TERMINUS: Interview for Turkish fanzine
'ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS'
This was an interview for the first issue of a Turkish 'zine based in Istanbul, called 'Action Speaks Louder Than Words' and produced by Yavuz Celik, vocalist from Necrosis and Gagdas, the drummer from Encounter. The interview was dated 18 January 1994 and posted out a few days later with a couple of singles by way of apology for my being late in replying. As we never received a copy of the finished 'zine, I don't if it was ever produced, or if my reply was too late for inclusion, if anyone has any information on this, 'zine please let me know.
Either way, here is the interview as sent out below.
Either way, here is the interview as sent out below.
Q1/ CAN YOU GIVE A BIO OF YOUR BAND? HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR BANDS NAME? Mark: (All questions hereafter answered by him), The band have been going since 1983 in one form or other and have released three demo's before doing stuff on our
own label, and have played gigs in various places, though not enough due to various hassles, ranging from line-up changes to transport problems. The name, basically, means the "end of the line', though as people will point out to you, it's also a place where trains and buses stop! It'll do.
Q2/ CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE MEMBERS OF THE BAND? Mark: What,
behind their backs! IS THE BAND A HOBBY FOR YOU OR DO YOU ONLY STRUGGLE WITH IT? Mark: In that the band is not a “career" thing, then, yes, it is a "hobby” but really its more my life, in that at times the band has been the only thing that's kept me alive - given me something worthwhile to carry on living for. I don't think some people, connected with the band or not, realize how serious it is to me, and yes it's always been a struggle.
Q3/ WHO OR WHICH BANDS INFLUENCED YOU TO MAKE THIS KIND OF MUSIC? WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE BANDS AND ZINES? Mark: Early punk bands kicked me into making this kind of music. it was the "if they can do it so can I" attitude. The bands I started to listen to back then ('77/78) were stuff by the Pistols, Clash, Stranglers, The Damned and Buzzcocks... oh, and the Ramones... loads of other stuff to though, like
The Soft Boys, Roky Erickson, The Art Bears, The Residents, stacks of different types of stuff, and I still like to listen to a variety of things today. Punk (ish) type bands I 'm into now include, Herb Garden, One By One, Spithead, Oi Polloi, Blaggers (pre EMI)... 'zines? There's too many to mention really, but All the Rage, Beermat, Charred Remains would be on the list.... all 'zines are worth while - except for the Nazi ones!
Q4/ CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR RELEASES? (DEMO'S, EP'S, LP'S) ARE YOU HAPPY ABOUT THE SELLING OF YOUR RECORDS? IS IT DISTURBING YOU THAT ”HOW MANY OF YOUR RECORDS SOLD OUT TODAY"? Mark: I'm not sure what you mean by that last bit, if you mean does it bother me whether or not our records are selling
well or not then, no, not in the commercial sense. We don't expect to sell many records, though it would be nice to sell enough to finance our next projects! We've never made any money doing this - only losses... Our releases? We did three demo's, “Terminus“ in '84. "Catalogue of Crimes" in '85 and "Body Count" in '86. The quality got a bit better each time - though not by much! We then put out our first 7' on our own label ("Star Born Thing”) in early '88 followed by the "Fear, Despair and Hate" EP in '89. After this we did our first LP for Words of Warning (”Going Nowhere East") which I'm not happy with due to the band fucking up at the time - that line-up split soon after. We then did a single for wow ("What Kind of world?"/ "Violent Resistance") and early last year they released our second album ("Back Among the Blind") which I think is our best work to date. Campary Records in Germany released our 4rth EP ("Into the Flames") and we are doing a split LP for them later this year. Hope all that info wasn't too boring!!!
Q5/ WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT YOU'RE SORRY ABOUT YOUR RECORDS (SOUND AND RECORD QUALITY)? Mark: As I said, the quality of our first LP didn't make the grade. We could , and should have done a better job, but we
were having difficulties at the time within the band and in retrospect we should have scrapped the album until our internal problems had been sorted out - just salvaged an EP from the sessions... but I think too much money and time had already been spent on it to just abandon it at that time. Other than that album, I think all our stuff has improved
as we've gone on, but we are hampered by a lack of money to spend on recording, and always have been.
Q6/ HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR SOUND TO BE? (MORE FUCKING BRAIN OR SOFTLY). Mark: Clear and powerful!... but hearing the words is important... if you can't hear the vocals then you might as well sing shit... DO YOU GIVE YOUR BIG TIME TO WRITE LYRICS? MOSTLY WHAT KIND OF LYRICS DO YOUR SONGS INCLUDE AND WHO WRITES THEM? Mark: I write the words and I usually spend quite a bit of time on them - I've even revised words after they've been recorded and released - though' not often. The words are important to me, and a song with a great tune/ sound but crap lyrics is a Crap song, despite the good sound/ tune. Most of the songs are political, though some are more personal and bile filled, it depends what's winding me up at the time!
Q7/ CAN YOU GIVE INFO ABOUT YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS AND BANDS, THE SCENE IN YOUR COUNTRY? Mark: I know nothing about any 'scene" really - totally out of touch. We are pretty isolated in Scunthorpe, which is a pretty small “dump", but bands we know and respect are One By One and Herb Garden, not forgetting Pig Havoc and Co! (PVC, BugEyed, etc).
Q8/ DO YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN SOMETHING WITH YOUR MUSIC?
Mark: Yes. Think for yourselves! Do as much as possible for yourselves... and fuck the system/ government and all those who work for it. The only interests they represent are those of our rulers - our oppressors. Don't let them tell you otherwise... I suppose that is
what I'm trying to say, there's a common theme running through everything we do, and that is liberation, solidarity, communication, unity among peoples - however seemingly diverse, we have our humanity in common, and the fact that if we want to live in a free world - not the fake 'freedom' spouted by western leaders (i.e., the freedom for the rich to screw the poor!) but real freedom - the freedom to live in peace, in equality, in cooperation with others, in the abolition of poverty (and there's enough in this world to provide decent living standards for everyone), then we have to fight for it*. You get my drift. Petty nationalisms are a block to this, and in Europe today it is one of our greatest problems.
while one set or poor people are busy fighting another set of poor people for basic scraps, our real enemies continue living off the backs of all of us. i.e., the international ruling class! World Bank. IMF, Industrial corporations etc, these people know no racial divide when it comes to fucking people over and neither should we know such divisions. Divide and rule is an old trick.
Q9/ D0 YOU NAME YOUR BAND AS A POLITICAL BAND? Mark: Very much so! I personally believe in Anarchism, or more specifically, anarcho-syndicalism when applied to industry. The rest of the Band are more or less unaligned Lefties! CAN YOU GIVE A NAMETO YOUR MUSIC? WHY THIS KIND? Mark: I suppose its "punk" and "rock", but
we play acoustic based stuff as well, we don't like to limit at pigeonhole ourselves.
Q10/ WHAT ARE YOUR POLITICAL THOUGHTS? WHAT DISTURBS YOU NOWADAYS? DO YOU BELIEVE IN COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM?
Mark: As I've said, I'm an anarchist. Socialism doesn't go far enough - you can't tinker about with the system to make it more fair to working class people - it won't work, as the system was not created to be 'fair' to ordinary people - it was created to fuck us over!
So we have to smash it and build something new. Communism, as practiced by the 57 varieties, is too authoritarian, stifles liberty and ends up chaining people even tighter than capitalism, the farce of Bolshevik controlled Russia has condemned "communism" forever in many peoples eyes. The only real alternative to the suicidal waste of capitalism and the divisive slavery and war of Nationalism/ Fascism, is Anarchism; Free peoples federated together and working in cooperation with each other, and no demagogues inciting people for their own dubious ends, nor any rich parasites sponging off the backs of the common man and woman. As you can see, Nationalism is what disturbs me today. It's a poison that eats at peoples souls.
Q11/ DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LIVE SHOWS AND STUDIO EXPERIENCES?
WHERE AND HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU DO GIGS, AND WITH WHICH BANDS? Mark: Our live shows are hit and miss affairs, sometimes we get a good sound but at other times we sound shite! Funnily enough, those gigs can be the best! We‘ve played with loads of bands, such as the Instigators, ABS, the Blaggers, One By One, Herb Garden, stacks of bands, I won't bore you more. Studio's are boring and send people mad! They also remove all your money.
Q12/ WHICH BANDS DO YOU MOST WANT TO PLAY WITH? DO YOU
OFTEN GO TO CONCERTS? Mark: I think I've played with most of the bands I like, probably I'd have liked to support the Damned, but that's just nostalgia! I don't go to many gigs anymore.
Q13/ CAN YOU SAY THE THING YOU MOST HATE IN THE WORLD AND IN YOUR COUNTRY? WHY DO PEOPLE MAKE WAR DO YOU THINK? Mark: Racism and ignorance... apathy... all piss me off. People make war, or go to war, because, in general, they are being manipulated into situations where they end up being sent out to fight wars started, and in the interests of, our rulers - the rich. Whether the war has been started to protect the property of the wealthy, steal some other countries/ rulers property, to take peoples attention from economic difficulties in their own countries (i.e. blame some one else), it's all an excuse for the rich to benefit (by selling arms, stealing commodities, opening 'markets', ridding themselves of troublesome populations/ people, etc)... however they dress up the excuse/ reason for a war (religion, whatever) it's the poor who suffer and the wealthy who win. While differing peoples are pitted against each other, for whatever spurious reasons, it's the international ruling class who are doing 'business'. It's time to shut them down.
Q14/ WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT ALCOHOL AND DRUGS? DO YOU USE ANY OF THEM? ARE YOU A VEGETARIAN? FOR YOU WHAT IS VEGETARIANISM? Mark: I like the odd drink or two, alcohol is like most drugs, used in moderation it's okay, too much will fuck you up. I don't think 'dope’ should be illegal as it's no worse, less in fact, than alcohol. The thing with drugs that gets me is that governments are using the traffic in hard drugs to
finance their dodgy policies (i.e. the CIA in Central America) while at the same time ranting against them. A large percentage of street crime in this country is drug related - people stealing money for drugs - so if drugs were freely available to users/ addicts whenever they needed them - personal supply, controlled by the government, then you'd think that that would cut out most of the street crime caused by junkies stealing for money while cutting out those who profit from the sale and import of drugs! (people who are going
to take drugs will find and take them whatever, so in them being supplied for free - on prescription - and legally controlled, would also cut out deaths from cut drugs etc), but this will never happen, not because of any moral outrage over the supply of drugs but because governments have more to do with the control and supply of 'illegal' drugs than they like us to know about. They certainly have no concern over the victims of drug related crime or the users themselves. I'm not a vegetarian, though I probably should be. Vegetarianism is about a healthy lifestyle with no suffering involved in the things you choose to eat.
Q15/ HOW MUST LISTENERS SUPPORT THE UNDERGROUND? Mark: Go out to gigs, buy independently produced records and tapes and 'zines, open your eyes to what's going on around you and suss things out; our ignorance helps keep us in the shit, so we should make it our business to educate our selves - the state will only ever tell us what IT wants us to know! Most of all ACT, make music, write your own 'zines, spread information, support each other. Solidarity is our power!
Q16/ WHAT DO YOU THINK TO DO IN THE FUTURE (CONCERTS, RELEASES)?
Mark: Well, we hope to start gigging again, after a three month lay-off, and hopefully get out to places we've not been yet. We should be releasing a split LP on Campary Records later this year and after that we'll be working on our follow up to the ”Back Among The Blind" album - "The Ugly Spirit".
Q17/ PLEASE GIVE SHORT ANSWERS TO THESE WORDS: GOVERTMENT: Hate. RELIGION: Oppression and ignorance. SYSTEM: Restriction. MILITARISM: Death. MEDIA: Poison. CORPOATIONS: Suicide. REALITY: Horror. PUNK: Fashion. PORNO: Exploitation. D. I. Y: Freedom, Satisfaction. PROFIT: Loss (of humanity). POLITICS: Slavery to idiots. DEATH METAL: Ha ha ha! SATANISM: Ha ha ha, a twist of
Christianity, which is itself Bollocks! STRAIGHT EDGE: Personal. SOCIALISM: A joke. COMMUNISM: Dead.
Q18/ WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT TURKEY? Not much, other than it has a bad human rights record (not that many western countries can talk, including the UK!). Some nice country side, isn't there some sort of conflict with the Kurds going on at the moment? As you can see. I'm pretty ignorant of events in Turkey, so any information
is welcome!
Cheers for the interview Yavuz, good luck and Solidarity to all those fighting for a Free world!
own label, and have played gigs in various places, though not enough due to various hassles, ranging from line-up changes to transport problems. The name, basically, means the "end of the line', though as people will point out to you, it's also a place where trains and buses stop! It'll do.
Q2/ CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE MEMBERS OF THE BAND? Mark: What,
behind their backs! IS THE BAND A HOBBY FOR YOU OR DO YOU ONLY STRUGGLE WITH IT? Mark: In that the band is not a “career" thing, then, yes, it is a "hobby” but really its more my life, in that at times the band has been the only thing that's kept me alive - given me something worthwhile to carry on living for. I don't think some people, connected with the band or not, realize how serious it is to me, and yes it's always been a struggle.
Q3/ WHO OR WHICH BANDS INFLUENCED YOU TO MAKE THIS KIND OF MUSIC? WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE BANDS AND ZINES? Mark: Early punk bands kicked me into making this kind of music. it was the "if they can do it so can I" attitude. The bands I started to listen to back then ('77/78) were stuff by the Pistols, Clash, Stranglers, The Damned and Buzzcocks... oh, and the Ramones... loads of other stuff to though, like
The Soft Boys, Roky Erickson, The Art Bears, The Residents, stacks of different types of stuff, and I still like to listen to a variety of things today. Punk (ish) type bands I 'm into now include, Herb Garden, One By One, Spithead, Oi Polloi, Blaggers (pre EMI)... 'zines? There's too many to mention really, but All the Rage, Beermat, Charred Remains would be on the list.... all 'zines are worth while - except for the Nazi ones!
Q4/ CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR RELEASES? (DEMO'S, EP'S, LP'S) ARE YOU HAPPY ABOUT THE SELLING OF YOUR RECORDS? IS IT DISTURBING YOU THAT ”HOW MANY OF YOUR RECORDS SOLD OUT TODAY"? Mark: I'm not sure what you mean by that last bit, if you mean does it bother me whether or not our records are selling
well or not then, no, not in the commercial sense. We don't expect to sell many records, though it would be nice to sell enough to finance our next projects! We've never made any money doing this - only losses... Our releases? We did three demo's, “Terminus“ in '84. "Catalogue of Crimes" in '85 and "Body Count" in '86. The quality got a bit better each time - though not by much! We then put out our first 7' on our own label ("Star Born Thing”) in early '88 followed by the "Fear, Despair and Hate" EP in '89. After this we did our first LP for Words of Warning (”Going Nowhere East") which I'm not happy with due to the band fucking up at the time - that line-up split soon after. We then did a single for wow ("What Kind of world?"/ "Violent Resistance") and early last year they released our second album ("Back Among the Blind") which I think is our best work to date. Campary Records in Germany released our 4rth EP ("Into the Flames") and we are doing a split LP for them later this year. Hope all that info wasn't too boring!!!
Q5/ WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT YOU'RE SORRY ABOUT YOUR RECORDS (SOUND AND RECORD QUALITY)? Mark: As I said, the quality of our first LP didn't make the grade. We could , and should have done a better job, but we
were having difficulties at the time within the band and in retrospect we should have scrapped the album until our internal problems had been sorted out - just salvaged an EP from the sessions... but I think too much money and time had already been spent on it to just abandon it at that time. Other than that album, I think all our stuff has improved
as we've gone on, but we are hampered by a lack of money to spend on recording, and always have been.
Q6/ HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR SOUND TO BE? (MORE FUCKING BRAIN OR SOFTLY). Mark: Clear and powerful!... but hearing the words is important... if you can't hear the vocals then you might as well sing shit... DO YOU GIVE YOUR BIG TIME TO WRITE LYRICS? MOSTLY WHAT KIND OF LYRICS DO YOUR SONGS INCLUDE AND WHO WRITES THEM? Mark: I write the words and I usually spend quite a bit of time on them - I've even revised words after they've been recorded and released - though' not often. The words are important to me, and a song with a great tune/ sound but crap lyrics is a Crap song, despite the good sound/ tune. Most of the songs are political, though some are more personal and bile filled, it depends what's winding me up at the time!
Q7/ CAN YOU GIVE INFO ABOUT YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS AND BANDS, THE SCENE IN YOUR COUNTRY? Mark: I know nothing about any 'scene" really - totally out of touch. We are pretty isolated in Scunthorpe, which is a pretty small “dump", but bands we know and respect are One By One and Herb Garden, not forgetting Pig Havoc and Co! (PVC, BugEyed, etc).
Q8/ DO YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN SOMETHING WITH YOUR MUSIC?
Mark: Yes. Think for yourselves! Do as much as possible for yourselves... and fuck the system/ government and all those who work for it. The only interests they represent are those of our rulers - our oppressors. Don't let them tell you otherwise... I suppose that is
what I'm trying to say, there's a common theme running through everything we do, and that is liberation, solidarity, communication, unity among peoples - however seemingly diverse, we have our humanity in common, and the fact that if we want to live in a free world - not the fake 'freedom' spouted by western leaders (i.e., the freedom for the rich to screw the poor!) but real freedom - the freedom to live in peace, in equality, in cooperation with others, in the abolition of poverty (and there's enough in this world to provide decent living standards for everyone), then we have to fight for it*. You get my drift. Petty nationalisms are a block to this, and in Europe today it is one of our greatest problems.
while one set or poor people are busy fighting another set of poor people for basic scraps, our real enemies continue living off the backs of all of us. i.e., the international ruling class! World Bank. IMF, Industrial corporations etc, these people know no racial divide when it comes to fucking people over and neither should we know such divisions. Divide and rule is an old trick.
Q9/ D0 YOU NAME YOUR BAND AS A POLITICAL BAND? Mark: Very much so! I personally believe in Anarchism, or more specifically, anarcho-syndicalism when applied to industry. The rest of the Band are more or less unaligned Lefties! CAN YOU GIVE A NAMETO YOUR MUSIC? WHY THIS KIND? Mark: I suppose its "punk" and "rock", but
we play acoustic based stuff as well, we don't like to limit at pigeonhole ourselves.
Q10/ WHAT ARE YOUR POLITICAL THOUGHTS? WHAT DISTURBS YOU NOWADAYS? DO YOU BELIEVE IN COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM?
Mark: As I've said, I'm an anarchist. Socialism doesn't go far enough - you can't tinker about with the system to make it more fair to working class people - it won't work, as the system was not created to be 'fair' to ordinary people - it was created to fuck us over!
So we have to smash it and build something new. Communism, as practiced by the 57 varieties, is too authoritarian, stifles liberty and ends up chaining people even tighter than capitalism, the farce of Bolshevik controlled Russia has condemned "communism" forever in many peoples eyes. The only real alternative to the suicidal waste of capitalism and the divisive slavery and war of Nationalism/ Fascism, is Anarchism; Free peoples federated together and working in cooperation with each other, and no demagogues inciting people for their own dubious ends, nor any rich parasites sponging off the backs of the common man and woman. As you can see, Nationalism is what disturbs me today. It's a poison that eats at peoples souls.
Q11/ DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LIVE SHOWS AND STUDIO EXPERIENCES?
WHERE AND HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU DO GIGS, AND WITH WHICH BANDS? Mark: Our live shows are hit and miss affairs, sometimes we get a good sound but at other times we sound shite! Funnily enough, those gigs can be the best! We‘ve played with loads of bands, such as the Instigators, ABS, the Blaggers, One By One, Herb Garden, stacks of bands, I won't bore you more. Studio's are boring and send people mad! They also remove all your money.
Q12/ WHICH BANDS DO YOU MOST WANT TO PLAY WITH? DO YOU
OFTEN GO TO CONCERTS? Mark: I think I've played with most of the bands I like, probably I'd have liked to support the Damned, but that's just nostalgia! I don't go to many gigs anymore.
Q13/ CAN YOU SAY THE THING YOU MOST HATE IN THE WORLD AND IN YOUR COUNTRY? WHY DO PEOPLE MAKE WAR DO YOU THINK? Mark: Racism and ignorance... apathy... all piss me off. People make war, or go to war, because, in general, they are being manipulated into situations where they end up being sent out to fight wars started, and in the interests of, our rulers - the rich. Whether the war has been started to protect the property of the wealthy, steal some other countries/ rulers property, to take peoples attention from economic difficulties in their own countries (i.e. blame some one else), it's all an excuse for the rich to benefit (by selling arms, stealing commodities, opening 'markets', ridding themselves of troublesome populations/ people, etc)... however they dress up the excuse/ reason for a war (religion, whatever) it's the poor who suffer and the wealthy who win. While differing peoples are pitted against each other, for whatever spurious reasons, it's the international ruling class who are doing 'business'. It's time to shut them down.
Q14/ WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT ALCOHOL AND DRUGS? DO YOU USE ANY OF THEM? ARE YOU A VEGETARIAN? FOR YOU WHAT IS VEGETARIANISM? Mark: I like the odd drink or two, alcohol is like most drugs, used in moderation it's okay, too much will fuck you up. I don't think 'dope’ should be illegal as it's no worse, less in fact, than alcohol. The thing with drugs that gets me is that governments are using the traffic in hard drugs to
finance their dodgy policies (i.e. the CIA in Central America) while at the same time ranting against them. A large percentage of street crime in this country is drug related - people stealing money for drugs - so if drugs were freely available to users/ addicts whenever they needed them - personal supply, controlled by the government, then you'd think that that would cut out most of the street crime caused by junkies stealing for money while cutting out those who profit from the sale and import of drugs! (people who are going
to take drugs will find and take them whatever, so in them being supplied for free - on prescription - and legally controlled, would also cut out deaths from cut drugs etc), but this will never happen, not because of any moral outrage over the supply of drugs but because governments have more to do with the control and supply of 'illegal' drugs than they like us to know about. They certainly have no concern over the victims of drug related crime or the users themselves. I'm not a vegetarian, though I probably should be. Vegetarianism is about a healthy lifestyle with no suffering involved in the things you choose to eat.
Q15/ HOW MUST LISTENERS SUPPORT THE UNDERGROUND? Mark: Go out to gigs, buy independently produced records and tapes and 'zines, open your eyes to what's going on around you and suss things out; our ignorance helps keep us in the shit, so we should make it our business to educate our selves - the state will only ever tell us what IT wants us to know! Most of all ACT, make music, write your own 'zines, spread information, support each other. Solidarity is our power!
Q16/ WHAT DO YOU THINK TO DO IN THE FUTURE (CONCERTS, RELEASES)?
Mark: Well, we hope to start gigging again, after a three month lay-off, and hopefully get out to places we've not been yet. We should be releasing a split LP on Campary Records later this year and after that we'll be working on our follow up to the ”Back Among The Blind" album - "The Ugly Spirit".
Q17/ PLEASE GIVE SHORT ANSWERS TO THESE WORDS: GOVERTMENT: Hate. RELIGION: Oppression and ignorance. SYSTEM: Restriction. MILITARISM: Death. MEDIA: Poison. CORPOATIONS: Suicide. REALITY: Horror. PUNK: Fashion. PORNO: Exploitation. D. I. Y: Freedom, Satisfaction. PROFIT: Loss (of humanity). POLITICS: Slavery to idiots. DEATH METAL: Ha ha ha! SATANISM: Ha ha ha, a twist of
Christianity, which is itself Bollocks! STRAIGHT EDGE: Personal. SOCIALISM: A joke. COMMUNISM: Dead.
Q18/ WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT TURKEY? Not much, other than it has a bad human rights record (not that many western countries can talk, including the UK!). Some nice country side, isn't there some sort of conflict with the Kurds going on at the moment? As you can see. I'm pretty ignorant of events in Turkey, so any information
is welcome!
Cheers for the interview Yavuz, good luck and Solidarity to all those fighting for a Free world!