Taking the name 'Combichrist' from his old hardcore punk fanzine, and today maintaining passion for guitar music (not to mention a knack for memorable monikers) with psychobilly side project Scandinavian Cock, Andy LaPlegua has always been an anomaly in the industrial arena. Increasingly, Combichrist are now becoming an anomalous mainstay of the mainstream metal press, as tours with Rammstein, collaborations with the likes of Bleeding Through and the addition of live guitars endear them to a wider audience away from the industrial underground. As LaPlegua tells SinZine though, he's not about to forget his roots, and is even reuniting Icon of Coil early next year.
This year you've released the Throat Full of Glass EP, as well as touring extensively. What have been some of the highlights?
Umm.. highlights…there are so many highlights that the only highlight that comes to mind was when there was none anymore, when you just got home after all this touring. Sometimes you just truly, truly enjoy what happened on tour the most when you come back home after all this touring and you get to sit down and actually process everything.
Just being on tour and just doing what we're doing or what we have been doing. This year has been the highlight of the most recent history of Combichrist for sure, it's been something magical within the band and just onstage and everything. It's been a good run.
You seem ready & willing to play anywhere - just in London you've recently played Wembley, the Electric Ballroom, Electrowerkz and Koko - hugely different venues. Many bands baulk at the tiny clubs when they've been on larger stages, but not you...
The first show we ever did in London was at the Electric Ballroom many, many years ago. After we did Wembley we were like it would be cool to play the first place we ever played here and just do something more intimate, just where we started kind of thing.
Every now and then it's cool to do stuff like this, but you soon realise it's taking a lot out of you to do stuff like this, because you have to cut down on your production, you have to do this, you have to do that and we have a pretty big crew at this point, sometimes it causes more problems than it causes anything else, but it was definitely a lot of fun doing it.
A lot of the people running that place have been good friends of mine since we were there first time around. It was good to just see everybody and see that it's still going the way it was going back then too.
You used to write you own 'Zine, and were involved in your local scene - how did this affect your music and attitude going forward?
The basic idea of it is what makes everything, I've always done this with a passion for what I'm doing, I've never done this for any other reason. The only reason why I was able to do it for a living is because I did it so much. I had to choose - should I do this part time or should I do this all the time. We didn't change anything, we never changed anything.
I honestly don't know, there are definitely people who would say we did get more commercial, but we never did it on purpose to be more commercial. In fact a lot of the stuff we're doing now is way harder musically than it was when we started up.
"You changed so much", but there never was a big change because every release was different, every release had something different to it, it amazes me that people are still surprised when we make a little change on the next album because we have done since the beginning.
I think that the biggest trap somebody can do is if they stick to the one song. Somebody has a club hit and they'll stick to that one sound and try to copy that song over and over again and do it on every album and finally they realise that it's not working anymore so they try to change things around and then suddenly they have this big change in their sound and everybody will be complaining.
I just always did exactly what I wanted to do and not what people expected me to do and maybe that's the reason why we were able to continue, touring all the time and having a growing fan base - people know that the integrity is there regardless of what we're doing, regardless of how much we change, the integrity is there. We're doing what we want to do.
KOBARU.PL
Listening to the Combichrist albums there's a noticeable progression in style, from the straighter dancefloor tracks of Joy of Gunz through to the big songs and choruses of Making Monsters…
When I did the first Combichrist album it was hardly influenced by anything, I just wanted to do something completely different, it was very experimental for me. But the more I write, the more I do with Combichrist, more of my past comes up and influences me, and a lot more of the things I used to do and used to like. It kind of comes back, and it comes back naturally to me, and as it comes up I kind of just keep adding it to the music.
I think that's why they kind of have that natural progression, because it just came up piece by piece from the things that I didn't allow myself to do in one way to do, it kind of comes back and it feels right to do it.
Behind the anger, there's a real tongue in cheek feel to a lot of your music - it always sounds like you're biting back a smile. Tell me more...
I don't know what it is but there's a thing in my life, where the happier I am as a person the more aggressive I like the music, which is a really bizarre thing, but that's just how it is. If I'm in a really bad mood I'm not going to feel sorry for myself and put on depressing music, I just try and snap out of it. If I'm in a really good mood I'm going to put on… I don't know why but aggression makes me happy, it's a strange thing to say but it does, there's something about the power of aggression that just makes me happy and I guess when something is very aggressive I guess it does put a smile to my face.
It's almost as if you are kicking back at the music business, by doing what you want to do the way you want to do it and then finding success like that.
It's definitely something to do with that too. I mean I approached a lot of people and a lot of labels, a lot of booking agents or promoters or magazines or anything else. I approached a lot of people in the beginning and they were basically very rude really, not being friendly about it or nothing. Same thing I was playing with the other people, other bands and everybody thought they knew so much better than me what to do, and we never got anywhere with it. So that's why I finally went like you know what I'm just going to do everything myself.
So that's why I started up doing all the writing, doing all the production, all the recording, doing everything, to the point where I did all the artwork, all the promotion; to the point where I did all the booking myself, the management myself and it was a really good feeling to be able to kind of flip off everybody, and go I did this myself, you didn't believe in me.
I just continued doing what I wanted to do, and here I am, and now you show peoples true colours, it's like a lot of the same people are now approaching me, and be like "we'd love to work with you, one day, we'd love to do this". You know, I did all the work, there's really no free ride on this, you had your chance to work with me. There's a lot of satisfaction in being completely independent, not only as an artist and musician, but also building my career with it at the same time.
GILI SHANI
You know that you did everything on your own, so you are able to stand by what you've done and all the decisions you have made.
Exactly.
What's next for you? More Combichrist, a new project or are we going to see more of Scandy or Panzer AG?
We'll see, I do have a rock and roll/ punk rock band called Scandinavian Cock which is the one band that I am playing a lot with right now. We don't do many shows but we do a lot of rehearsals and a lot of writing. Its completely different from Combichrist because we are five people, we all put everything into it, we show up a couple of times a week and we go into a rehearsal room and play rock and roll.
Are you going to progress that more, possibly going to start touring at some point and hopefully bring it to the UK?
Whenever it feels right we definitely will. I want to do it the right way, I don't want to take any short cuts. I could try to announce it through the Combichrist fan base and try to do more of a short cut to get an instant audience to see if it would work out, but I want to do it right. I want to do it for the music and not for the success of it, so whenever that time comes.
Scandy, Panzer and Icon of Coil and all those things are more or less on ice for me, if not done. I do shows every now and then if the time is right and only if it fits in, but production wise and the ideas for it is more or less on ice, there are other things in my life now that are more important. I got other things to do, that's all, not that I don't have time for it.
I'm also doing a lot of Combichrist stuff still, I'm working in the studio right now. I'm literally in the studio right now! I'm working on a video game, the soundtrack for a video game as Combichrist and I'm doing some more soundtracks for some movies coming up.
What video game are you doing the soundtrack for?
Devil May Cry
That's a huge series...
Yeah, that's definitely a lot of fun to be working with that.
How are you finding it?
It's very interesting and it's a lot of fun because; I'm used to basing things on my own creations, my own moods, my own fantasy and my own characters and now I'm kind of setting a tune to somebody else's character and somebody else's story line. It definitely makes things different, and since it's a video game I'll do everything it takes to make it feel right for the game and not for the band, so there is a lot of stuff that in there that I would never have used for Combichrist but for a game it just makes perfect sense.
Its been announced that Icon of Coil are headlining Sheffield's Resistanz festival next April - how does it feel to play with Sebastian & Christian again?
It's always amazing to see those guys, we do play maybe one, two shows a year every now and then, but that's the only time I ever see them. It's always a special occasion getting back together and it makes the show that much better and more fun to play too. We're still really tight; we do stay in touch but all three of us are really busy with our own things and we just never have time to catch up except for these shows, so it's always a great time.
GILI SHANI
I know you did meet & greet tickets on the US tour, so what's it like meeting the fans?
It was really cool. We've done this on a couple of tours and the main reason that we did it in the first place was we used to be, how can I put it, a very social band. We'd always go to the after parties, we'd always hang out with our friends and the fans, and friends that are fans and fans that are friends.
The busier we got the harder it was to actually get anything in there because, you know, you set up and you do press all day and then you do the show and it's just get ready and get into the bus and get to the next place, to the point where we felt we were loosing a little bit of touch with the fans on a personal level.
Joey our drummer actually came up with the idea of doing this, and we thought it was a great idea to try it out and it became quite successful in a way that we had a lot of fun meeting people, hanging out with people, seeing people before the show. Meeting a lot of people we wouldn't ever of met if we were going to the parties and stuff like this.
Hopefully we got to give something back to the fans that are more keen to get something extra than the most regular fans, like we did the passes, we did the shirts, the posters, we did some extra stuff. That was quite fun.
Finally - anything else you'd like to say?
Not really, I appreciate that people have the interest in the band. If anything I'd just like to tell the fans we are doing this…still doing this because you guys allow us to and we will never forget that. Its a big honour for us to have such a wonderful fan base, that's the only reason we can still do this.
Thanks again for talking to us.
Icon of Coil will be headlining the Resistanz festival in Sheffield, on Sunday April 8th, 2012.
Visit www.combichrist.com
Scroll down to see the "Throat full of Glass" video (uncensored version)
