thrown together. This is a record that took a long ass time. I think when the fans hear they are going to be like yeah, ok now we know why it took such a long time.
Chris- Tell me about the Blackheart Revolution confessional booth.
Gen- Well we have been doing something. We actually have our videographer Matt here, editing footage and talking to different people. It just came about because we have a lot of fans that our always like remember that one time I saw you and I brought my friend and she vomited on so and so. It was just like ok, lets see if we can capture some of those stories. We have been compiling that as we go so we can have something for our fans.
Chris- The winner will go on the ‘Devils and Dolls’ cruise?
Gen- We are going to start putting up some of the submissions, people will be able to submit videos themselves. We are also getting some things at the shows, when people would come up to Matt and confess their sins than we can post that up.
Chris- So what can someone expect when they get to the cruise?
Gen- We are doing a full show. There is a big ballroom. On the third night of the cruise we are doing a full show for the people who pay to be on our part of the cruise. We are having parties every night, djs every night, Angela Ryan (fetish pinup model) she is doing some burlesque performances. My friend Chris Mackie (a dj) will be djing some stuff. There will be a couple of other bands that we will have as well. It will be fun. Every night there will be a different themed party that you can dress up for.
Chris- When was the last time an audience has surprised you?
Gen- Well, last night there was this very innocent looking young girl, and I was just kidding when I was talking. We were in North Carolina. I asked if anyone knew how to do an assclap. We were making this big joke up on stage. This girls jumps up on stage and pulls her pants down. She totally looks like this conservative kind of girl. She did it tho, she got that booty shaking. It was pretty funny. We let her stay up and shake her stuff while we performed kabanging all night. It was fun.
Chris- You guys had a song in the video game Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, are you open to any other video games to include your material?
Gen- Oh, absolutely. We have been in contact with that same company (activision). We have some songs submitted for some stuff, as well as some others.
Chris- Things are a little different now with video games like guitar hero, rockband. They seem to be a different way to promote band’s songs.
Gen- Yeah, and there is some stuff on this record that could be really great for guitar hero. There are some actual guitar leads on this album.
Chris- That would be very cool. It would be good to get something different from guitar hero instead of the same stuff. Cumjunkies seems like a fun way to start off the album. How did you pick that to start it off?
Gen- We released that as our first vinyl because we are doing a series of vinyl. We picked that song, because it was on our dvd and a lot of people really loved it. We had done some over the top photo shoots. It was a time where we weren’t exactly sure what we were going to do with them. I realized that it would be really fun, because I was always into collecting hardcore punk 7 inches (Misfits, The Germs that kind of thing) I had a huge collection. I thought it would be very cool to do something where (you know something that you cant download, something you can keep) and make it really special. The packaging is really spectacular on it. (This is really wrong) Best Buy isn’t going to carry it. We made it for our fans, our hardcore fans. Each one is limited edition 500 copies. Each song has its own theme, so the Cum Junkie one is the first one and its kind of wrong its me and this sexy outfit with this huge machete, me grabbing a cock like through a glory hole, than when you turn it over it’s the band dressed up like cops. It looks like I am cutting his penis. Cathouse castrator cumjunkie killer, as you open it up the story unfolds. It’s like another way to tell a story, and another way to show a conceptual element for the fans. Each one of these 7 inches is over the top and super ridiculous. The cumjunkie one I thought would be cool too because the vinyl is clear. There are 3 different versions. There is one that has cumsplatter like white, and one with red and white splatter. As you see the pictures you would understand the gory hole, and the last one is the castrating one with just red splatters, kind of scary. Its cool, it goes with the story, so each one with the art and color vinyl. They have little prizes in them like condom, another with a drinking game. Its just ridiculous.
Chris- Can you just purchase those online?
Gen- Actually our distributors always gives us an allotment of them to the first record stores to buy them. (you know like Newbury comics, and people that carry vinyl) They are kind of scattered around.
Chris- I think around here there is Record and Tape Traders and Sound Garden.
Gen- Yeah its such a rare thing that they instantly go, number 69 went for $120 on ebay.
Chris- I know you guys played with Combichrist recently, how was that?
Gen- My electro side project has played with Combi. Our drummer joey is now in Combi. I have a project called Gen-XX that is a side electro thing that I have performed with Combi a couple of times. Than I have done some guest vocals on their new record. We had Andy from KMFD play drums with us for a bit. We had a rotating drummer situation that was kind of funny. Right now we have Angel who has played with us for a long time. He has played before Joey and after Joey. We (Gen-xx) did a show in Denver with them, and it got snowed out. They couldn’t make it, and I wasn’t able to fly in either. We played a couple of times with them though.
Chris- Do you have other performers besides the band.
Gen- Oh yeah, we have a full stage show that goes on. It’s going to be very tricky to pull this off
Chris- Hey, I know we are running out of time before sound check. It was really great talking to you, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I very much look forward to your show.
Gen- It is going to be very interesting to see how we will be able to pull off our show in this room. Its very small. Its going to be tricky