Cephalic Carnage

Having spent more than a decade laying waste to American and European audiences, Cephalic Carnage is gearing up to hit Australia with The Black Dahlia Murder.

Vocalist Leonard caught up for a chat…

Interview w/ Leonard Leal (vocals)

of Cephalic Carnage

We’re grateful for your time

today man, thanks a lot. 

That’s alright man, I’m just

eating some food, ha ha. 

pre show drink? 

I’m Leonard but you can call

me Len and I sing… or try to sing for Cephalic Carnage. 

My favourite pre show drink did

you say? 

Yeah man. 

pussy, ha ha? 

It sounds like a pussy drink so

it’s got Bailey’s in it, you know, some Irish cream and some Schnapps

and plenty of ice. It’s a subtle drink so it doesn’t kick your ass

right away like Jager. It’s good to drink. 

Where are you calling from

at the moment? 

Denver, Colorado in the United

States. 

What

have you been doing with your time off the road? 

Just relaxing man. Doing some

work around my house and pruning things, ha ha. Nothing apart from that.  

Xenosapien was released in

so far? 

Oh yeah, it’s pretty sick man.

We’ve been blown away by the response. We thought people would dig

it but they’re really digging it! 

You guys have been together

to record? 

Well, there’s more experimentation

going on now because we bought our own studio. It’s like we were doing

a death metal Queen record, ha ha. It’s the same thing for the

most part. We had 4 months to write and record the album so that’s

what we did so you guys can listen to Xenosapien… a record of science

fiction anthems! 

Tell us a bit about the writing

and recording process for Xenosapien? 

Umm, it was just 4 to 5 months

of constantly working, practicing, writing stuff and then going back

and forth with everyone else in the band… while at the same time building

the studio! 

There was no time in the day for

anything else. We lived and breathed the record for that time man. During

the recording Colorado got him with a huge storm… we had something

like 3 feet of snow for 60 days!  

It was hard to get all the things

we needed to record how we wanted so it was a challenging time. Once

we started we were just like, hurry up, hurry up, we need to

get this record out to people! It was just brutal! 

What touring have guys done

so far this year in support of the record? 

We went over to Europe right when

it came out. Then we came back to he US and did a 6 week tour called

the Summer Slaughter. It had 9 bands like Necrophagist, Cattle Decapitation

and Decapitated as well as some up and coming US and Canadian bands.

It was a killer tour! 

After that we came home for a

few days and then we hit the east coast and Canada with The Red Chord,

Between The Buried And Me and The End. By this time we’d been on the

road for 4 months so now we’re home and I can just hang out and relax

with my cat.

Touring a foreign country for

– how did the tour come about? 

People at some place called Soundworks

like us and yeah, I dunno, we got a call asking to us to do some shows

with The Black Dahlia Murder… so we said fuck yeah! 

Anytime we can go anywhere down

there we’re excited. We’d tour with Milli Vanilli for all we care…

we just want to tour! 

What are you looking forward

to most from the Australian shows? 

Just meeting some cool new people

like any other tour. Meeting the fans that are into your music and just

hanging out with them and seeing what’s going on in their mind man. 

The Black Dahlia Murder has

you guys or them? 

We will try and rival them. We

might not cause more trouble than then but hopefully just as

much! 

Are you familiar with much

Australian music? 

To a certain extent. There’s

more black metal bands down there as far as I know. We’ve played with

a band called Sons Of Azrael, but I’m not sure if they’re from Australia

or New Zealand. Either way they were a cool band. 

I’m a big fan of Hobbs Angel

Of Death though! 

I had to squeeze this in man.

so if you get the chance, check out The Abandonment! 

Well, just tell him to bring some

weed and some beers and that’ll help out. That’ll make me the biggest

fan of them man… I’ll be in the front row for sure, ha ha! 

What are your top 3 metal records

of 2007 (so far)? 

This year? Shoot, that’s a hard

question. There’s been so many good records this year. Man, I dunno…

it could take 40 hours to think of this! 

I really like the new Dying Fetus

record War Of Attrition. I’m going to say stuff that came out on Relapse.

The new Man Must Die is sick and then I’d probably have to say the

new Queens Of The Stone Age Record. Yeah, that might work. 

The video you did for

– who came up with treatment for the clip? 

Um, it was this guy named Darren

Doane. He produced the video and came up with the idea based off the

lyrics. He just said let’s get some people going crazy. That’s basically

it! 

What’s in store for Cephalic

Carnage once the Australian tour is wrapped up? 

Well, right before we come to

Australia we’re hitting Mexico sitting for some shows there. Then

3 days after that we’re coming to Australia and then as soon as we

get home we drive half way across the US to tour with Dying Fetus right

through until December. 

After that we have a 2 month break

and then we hit Europe with Decapitated! 

I saw them with Nile a few

months ago and they were easily the best death metal band I’ve seen.  

Yeah man. We did 6 gigs with Decapitated

this year and it was fun man! 

That’s about it man, any

last words? 

Cheers. Um, Steve Hughes rules,

smoke weed, grind out, listen to Cephalic Carnage and support your local

metal web fan zines! 

Ha ha, thanks a lot man. 

No worries Cam. You take care

and we’ll see you in… what city are you in? 

Melbourne.  

Melbourne it is! We’ll see you

there man!