Pic courtesy of: Little Dead Bertha "Many Russian bands today are recording in a home studio. In that same way was recorded "Way Of Blind". We have a little home studio - PC and some other equipment. This is because in our city there are no professional studios that work with metal music"

CR: Why don’t you tell us a bit about Little Dead Bertha, how did the band begin?
Sergey Galushko: Ok, in a few words. LDB began to play in 1994 as a thrash band. Afterwards our music taste started to change, so we decided to place a second guitar and violin and begun to play doom-metal music. So we recorded two albums "In Memorium Premortis" (1998) and "Two Sides" (1999). After this we had a big period of inactivity. LDB had some problems with the line-up and also we wanted a little change in our style. Many critics after listening to those first albums called us the Russian My Dying Bride, and to be completely honest, we didn’t like this that much. So the following album "Light&Shadows" (2003) was totally different from the first albums. That album was got not very heavy since we were looking for the new sound. Many people have defined this album as gothic metal. However we all love heavy music and so we decided to go back to some basics and play a little heavier. Our last album "Way of Blind" (2005), I think is more melodic death, it does have some doom, and some black sounds but definitely less gothic themes. We have played a lot of gigs this year supporting the release of this our latest album Way of Blind.

CR: Why the name Little Dead Bertha?
Sergey Galushko: This is a very old story. We have a song name "Little dead Bertha", this was one of the first songs of the band. When our band was 2 months old we were about to play our first gig, but we had no name. So we decided right there to name the band Little dead Bertha. I think this is an interesting and unusual name. Also many people probably think like this, because I happen to answer this question very often.

CR: You guys will be playing at Metal heads Mission VII this year, along side Tiamat and many other great bands; what can you tell us about this fest, what are your expectations towards it?
Sergey Galushko: This is an excellent fest. I was in it last year, as listener and it was amazing. This Fest lasts 3 days on the Black Sea coast. 3 days to swim in the sea, drink beer and listen to metal music. This is largest fest for a C.I.S. country, there is going to be several thousands of people and is very prestigious for any group to participate in it. I hope to play a great show and get a lot of new fans for LDB.

CR: “Way Of Blind” is your latest album, definitely a complex and beautiful record, what can you tell me about the recording process of it; where did you recorded it and what was the most important thing you think this process gave you?
Sergey Galushko: Many Russian bands today are recording in a home studio. In that same way was recorded "Way Of Blind". We have a little home studio - PC and some other equipment. This is because in our city there are no professional studios that work with metal music, and the possibility to go to a Moscow studio is just too expensive. Sadly Russian labels only pay for the whole recording process to very popular bands, bands like LDB must do this themselves.
Home working has a big minus - it is difficult to obtain a really good sound. But also there is a plus - time to work doesn’t have a limit, and if you work hard enough you can get the sound you wanted. I prefer to work at home than to pay for a studio with an engineer that doesn’t understand metal music; I have to be the producer, engineer and coordinator, and I actually enjoy this quite a lot.

CR: How many instruments did you guy used in the recording of “Way Of Blind”?
Sergey Galushko: There is the traditional set - guitar, bass, drums, keys. Some drum parts were recorded by our drummer on a Roland TD-10 module. I recorded all the rhythm and solo guitars. We also used male and female vocal and a real violin.

CR: How do you guys handle the writing process, do you first write the guitar parts or is it the keyboard the first one to create a tune and then you guys just start adding the different pieces that will eventually become a song, how do you do it?
Sergey Galushko: Yes, usually is done like this. I have some riffs so I go and play them on rehearsal, after we start playing it together and if it sounds good we include this as a new song; and if is bad - throw in the basket. Sometimes we simply play jam-sessions.

CR: What was the hardest part of writing, recording and releasing “Way Of Blind”?
Sergey Galushko: I think, the hardest part of recording is getting the necessary sound for the album. I’m also not very satisfied with the sound of this last album. I am not a professional producer. Song writing also takes very long, something like 3 years. With the release we have no problems because we had a contract on CD release with Stygian Crypt.

CR: “Way Of Blind” has some segments in which the vocal part display a great deal of aggression but is complemented by some mellow melodies that don’t allow the album to become a brutal display, how do you guys handle that equanimity between melody and brutality, is there a special formula for this?
Sergey Galushko: I think the special formula is something we call LDB. We have our own approach: is a balance between aggression and melody. We always want our music to be energetic, but at the same time to posses melody. I think that in general our songs are very melodic, but they become brutal when we play them, because we are very energetic people and we place a lot of emotions in our music. Many of our fans say that we are more aggressive on the live shows, than on the CD’s.

	Pic courtesy of: Little Dead Bertha "I hope that fans of different genres like black metal and doom metal can find something attractive in our music"

CR: I will like for you to please talk to us about every single song on “Way Of Blind”, what are the songs about or what do they mean to you?
Sergey Galushko: That’s a complicated question. We wrote these songs 3 years ago. "Without Hipe " and " I don’t Believe" were written when we worked on the previous album "Light&Shadows". However we did not include them in that previous release because they didn’t have the approach of that album. Other songs came to us a little later. "Requiem" for example is a very old song; it was written back in 1994 and was on the first LDB demo. However we did not include that song in any record, so we decided to include it in "Way Of Blind" so that our listeners could have a taste of our music from those early days. If you ask me about the lyrics I think I’m going to disappoint you, since they are written by our singer Dima and he writes in English…and my English is very bad, therefore I can only understand the general topic but not the details behind them. I also think that music is more important than the lyrics, therefore I do not pay a lot of attention to some of the texts. However I should say, that Dima is a very talented man - its lyrics are very beautiful and sad, as they should be in a doom band.

CR: Do you think this new album has giving a bigger exposure to the band than let’s say your previous album “Light And Shadows”?
Sergey Galushko: I think so. "Light&Shadows" was a very good album, but it had so many mixed styles in it, that it may have confused some listeners. However I have no regrets about that album. We recorded what we wanted to record and not something to please people. "Way Of Blind" is absolutely in another level. It’s more powerful and aggressive stuff; it also represents LDB as it is now.

CR: Who did the art work for “Way Of Blind” and what is it supposed to mean?
Sergey Galushko: The artwork was made by our label Stygian Crypt prod. Кр. I don’t like it so much, but there was not enough time to change it so we had to stay with that first design. So to be honest with you I do not know what it means, I’m terrible sorry for this.

CR: Your press sheet says you guys started out as a Thrash metal band, why the change to the now doom/melodic death metal sound? Do you think the band will evolve one more time embracing another genre?
Sergey Galushko: I think so. Our beginning was as a thrash band; that was a long time ago and it didn’t quite describe what LDB was all about. I would say that our real beginning would be when we started to play a little more doom metal. I think that to play only one style is not very interesting. To me when you mix different genres everything seems to sounds better, way more interesting. Also our musical taste has changed in time, as well as our line-up. All this influences change our music. On "Way Of Blind" we added a lot of doom metal and many elements of melodic death and black metal. It seems to me that LDB sounds more modern, than if we have continued to play just doom metal. Now we are writing songs for a new album. As a whole, I think, it will continue on the same direction as "Way Of Blind", however we expect to place a couple of surprises in it.

CR: Little Dead Bertha mixes a lot of elements, from melodic death metal to gothic atmospheres, and sometimes the vocals sound like black metal, what inspired you guys to mix all this elements? Do you think that maybe because you guys mix so many different elements is hard for some listeners to get the idea behind the music of the band?
Sergey Galushko: I think that thanks to that we are more interesting, to us and to our listeners. I hope that fans of different genres like black metal and doom metal can find something attractive in our music. As I have already told you, our style is based on melodic themes with aggressive submission. We could also mix genres like doom, melodic death, black, may be some power metal because such music is pleasant to us. And if someone just likes the extremely heavy stuff, well they can always listen to bands that appeal more to them.

CR: What bands or different music styles have influence the band or you personally?
Sergey Galushko: All LDB musicians have different influences. To write them all will probably make no sense. But as a whole, I think the basic influences are Amorphis, Children Of Bodom, Paradise Lost, In Flames and also many black metal bands. In general, we listen a lot of different music. Personally I listen to bands from classical heavy metal like Iron Maiden and Manowar up to Dark Funeral.

CR: How many line up changes has Little Dead Bertha have had in all of your existence as a band?
Sergey Galushko: The Line up changes has certainly been a problem for us. LDB line-up has been changed many times. After the recording of "Two Sides" in 1999, almost all the musicians changed. Back then we lost a lot of time finding a new line-up. But since that big line-up change we sort of had some stability. Now there is Dmitry (vocal, he has taken part in 4 albums) Yuriy (bass) and Svetlana (vocal) have been in the last 2 albums and we have the new musician Vika on keys and new drummer Evgeny. Well I’m in the band from the very beginning. You can say that Yuriy and I are the founders of LDB, but from 96-99 he had to serve in the Russian Army, so during that period of time we had a different bass player.

CR: What’s the Russian metal scene like? Do you guys get a lot of support from the local fans? Do you know of another country or countries were Little Dead Bertha is very well supported?
Sergey Galushko: Certainly, we have a great support from fans in our city. We are the oldest and a very popular band in Voronezh. Very often we play shows in other cities and we always find people there that support us. I was very surprised with the last tour. We were very far from our homes, something more than a thousand kilometers (Russia-is a big country), and many people came to our shows and they were big fans of LDB. We have also played in countries such as Belarus and Ukraine and there we also found some fans of our music. Unfortunately, we haven’t had the change to tour Europe, so not so many people know us. It afflicts us and we are trying to change this.

	Pic courtesy of: Little Dead Bertha "The government then prohibited the broadcast of metal music, and those who did it, were named antisocials. In 1985 our outstanding leader Michael Gorbachev made the now famous "Perestroika". Now Russia is a democratic country and everyone can do what they please including playing in a rock-band"

CR: How do the Russian media and government support the metal bands in Russia? Do you guys get some exposure in the local media, like TV shows, radio shows? Is there any special “art” program given by the government that Russian metal bands can apply to?
Sergey Galushko: It is very sad, but we have no support from the government or TV. There are some private radio companies, which broadcast metal shows, but there are not many of them. Our government and local authorities only support pop-music.
Our media industry supports pop-music and a special Russian music genre named "Russian rock ". They say that on metal it is difficult to earn any money; I do not know how many real metal fans are in our country, but I’ll bet there are a lot of them. So for metal bands there are only the magazines and the Internet-sites. At least our government doesn’t bother us about playing metal, so I guess is ok.

CR: How does the Russian society perceive metal music, are they open minded about it or do they look at metalheads as antisocial and apply those sort of stereotypes?
Sergey Galushko: Yes, you are right, this is real! As you know, earlier we had a Communist country and a totalitarian state. The government then prohibited the broadcast of metal music, and those who did it, were named antisocials. In 1985 our outstanding leader Michael Gorbachev made the now famous "Perestroika". Now Russia is a democratic country and everyone can do what they please including playing in a rock-band. However stereotypes in society, especially in people of the old generation, are still there. I live in a big city, many people have already got used to guys wearing "Cannibal Corpse" t-shirts and long hair, they are no longer shocked by metalheads, but in little cities the stereotypes are still very strong. We sometimes have problems with the organization of concerts. Many clubs do not wish to organize a metal show since they think that all metal-fans are antisocial people and they are very aggressive persons who will destroy their establishments. When Behemoth was playing in our biggest music club, the administration brought a platoon of special troops in full arms. They faced the stage in all their shows, It was very funny!

CR: What has been the biggest show or tour in which Little Dead Bertha has participated in?
Sergey Galushko: I think, it was our last tour named Metal Spirit Ressurection -2. Together with another known Russian bands called Sinful, Apokefale and Act Of God we played 8 shows in Siberia. It is very far from the European part of Russia. It was an excellent tour, good halls and great fans!

CR: 11 years playing metal music, what’s the best thing about playing this kind of music? And if you please, what has been for you the best moment in the bands career?
Sergey Galushko: A difficult question again! I simply like this music. I started listening to metal when I was 14 years old, and now I’m 32… Earlier, when LDB was an unknown band our city, we simply wrote songs and record them because we liked to do it. Now it’s all more serious. We have released some CD’s, we go on tours and we give interviews to Russian and European magazines. The most part of my adult life has been with the band; therefore all of this is a very important part of my life. I think that if I was not engaged in it, I would definitely be other person. I think, that we have only begin with our professional career, therefore the best is yet to come.

CR: Is it me or do you guys have for free download at your web site two of your previous albums, if so why this free download?
Sergey Galushko: Yes, on our site it is possible to download for free our two albums "Two Sides" and "Light&Shadows". But they are in low quality; therefore the one who likes our music should really go out and buy our albums. Unfortunately to go out and buy one of our albums might be a problem since our label does not possess a very big distribution and many fans, especially in small cities will have a hard time finding our CD’s.
There are many Russian sites with our music and there it is possible to find all of our albums absolutely free and in a good quality. It probably afflicts our label, but I don’t care, because the money from the sale of our albums barely covers the beer in our trips. Actually I’m glad just with the notion that many people are downloading our music and listening to it.

CR: What does the future holds for Little Dead Bertha, maybe a DVD, new album?
Sergey Galushko: We wanted to release a DVD based on one of the shows of the last tour; unfortunately because of technical problems we couldn’t make it happen.
Now we are recording an EP with 4 songs. Two tracks are new songs and two are remixes from early albums. This EP will also have a video clip and multimedia. It will be a promo pack which we will send to many magazines and to distribute in our shows. Also we have 5 new songs for a following album.

CR: Well I think I just ran out of questions, but thank you very much for this opportunity, hope you enjoy the questions, and please if you have something else to add, you are welcome to do so…
Sergey Galushko: ОК, I liked your questions that’s why I wrote such long answers. Thanks for the support and interest in our band. Greetings to everyone who reads this interview. Come visit our sites http://bertha-music.narod.ru/ or http://www.myspace.com/ldbertha. Good luck!