Psycho: A Promising Future

June 26, 2011

Psycho, a horror death metal band from Singapore, was kind enough to take some time out to do an interview with me. Great band and good people.

On your Myspace page, you make your lyrical influences quite clear but I would like to know what are your musical influences. What bands inspired some of your sound?

Some of the bands that inspire our sound include: Morbid Angel, Slayer, Bathory, Mercyful Fate, Black Sabbath, early Sepultura, Deicide, Sarcofago .. the list goes on, but these are those that come to mind at this point of time.

Wonderful! I definitely heard Mercyful Fate's vocal influences in "Mater Lachrtmarum". How long have you guys been playing in Psycho and did the band go through any transitional periods before finally transforming into it's current incarnation?

Yea, We're pretty diverse and we listen to a lot of different things. We love everything from Ozzy Osbourne to Deicide, the band only got heavier and more extreme since we started back in 2005, i remember us playing lots of Sabbath back then, and we still do that even today! Our musical development as a band has been quite interesting, and it'll only get more interesting in time to come.

That is a very interesting background. What made you guys move in the direction of a horror inspired band? I like shock rock personally but your music goes a step beyond classic acts like WASP and Alice Cooper. Aside from those, there really hasn't been any notable horror influenced bands in metal for me until I came across Psycho.

Yea we are inspired by a lot of the films we watch, we'd borrow ideas and put them in a song. A lot of the things we write about begin from a horror film, and then elaborated further by imagination.

When we play live, we tend to be more "involved" in the song - you know, for example we might actually bleed or taste some blood. We like to entertain and test boundaries like maybe an Alice Cooper performance. However, we don't have a lot of money to do all that, so we do what we can.

That sounds like quite the experience! Speaking of which, not much is known about the Singaporean metal scene over here in the US. How well are your live acts received by the general populace? Is the local scene small enough that every band knows each other like it is in other non-European countries?

Yea, the scene here is a small one, and still growing, everybody more or less knows or heard of each other. Psycho has gained quite the reputation here, although there are those who really like our songs, live shows and what we do in general, I'm sure there are also those who aren't too supportive of our style. However, such things do not really bother us. We just do our thing, you know?

And you're doing such an awesome job at it that you've managed to bust into the international scene. Did you ever think that you would reach ears so far away from home?

If it wasn't for Moribund records, a lot of people wouldn't have heard of us I guess. We're pretty psyched to get more stuff out and to keep gathering the crazed masses..

In light of that, how has your vision of the band's future changed over time? What plans do you guys have for Psycho?

I believe that the band's future sheds promising light. The band now is made up of competent individuals and we're about to embark on a journey. The writing process for the next release has begun and we can't wait to put things together and head back into the studios. We're also trying to arrange some overseas shows for next year, so we're preparing for a lot of things, really.

Sounds great! Hopefully I will be able to catch you if you come to the US. Thank you for taking the time out to do this with me. Do you have any last remarks or thoughts that you would like to share with our readers?

Tell the readers to stay psycho! Thanks for all the support all this while and there will be much more to come from us in the coming years!

Courtesy of Sarah.