With:	Pablo Alvarez [Vocals, guitars], Sebastián Vergara [Guitars]
Conducted by:	Jeff
Published:	31.10.2005
Band profile:	Coprofago

- Hi guys, Jeff of Metal Storm.ee here. To begin, the classic question, can you present Coprofago to our readers?

PABLO: Yes, that is a classic question to start interviewing an unknown band. I hope that someday we won't have to introduce ourselves on every interview. Well, in short: We have been playing together as a band since we were 15 years-old, and now we are 27. Four albums have been made in the meantime; the very first one, simply titled "Demo I", features an embarrassingly raw slow-motion death metal, which gave us nothing but bad critics. It is really a miracle that we kept playing I would say. Happily, since that first attempt, every new album turned out to be in a way more complex and jazzy-influenced than its predecessor. The same happened to our album names, from a rather simple and effective title such as "Demo I", we ended up with some exaggeratedly long and un-catchy tongue-twisters such as "Unorthodox creative criteria", our last album's title. Our goal for our next album title is to beat Dimmu Borgir's.


- One can say that your music isn't so conventional. Where did you find this "idea" to produce such complex music?

Sebastian: That motivation, in the very beggining came from Pablo, everyone agreed because we all enjoy listening very different styles and genres, from classical to Jazz and a lot of popular music.
How this music can have a dialogue with Metal?, well, it makes a lot of sense to know which where our favourite bands and main influences that inspired our first two albums. We've always been very close to bands in the vein of Cynic, Pestilence, Death, Meshuggah, etc. so, I think that this is the main reason why this "fusionlike" aproach flowed in a very natural way.
Nowadays, I think that our music is reaching its own sound and personality, everyday we are improving our songwriting and performing skills and we are feeding of many different genres, today each new musical experience can participate in our own music, so we're highly motivated writing new stuff.


-Let's talk a bit about your last album "Unorthodox Creative Criteria". Can you present this album?

PABLO: This is a rather strange album; however my favourite one. It is possible to find traces of all our previous works throughout its 50 minutes: the blast-beat sections and endless song structures of "Images of despair", the short fusionesque guitar solos between tons of staccato riffing of "Genesis" and such. Nevertheless, some new elements were added to our bag of tricks this time. Strings sections, loops, midi-guitars and some other resources seldom seen on Death Metal, allowed us to enhance our sonic range and explore some more on the fusion arena, bringing into being an album almost 50% instrumental.
It was a big challenge for the band to include on the same album extremely brutal songs such as "Constriction" or the more industrial "Crippled tracker", a midi-guitar solo tune, a violin-noise based track, a few instrumental suites and yet sound authentic on every instance. Some may say that we still sound too metal on the jazz parts; however I consider that upon this heavier approach towards progressive and jazz music relies the concept and coherence of the album as a whole.






-Do you have any messages under your lyrics or do you only play music to play music after all?

Sebastian: Yes, there are messages in our lyrics; those messages speak in a very personal level. Every lyric develops a different perspective of a set of ideas. I would love to talk more about it, but I think that is useless, because the lyrics where removed of the booklet by our record label, so, it would be like explaining the music of an empty CD.
We uploaded the lyrics on our website, and probably I'll comment them there.


-If I'm not wrong, you're influenced by others musical styles than Metal like Jazz for example. Were you "Jazzy" musicians before that you started your career into the Metal scene?

Pablo: Not at all. We were no musicians before starting the band actually; I mean, the only reason we had to pick a guitar for the first time, was to mimic James Hetfield of Metallica. ?We hardly knew who Charlie Parker was. We grew up as metal-heads, and only when the whole metal scene started to feel a little bit restricted, we started to explore different styles, discovering thus jazz and fusion. At the beginning we were totally overblown by the bands that started the metal-fusion in the early nineties like Pestilence, Cynic, Atheist and Meshuggah. Quite soon I went to "the source itself" though, as a result, I listened to all those jazz-fusion bands like Tribal Tech or Jean-Luc Ponty on a daily basis for several years.

Nowadays, I think we are no die-hard fans of any particular style. Of course we still amaze ourselves when we listen to "Individual thought patterns" or "Bitches brew", however, those albums don't spin in our Discmans on a 24/7 fashion.


-The 2nd part of the album (especially the last two songs) is really "progressive". Why did you choose to release instrumental songs clearly influenced by prog-rock bands (I suppose that you like the Pink Floyd and all those "Prog killers")?

PABLO: Since we are not really making a living from our sales or touring earnings, we have total independency when it comes to compose. We don't see ourselves forced to continue the sound of our previous album or whatsoever; we just recorded the songs we had at the time we entered the studio, regardless they were softies or white noise. I've listening to those "prog killers" you mention for the last 10 years or so; however, I'm a little bit afraid to use the word "progressive" because nowadays a lot of people use the term to refer those Shrapnel records´ virtuosos, which I have hardly ever listened. I'm good fan of what was called "progressive" music in the 70's though. Just to name a few of my favourite acts, going from jazz-fusion to art-rock (or progressive or whatever it is called): Chick Corea, Gong, Soft Machine, Uk, Yes, Rush, and such, I think you got the idea already. Of course that Pink Floyd is one of my preferred bands of the period; however, I don't think they have influenced me as much as, say Allan Holdsworth or Pat Metheny, who simply redefined my approach to the instrument.






-You have a good bunch of "die-hard" fans but Coprofago seems to stay into the "underground" scene. Does you music is maybe too complex for "basic" listeners? Would you like to have some more audience or do you don't care and are happy of the situation?

Sebastian: I don't think that our music is too "complex", and being complex is not a goal for us. If we wanted to be recognized just for being "complex" ( yes, 3 times complex), the results would have been completely different. I think that is quite easy to make the "ultra difficult album of the year", but that is not our goal, we enjoy non symmetric structures, time signature changes or non functional harmony as much as we enjoy a good solid groove, that's why I think that Coprofago is very easy listening. However, is difficult for me to imagine the situation of hearing it for the first time and probably that is a very different experience....now I'm thinking in the first time that I listened to Pierre Boulez, ha ha ha. There are millions of compositions that make our music look like a straight ballad, it is just a matter of musical background, so I see no difficulty in listening or doing headbanging with our music.

About the audience, yes, for sure we would like to reach more places and people; the main reason is that we like to share what we are doing. Now we have a really great distribution plan in France, (many thanks to the guys of Underclass) and "Unorthodox creative criteria" is now being distributed by Galy Records in Canada and in USA, we are very happy about that.
... Speaking about the albums to come, we will have to develop new promotion strategies.


-You're an "old" band but you've only released three albums. Why did you have to take this long break?

Sebastian: The main reason is that for about 8 years (aprox.) we produced everything by our own means. Our demo and the two first albums ("images of despair" and the first edition of "Genesis") were financed by the band members.
Also, we have a lot of other things happening besides the band, Pablo and Marcelo are engineers, so some years ago they had to focus a lot in their studies and today they work in big companies; me and Felipe also have different musical projects, Felipe is into the Jazz stuff, playing with different bands and I've been writing a lot of Orchestral and Chamber music to.
Nowadays I think that we could achieve more continuity in terms of album releasing, because there is more people collaborating with the band.


-You're signed on a little French label? How come? Didn't you have any more touches with bigger ones? How and why did you have this deal with them?

Pablo: Before being signed, we used to release all our albums independently. This means that all the distribution and promotion duties were carried out by us, all of which can be really exhausting. By 2002, we received an email from this unknown label called Sekhmet, in which they offered us to re-print "Genesis" in Europe and give us one fifth of the royalties. Even though we had never heard about them, they were the first ones to knock our door, so we accepted. They made a decent job, so we accepted to release yet another album for them. That was "Unorthodox creative criteria". Unfortunately, some problems delayed the completion of the mixing of the album, which turned the label against us. In order to take vengeance on us, they removed the lyric pages of the booklet that we designed to include some cheesy curse for us and some other label propaganda that certainly didn't add value to those fans that bought the album and expected to see the lyrics instead. For that reason we won't continue with them and are considering other labels to release the follow-up to "Unorthodox..."


-Are you planning to tour soon? Or are you into a pure writing-process?

PABLO: We are eager to do so. However is rather hard for us to arrange a tight touring schedule by ourselves. We hope to count with the support of a record label to get some live dates next summer. There are lots of tracks from our last album that still haven't been ever played live!






-You were in France last summer right? Was it your first date in Europe? How was the show and which differences between America and Europe surprised you?

Sebastian: It was our first time in Europe as a Band, the experience was really great, we played in Paris and later at the Fury Fest with tons of really great bands, the atmosphere was awesome and the organization really impressive.
The show was cool, we played some songs of the new album...in Paris we played together some new songs for the first time!!! ...Pablo moved to Germany this year and we couldn't play together before, so we were studying everything but we played together just 2 rehearsals and then live, very stressing and challenging...we were fully motivated and happy to be there, now we are just waiting for the next chance to play in Europe again.
In Chile there are no huge Metal Festivals like this, great bands come here very often but never to play all together in this kind of events...as I said before, it was a real wonderful experience, the audience was amazing and we could meet a lot of fans and collaborators, we are going to do our best to be playing in Europe again as soon as possible.


-What are the futures plans for Coprogafo? Will we have to wait a lot to have a new album?

PABLO: At the moment, we are writing new material, which is personally what I enjoy the most about this entire band thingy. For this last album we really tried not to have style considerations when we composed; and certainly this is the approach that we are choosing for the next album too. Not sure whether it will take one or two years to complete it, just know that we will have a lot of fan in the process. Regarding the administrative things, we hope to find a new label to organize some live dates in the near future and release our new projects.


Many thx to Pablo, Sebastián and Coprofago and to Jérôme @ Underclass Music