CC// How long does the album-making process take?

J// Well actually its difficult to say, because some songs were older, but the rest were done in the last few months. I set myself a deadline and then I work to that. I was getting closer and closer to the deadline and still no new material, but I got it done.. and it always works like that. It was the same with the Mindstrip album. It takes me about two years between albums, but actually most of the work will be done in the last few months. And now of course nearly a year later I have the new single…

CC// On the "Cause Of Death" single there’s what I think is a fabulous re-working of 'Better Off Dead'. What makes you revisit a song that you’ve already remixed?

J // It was more of a coincidence. We used to play it in our live sets, and then I didn’t play it for maybe one or two years and for the last Axis Of Evil tour I picked it up again as an encore and the response from the audience was so great that I thought.. yeah, I have to make a new version and release this again.

CC// With an explosion of p2p sharing sites, people can find all the music off the Internet.What difference does it make to you as a band and what would you say to people that are doing this?

J// Well it’s a very difficult situation, because you can be against it, but it won’t help much. In a way, up to a certain point I can understand that people who can’t get this music in their local music shop have to get their music this way. I can understand that people download if they really have no money and ones who do it to listen to new music before they buy it. But of course, it becomes a problem when people download it just because it is free and copy it for their friends for free.

CC// How do you think it affects your sales?

J – Well it’s hard to say but if you see that so many record labels, record shops, distributors are going bust, then that it is probably one of the reasons for that happening. The youth these days are spending their money differently than we used to. They are spending their money on mobile phones, computer games, DVD’s, things that we didn’t have 10-20 years ago. It’s one of the reasons for the CD sales market’s decline, but I don’t really know what the solution would be.

CC// The thing I’m getting at is that people in the UK have this idealised view of what it is like to be a top EBM/Industrial band. They think that you can live off your CD sales, and that downloading tracks off the Internet and not buying your CD’s doesn’t really make any difference.

J// Of course it is so easy to download to your computer. But please remember that these bands put so much time and effort into the music that you love to listen to, and because you have downloaded their music they get nothing in return. It just doesn’t seem right to me.. The downloader gets the music, but the band that has made that, spent months and maybe years working on it for them, they get nothing. It does not seem right. So what should we do with them?? Shoot them?? <at this point the interview collapses into great laughter, and we end the interview on a high note..>


My time with Johan is up. He’s an intelligent, quiet spoken man, with a big personal presence. Just like most of the other bands I’ve interviewed, he is humble and passionate about what he does. He is no superstar with a super-sized ego, he’s a normal guy, just like you and me. But he cares, cares about his music and cares about the scene.
The next day he takes INFEST by storm with an incredible voracious assault on our senses in one of the finest live shows I’ve ever seen. So next time you listen to your Suicide Commando CD remember the man behind it all. A quiet, genial genius. His name? Johan Van Roy.