In early November last year local Doom outfit Mad God released the cosmic horror of a second full length album. It even got an entry in Metal Hammer magazine. What follows is an interview with guitarist and vocalist Tim Harbour.
Conceptually and sonically speaking, what were the motivations for the album and do you feel that it
turned out how you wanted?
Tim: With the latest Mad God album we tried our best to create more interesting and heavier songs while still keeping the music doom at heart. We added a wider variety of influences and started blending more heavy metal and traditional metal into our sound. I feel like our latest album is definitely the best produced and most interesting of our releases, though our older album still seems to be doing better online. Conceptually the album was supposed to have darker themes and also touch on some local horror stories. Overall I think the album was a success in all those regards and we are excited to start thinking about our next one.
There is an experimental horror film also titled Mad God. Was this at all an influence on your band name?
Tim: I had never heard of the movie before I came up with the band name Mad God. The band name process is always a tough one and as a band we had been back and forth on a tonne of names. I started to think simpler and realised most of our earlier content was based on or heavily inspired by the work of H.P Lovecraft and I simply used the name Mad God as a reference to one of the deities from the Cthulhu mythos. I still need to give the Mad God movie a watch haha.
The new album art is a lot different from the previous ones which were quite brightly coloured. What was the influence behind it?
Tim: The album art directly relates to the darker themes and sound of the album. On the previous album our artist, Lyle Van’Dango, used the title of the album as inspiration for the artwork and I was very impressed with what he came up with, it was pretty much exactly what I wanted. With the latest album I gave him more direction telling him the themes of the album and mentioned I wanted some form of dark forest and supernatural elements and he just went with it. Again I was blown away with what he came up with. Lyle’s art has become as canon as the music itself and I can’t imagine doing an album without his artistic direction.
As far as I know the metal scene in Johannesburg is quite large, in comparison to our punk scene. Any bands you recommend we check out that may be of influence to you?
Tim: I have always been a huge fan of the local metal scene. I was a massive Architecture of Aggression fan when they were still around and almost never missed a gig of theirs. Bleeding Spawn is another amazing death metal act that I really enjoy though only a small bit of death metal influence is heard in our music. Juggernaut were a band that I saw before Mad God started and was so excited to hear that style of metal in this country, so that has always stuck in my mind and served as an inspiration for getting Mad God out there. After we formed I started to draw inspiration from the bands that also formed around or a bit before the same time. Ruff Majik and Goat Throne are some of the best examples along with acts such as STRAGE and Corax. More recently I have discovered the incredible MA-AT from Cape Town as well as Psykasm, both bands we played with recently on our trip to the cape. The biggest inspiration I get is from observing some of the hard working local musicians I see busting their ass to put on great shows on a regular basis.
What do we have to look forward to in the future from Mad God?
Tim: More music. We want to record and release a new album, hopefully this year. I’d love to do another music video as well as getting our older releases on vinyl. We have some tape releases coming out soon with our label Red Handed Records in the US as well as just received some digipacks from our EU label, Narcoleptica Productions. Basically just more tunes and more merch coming your way, hopefully in the not to distant future.
Questions by Sarah Lee
Mad God is:
Tim Harbour - Vocals and Guitar
Pat Stephansen - Drums
Evert Snyman - Bass
