Chain D.L.K.: What have been your musical experience before History Of Guns andwhy did you pick up this name?
History Of Guns: Originally when Stagger formed the band he named it Pre Hate Machine.One of the first bits of music we came up with was to go with somelyrics Del had written called History Of Guns about the DunblameMassacre. Del started campaigning to change the name of the band. Iwasn’t too keen on Pre Hate Machine as it’s a bit of a mouthful andmaybe a bit too Nine Inch Nails so backed him up making it two againstone. Like so many things, band names are something that you have towear around for a while before you know how they fit. As time went on Ifell in love with the name History Of Guns and now I can’t imagine beingcalled anything else.
Chain D.L.K.: What have been your releases and achievements before joining LineOut Records? Can you make a little oversight on what you did since now?
History Of Guns: Our debut album Flashes of Light was an album of dark electronicawithout any guitars released on our own Liquid Len label in 2004. Thencame 2nd album Apophenia in 2005 which is a bit crazy as each song is ina different style from goth to dance to punk taking in a lot of otherstyles in between! Aside of our main releases we’ve done lots of EPsand free giveaway cds. Many of these are available for free downloadfrom lineoutrecords.com
Chain D.L.K.: “Acedia” under many points of view talks about human weaknesses,fears, politics and cowardice but let’s start from the album title: what kind of spirituality do you think is missing?
History Of Guns: Globally I think there’s currently a chronic lack of spirituality, andi’m certainly not talking about organised religion, which in many (butnot all) cases achieves the total opposite of personal spirituality. ilike to think people can develop their own spirituality.For the album, though, we’re talking about Acedia on a personal level.We’re quite volatile people who suffer from mental issues anddepressions. We’ve always had dark songs, but with this album wewanted to try and confront some of our demons head on.
Chain D.L.K.: On “Born, brutalised, bought then buried” you evidence the negativethings that a newborn baby will face during his/her growth, starting from the loss of purity on the same moment of birthpassing through the “shut the fuck up” lesson at school. In your opinion, is there any chance to avoid this process?
History Of Guns: Excellent question! It’s easy to point out what’s wrong with societycurrently, much harder to come up with a workable alternative as to howto lead a spirtually and artistically fulfilling life. It’s easy toobserve that the more people have, the more miserable and unfulfilledthey often become. Society has evolved to be like this over thousandsof years, and so unfortunately I don’t think there’s any quick fixanswer. My faith in humankind is pretty low at the moment.
Chain D.L.K.: A lot of tracks seem to have a sort of post punk influence. Whathave been the steps into the creation of your own sound?
History Of Guns: Our sound has evolved over the years, we’re lucky in that artisticallywe’re pretty free to write in many different genres, yet somehow westill manage to always ending up sounding like History Of Guns. We tendto go from guitar music to electronic and back again, or sometimes amixture of the two.
Chain D.L.K.: Creativity is your main issue. Where is it heading you?
History Of Guns: We’re half way through an album of electronica called Half Lightwhich is planned for release in 2010. That said we’ve put work on HalfLight on hold for a while as we’ve been getting such good reviews forACEDIA it probably makes better sense to do another guitar album ratherthan shock the new fans we’ve picked up with a release in a completely different style.We’ve got a few guitar songs that we’ve played live for a while butnever recorded such as Powder and Kicking Down The Doors, and I’ve gota couple of new songs written called Ice and One Day I Will Be StrongerAnd I Will Hurt You Back, so we’re already almost halfway there. We’vegot some sessions booked in at the rehearsal studio and we’llconcentrate on writing new material.
Visit History Of Guns on the web at:
www.historyofguns.com
[interviewed by Maurizio Pustianaz] [proofreading by Max Rael]