The tribute of Ravenous Dead

Ravenous Death was born to create an evil and fast death metal band. Their first EP "Ominous Deathcult" was released in 2017 independently. In 2018 they worked on their first full length and "Chapters Of An Evil Transition" was released by Memento Mori in the beginning of 2019. The review of the album can be read hear, but before you do this read what Esteban had to tell about the album.

Please give us a brief introduction of yourself and your bandmates?
Hello Twan!! Well, I’m Esteban Salcedo, drummer, guitarist and songwriter of Ravenous Death. The actual line-up of the band is:

Enrique Fray – Guitars & songwriting
Alejandro Méndez – Bass
Victor Mercado – Vocals
Diego Gómez – Guitar (live)

Mexico, land of jalapeños burgers and mararachies. So what went wrong you got into metal?
Hahaha well I think I like more distorted guitar sounds, heavy and fast drums and growling voices. Since I was a kid I started to listen to Metallica, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, etc… A lot of heavy metal and rock bands. Then when I was a teenager I got more into underground metal, you know, all the god shit… Slayer, Kreator, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Deicide, Entombed, Dismember, Grave, Dark Angel, etc…

Can you remember what the attraction was for you to start listening to metal?
As I said before, those distorted guitars, heavy riffs, fast drums and growling voices just got me into metal. Even some of nu metal bands in the 90’s, after that I knew black metal, thrash metal and death metal. I like almost all sub genres, just the metalcore isn't my thing.

What were the first bands and you still listen to them?
Fucking Slayer for sure!!! Metallica, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin, Slipknot (believe it or not), Dark Angel (my fav thrash metal band ever), Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, early Megadeth, Entombed, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Emperor, Satyricon, Enslaved, Death, and the list is still very long.

How did you expand your metal knowledge that time? Collecting? Trading? Shows? Friends?
Mostly collecting CDs, I got into some bands by a couple of friends. Then I started to go to the shows in my hometown to see local and international bands.

And what decide you to pick an instrument?
I always wanted to play guitar, after that I started to listen to the drums and I fell in love haha. I was 14 when I started to play guitar. At 16 I bought my first drum set and the rest is history. Nowadays I play guitar, drums, bass and do some growls too.

Reading the bio it came clear the band was formed as a side project. So tell us something about the bands you were all in.
Well, at the time I was playing in a couple of black and death metal bands. Xastur and Death’s Forsaken were the two main bands that I used to play with. Then I recorded and play some shows with Remains, Miguel Angeles play in Remains. Today I’m playing in various death, doom and black metal bands along with Enrique Fray.

Why did you start a new band?
Because we wanted to play some furious, fast and obscure death metal and our main bands, at the time, didn't has that style and we didn't wanted to affect those projects.

Wanted to play another style? And if so, why not adapt this style in the other bands?
Because there where other members in the other bands, and we wanted to create a new band between members of those representative bands of our country.

The band name is take from a Vomitory song. This is a favourite song of all or just sounded evil?
Isn´t about the song. It’s because we wanted to pay tribute to this glorious band called Vomitory!! And "The Ravenous Dead" seemed to be a good name for the band, just with a little change in there.

And has it a deeper meaning or just a cool name?
The two things. For us sounds like a really cool name, goes with the band style and at the same time we are telling to the world which band was our main inspiration to create this.

Musically I would describe you as a guttural bone crushing old style. Is this the style you like or just no feeling with nowadays death metal style?
What can I say? This is the death metal we love to play, just like we love some other subgenres that have something to do with old school death metal.

What kind of emotions are you hoping for when fans listen to "Chapters Of An Evil Transition"?
Evilness, aggression, fury, anger, desperation, etc… All the emotions that we felt when we wrote the songs.

Try to explain what non metal people will experience when listening. And what does you elders and priest say?
Hahaha I think some fear and confusion, I don’t know man haha maybe a little disgust. And about my parents, well.. My dad is an old rocker, so he’s ok with metal, actually he likes it. About my mom and my priest, I´m sure they will not like this shit.

Now the word priest has fallen, lyrically it is the opposite. Or not?
Absolutely bro.

Where do you get inspiration from for the lyrics?
Well for this album my inspirations to do the lyrics was kind of hilarious. I was inspired by "The Perfume" by Patrick Süskind, a taste of the TV series "Breaking Bad", some occult shit and part o personal experiences. Is kind of how I feel myself sometimes projected in an album.

The first live show of the band was in Guadalajara. I only know this from Narcos on Netflix. Can you recall that show?
Actually it was pretty cool man. I did not expect so many people, kind of sixty metalheads... Thinking about that the death metal scene in Guadalajara is practically dead.

How did people react?
The reaction was pretty good. They looked kind of shocked about seeing some brutal growls, evil riffing and blast beats most of the time in the songs. So I can say that people were impressed by Ravenous Death.



Already have played other shows?
Yes bro. Not too much because it seem that the organizers do not like to spend a lot of money on the per diems of a band made up of members from several states of the country. So I’m talking about four shows since Ravenous Death was formed.

With local bands or international bands?
Local bands most of the times. There was only one show that we played with this Slovakian band called Beton, here in Guadalajara.

And is it easy for you to play outside of Mexico?
Not really bro. We need to pay for the plane tickets to go outside Mexico and get some dates in several cities for the shows. Is an investment that is hard for us to do it cause we don’t earn a lot of money and the economy in Mexico is not so good. Is very hard to get some promoters that offers you all paid to play some shows out of your country.

Where would you really like to play?
Obviously Europe, wherever they take us. I mean, we would be glad to play in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Poland, Russia, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, etc…
And of course we want to play in South America, USA and Canada too. All over the world man haha.

Of course there must be sleazy backstage stories to share...
Well, there’s always some experiences and stories to tell. But with Ravenous Death I don’t think there is too much to talk about cause we don’t play live too much.

The album is released couple of days ago. How did the recording go? Home recording or studio?
We just recorded the drums in a studio here in Guadalajara. Everything else was home recording in Colima and Mexico State.

What was a real pain to record?
Definitively the drums… Always the drums haha. The songs are really fast and sometimes is kind of exhausting to record a whole album full of blast beats, then we got to find the right sound and equalisation for the drums. Now I remember that recording the vocals was a big trouble too because Miguel wasn’t able to sing by his health struggles. So we ask Victor to did the vocals and he did it in just one day. He did a great job certainly.

Momento Mori is releasing it, so how did you end up with Raúl? Did he helped you or just releasing it?
Raúl help us with all the manufacture of the physical CD, I mean… art cover, layout, print and distribution. We just paid for recording the album.

Happy with the overall outcome of the album?
Yes we’re very happy, obviously you can always do it better, with music, composition and printing, but we want to keep that for the next albums, because we want that in each album that we release we will hear a general improvement. Nowadays it happens to many bands that release their first album and it sounds totally devastating, so much so that the next one is very difficult to overcome the previous result. So we want to take it step by step.

With the album promotion starts. The feedback so far is positive. Assume you are happy with the press feedback?
Yeah for sure man. Always is good to get feedback, even if is bad. We always learn and try to get a better result over and over.

What is the most fun of promoting it for you?
Mmmm I think the bad comments hahaha is always funny to read shit, specially when it comes from some dickhead that never had played any instrument, or if he plays, has a band that really sucks and nobody knows. Well, we focus on the music and promoting it. That’s why we mock about the shitty comments coming from the shitty dudes.

Beside the band you must have a 'normal' live. What do you do daily? Study, work? And what other hobbies/interest do you have?
Well, I’m an architect actually. We have normal jobs, Victor is a doctor, Alejandro is an engineer, Enrique works on the construction and Diego is a tattoo artist and illustrator. Miguel is a sound engineer. About my hobbies, I got some… I love to play football (soccer), CrossFit and drink beer with my friends.

Most likely I forgot to ask an important question so do any self promotion to close this little interview.
We got nothing new on the way… No live shows, but we will have some t-shirts soon, patches, and obviously the CD. You can also listen to the Chapters on Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, YouTube Music, iTunes, Bandcamp and Google Play. So, take a listen people!

Last rites to the readers?
Don’t forget that we are currently working in some other projects. So, please support those other bands, I think they’re pretty good too:
Demonic Manifestation
Avgrund
Macabre Goat
Closure
IOR (In Obscurity Revealed)
Remains
Grotesque Deity
Hail to you all brothers and sisters! Thanks for this interview and sorry about the late Twan!