Ok, tell us your name and what you do in the band and how long you have been at it?  Also why was the band name-who chose that? 

Sup Frank! I’m Dan Herrera, I play guitar and I’m one of the founding members in this band.

The name of the band was made by our previous singer Rob Newson (Ex-Embryonic Depravity) and myself. Unfathomable Ruination means an obscure/complicated destruction, a symbolism that reflects quite well on the music that we make, which is relentless and cataclysmic.

Your debut album on Sevared Records last year Misshapen Congenital Entropy, is outstanding brutal death metal!!  Are you happy with the results and how it came out?  How has the reaction been to it?

Thanks man! The buzz has been amazing worldwide, we worked hard on this release and Stefano Morabito at 16^th Cellar studio did an amazing job. All the reviews have been great as well as all the compliments we’ve had from the listeners and other bands in the scene

What went into creating the album cover, I believe the Wormed singer did it, what went into the album name and the songs?  Any other cover songs planned? The Death cover was vicious, of “Vacant Planets”!

Yes, Phlegeton did our cover for the album as well as for our last EP.  We have worked really well with him as he understands our vision on the art we want.

The cover itself is a deformed/morbid plant with distorted human faces all around. Representing the growth of malice and undecipherable factors, which attack humanity in a psychological form- as all the lyrics in our album are based around this concept.

Glad you like our cover of “Vacant Planets”, for me especially, this was a big achievement as it’s because of Chuck that I play this style of music. It was a great honor getting Erik (Death’s manager and lawyer of the Schuldiner Family) to facilitate the license to cover this song and put it in this release officially. Barrett from Sevared made all this happen for us too!

No covers planned for now, we used to cover Pierced from Within from Suffocation on gigs but we stopped doing this because we have more of our own songs to promote on stage now.

Are you writing a follow-up album now and how does it compare to your debut?  I really enjoyed the bass bomb drops on the album, they were well placed and added an extra dose of brutality-will that continue on your next album? 

At the moment we are not writing anything yet, we have a new guitarist now so we’re still trying to adapt our playing with him so the material we have so far sounds tighter live.

The bass bomb drops were something that we wanted to do from the beginning; we are real fans of the ones from Vomit the Soul’s last album and since we were recording at the same place that this release got produced, we knew that these were going to sound great and so they did.

We don’t know if we will have these in our next album though but I have a few ideas to implement in time in regards to sonic punishment!

It seems that over the years, I am seeing more brutal bands coming out of England-what is this attributed to?  I notice a strong American influence as well in a lot of the bands, do you agree with this assessment?

Yea I agree but there’s also the European influence of grind as well, it depends I guess but we can certainly be one of the examples of bands that are highly inspired by American Death Metal (Suffocation, Death, Origin, Disgorge,  Dying Fetus, Cannibal Corpse, Immolation, Vital Remains etc…)

The UK is seeing a lot of great BDM these days, I think it’s because when you’re a musician, you want to push your limits in your playing and DM is a good platform to put your skills into practice unlike any other genre in Metal which could be more limited.

What are some of your influences?  When playing live how do you react if you look at the crowd and not many people are there?  How do you get the crowd more involved at your live shows?

Haha, I think I speak on behalf from everyone in the band that we never really care how many people there are at gigs, we always put on the same intense show even when the turn outs are not great. We care more about in playing a tight set really, for me that’s what makes me happy the most. Of course when you are playing tight and there’s a good crowd like we had in Neurotic Deathfest, it’s a lot better! My influences on guitar are: Chuck Schuldiner, Jeff Loomis, Vogg, Diego Sanchez, Ron Kachnic, Dave Depasquale, Dave Suzuki, Mads Haarløv, Moyses Kolesne, Dimebag, and many more.

Although they are no longer around, I really loved Annotations of an Autopsy, hailing from England?  Did you know them?  What I’m getting at is this was a band that had a killer death metal sound, what prompted them to try an emulate that horrid metalcore sound of an atrocious ep in 2011?  Do you think bands that experiment too much risk losing their fan base and can you promise the fans out there that you won’t go the route that AOAA did?  

Yes, I am aware of that band, in my opinion they always pushed for that core sound from the beginning so it wasn’t surprising of how they progressed in their sound into something more trendy or whatever. Bands like these are indifferent to me as I rather spend my time in supporting the bands I like.  I don’t think experimentation is the word to talk about bands like these, as there are amazing acts like Ulcerate, Wormed, Defeated Sanity  which take experimentation of sounds to a new level, as they transform different elements of music in the vein of Death Metal which is the right way to do it.

Another honourable mention would be the latest Cattle Decapitation album, I didn’t get it when I first heard it but after seeing them perform these songs live onstage, my listening perspective changed suddenly. Their vocalist had a lot of balls in doing those kind of vocals in that album and now I can see all the art behind it, especially in their video ‘Kingdom of Tyrants’ which is now one of my top favorite music videos ever. I strongly recommend checking this out!

Not sure if you are a drinker, but when playing live do you withhold drinking some beers until you’re finished playing live or do you get loaded before you go on? What is the most difficult part of performing live?

Before I used to have a shot of any spirit and maybe 1 or 2 beers before going on stage but now I only drink water or energy drinks as I find that I perform better like this. When we’re off the stage that’s when I begin with the carnage, as you might have seen in our latest tour video with our bros in Pyrexia and Beheaded– ‘Never Drunk, Always Professional’ is the name of the video hahaha.

Any tours planned or shows this summer you would like to mention?

Oh yes we got two tours been organized at the moment for later in the year. One of them which we recently announced is Bloodletting the UK with Iniquity and Katalepsy in December and the other one is yet to confirm! We also got 4 more fests confirmed which are ‘Bloodstock Open Air’ in Derbyshire (Just played),  ‘Carnage Deathfeast’ in Switzerland, ‘Hammer Smashed Fest’ in London and ‘Northern Darkness’ in Newcastle.’

What do you do in year spare non death metal time? Do you get inspired to write such brutal music due to where you live, or the environment you grew up in?  Are your family supportive of you being in a death metal band?

I have started to hit the weights quite seriously recently and I’m happy with my progress so this gives me a good brake of music as I train a lot these days. I don’t really get inspired by surroundings; I get inspired by listening to a lot of extreme music from different styles, I’ve been listening to a lot of Latin Jazz at the moment as well as really old filthy Death Metal. Writing to me has to come naturally not by force as this is when I enjoy making music the most! And yea now that UR are getting quite a good buzz my family have seen how serious I am with music these days, however they still don’t understand the growls and the blast beats, but that’s something that boring people will never understand haha ;)

Any final thoughts or questions?  

Yep I recommend checking out these great UK acts if you haven’t already:

Burial, Cerebral Bore, Iniquitous Savagery, Scordatura, Crepitation, Neuroma, Kataleptic, Merciless Terror, Spawned from Hate, Juggern0rt, Engorgement, Cryptophile, Bloodshot Dawn, Black Skies Burn, Anoxide, Regurgitate Life, Oblivionized, Eye of Solitude, Laceration, Flayed Disciple, Merciless Precision , Scatorgy, Cythraul, Trifixion, Kastrated, Necro Ritual, Twitch of the Death Nerve,  Acrania, Acatalepsy, Desecration, Basement Torture Killings, Dyscarnate, Ataud, Necroriser, Ancient Ascendant, Foul Body Autopsy, Resurrection, Zombified, Living with Disfigurement, Amputated, Cancerous Womb.

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