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New Year's Day with Josh Croydon (Lymphocytic)

For those who doesn’t have a clue who Josh Croydon is…can you shortly introduce yourself to our readership?

Hi I’m Josh, I’ve been actively making music for about 7 years now, slowly progressing from Death Metal into more extreme genres such as Goregrind/noise.

I know (and by now I am not alone) that you are active in two musical outlets, one being the goregrind/gorenoise one-man project Lymphocytic and the other being Devoured Flesh. Let’s talk about Lymphocytic first…what was the reason, or an urge, to form the Lymphocytic in a first place? Any influences you might share with us?

I formed Lymphocytic mainly as a project for a one off release as I wanted to experiment with the production of Gorenoise. Influences for the project mainly come from Mortician, Last Days of Humanity, Butcher M.D. among a few others.

I know you’ve started as a duo (with Christian on vocals), releasing “Severed from Every Limb” and “Sadistic Dismemberment”, but later Lymphocytic became one-man band only…What has happened? Any disagreement between you and Christian? Or something completely different?

No not at all, Me and Christian are good friends. Sometime in 2018 we lost contact on social media, during this time I released a few splits and Severed From Every Limb. The later using drum tracks that Christian had sent me before we lost contact, so technically he does feature on Rancid Sounds. Just recently we have got back in contact and are starting to work on a new release together.

It’s obvious you’re a fan of horror movies (I love those movie trailers’ samples), do you base your songwriting on the movies you’re taking the samples from, or you just use whatever interesting quote or passage catch your attention?

All the samples which I add into the song are done during the last stage before mastering. Most often, I will search through horror movie trailers on YouTube to find a good quote. Other times I will go through my movie collection which I know have some gruesome deaths which I can sample into the song. From there the samples inspire the name of the track, with a mixture describing the way the person dies, to the name of the film. The first release (Severed From Every Limb) had more less serious song titles such as Virgin Basement Dwellers and Suffocated by your Waifu Pillow.

You’ve mentioned your latest material, “Agricultural Gore”..it’s concept was inspired by a local suicide spot. Can you tell us more about it and what inspiration you’ve drew from it?

During the summer of 2018, myself and my friend were at a local beauty spot called Hells Mouth, which is known for people committing suicide by jumping off the cliff tops. Whilst we were having a drink at a cafe there, I was looking at the local farms in the distance thinking “I wonder if there are any dead bodies buried in the hedges”. Further inspiration came from the CxBxFxIxHxFxLxFxRxE split with Badass Farmer which features a decayed farmyard on the front cover.

This whole idea seemed like a natural choice to me as could pull ideas from a lot of places, I guess that is one of the positives about living in a rural part of Britain.

From the material you’ve already released as Lymphocytic, which release you’d pick as your favourite and why?

Agricultural Gore is my favourite release that have recorded so far, mainly due to the fact that it feels like a step up from Rancid Sound of Ripping Flesh, as the drums have more variety with fills and beats. If I could have improved one thing with Rancid Sound, it would definitely have to be the drum tracks repetitious sound. However, Severed From Every Limb comes a close second as that was the first time myself and Christian had properly collaborated on a release.

And talking about releases…anything new in the works? When we can get some new fix for our gore-worn ears? Any other plans in the near future? Playing live, new merch…anything?

Currently myself and Christian are planning on a split release around 2020. We haven’t got a set date for the release, we’re just recording when we can then piecing it all together when we’ve done the tracks. Apart from that, I’m planning on following up Agricultural Gore with another release based on the same themes, and a nautical themed release after that. However at the moment it’s just ideas which I need to work more on.

I do have a Iron Maiden cover album that is partly recorded, you may have noticed the inclusion of Be Quick or Be Dead on Rancid Sound. That was a last minute decision that I had to include that track as a bonus song. My initial plan is to cover a song from each Iron Maiden album, however at the moment, there has been a few technical problems with guitars, so I will most probably have to rerecord some the tracks again.

As for playing live, I would love to do a few gigs, but at the moment it is finding the time and way to perform the songs. I have had a few offers in the past, but due to other circumstances they haven’t been viable. Cornwall isn’t the best place for performing metal, granted there are a few black and death metal bands based here that play local gigs now and again, but there isn’t much of a metal (especially Goregrind/Noise) scene in general in Cornwall.

I do have merchandise ideas, but again it is finding the time to put it all together. Perhaps a limited run of shirts will be available in the future, depending if the interest is there.

Roast Dead

According to the information available, you are – or were – active in other bands/projects as well. Let’s talk about Roast Dead first…what can you tell us about this band? I see you joined the band in 2016, have you been instrumental in any way in shaping/writing the material for the debut album “Fit For Human Consumption” as well? What would you see as the main difference from Lymphocytic?

I was brought in as a bassist when me and my friend Stu were studying music production together at university. We used the opportunity to record ‘Fit for Human Consumption’. With the low tuning, we used a 13 string bass, which was sampled and I created the subbass tracks from, Stu eventually recorded the main bass parts later on in the production. However I did create the album cover, using a image of a kitchen I had found online, to which I added extra things which are a reference to the songs, e.g. Chum bucket and 4 barrel shotgun from Phantasm.

And we’re not done yet, because we need to discus yet another band/project of yours…damn, I sound like a guy from some teleshopping video 🙂 but nevertheless, I’ve found you are active in Machine Kill…so, why another project? Do you feel somewhat limited/restrained in your creative work with other projects/bands we’ve been discussing?

Machine Kill was the first music project that I started, it provided me a platform to start building my music on. After a while the creativity for it dried up and I moved onto Devoured Flesh. When I listen back to the Machine Kill stuff, I think that it should’ve possibly been left unreleased due to how primitive the production and everything else is. However, at the time I thought it was good enough to release the tracks. Perhaps with the current way that I record music and the knowledge I have gained over the past 7 years, the tracks would actually sound decent rather than an poor excuse for music.

Seeing that your last material with this project was released in 2016, does it mean Machine Kill is put on ice?

Although Metallum states that the project is still active, the project is long gone now and I’m mainly focusing on Devoured Flesh and Lymphocytic for the future.

And last, so far, project to mention is Devoured Flesh and by the titles of the material released I’d guess it’s devoted to various horror movies, am I right?

Devoured Flesh was originally inspired by the Video Nasties, with each song based entirely on one separate film. I had an idea to record 72 tracks at one point which would be based on each film. However I never got around to doing that, but it is still an idea for the future.

Faces of Death was one of the main yearly featured releases which I first started doing James of Squirm. The title cane from the infamous video nasty film of the same name, the idea was to have a load of different bands featuring on the split every year, as a celebration of horror, gore and brutal music. Although by Faces of Death 3, my creativity had started to dry (That’s why there is only one new track for Devoured Flesh and not three) and not long after the project would go on hold, I still look back at them splits as one of my favourite releases for that project.

I can’t help but ask…where do you find the time to devote to composing, recording and distributing your musick? I bet it’s not a small task to do all this stuff almost on your own…

Not by any means, back when I did Machine Kill and Devoured Flesh, I was studying at University so I had loads of free time to write and record music. These days I have hardly any, with working pretty much full time and raising a family, so releasing music is more of ‘as and when’ I can. I do have some tracks recorded for projects which have no name, a rough demo of about 25 mins of space inspired metal/soundscapes and bits and pieces of demos and covers that I’ve recorded and forgot about. However, releasing music means much more to me at the moment.

2020 …I have asked about the plans for Roast Dead, but what about other projects…what plans do you have for them…and do you have any new project in works?

I hope to release another Faces of Death split at some point with just Squirm. But that has been in discussion for about a year, and I haven’t really had time to devote to that idea yet. As for Lymphocytic, I hope to do a follow up to Agricultural Gore, a nautical inspired release and the Maiden tribute album at some point in the next few years. I also plan to release a live split with Willy and perhaps a debut gig, but it is all ideas at the moment, once I find the time, I will try and make them come to fruition.

Many thanks for your time, Josh! All the best in 2020!!!

https://lymphocytic.bandcamp.com/

https://devouredflesh.bandcamp.com/

Rudolf Schütz
Rudolf Schütz
Kreatívny mozog skrývajúci sa za webmi Indokult.com a RubberAxeZine.com, horlivý connoisseur kultúrnych pokladov, s neochvejnou vášňou pre grindhouse filmografiu, filmové poklady z minulosti a ázijské filmy a hudbu.

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