CORRUPT THE SYSTEM – IN CONVERSATION (Interview)

Decibel Geek was lucky enough to have a chance to interview upcoming Glaswegian thrash rockers Corrupt The System whilst they were in Edinburgh before their excellent gig in Opium. A chance to find out a little about the guys and to remind the interviewer how bloody old he is!

DG: Hi guys, thanks for sparing some time to chat. First of all, can you tell us a little about the background of the band to our readers?

Corrupt The System – How It All Started

Neil: (vocals and guitar) It started off with myself and Adam (drummer) when we met at college, and it was really just to me and him that were in the class that were into the heavier kind of things musically. We both ended up in college bands in a pub in Hamilton (a town to the south east of Glasgow), so I went up to him and asked “do you want to start a metal band?” to which he replied “Alright! Why not?”.  (Both at this point laugh)

Then one of my bass playing pals lost contact, so we asked one of the other guys around to help out. We played as a three piece, but the bassist felt it wasn’t for him as he wasn’t really into metal. He kind of went “I’m out, I’m done.”

One day we were in one of the classes and Gary (bassist) was playing in a similar style, but more articulate if you will. I leaned over to Adam and said “we need to get him”. We spoke with him and told him we were in a tight spot as the bassist was leaving and we were about to play an EP launch. Gary was like “I’ll play”. He had a day or two to learn the songs, as well as rehearse. He played the show. Done REALLY well.

I suppose that is a rough background of the early days. That was over a year and a half.

After a while, Paul (guitar and vocals) came in giving us a bigger sound with two guitars in the mix and he also brought in the heavier vocal aspect to our sound.

Getting To Understand The Songs

DG The songs sound at times slightly political, or am I reading too much into that? Is it something you try to do or focus on or, indeed, something that interests you?

Everyone seems to point at Paul, so we put the mike over to him.

Paul: No, honestly, no too much. “Temptations Of Anarchy” I suppose. I was sitting one day and it came along. Ironically, by the time we released it, the Scottish independence referendum came around and sadly went tits up. So, at that time, we looked at each other and thought “this actually fits” and, surprisingly, it has become easily our most popular song, the one most folk go crazy for. I’m not going to take that as a bad thing.

So no, not too political, just based a lot on real life situations. Stuff that goes on, things in everyday life. Don’t think any of us are that political. I know I’m not.

DG: I was also curious – I heard a couple of you used to be in a System Of A Down covers band.

Neil: “Aye, that was with him (points at Adam, laughing). Back then, like many bands starting out, we used to play covers and the bass player, although not being much of a Metal fan, was right into them. So, we did a couple of covers.“

DG: Great band.

Neil: Aye, absolutely outstanding. Our most popular cover of theirs was “Old School Hollywood”. System is kind of where the band name came from. A mate of ours in another band called Take Today (Take Today Facebook also from Glasgow ) said “why don’t you call yourselves” (I think, anyway) Condemn The System? It was like, “that sounds alright”, then we changed it to Corrupt. We felt that sounded cool, so done a bit of research and found no other band with it. All the guys felt it was a good name.

DG: I like it.

Neil: Thanks very much.

DG: It works really well with what you do.

Paul: (I think, listening to recording) It is the direction the band has gone in. So it has kind of fallen into place.

New Material?

DG: You have a new single, “Fade Out“. Are you planning a new album at all? You only have the one so far haven’t you?

Adam: Since we are doing the tour this year, I think we will the plan for next year to get something recorded, whether it be an album or an EP. We are weighing up price differences and situations. Definitely hope to get some more music down and released.

DG: Have you got anything written at all yet?

Neil: Well, before the tour we were writing new stuff, kind of jamming ideas. We have some stuff in place; templates, demos and also stuff in storage that we might be able to use as well.

Paul: We have a hard drive full of projects that we are bringing on tour, so we can do some writing on the road as well.

Neil: Yeah, definitely going to write on tour whilst there is down time and we aren’t out exploring (laughs).

DG: Take it you all have day jobs, making it harder?

CTS: (all of them) Yeah! God! Aye!

A Quick Run Round The Band/Is It An Age Thing?

DG: Thought that. Pain isn’t it? (agreement and laughter all round). Just to round up, and to let folks get to get an idea about each of you, can you (taking it in turns) tell us your favourite band or artist, along with favourite album.

(Lots of laughter and complaints about how bloody difficult that is and egging each other to go first)

Paul: OK, I’ll go first.  My favourite band is Trivium as their Ascendancy album pretty much got me into metal properly. As for albums, anything by Pantera. Anything from their catalogue. Those guys never wrote a bad album, they got better and better every time.

Gary: Favourite album is definitely Antipop by Primus. That is the one that got me into playing bass (laughing). Band wise, probably Rammstein.

DG: Probably?

Gary (laughing again) Yeah, probably. Them or Ghost. Toss up between the two of them.

Adam (at this point lots of laughing broke out as he said his name into the mike) Hi my name is Adam (said in such a way to cause more laughter and take the piss). Probably something from Metallica. If it wasn’t for them, I might not have picked up sticks. Just watching Lars play made me want to drum. Really, anything from the back catalogue.  Watching them made me want to do the same thing. I wanted to be like Lars. So Metallica.

Neil: Probably the same as Adam. Growing up, I was listening to a lot of bands, going round to mates’ houses and watching the music channels on TV. There was a lot of Nu-Metal stuff around and, believe it or not , and this might ruffle some folks feathers a bit, but St Anger came on and immediately I was like (deep intake of breath), “What’s this? This is AMAZING!” I was about 13 or 14 at the time.

At this point, I thought “these guys are so young”, then realized “bloody hell, I am really old!”

Neil: So I got more and more into them. James Hetfield is the man. He is the reason I do what I do. Playing and singing. The best album, or at least my favourite, is Ride The Lightning. Easy answer, as I love that album.

At that point, I took my leave to allow the band to get ready for the gig.

A huge thanks to Neil, Paul, Gary and Adam for their time and we wish them all the best for the future.

The Live Gig Review On Decibel Geek

Buy Fade Out

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