Fuck The Facts interview

The 10th of March Fuck The Facts will hit Antwerp and Stino had a little chat with Topon (guitar)!

Hey Topon! A new European tour for Fuck The Facts, you must've enjoyed yourselves here last year?!

Of course we had a great time! Even if we didn’t enjoy ourselves last year, enough time has pasted that we all at least remember having a great time. I actually didn’t think it would be this soon that we would come back, but the stars aligned and we’re gonna be getting on a plane in less than a week.

The band is doing this tour D.I.Y. (like it should imo), what's the reason for that? Most overseas bands use booking agencies etc, isn't that easier?!

Fuck The Facts is a DIY band. We don’t like waiting around for people and have no problem getting our hands dirty to making sure things are happening like we think they should. That’s not to say that we don’t get help from other people, but the general rule is that if you want something done right (or even at all in many cases) you have to do it yourself. This time around we got the help of Koppa from Agi-punk to book most of the European tour. The guys from Doomstar booking (who did our last European tour) also helped out. There’s no real reason and I can’t say that it’s easier or harder, because both times the booking process was pretty much the same. It’s just the way it is. We knew we wanted to tour Europe and we had to find a way to do it. Luckily enough people in Europe were interested in making this happen as well. In Canada and a lot of the US every show is booked straight through us, but in Europe it just made more sense to get some help.

Could you give me the 3 biggest differences between touring in the US/Canada and Europe? Any tips for European bands that want to go overseas?!

The biggest difference is probably that the hospitality in Europe is much better than North America. Feeding and giving a place to sleep to a touring band isn’t expected as much in the States or even Canada for that matter. Beer and hard liquor is cheaper in and better (in my opinion) in Europe as well. You guys also have all that fizzy water everywhere, Mel loves it, she’s always looking for it over here since we did our first European tour. The only tip I can give to a smaller European band that wants to tour the US, is prepare for the worst. Make sure you have all your paper work together and don’t expect anything. But that’s pretty much my rules for touring anywhere.

Just before the tour you released a new, unnamed, EP, also on your own. Tired of waiting for labels etc to release stuff?

Maybe that’s one way of putting it. But it’s more like we wanted to try doing it all ourselves. We put a lot of time and effort into our music to make sure we’re creating something we’ve very proud of, so we need to work with people that feel the same way about what we’re doing as we do, and it’s not easy to find. We had a tight deadline to get this EP done in time for the European tour, so the best solution seemed to be to do it ourselves. It’s actually been quite rewarding in many ways. The response has been really great and even when I look and listen to this record there’s a bit of additonal pride knowing that we did this ourselves from scratch.

The EP came after the split with Leng Tch'e and the Disgorge Mexico LP, all in one, are you guys a fast writting band?

We definitely are. We have 3 people in the band that are always writing music, so we have tons of songs and ideas sitting around on all our computers, as well as new shit that comes out just from jamming as a band. 3 of the 4 new songs from the EP are actually left-overs from our next album that didn’t make the cut. We always have tons of music on the go, because when ever we’re not tour we’re writing. It’s just the way we do it.

What are the future plans for Fuck The Facts?

After the European tour we’re going to finally release our ‘Disgorge Mexico’ DVD. It’s been in the works for a long time and we finally have it completed, just didn’t have the time to release it before tour. Then we’ll be touring the US in May and playing Maryland Deathfest. We should be doing a Canadian tour with more US dates in the late summer/fall. During all this we’re gonna be finishing our next album which I would like to see released by the end of the year.

Ok thanks and see you on the 10th!

Stino