10 Quick Ones with BARNET from SKITARG – December 2017

According to the band’s bio: “SKITARG is an extreme metal band that gives you the pleasure of heavy, violent and evil metal combined with humor and theatrical dildoesque madness. The band is known as an exceptional live act by its ability to force people’s attention with clown / corpsepaint, bloody diapers and dildo fields.”  We get singer Barnet to answer our 10 Quick Ones about new music, his influences, and more…

1. Tell us a little about your latest release.  What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through?  Are there any hidden nuggets the band put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

Our fourth album Los Pulkerz is basically a re-recording of a bunch of songs that either didn’t make it onto the first album or a bunch of songs that were never intended to be released through SKITARG at all. There are a lot of “inside jokes” on the album… well, maybe not so much jokes as inside references that just makes us laugh. If you check out the last track on the album, you´ll hear Necrofilip (the other vocalist) at age 5 and 7, dicking around with his mom´s tape recorder. We thought that was such a genuine moment and also, how cool is it to release a track on an album when you´re 34 from when you were 5? Very cool, in case you were wondering. The die-hard fans will most likely recognize the four or five songs that we’ve re-recorded since they made it onto the first three demo recordings. But we’ve also spiced them up a bit with the tricks we’ve learnt from releasing three albums and playing as a band for ten years.

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

For me I think it was when I was looking at the album sleeve for Metallica´s album Load. I always hate mentioning Metallica as a reference – it´s basically like saying you like Christmas and hate Mondays, nothing special about it – but in all honesty, they are a major influence for me. But I was looking at it and I was so jealous of those four guys having this camaraderie where they would hang out, play gigs and just fuck about. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that those were only band photos. Most musicians are just regular people, and regular people don´t hang around other adults in junkyards wearing cool sunglasses.

3. Who would be your main five musical influences?

Ok, so Metallica, Pantera, Satyricon, Testament and Megadeth. Wherever you hear a thrash riff, it’s Metallica or Megadeth. Wherever you hear black metal, it’s Satyricon. Blues stuff, it’s Pantera and every now and then we write something in 2-beat with triplets on the guitars: that’s Testament. Everything else in our music is from Necrofilip, and he only listens to the sound of squirrels making plans.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be?

It would never work, but James Hetfield. He has the most solid song writing I’ve ever heard. The problem though, is that whenever he lets go of the creative control, the music usually turns to poop. Just look at St Anger where he let Kirk write lyrics, and Lars have a bigger say than usual… Or when they collaborated with Lou Reed on Lulu.

5. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before?

We play melodic metal with splashes of thrash and black metal, sprinkled with insanity, humour and dildoes. (And yes, if a dildo penetrates in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, it does make a sound: the sound of SKITARG.)

6. What’s the best thing about being a musician?

You get to hang out with your friends and crack jokes and groove with music. Oh, and all that moneez we get as well… all two of them.

7. When the band are all hanging out together, who cooks; who gets the drinks in; and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

Necrofilip would probably be the cook, and I would probably make drinks. Necrofilip would also be the one eating all the food and I would be drinking the drinks. The guitars don´t come out at all, we are weirdly uncomfortable with social interaction through music unless it´s electric.

8. If you weren’t a musician, what would be your dream job?

Probably the bass player in some band.

9. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over”?

Let me rephrase your question: “Is there anything that you’ve done related to the band that you would prefer to have buried and forgotten and never ever ever brought to light again?” Yes! Oh yes. Yes.

10. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

It would probably be Led Zeppelin’s II. From what I understand they had this house where they put the drums at the bottom of a staircase to get the perfect room ambiance and only microphoned it with one or two microphones. That´s true craftsmanship that is.

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Category: Interviews