One of the big finds - if not THE big find - from my trip to Bangkok last year was Macaroni. Indisputable OGs in the world of South East Asian death metal, Macaroni have been around since the early 90's. With their latest album A Gift For Corpse, they offer a singular and distinctive take on the genre, a true sign of veteran status. Since I've been dying to know more about these guys, I e-mailed some questions to the band, which guitarist Supoth Sakaekhao was kind enough to answer.
Hi everyone, we are Macaroni band. I, Supoth Sakaekhao (guitar), will represent our band: Anan Kanlapalee (guitar, vocals); Sayan Suwannameta (drums); Anake Kanlapalee (Bass). Actually we don't like to eat any noodles much, we prefer rice along with Thai food.
DoC: I know many people have already asked you this question, but I still have to ask: Why is the name of your band Macaroni? Also, please give me a recipe for the perfect Thai-style death metal Macaroni, including ingredients and directions.
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| Macaroni at Pain of Death, 1994 |
We grew up in the peak time of Heavy Metal, Speed Metal, Death Metal music. But in the early days of the band, we played old British hard rock such as UFO, Deep Purple, Judas Priest etc. And of course, we were interested in trying to play in a heavier genre. We liked to play Metallica's old albums, Slayer, Sepultura etc. until we started to play death metal; we decided that we should play this, since it suited us.
About the underground metal scene in Thailand at that time, it was not big. It was just beginning. There were some local metal bands that played death metal; just a few bands. Other bands played other kinds of metal, but not death metal.
Cremation surprised people at the time; that was the first pure death metal full length album in Thai among a few bands that played a mix of death, thrash and other kinds of metal.
I'm not sure that we had overseas fans as we were never promoted outside of Thailand and at the time there was no internet like today.
And nowadays Cremation is accepted as one of the classic death metal albums of Thailand.
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| Macaroni in 1996 |
Yes, we are more comfortable writing in Thai. We can write what we feel to every single word. Honestly we don't have enough English skills to write lyrics, ha ha. But I think we can still communicate the feeling for death metal songs.
If we have a chance or some one wants to give us the lyrics in English, it may happen that we play our own songs with English lyrics. Cool.
This is also the question that we are always asked, ha ha ha. Our first EP Hot Like Hell was released in 1994, two years later Cremation came out in 1996, four years after that 13th was released in 2000, and twelve years later came A Gift For Corpse in 2012. After we released the second album 13th in 2000, we just had a few local gigs to support the album. And there were many new bands that were born in the 2000's era and the new faces didn't know us widely as before. But the main reason that made us quit the metal social scene was that we had our own business to do, we can't be metal musicians as a career in Thailand. So Macaroni disappeared. Although we didn't [get together] as a band, we were still in touch as old friends and said that one day we would be back.
Around 2010, we had more life experience that can manage our time, we had more money that is very very important to do the things done, and we decided that we should do the new album without pressure, no rush, just keeping in the same way we had done before. And we started writing the songs. Finally our third album was released in 2012.
All lyrics of this album were written by Anan Kanlapalee (guitar, vocals). The themes in this album mainly describe about death, suffering, wrathful, evil, and some song is about drugs, some is politics. Every bad things in the world happen by human hands, only one thing that can stop human...... DEATH.
DoC: A Gift For Corpse is a very interesting and unique death metal album, and one of my top albums of 2012. What were your goals when you began writing it? How does the finished album compare with your initial vision?
Before we started writing the songs, we internally talked about the direction. We kept in the style of old school death metal with a little bit of a modern sound. We were very serious about the sound. It should be clear, not a mess. This album took a very long time to do, about two years until we finished; as mention above, we had no deadline, no rush, so we had more time to develop our songs. Some songs were changed many times, recorded again and again. To compare between the initial versions with the finished versions, some songs were almost completely different, some were made better in development. We would not release anything until we were satisfied.
In fact, our first 2 albums (tape cassette) had been distributed by a small label distributor and the first EP (tape cassette) had been distributed by a part of EMI (Thailand) [whoops, my bad - schooled DoC ed]. Well yes, the third album has been self-released. After our reunion, we insist on doing everything by ourselves including production and marketing as we have more experience and a higher budget. After we announced to our fans and released the album, we were very surprised that our fans still welcome us; that made us very happy. We sell our CDs (also T-shirts) on our Facebook fanpage and also distribute to our friends' metal shops. Regarding online sites, we will also consider this when we are ready.
And it's definitely thanks to technology that production is cheaper and the internet allows our fans to be closer.
We are going to re-release the second album (13th) in CD format as we just re-released the first album (Cremation) last year. Now we have some gigs to play and after that we may plan for the new album, and again... no rush, that may take another decade, ha ha.
Macaroni on Facebook
