UN: I was reading in the Mutilated bio that the first show the band ever played was opening for Mortician and Exhumed! Now, for a young band starting out, especially playing gore soaked death metal, that had to be a great experience for the band! Were the other bands into what you guys were doing at the time? Were you nervous at all about it?

Russ: Opening for those guys ruled man, we’ve played a bunch of shows since then but yeah we got a real good response that night. I never get nervous before shows that’s my favorite part man!

UN: I haven’t had the chance to check out the debut demo, and I know it pretty much has been re-recorded on the new album. How did the demo versions stack up compared to the new album versions? Is the demo still available? By the way, the cover art is very sick and screams to be on a t-shirt!

Russ: The demo did have sick art; our original drummer Tony Cosgrove painted that. He’s a sick artist. We don’t have any more of em…but more than likely it will end up as a shirt in the near future.

UN: How did Forever Underground come into the picture? Was it just a matter of them hearing the demo and being interested in doing an album with the band? Were you guys excited when they got in touch with you?

Russ: Bill from Forever Underground saw us play a show when he brought Leukorrhea and Beheaded out on tour and to Detroit. I don’t think he’d heard us up to that point…but once he saw us he emailed me a couple weeks later with a contract. We were all pretty psyched man…we are all fans of death metal so to see our stuff come out or at least getting a chance to record a CD was a trip.

UN: Let’s talk about the debut album “Devirginated Genital Pulp“. The first thing I thought when I saw the album cover, other then that it’s sick shit, was that it reminded me of the cover from The Bleeding. In the sense that you know what it is, but it’s not in complete detail. Did you guys notice that it looks similar to The Bleeding cover?

Russ: I guess you could say that…it wasn’t a calculated move or anything…we liked the shredded bloody fuck hole.

UN: I was curious to ask where you guys recorded the album and who handled the production. For an underground recording it sounds pretty damned good. Did you guys have a sound in mind, or did you just want the album to sound like Mutilated does when they play live?

Russ: We recorded at Studio One in Wisconsin with Chris Djurcic. He knew exactly what we wanted and it came thru in the final product. We wanted it to sound like what we like, cranked guitars, drums are up there too but not overpowering…ya know how a death metal CD should sound!!!

UN: While on the subject of the recording, I read that the album was recorded almost a year before it saw the light of day. What caused the delay? Was it recorded before Forever Underground came into the picture, or did it just take a long time to be released?

Russ: Just took a long time to release…I thanked my girlfriend at the time in it…and we broke up before it came out!!! hahahaha

UN: Do you think that the US death metal scene is healthy right now? There was a little while when it seemed like there wasn’t much coming out, but now there are new labels and bands popping up all of the time it seems. Do you think it’s a good time for a band like Mutilated to exist?

Russ: Dude, fuckin ANY time is a good time for Mutilated to exist!!! The US scene is getting bigger, there are always new bands popping up and new labels and zines and everything. Right now though, its good and bad, since there’s a Cannibal Corpse influence in our sound…there’s a lot more people into the chunking Devourment/Suffocation stuff that get turned off if they hear Cannibal type influence. That’s their opinion, and that’s cool but we are by no means a Cannibal Corpse-worship band…I like to think there’s more to us than that. We just play what we like and if you can grind on it, sick!

UN: You parted ways with the drummer that appears on the album. Did it take you guys awhile to find a replacement? How are things working out with the new guy? Does he bring anything new to the table? Did it take him a long time to learn the material or did it click right from the start?

Russ: Tony left the band for personal reasons, and we’re still cool with him. Me and Ryan have known Tony for a long time so we still hang out even tho we don’t all jam together. Zach started in Sept of 2003. He learned the songs fairly quickly. Tony and Zach have different styles…so to me the songs on the CD sound different when we play em now…it’s a good-different though ya know, it’s still Mutilated.

UN: How does the new material compare to the cd? I’ve read that you guys already have 3 or 4 new songs written, any idea when we can expect something new to see the light of day? I know “Devirginated Genital Pulp” hasn’t been out for very long, but for how long it’s been recorded I’m sure you’re already thinking about the next album.

Russ: Yeah we got like 4 new ones man and they are SICK AS FUCK!!! We’ll probably release a couple splits before a new full length. Check the site for details www.mutilated.us

UN: I was curious to ask about the lyrics. Would you say that bands that write lyrics like this are a little bit tongue in cheek? I know that the bands take the music very seriously, but if the band seriously meant some of the things they said in the lyrics they could possibly be committed! Do you guys offend a lot of people out there?

Russ: We take the music a lot more serious than the lyrics, I mean if you read em…we’re not trying to change the world, present our views on world issues, or see who can hate god and love Satan the most. If you want cool words and a story read a fucking book. When we were writing lyrics though my test, to see if we could use it, was to take whatever we had written and show it to people that I worked with that listen to mainstream music…if it was the grossest thing they ever read we used it…we knew it was good!!!

UN: Do you guys play as many shows as you’d like to? It seems like you guys mainly play a few shows at a time. Have you guys ever thought about planning a longer tour or is it just not possible? I’d like to see a Forever Underground package tour, you could put together a sick lineup of bands from the labels roster.

Russ: I’m always up for more shows man believe you me! The show turnouts here are kinda lame if you’re not opening for like Cannibal Corpse or something…and even then you get fucked, cuz you have to sell 100 tix to play for 15 minutes right after the doors open in front of no one. The bands that have the money/tix sales to open those shows usually don’t fit in with the headlining bands. It’s always great to hear a band play a pantera/metallica medley before Hate Eternal comes on ya know?! We’ve always wanted to tour, that’s one of the reasons why I do this…want to get out on the road…but my money situation isn’t looking too favorable, as is the case with a couple of us…but hopefully we can get out there before the end of the year.

UN: Here’s an ideal question to end this, why death metal? Out of everything you could play what draws you to death metal? Is it the speed? The heavy nature of the music? Did you know from the first time you heard death metal that you wanted to play it?

Russ: Death metal is the only music I can write!!! I could never write stuff until I started playing death metal. Probably because you can forget about the “rules of music” and play something that’s brutal, makes sense and makes you wanna put your foot thru the floor. If you do that the music theory end of it pretty much works itself out. The aggression, intensity, speed and the complexity of the music keep my musical boner hard though. The balance of speed and feel is also very important…I mean its great to play fast…but you have to have feel and vibe in there too. A lot of our stuff is fast…not the fastest in the world…but fast…yet you can still hum the riffs. Man I could get a case of beer and talk music all nite man!!!…But I guess I’ll wrap it up! Go to www.mutilated.us and/or www.foreverunderground.com, toss an email our way mutilated97@yahoo.com, pick up “Devirginated Genital Pulp”’ and stay sick and/or brutal.