Interview with black death metal band from Portugal - REPUGNATOR.
Recenze/review - REPUGNATOR - Foul Transfixation (2025):
Ave REPUGNATOR! Hello to the Portuguese underground. I hope all is well with you. It should be, you have the first great EP of your career this year. I have to admit, it literally drove me up the wall. It's dark, it's energetic, it cuts with a knife edge. It's very telling that you've done a great job and a great deal of talent too. How do you feel about the new record? Could you please introduce your band?
Hails! Thank you so much for having us. First of all, I'd like to thank you for these questions, they're great, coming from someone who really cares and gets what we're about. Now to answer your question, we are Repugnator, a putrescent black death band from Porto, Portugal consisting of Scourge Degragator on vocals, Sulfuric Wraith on guitar, Cryptic Smog on bass and Poisonous Fumes on drums. We're really proud of our release; we believe it truly demonstrates our power. We poured our soul into this release, and it's sick to see that so many people enjoyed it. One of our goals was to make something malignant, spastic, and unique, and I think we achieved it.
"Foul Transfixation" has all the attributes of good black death metal. For me personally, it is a record that I love to come back to. How was it created? How did REPUGNATOR compose the new material?
Sulfuric Wraith: The band started with me wanting to just really create a barbaric and primitive sounding black/death band with all the right influences, but one that could, in a way, stick out and not just be a worship band. So, I eventually just called up the other members, having already played before with two of them in two different bands, and we just made it happen. One aspect that really made us grind and do what we had to do to make this work was to book a gig as soon as possible, so we’d have a deadline to actually focus and make music. It was a great opportunity since the first gig was with Morbific from Finland, which is a band we truly respect. In terms of artistic process, I usually just composed guitar riffs and song structures at home, and then, layer by layer, we added the other elements. Poisonous Fumes and I start out just jamming the song structures, constantly changing them and rearranging the riffs, really trying to perfect the composition of the song. Then we just include the other members who come up with the lyrics and the bass part. The lyrical aspect is made by our vocalist Scourge Degradator, and we all pitch in with our opinion on the lyrics.
I have to confirm that I like the production of the EP. It still makes me turn up the volume on the hi-fi tower. Who made you a sound that is harsh, raw and dark and animalistic at the same time. How did you work with him and why him? What studio did you record in and how did everything go?
Glad you asked that, Foul Transfixation was produced by André Fernandes at his studio called Tanoaria (Instagram: tanoaria_music.complex). We recorded the EP in his studio as a live take, with a few overdubs to ensure the sound was as organic as possible and not too choppy. We chose him because we had heard great things about his professional methods and his studio. Since he was really intrigued by our project and actually eager to produce it, we had to go with him, and honestly, it was the perfect choice.
The album has a dark cover. I imagine, I perceive, the image as a once desecrated church. Who is the author? How did you choose the motif and how does it relate to the music on the album?
The author of our cover is Maria Madalena (ig: nosfewatuwu), who is an amazing artist and our obvious first choice for our album cover. The art is basically a visual representation of the "Foul Transfixation" song. We depict an alternative hellish dimension of degradation and rot in our lyrics and, in a way, try to connect this alternative reality to our current society. Everything in our lyrics is just pure morbid fantasy that is supposed to be perceived as a metaphor for the filth that is humankind and, in a way, a punishment for all its wrongdoings.
I've been wandering the underworld for over thirty years and I go to Portugal to get music for sure. I think we have similar moods and tastes when it comes to metal. I like your bands a lot and I follow your scene very closely. Maybe I'm a bit jealous, we only have a few death metal bands in our country that are worth it. What do you explain that extreme metal is so successful in your country? How do you perceive your scene, fans, labels?
It’s funny that you say that because we don’t really look at our scene that way. We feel that our extreme metal scene has a few great bands, but it really lacks originality and the primitive and raw feeling we truly appreciate in extreme metal. Honestly, the metal crowd sometimes lacks passion and emotion at most gigs. I wouldn't say that extreme metal thrives here in Portugal, and we’d go as far as to say that the punk crowd is far more enthusiastic and fun to play to, but there are always exceptions.
The population of Portugal is ten million according to wikipedia. We, the Czechs, are the same number. But in your country eighty percent of the population is Christian. We're almost all atheists here. Does the church interfere in your lives? What about music? Have you ever had problems with concerts, etc.? What's your relationship to your faith?
Well, even though Portugal is a religious country, it's not conservative. We don't feel it being shoved down our throats, even though it has been getting more conservative with the uprising of the fascist scum throughout all Europe... it's 100% there culturally since we all grew up with a religious upbringing and even most patrimony has a religious connotation. But, even though we despise Christianity and catholicism (and any other religion) it doesn't really affect our daily lives or our concerts. However we hate oppression and for us, religion is just another form of oppression that obviously fuels our hate towards mankind.
You play old school influenced death/black metal. Nowadays a band can't really avoid comparisons, but I'm curious to know how the idea of starting REPUGNATOR actually came about, who was and is your role model and where do you want to take your band? Are you tempted by big festivals abroad, for example, are you willing to go on tour with a more famous pack?
Repugnator’s story was already answered above and obviously this urge to create the band came from the die hard mentality we have towards this type of music. Even though we have our identity, we obviously have many bands we worship and channel through our music, to name a few that we love: Necrovore, Order From Chaos, Profanatica, Sarcófago, Vulcano, Sex Messiah, Bestial Warlust, Blasphemy, Mortuary Drape, Von, Rottrevore, Revenge, Impetigo, Repulsion, Autopsy, Incantation etc. We want to go everywhere and play with many different bands that align with our sound. We’ll play at a big festival if it has great bands and is not riddled with poser bullshit, to keep it simple.
When I started my site eight years ago, I had a vision of trying to support bands that I thought weren't as visible. Let the world know about them. I think I've been pretty successful at that, at least judging by the response. How do you approach promotion? Do you leave it up to the label or do you send out CDs yourself for various reviews? I buy albums that I really enjoy, for example. How are you? Are you also a fan who likes to support your colleagues often? Do you go to concerts? Do you party?
We are all huge music fanatics, each one of us with different projects and different obsessions but we all definitely share this passion and we all love buying physical format and buying merch. We do a little bit of both when it comes to promotion, we send out merch and cds ourselves and we also trust the labels to handle their side of the promotion, whether it be Noxious Ruin or Gods ov War.
We believe it is mandatory for an underground music fan to support their scene, even if sometimes the music doesn't align perfectly with their music taste like for exemple in Portugal the underground scene is kind of a melting pot of multiple different genres. Even us, sometimes play with bands that have nothing to do with black or death metal but if we respect the spirit of it, we’ll definitely play. We need to keep it alive, we need to go to gigs, rage out and buy other band’s stuff. In terms of partying, we obviously love to party but we never let it affect our end goal with our band. I feel like sometimes bands loose track of their passion with booze and drugs and we personally like to stay focused.
On the one hand, a band starting out today has a lot of opportunities to make their presence known, but on the other hand, there are a huge number of bands and fans get lost in them. A lot of people are just downloading mp3s from the internet and spitting venomous spittle on Facebook instead of going to a gig. How does modern technology affect you as a REPUGNATOR? What do you think about downloading music, google metal, streaming music etc.?
Honestly there are way more chances for exposure with the internet nowadays and obviously we take advantage of it but what matters for us is the human interactions, performing our lives rituals, selling stuff in person, having passionate discussions about music with other maniacs. For us, the scene is saturated and the music is getting gradually more soulless in general. Obviously the scene is 100% alive for now and amazing bands come out every year but online platforms are turning even the most underground music a bit like fast food, everyone knows everything but nobody has a passion for it. It seems as if every band is disposable cause there isn’t any effort in finding music and there are too many bands and not that many fans. For these reasons, underground magazines are not nearly as supported as they used to be. I feel like technology can sometimes be the enemy of underground music with stuff like AI. Underground music should be a celebration of the human feeling, from listening to underground demos with flaws and mistakes to amateur artworks, it’s all raw and organic and we must accept for what it is. If I listen to a band like necrovore, what makes it beautiful for me is the raw emotion in every bit of it. For us it is an insult to the genre having bands like Deicide and Pestilence just using a fucking machine to do their art. The artwork is as important as the music and the artists have an equal part in the scene as the musicians. If we take the raw visual aesthetic away from death and black metal I won’t be interested in the genre anymore.
I like to ask musicians what death/black metal means to them. How would they define it, is it more of a philosophy and lifestyle for them or "just" relaxation. What does it mean to you? How do you perceive and experience it?
For me this sub sub genre brings out the best of metal. The mystical and occult energy of black metal and growling and cavernous feeling of death metal. With this subgenre we try to balance everything from each genre, the continuous momentum of black metal and the spastic energy of death metal. In a way it is just how we can identify our band and channel our love for this music scene and bands who made it in 80s and 90s but it can be way more than that. Repugnator goes beyond what it is categorized, it’s its own lifeform with no shackles and no restraints. We want to use everything we got to be barbaric but also original and for us this small sub genre isn’t more than just a label on our band so people can get grasp of what we’re about.
Finally, a classic but important question. What are REPUGNATOR planning in the coming months? Where can we see you in concert and when will you visit the Czech Republic?
A new release and new gigs in different places, hopefully outside of Portugal. We’d be more than happy to play in Czech Republic and if we get someone to book us that I’ll definitely happen.
Thank you very much for the interview. I wish not only the new album a lot of success and may the ranks of your fans expand as much as possible. I'll be looking forward to seeing you live somewhere and may you do well both musically and on a personal level. I'm gonna go shove "Foul Transfixation" in my head again!
Thank you so much for the interview! It's clear you genuinely understand what we're aiming for with REPUGNATOR. We really appreciate your kind words and we're thrilled to hear that "Foul Transfixation" is still getting under your skin! For anyone that is interested in booking us throughout Europe, please reach out through our email: repugnator.band@gmail.com.
Recenze/review - REPUGNATOR - Foul Transfixation (2025):
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