Interviewing people, you know on a personal level, may be one of the hardest things to do as a journalist. But when you are lucky enough to find a man who can't stop talking about metal, the metalscene and all that goes with it, that task becomes slightly less big. Unless he can't stop talking of course. Then an interview suddenly becomes more or less a monologue. SHUTTERWALL AGAZINE sat down, and let CHRIS MEYNEN tell his story. We just had to send him in a direction, he did the rest.
CHRIS, WHAT GENRE IS EXOTO TO YOU?
Back in the day, we just said we were playing death-thrash. For me, those two genres are pretty much woven together. The tempo, the power, the energy, the melodic lines... It's all interlocked. When we started out, the difference between those genres, was found in the vocals. If the singer was a grunter, the band played death. If he was more a screaming or clean vocalist, the band played thrash. If you compare for example EXOTO to anoter band from the region, LEAVE SCARS, the biggest difference for me, lies in the vocals. We play completely different genres, but we could play each others support. There have even been talks about that in the past. LEAVE SCARS reminds me in a way of the hayday of the Bay area thrash. Especially the vocals will apeal to TESTAMENT fans. That era of Bay area was the time I made the switch from thrash to death by the way.
WHAT OTHER BANDS DO YOU COMPARE EXOTO WITH?
We've got some pretty hard songs, but we have also songs that lie closer to thrash. In the pastI didn't always see that. I think there's some SLAYER in our style. But also MORBID ANGEL. Mostly when it comes to how we build our songs. DAVID (VINCENT) sings deeper then I do, but in the structural components of the music, there are some common grounds to be found. Further more, NASTY SAVAGE... Absolutely not my piece of cake, but there are some common features. That was the favorit band of FLIP, our guitarist. When I listen to their music today, I see those common features more then back in the day. However, NASTY SAVAGE still isn't one of my favorite bands.
YOU GUYS ARE MAKING A RE-START THESE DAYS, AFTER DISBANDING EXOTO IN APRIL 2014.
A lot has changed. After the stop in 1996, I completely left the metal scene behind me. There are two reasons for that break up. One is that I found myself living too much in the metal scene. The other was everything that happened in and around the band.
We went all out from day one. Willingly and unwillingly. Maybe even by a lack of other - bigger - death bands in Belgium at that time. It all went too fast for EXOTO at that point. At a certain point in time, we got the record deal with TESSA RECORDS, for CARNIVAL OF SOULS, our first CD. At that time, that CD was a small bomb in the Belgian metal scene. Originally, there would only have been 1.000 copies made. That album was supposed to be released worldwide. RUFF TRADE was dealing with the distribution. Before the album was released, it was sold out. Sold out for the record company that is. What means that every single copy of the album, was called on by the resellers in Belgium. While the plan was to use some of those 1.000 copies for the international market. Some additional CD's had to be printed for that international market. That all happened above our heads. Even today, we don't know exactly how many CD's were printed back then. Today, I'm not even sure TESSA RECORDS are still active.
Soon after the release of our first album, CLAUDE PERWEZ (Former winner HUMO'S ROCK RALLY and producer) found out about EXOTO. As leading force behind the STUBRU radioshow METALOPOLIS, he gave us plenty of air-time. In that same timespan, we were managed by ALAIN GROOTAERS, brother of DE KREUNERS singer WALTER. Because of that, we were booked for shows with DE KREUNERS and DANA WINNER. The line up often was DANAWINNER - EXOTO - DE KREUNERS. (For those not living in Belgium, that's ballads - death metal - pop rock, in that order.) ALAIN definately ment well with EXOTO, but him being active in the pop scene, he couldn't have the feeling needed to promote us in the metal scene. By then, TESSA RECORDS has contacted BLACK MARK on a music messe. They demanded a four song tape, with new songs, to see if we could confirm CARNIVAL OF SOULS. We got the contract for five years, in which we had to record three albums. At that point in