blood of christ

INTERVIEW WITH JEFF LONGO (GUITARS)

CORROSION: O.K., the typical first question: when was Blood Of Christ formed and what's the current line-up?
JEFF: We formed BoC in late 1993. The only remaining members from then are myself (Jeff!!!!), and my brother, Jason on drums. The line-up is completed by Conan on vocals and Greg on bass. We've gone through several bass players and vocalists, cause it's really hard to find dedicated musicians. Most of them just ended up being assholes or liars and couldn't play the music, so they had to be replaced. Hopefully we've got the right ones now, cause we're tighter than ever and seem to have good chemistry…so who knows?…

C: And you released your "The Lonely Flowers Of Autumn" when? Do you ever listen to that tape any more?
J: That demo was released in December 1995. Of course I still listen to it! I love it more than the new stuff we're doing now probably, well, as much anyway! We still play the first song "Autumn's Twilight", and that's one of my favourite BoC songs, and hopefully when we record another full length, we'll be redoing that song for sure.

C: What kind of musical progression was there between "Lonely Flowers…" and the debut CD "…a Dream To Remember"?
J: Not much really, I don't know, we just got a little better at playing our instruments, and got tighter all around. We also got Conan by then so that was a much needed improvement, stronger vocals. I don't see any real difference between those songs and the newer ones, they're just as good.

C: How did you get Pulverizer to notice you?
J: We sent the demo to Randy Williams for review in his Inner Source mag and he liked it, so he contacted us about releasing it on CD, but we didn't really want to cause we had like these nine or so new songs that we were itching to records, so we did the album instead!

C: How does the deal with Diehard work in conjunction with Pulverizer? Do the two labels have any kind of connection or are they working independently on this release?
J: Diehard were just licensing all the Pulverizer stuff, but they're not going to do that anymore because Randy apparently fucked them around or something, and now they think he's a goof. So….

C: Is it a multi-album deal or just a one-off?
J: I don't know anymore, I haven't talked to Randy since 1997!!! We're looking for a new label now, cause he's been fucking up a lot of shit, and all the other bands on that label have also moved on to better things too, it seems….so, I guess more albums were not really talked about, but we were talking to Randy about recording this summer, but he seems to have disappeared!

C: When do you expect to be releasing something new?
J: We want to release another album by late 1998, but if that doesn't happen that's okay, we have these four new songs that we just recorded, and we'll be passing them out at shows and stuff, just for fun, and hopefully a label will find something in us that they would like to work with… Like I said before, we had planned to record this summer, but now we just don't know. Really we're just concentrating on playing lots of shows right now, and just giving out some demos to get more word spread about the band.

C: What are the titles of the four songs?
J: The four songs we just did are "Forgotten Divinity", "Blood Passion", "Realm Of Austerity", and "Pagan Circle….Shadows Of Silence". They'll be recorded on our full-length as well…we have about six other new ones too.
C: Do you think you'll work with Rainer Wiechmann this time? Are you guys involved in the production of your releases at all or do you put yourselves completely in the hands of the producer?
J: We aren't sure who we'll work with next time…Basically it is just left up to how much money and time we have to work with in deciding where we'll go… as for production, we are extremely happy with "…a Dream to Remember", but we want to try something different. These four new songs are sounding much, much better, thicker and heavier, they were recorded with these two students at OIART here in London. They're Pete and Scott, and they're really easy to work with, and fun too!! Usually we handle the production, like the mixing and we tell them exactly what we want, so basically we get engineers to help us and get our sound on tape, but we tell them how the finished product will be…

C: Which format do you prefer to release your music on? Any plans to do a 7" at some point in the future?
J: Yeah, I'd love to put two of these new songs on a 7", that'd be great, I love vinyl, but I don't know who'd be interested in doing that so…

C: Any bands you'd like to recommend to the readers?
J: There's some great bands in our city, and they all sound completely different, but they're all still pretty much death metal: Summertime Daisies, Flesh Feast, and Porno. I think we have a pretty good scene here with great bands, but there's just not much support from people here, and that's just pathetic.

C: What do you have available in the way of merchandise for sale?
J: Nothing right now, but we're looking into doing some t-shirts again, and this new four song promo thing, which we'll probably sell for the cost of the tape, like $2 or something, same as "…a Dream to Remember", we'll copy them and sell `em for like $2, just to break even, not to make money…but, if any one wants free stuff, just send me a couple of blank tapes and I'll tape them like over 15 songs for free!!!!

C: What's the ideals you're trying to get across to the listener through your music?
J: LIFE SUCKS.

C: Future plans for BoC?
J: Play lots of shows, make another CD, that's what we're focused on right now…

C: Any final comments?
J: Thanks for the interview Jim!!! If anyone is interested in receiving a copy of the demos, or the album, just send me as many blank tapes as you want, and one IRC (if outside of Canada), and I will gladly tape them for you no problem!!! Thanks again, and stay brutal!!!!

Write: BLOOD OF CHRIST
c/o Jeff Longo
27 Century Place
London, ON
Canada N6H 4W9
e-mail: bloodofchrist@mailexcite.com

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