Pic courtesy of: Corpus Necromanthum "Well, we have to I think take a look at our name first Corpus Necromanthum which I already explain means sort of necromancy of the body; this was a ritual pretty much practiced by mediums during the “Alchemy” times. It was said that this mediums could communicate with the dead and in some cases even torture the dead…"

CR: All right lets start with the basics… why don’t you introduce yourself?
Lord Mephistum: Ok… well Buena nota (sort of a cheers greeting) to everybody, how’s Leviatan doing lately?

CR: Working man, is hard to promote the mag without money, but the bands we interview really help with links and news of their own interviews so…
Lord Mephistum: All right, so Pura vida (another Costarrican lingo phrase meaning something like everything is good) to all, Lord Mephistum, Arturo… cholo (and yet again another lingo word used to describe just how metal someone is… the more cholo you are the more metal you are) laughs…

CR: Why that name, Lord Mephistum?
Lord Mephistum: That is pretty much because when we started the band, we began to do some research on demonological dictionaries and things like that, as a matter of fact the name Corpus Necromanthum is Latin; just like the names of the other guys on the band, one is called Leviatham but with h and m, so we just wanted to keep with that whole Latin theme going… and lord just for cholo! laughs.

CR: Lets put some sort of history here, how about a brief bio on Corpus?
Lord Mephistum: The band began October 2005 if I’m not mistaken, we began just with the idea of a garage band really; it was one of the guitarist Lulo and me, soon we got another guitar player that I didn’t like that much, but we went to rehearse one Sunday…

(My coffee and Mephistum’s juice arrive… we where at Spoon) what you are hearing right now are evil drinks, demon like beverages…

CR: Even the sugar free sugar is satanic at this place! Laughs
Lord Mephistum: Well to continue, yes we started as a garage band, and after jamming a couple of times with the new guy we just went to Pana to get some rehearsal space and started to write a couple of songs, after a little while the songs began to sound pretty good… we got some guy helping us with the bass, but it didn’t worked out that well.
After 4 months I believe, we got like 2 or 3 songs of our own, but they were all without a bass line or vocals practically. My brother who was in Cangrena started to ask about the band, and naturally I asked him to sing for us, he was also a bass player so it fit perfectly.

CR: I was going to ask you about that… when he came in, did he brought the same sound that he had in Cangrena or he just managed to accommodate himself to the sound of Corpus?
Lord Mephistum: At the beginning he had to found a way to fit in, and I think that’s exactly what you have to do every time someone comes into a new band, to find his place; maybe later he can start adding his own style to the band. And yes Corpus has some big influences from him, the band has always had two old guys and two kids, the two older guys are my brother and Lulo, those guys are lets say the “old school” guys, and the other guy and me, even when I look pretty old I’m not that old you know we are the younger generation sort of speak, so the band has that balance. Those two guys want to put some old school sounds on the band and the others are trying to place some new stuff, so there is a pretty good balance there.

CR: How long do you think a band here in Costa Rica has to be together, playing or just jamming to be actually considered a band?
Lord Mephistum: That depends on the band, I mean if people actually work then you can have something, but if a band has lets say 10 years but they haven’t done anything, or they just don’t have the ability… time is not quality. And keeping the original line up is very hard, in the band one of the founder members had to leave, and we have another guitar player, the guy is pretty good and has helped the band a lot.
Having a stable band is very hard and very important, I think you have to have at least 3 years with a steady line up to know that is a stable one and see just how much you have played, talk to people about the band, and how much you have helped the band, how much of a reaction have you made on people, because is not about selling records, I mean is very good when you haven’t sold a single album but people knows you, knows the band.

CR: Corpus reminds me or sort of sounds and looks like that wave of polish death/black metal bands, you know! Using a black image and death riffs to create an interesting proposal to our scene; was the idea for the sound and appearance of the band borne from a familiarity towards that blend or it just happened because some of you guys like death metal and others like black?
Lord Mephistum: We have influences of course, but we have never tried to imitate someone. Two of the oldest guys on the band yes they do listen to black but not as much as the other two. The band got were it is today because we were looking to satisfied each and everyone’s likings you know. We just get together and share riffs and melodies that each have created, present them to the band and work from there on, if there is something on those riffs that someone doesn’t like at all, then we have to dismiss it. So the music comes out thanks to that… because everyone likes something sort of different and so it creeps into the riffs that we propose.
The one that pushes the idea of how we look on stage, there that will have to be me, if it were for the other guys they’ll probably just play with a simple shirt and that’s it. But since the beginning of the band I wanted to do something that we didn’t see so much in this country, maybe not musically revolutionary but different at least in the way it looked. We have some great bands in this country don’t get me wrong, I’m friends with many of them, and those I don’t know I do admire their bands, I’m always in the pit cheering them up you know, but for some reason many of them just don’t have presence, stage presence… they lack that feeling on stage that metal bands should have; it should be a show; you have to not only play good, but you have to give the audience something else; so yeah I have been pushing the band to give that something extra to our audiences… in the beginning you used to play with a very simple look, I just didn’t want the members of the band to be wearing another bands t-shirts… there is nothing wrong with that is just that I didn’t want that “look” for the band, and ironically enough one of the guitar player appears on the album with and Slayer t-shirt (laughs). So it just sort of started from there and little by little we started adding stuff to our “repertoire”; boots, paint and one time I told them that it would be cool to go on stage just with white shirts, some argue that it didn’t fit with death metal but we did it at the end. I also began painting my face, and it was sort of weird since at first it was just me but after some time the fact that I was doing this, helped the other guys to do and wear what ever they wanted.

CR: Corpus is recognize in this country for that presence for that show, I have seen people at your concerts just attending because they have been told of the show that you guys can put… in that note… who buys the pig heads man?
Lord Mephistum: Me, there a nice butchers shop in downtown San José, close to Parque de La Paz… I have to go with 3 days in advance, and leave a deposit of around 3.500 colones and that’s it I have a 5 kilogram pigs head on my freezer.

	Pic courtesy of: Corpus Necromanthum "There is a song that no one has pay enough attention to “The Arrival of the Ancient Ones” there is a segment in which if you pay enough attention you can hear the bus from Paso Ancho on the background”

CR: Cool; let’s talk about the album “Underworld Inquisition” why that name?
Lord Mephistum: Well, we have to I think take a look at our name first Corpus Necromanthum which I already explain means sort of necromancy of the body; this was a ritual pretty much practiced by mediums during the “Alchemy” times. It was said that this mediums could communicate with the dead and in some cases even torture the dead…
CR: their soul or torture their dead body
Lord Mephistum: They did stuff to the body in order to torture the soul, they said they could hear the dead complain about what they were doing to their bodies. So that’s were the album title comes from, an Inquisition to all the dead, to own the dead and to torture the dead, I mean this is metal what we are talking about here, we are not going to go too deeply into the topic to analyze it. Obviously there are your classical metal theme songs in it, blasphemy, torture, suicide; all you have to do is read the lyrics to get what we are doing.

CR: So do you believe in something “spiritual” in our life, I mean not talking about any organized religion, but do you think there is something else after dead?
Lord Mephistum: Totally, obviously you don’t have to allow any religious doctrine to control you; of course when you are playing metal you tend to fall into the constant use of Satan and demons and shit, it is sort of a bad habit…
CR: a cliché
Lord Mephistum: Exactly, it is a cliché; I don’t believe in Satan or God, I do believe that there was something that created everything. I don’t think that there is someone that is going to punish me for what I do or don’t do now or before, not to me not to you not to anybody. You have to follow you own principles, I mean you don’t have to belong to any organized religion to know that killing someone is bad. You have to respect people’s ideas but yes we do follow sometimes that “metal cliché”.

CR: In the intro and I think through out the album there are some sounds of machine guns… battle noises, what movie are they from?
Lord Mephistum: Yeah, we got on the web and downloaded some sounds, a couple of people have asked me the same question and yet I’m not ready to tell you what movie are they from (laughs).

CR: I was reading a previous interview you gave to Call of the Infernal Hordes, in which you talk a little about the recording process of the album, it was a home made production right?
Lord Mephistum: Yes that’s right, except for the drums, they are a semi home made, we recorded those in a studio on Tibas, it is actually an isolated room with microphones. The rest was recorded in my living room… there is a song that no one has pay enough attention to “The Arrival of the Ancient Ones” there is a segment in which if you pay enough attention you can hear the bus from Paso Ancho on the background (laughs)… only the band notices for some reason. It took us about two weekends recording guitars and vocals, and we also worked in the house of one of the guitar players. It is quite funny seen my bother screaming his lungs out in the middle of my living room believe me.

CR: Is it hard to find a studio in Costa Rica, or what is hard is to find a producer or a sound engineer that will help you guys achieve the sound that you wanted?
Lord Mephistum: There is equipment in Costa Rica but no people capable of recording metal, that’s why right now we have totally stopped the recording of the new album, and if there are people with good ear they don’t know anything about metal. That I know of there is not a single metal producer in the country, if you or anybody knows of a person please let me know!

CR: So let’s talk about that new album… do you have all the songs already written for it?
Lord Mephistum: Yes, actually. The new album pretty much consist on the six tracks of the demo plus 4 more songs, we have more songs but we are thinking about using the rest for upcoming releases, and that’s because the composition has changed a little, they are a bit more brutal.
10 songs, I already recorded the drums, I think it was back in November; about three layers of guitars, the bass line and now we know who is going to help us record it.

CR: Is there an album title yet a release date?
Lord Mephistum: It was supposed to come out this month, but we run into some problems; you have to take into account that here you have to pretty much to do all the work yourself to release an album. We want to release this new record as a digipack, of at least 500 copies with a video, sort of a “making of”, plus pictures a live video, and we will love to make a video in the style of this Behemoth video “Slaves shall serve”…. But all of this is very expensive as you probably know. We want to put out the best quality album that we can; we have a couple of contacts with Earache records and Relapse, and other underground labels that have pretty said to us, “if you guys put out a quality album then we can talk about maybe a distribution deal”. Just thinking about the possibility that a label like Earache would actually distribute a Costarrican death metal band is incredible you know…

		Pic courtesy of: Corpus Necromanthum "Since the beginning of the band I wanted to do something that we didn’t see so much in this country, maybe not musically revolutionary but different at least in the way it looked. We have some great bands in this country don’t get me wrong, I’m friends with many of them, and those I don’t know I do admire their bands, I’m always in the pit cheering them up you know, but for some reason many of them just don’t have presence, stage presence"

CR: Yeah I have seen Earache sort of “refresh” their entire roster of bands, aiming at a more underground scene…
Lord Mephistum: That’s pretty cool, I got in contact with one of the managers, and I just them the record, it was pretty cool on their part to at least listen to the material, they don’t normally received mp3 or stuff like that, only full packages, and I think and hope that as a personal favor they actually listen to the record… they were pretty honest, pretty brutal with their opinion, you know they basically told us that the record sounded pretty bad, that there was a lot that we were missing in production and recording, but that there was something good on the music, so basically they told us to send them some material that we have worked a little more to see what we can do… and to hear an honest opinion like that from people that are use to listen to so much great music is really good for us.

CR: Let’s talk a little more about the topics in Corpus music; is there a global theme that you guys are more “leaning” towards? Would you ever consider or want to write songs that stray away from those satanic, dark themes that you are working on right now?
Lord Mephistum: We don’t really have a desire of talking about politics or things like that, but I guess or music has that tendency of telling people things that they don’t want to hear, I guess every metal band those that. Somebody said in an interview, that most people don’t like to see gore pictures in the paper because they don’t want to see exactly how bad are things going, and I believe that to be absolutely correct, people simply don’t want to see what’s happening in the real world, and I see Corpus as that, as a vehicle to tell people about the reality and how bad it can and it is. We can write a song about some ancient gods, but underneath if you pay enough attention then you’ll see that we are talking about something that is happening right now. We use metaphors to talk about things that are happening; like our song “The Necrodemon Manifest” that talks about a girl that masturbates and during the process the devil comes out of her, and what we were saying or trying to imply is about all the venereal disease that are out there these days, that “plague” that is hitting us right now… so yes we talk about the issues but in a metaphorical way.

CR: Which song from the Corpus demo would you say is the one that express or shows what Corpus is all about?
Lord Mephistum: Well there is a problem here, because we never actually released a single, we never pointed out the song that was going to be recognize as our single, instead the people did. They ask for the last track “Panzer Full of Christian Blood”, people come up to me to tell me how much they liked that track; ironically that song doesn’t have anything to do with the meaning of the bands name, but it does make people reach to it so is pretty cool to hear on a gig when people are chanting “Panzer, Panzer” you know it gives you that feeling of “they are actually listening to my stuff”.
So we can say that the main song is that one, but to me the one that embodies the meaning of the band is “The Necrodemon Manifest” the lyrics are great.

CR: How about some “mundane” questions now! What’s your problem with Iron Maiden?
Lord Mephistum: Laughs… I hate Iron Maiden. People that know me pretty much know that I hate Maiden, but as a matter of fact I think I’m a pretty open minded guy. I respect the fans from Maiden, I can recognize how much have they done for the metal market. Maiden is not a band is an enterprise; they are actually the dream for every band to become. Musically speaking I just don’t like it, and I don’t like the guys, I don’t know them but you know those people that you just don’t like by looking at their faces… well that happens to me and the Maiden guys. I don’t like Maiden but you can play me Judas Priest or some Iced Earth and I can enjoy it, I don’t listen to much power but there are some great songs within the genre. I have been on shows were Acero was playing, and I really enjoy their music, and some people come up to me to tell me that what am I doing if Acero is heavy metal, but I like it, so its not the genre that I don’t like, I just don’t like Iron Maiden. I listen to pretty much everything, black, death, doom, progg, symphonic, instrumental music…a big array of music really.

CR: Who’s your favorite drummer?
Lord Mephistum: I have two, from the school it will have to be Flo Mounier from Cryptopsy and old school Pete Sandoval from Morbid Angel; two different techniques really…

CR: Have you heard the new Cryptopsy album?
Lord Mephistum: Just one song from the new one, very disappointed to be honest, they sort of lost some force.

CR: What does it mean to you by “selling out”?
Lord Mephistum: You are a sell out when you do something you don’t want to do for money. You can be a band that has sell millions of copies around the world, you know be a commercial band, but if you stick to what you want to play then you are not a sell out, you are just a commercial band, a good commercial band. I think every band that records an album, has a myspace, charges for a live show, is a commercial band. The moment you start to promote your band, you are entering a sort of market, a commercial market, so there is a difference between been a commercial band and a sell out, a sell out those things to get a hit, to be popular.

CR: Every comparison is kind of insulting in a way, but I just had to say, that Corpus remind me of the latest work from Masacre from Colombia… what has been the weirdest comparison that people have made when talking about Corpus?
Lord Mephistum: Weirdest… none really, all have been praises really, and this one just adds to that. Masacre is an awesome band… some people have compare us to Incantation, Immolation, maybe Terrorizer, even Napalm Death… there was a guy in this latest gig that we did with Napalm Death that got all my influences right, and I never saw the guy before I was really surprised, he was from San Ramon I believe, he just walked up to me and said “you are pretty much influenced by Terrorizer and Marduk right?” I didn’t know what to say to that, he was absolutely right! It’s not like we try to imitated any band, but they are or roots you know.

CR: Did you like “Darker Days Ahead”?
Lord Mephistum: Fucking awesome…

	Pic courtesy of: Corpus Necromanthum "You are a sell out when you do something you don’t want to do for money. You can be a band that has sell millions of copies around the world, you know be a commercial band, but if you stick to what you want to play then you are not a sell out, you are just a commercial band, a good commercial band”

CR: Some people actually criticized that record because for some reason they expected this band/project to write an almost exact same album as they did what…15 years ago
Lord Mephistum: 17 years, I think they just sort of down tune even more the guitars, it is one of the darkest albums I have heard.

CR: I wanted to know your opinion on the following; some months ago the “playlist” that the US army uses in Iraq for “cohesive interrogation” in other words torture, prisoners in that country, was leaked, in that playlist we had Barney which will really fucking torture me no doubt, and another song was they used was a Deicide track… what would you do or say if any army used Corpus music to torture people?
Lord Mephistum: (Laughs) I will send them a whole box full of records and a note “Get ready for World War III!” that will be fucking great!

CR: Is there any record that you are expecting “anxiously” to be release this year?
Lord Mephistum: A Gorgoroth DVD actually, from a show in Poland, with crucified people… simulated crucifixion of course! But yes I’m really anxious to see that

CR: In your opinion, what’s the style of metal that Costarricans know how to play better, in your view of course?
Lord Mephistum: Very hard to answer, because we have pretty good bands from every genre; having said that I think death metal, because I think we have more death metal bands, and is not like quantity means quality but there is a bigger array of sounds out there. We have some great black metal like Alastor, but yes I will have to go with death metal.

CR: What band or bands do you think are the ones that have “inspired” or influenced our scene the most, in what live shows, albums, promotion corresponds?
Lord Mephistum: Well without taking merit away from… actually all of us that are continuously working to promote metal in this country, I would have to say the guys from Alastor; they manage to unite the scene in every gig they do… we also have that advantage, our scene is small but all metalheads here pretty much like to listen to all the genres of metal, not like in El Salvador for example, I said this from the experience that I had when I went to see Dark Funeral over there; there wasn’t a single death metal fan in that show, like wise when a death metal band plays there are no black metal fans… over here you can pretty much see everybody a bit more united and Alastor manages to show that better than anybody else, a proof of that is when they open for Dismember, they look and sound like a compact band, very well put together.

CR: Which band is more “Chola” on stage… Corpus or Alastor?
Lord Mephistum: (Laughs) Corpus no doubt, when I get a change to see Mauricio (singer for Alastor) throwing a pig’s head into the audience then maybe I will reconsider!

CR: A couple of months ago one of our local news papers began a sort of “campaign” against our metal scene, apparently they ran out of accidents to take pictures of and decided to… fuck with our scene; what do you think is the best course of action for a small scene like ours when we are been subjected to attacks like this?
Lord Mephistum: I think is a national reaction, and identity issue; when you live within such a small scene and some people attack it many get scared, because we have a small scene, we are not used to be a part of a big movement. We have so little and yet some people want to take it away, I saw guys, and I heard guys that send this guy from La Extra emails, letters even phone calls treating him, and that is all because of that reaction, of that fear that somebody wants to take away something we love. We have such a small scene, with very few international shows here and when one is possible some sectors dedicate themselves to take that way from us, and it becomes this snow ball, people began to talk on the street about possible fights with Christian groups, the possibility of the shutdown of the places that we use to go and listen to metal, off course people are going to get scared, and not scared at a physical confrontation, but scared because they want to take away from us something we love.
The fact that we are a small scene does have something that helps us eventually, when we are been attack by the media, and that is that the people in power in this country by seen that we are such a small movement then they don’t really care about what we do, so it works for us in that way that we are a small group of people.

CR: Ok, so in “honor” of La Extra, a couple of questions they will most likely ask!
Are you Satanic?
Lord Mephistum: (Laughs) Yes totally 100% satanic (Laughs)

CR: Do you guys sacrificed cats and things like that?
Lord Mephistum: NO, never… actually me and some friends really wanted to go and kick the shit out of that guy that eats live animals…you know what I’m talking about that guy that appeared in the news that he grab cats and street dogs and eat them almost alive, I mean I fucking hate people that tortures animals…

		Pic courtesy of: Corpus Necromanthum "The fact that we are a small scene does have something that helps us eventually, when we are been attack by the media, and that is that the people in power in this country by seen that we are such a small movement then they don’t really care about what we do, so it works for us in that way that we are a small group of people."

CR: Yeah, for some reason and I don’t know if I have been de-humanized but it hurts me more to see a dead dog than a human!
Lord Mephistum: Same here and I think that’s because an animal is defenseless, a human you never know maybe the guy was asking for it, they could have shoot him because he was involved in some drug issues, or he crashed his car because he was driving drunk… you know it pisses me off so fucking much to see those assholes killing baby seals for their fur.
A weird and funny fact, is that after some shows, I have received complains about animal activists because we have a pig’s head on our show, and it is totally different to go out and buy and animal after they have killed it for food, than to torture an animal, those same ones complaining probably ate that pig and the blood we use is fake blood, it’s not the animals blood dumb asses! And to be honest No we are not Satanists!

CR: I was just asking La Extra questions man, you have to stay in character here (Laughs)… Ok last question in their honor… Why the long hair and just how much you take care of it? (Arial Chavez from La Extra actually asked that!)
Lord Mephistum: (Laughs) When I saw “Live Corruption” the Napalm Death show, I was 13 years I think, I saw two things that I like, 1. Mick Harris and his tattoos and I said to myself, I have to have tattoos and be a drummer and 2. Jesse Pintado and his long hair getting tangled in the guitar, and so I wanted to have long hair! I mean it is very “useful” to have long hair on a metal show you know… and do I take care of it? (Laughs) well the normal stuff, shampoo, conditioner, and a comb (Laugh).

CR: All right, so what about this new album, when can we expect it?
Lord Mephistum: By the end of the year, I mean I wish I could give you an exact date, but we have had so much problems with it that I do not dare to give you a date, I just hope that by the end of November early December we can put it out.

CR: How about live shows?
Lord Mephistum: Actually we had promise in the Hellfire Fest that we were not going to play anymore live shows until the new record was out, but then they invited us to the Napalm Death show, and so we HAD to make an exception, is not like we could reject such an invitation, and so in that show we said the same thing, no more live shows until the new album is out…

CR: Of course if they asked you guys to open for Marduk then that will change!
Lord Mephistum: Ohhh if Marduck comes I will love to gorge myself with Mortuus chalice. I mean the fuel of a band is in the live shows, we really want to play, that is what makes a band continue to work, to see people reacting to your music, head banging, kicking each other… We are planning a show sometime soon with the guys from Sight of Emptiness, because they haven’t played since they got back from England, so it will be cool to play together.

CR: In San José or outside this area?
Lord Mephistum: No here in San José, we have been organizing gigs outside San José to expand the scene… you get to see just how many people from all parts of the country are really into metal when bands such as Maiden comes to play, you see people from all the corners of our territory. Every time I can, I go…sometimes I get bored of seen the same faces here, I even know exactly how a guy here in San José is going to hit me on the mosh pit, but outside, I just don’t know, they beat the crap out of me in San Ramon for example it was great. But no, that show with Sight will be here in San José. We want to go to Limón again the people over there was really cool to us last year.

CR: Limón has some pretty good bands man!
Lord Mephistum: Yeah I know, Maggoh for example…cheers to all the people of Limón!

CR: Ok man did I forget to ask you anything?
Lord Mephistum: Uhmm no I don’t think so! Just wanted to thank you then for the chance and to thank all the people that has supported us!