Dmytro Kumar: Stop listening to "Vasya The Skinhead"

The idea to write about Lviv hardcore band Ratbite has grown into a big interview with death metal collective 1914 frontman Dmytro Kumar. So, the text will be about 1914, the Toster itself, the collection of records and a bunch of other interesting things.

— I was asked to talk with you about Ratbite, but I’d like to ask about other projects. I would be a wonder if I didn’t do it! How did you start playing? Тостер (Toaster) was created by guys who wanted to play punk?

— It all worked a little bit in another way. You’re friends and you grow up together, because Тостер guys are my neighbours: bass-player lived downstairs and guitarist is from the closer house. They’re my childhood friends. Well, in short, it happened not the way it happens now: "Ok, we need a guitarist. You can’t? Goodbye! Next one please.".

They didn’t like punk very much but I did and wanted to play it. And as we created all music together, it was definitely shit, because nobody wanted and didn’t have a skill to do normal punk. So, we far-fetched and played something unclear. Also there were neither the internet, nor the music press, nothing at all. There were only tapes and I was living in the actual vacuum. Metal magazines only began to appear on the horizon. We didn’t know a lot about punk at those far times.

Suddenly, I forked over the money, which I had been collecting for a half of a year, for Sex Pistols bio, purchasing it by the workarounds. And then in the farest 1999 I got the English Craig O'Hara’s "The Philosophy of Punk. More Than Noise". And you’re reading it and starting to think "Fuck… as for me, it’s dope. Why to live so?’. This DIY-philosophy of 1980’s punk in the United States and you’re trying to imagine it in Ukraine of 1999’s format and realize "Fuck, that’s nutz stuff. It won’t work the same here". Years after you’re starting to understand that it works so here as well

— You’re lucky to be in Lviv, because a lot of people think that it was easier here.

— I think that it was the same here. You had a permanent worried feeling and had to look for some Pioneers’ palace for repetitions or some basements where we rehearsed. First we played in the cellar, then in the Palace of Culture. Also you ought to look for some apparate with mumbo-jumbo. I plugged my instrument into the tape recorder, then into soviet amplifier MK-103, visited some factories looking for some hardware.

— Well, that’s the musician’s point of view, but I’m talking about the listener's point of view. Maybe it was easier for them?

— There always have been more foreign music, cassettes, vinyls and radio recordings in Lviv. Such concept called "music on the bones" was spread here, it appeared during the soviet times. This means that people exchanged their handmade vinyls, which were recorded on the x-ray film. People took the x-rays and recorded music on them with the special machines, which printed the discs, but bones stayed on them, too.
I held some of such samples in my hands, it’s cool and strange. People keep them in private collections now. It’s interesting to take some of them from one of my friends and to listen to it on good equipment.

— Won’t you find anything alike anywhere on the planet, as on a post soviet?

— You won’t, because all more or less advanced countries had music as a great industry, which permanently sold. These were The Beatles, Elvis, Pink Floyd, Sabbath, that is the music which brought money. The huge market. But we had Лев Лещенко (Lev Leschenko) and vocal and instrument ensemble Пісняри (Pisniary) vinyls. Artists of the socialistic camp, who passed censorship, were sold on vinyls, too.

— So, as you now showing your vinyls, what do you prefer to collect more?

— In general, it’s noise, industrial, martial etc.

— Do you have some pearls in your collection?

— Few John Zorn discs, I have original Miles Davis from the USA, Virgin’s Sex Pistols from that times, first Danzig press of 1988, a very rare thing. I have a little of rarities. But I can’t say that I’m such a nerd to chase for vinyl of 500 euros. The most important thing for me is to own my favourite albums, the music I love. This means it's not so necessary to have a first press, good sounding reissue is good enough. Although I have some rarities.

— Do you order or buy some in 1914 tours?

— Both variants. In principle, I bought not that many vinyls, unless I really wanted some. I mostly exchange with people from all over the world. We make this on Discogs. I communicate with people, check their wishlists, what they have, what they need and the opposite. So, I write "Hello, let’s exchange!". Or I find a lot of interesting things for chicken feed when I travel around Europe with 1914 concerts. When you see cool vinyl for €4, how not to buy it?

— There are only Melodiia records in Lviv at such price.

— In general our vinyl pricing is closer to that of Papua New Guinea. Somebody takes vinyl which costs $5 or $10 and sells it for ₴1000 (~$35.45). Some thugs do such a sideway – they go to a flea market near the monument of the first printer Fedorov (second hand book market in Lviv - ed.) and take, for example, Jethro Tull for ₴150 (~$5.3) there, wash it in the vacuum sinks, put in a neat bag, put a price tag of ₴700 (~$25) and sell in their store. Halychyna business, it’s normal. And we have such situation not only here in Lviv, but in Kyiv also. I was in a few vinyl shops and it is the same situation there. You’re entering discogs or a label, let us say, Nuclear Blast, and you see this vinyl for $17, but the same one costs $40 in Kyiv, despite the fact that I will receive a discount coupon and delivery from the label in addition. This means that for the same money, for example, $100 you can buy in Kyiv not even three vinyls, but at Napalm or Nuclear you can afford about 5-6 and they will be delivered to you for free.

But the main goal of buying the vinyl is, first of all, to get an aesthetic and music pleasure, and the second is to support favourite band.

— Returning to Ratbite. How many releases have you had?

— Really we had only two LPs and two splits. One of them was with the American Ratbite and the second is with Zhytomyr Romps. This was the young band back then which played not bad hardcore. We played a couple of times with them, became friends and decided to issue a split. These were the last tracks that we recorded: 2014, the war has started and there were two songs only about this – my view of these events. One track was named "I Don’t Want To Be A Dead Hero" and was dedicated to the Russian, who are interfering here.

— Can it be found on Bandcamp?

— I’ve deleted all the bandcams of Lustry Chizhevskoho, Ratbite, Johnny B Gut and the rest of my projects. Everything is only on my computer now.

— How did you get in touch with American Ratbite?

— I registered a Facebook-page for our Ratbite and after half of a year I got the message with the proposal to unite our page with theirs, or something like this. Then I see that they are Ratbite, too. When I was registering the band, there was only one such and now it turns out that there is the other one. I found out that they are from Seattle, seem to play punk rock. I wrote them "hi, guys, we are from Ukraine and we are Ratbite, too". We have been joking and communicating for a year, simpy sharing some demos, asking each other what’s up. They were watching our concerts and liked them, we did the same with theirs. Then I said: let’s record a split, that’s a funny idea Ratbite with Ratbite. We’ve done it and issued on two labels – Britain and American. Britain variant was released on vinyls, American one – on CDs.

So, you asked, where you can listen to it: I have plans to reissue all Ratbite tracks on one CD. This will be a real LP about an hour of a timeline. Because long time ago, before the 1914, I had opened my own little label – 1914 Records. I started it in 2010 and released Johnny B Gut, first Ratbite album and a few products from other bands on it.

— What about Stalag 328?

— This one I will reissue on it, too.

— Ratbite ended in 2014 and in parallel with it there also was…?

— Ratbite came to the end in 2015 and in parallel with it there was also Johny B Gut, Stalag 328. Periodically in summer periods Тостер emerged. 1914 started its activity in 2014 and it all dragged on around it. But the moment has come that you better choose only one thing to evolve. It was enough tearing apart between them: here you play punk rock, there is something else and also you want martial industrial, and one more great thing to do is to perform unplugged.

— Solo acoustic? Just in Lviv?

— Yep, I had this fairy tale loco, as fucking Rosenbaum. And I decided to stop all of this and to take one band only seriously, to invest completely in it, so we have 1914 as such. When all the effort goes into one project and you ready to gnaw for it, to write, to think – it pays you off.

— How do you think, on what level 1914 is for now? If we take a look at European and Ukrainian nonfestival performances.

— As our experience in Kyiv shows, there was almostly total sold out on our album presentation at Monterey Live Stage. There were up to 500 people. We didn’t make presentations in Europe, but even there this number of people comes sometimes. Although we are, in fact, just beginning to invade Europe. Napalm really helps us with it so as booking-agency. We have our own agent, who arranges the concerts for us. I get letters like "Guys, %name% festival wants you, the conditions are… Deal?". And you look at the name of a festival while your saliva is flowing and you're like "Fuck, yes! You’re still asking?". Here it is Brutal Assault, the conditions are… agree? Then you sit, thinking that you had a dream to perform on Brutal. All of this together is very decisive and, as a result, 2020 is already quite densely planned.

Therefore, we have full festival summer and tour spring. This means that booking really works. And, in fact, we have only just begun. Nobody needs the band from an unknown country, which gradually crept into, so to speak, the market. And in Ukraine we are used to the fact that there is not much competition, because in each niche there are only two or three bands. Do you want to listen to good doom? Great, about 1.5 groups play doom. Do you want to listen to good punk rock? You won’t even collect three bands at one punk festival. But if we take the same Poland or Czech, the situation in each city is 10 times better than in whole Ukraine.

I won’t get tired of telling the story of how I came to a friend in Wroclaw for the first time with a stack of my projects CDs and I give them to him by turn and say that we want to perform in your city. And he answers: "Well, look, we have nearly 7 potential clubs for you to perform with it here. Those won’t take punk rock. We have 5 more clubs about punk rock". And you’re standing like, stop, that is Wroclaw, where 500 thousand people live, and it already drawn 12 stages where we can play with my bands? And he’s like: "Yes and 3 more stages, where we can shelter your industrial".

— And at the same time, every year 1914 rises higher and higher on the posters of major festivals?

— This is also very pleasing, because the interest in the band is constantly growing, the promoters are becoming more and more interested in the band, and a big label and booking help us with all of that. Promoters, who never worked with us earlier, took us to one of the biggest German festivals and it’s so mainstream. I’ve never thought that the festival of such format could invite us. Why? Because Napalm Records signed us and promoters are sure that they won’t work with some garbage. But I have my own opinion about this. And then the next promoter watches us playing at such great festivals, this means that in general we are okay. And it's a more easy way to get to cool sites. This year should be crucial in terms of team promotion and tours. Simply, we haven’t gone a lot across Europe during 2019.

I think that even such narrow-profile music, like ours, also finds a lot of response among people of different topics. I like it very much at Pitfest in the Netherlands. It was quite significant, because the festival is, in fact, 80% punk, grindcore, hardcore. All that I love. This year there were Wolfbrigade, Discharge etc. But both our performances were full house. And it's very gratifying, because our music is perceived by completely diverse groups. I’d really like that punks and hardcorers come to our concerts. It’s very good when people who listen to doom and death come to us and it could be great if not only blackers could visit our shows. Because blinkered stoned blackers is a black trouble. I want this music very much to be for a wide audience and, as European practice shows, it is.

— Does 1914 have haters?

— Of course, we have YouTube-commentaries, some write me in private messages "what is that shit? you mixed three chords, the world stopped listening this already in 1995 and you lift with that now". But I don’t argue saying that we are freaking innovators. Yes, we play the same music that all played in 1991, 1995, 2001, 2010 and are playing now in 2020 and will play further. I don’t pay attention to such things. I a priori always think that I play shit. My inner critic is constantly sitting in me like a monkey with plates saying "what the fuck? You need it better, you can do better." Here you sit, listening to Agnostic Front, why can't you play like that? Take and write a song like them. And if it doesn't work out, then maybe the music isn't yours. Although, as practice shows, why to write like Agnostics, if our people even swallow "Vasya The Skinhead", which is a great shame.

— Well, these people may grow over it.

— Fuck, nope! 20 years ago I wrote this song and they didn’t grow up yet! This country has internet for 20 years already and they do not grow up! See, adult people, IT-workers still send me their tracklists. They have families, children and they sit and listen to Тостер. Guys, what is wrong with your life? I don’t understand, there is a wagon of music, really. I didn’t manage to listen to albums and they’re with this Тостер.

— I’d say it’s the question of musical education.

— To listen to Тостер in 2020 it’s the question of the intellect, it’s not even about taste.

— When I was at the concerts of 1914 I saw a lot of metalheads and mosh. Does European audience differ from ours?

— How to say, differs or not. Roughly speaking, people are the same everywhere. The main difference is the purchasing power of the public. It’s higher for a few times in Europe. That is ok for them to come to the concert and to spend €50 on a band merch. We sell it quite fruitfully abroad on every gig. But it’s normal in Ukraine to spend ₴700 (~$25) in the bar, to buy whiskey and to come to the concert and ask for the enter discount, because you don’t have enough money. The approach in France or Netherlands is to come and to support the team. They will pay for the entrance, drink beer at the concert and, if they like music, buy merch, sometimes a lot of it.

Well, adult man in Belgium who occasionally got to our concert, came to us and said: "Actually, I'm a lawyer, I don't like metal and I'm here by accident, but what I saw was very impressive; I won’t listen to it, of course, but I want to support you, because you touched on a very cool topic which is very close to us here in Belgium, so I will buy your CD, vinyl and T-shirt". If we compare, for example, Belgium and Ukraine, so they buy 10 times more merch, but at home we have a steeper and more active support, and slam in the hall.

— But there were more events in Belgium during the World War I.

— Yes, of course Ypres, Pashandal, Hill 60. But again, a lot of bloody events took place in Ukraine as well and nobody knows about them. Such as the Carpathian Winter Operation, the losses of which reached almost 2 million people. We have a song about this, but those events are not even taught in schools, although it was here! Lavochne, Zvenin, Slavske, Skole, all passes and so on within all Carpathians. The fifth Galician battle, the so-called Kerensky Offensive, also has happened in Lviv and Frankivsk regions, more than 300 thousands of dead, the Brusyliv breakthrough – one of the largest operations not only in the Great War, but also in the history of mankind, which took place in Volyn, Frankivsk region and up to Chernivtsi in fact, also more than 2 million losses.

— I have such a trait: when I hear some references, I’m starting to explore them. For example, because of Mastodon I read Moby Dick, due to Totem Skin I learned about Fuller and because of 1914 the subject of World War I attracted my interest and then world history in general did. Have you noticed anything similar in others?

— Constantly! In general, this is one of the main motivators for me to engage in the band. For example, two men came to me in France and they say: "Listen, Although we live here, in the historical territory, where the movement during the World War I took place, we never really dived into it, except times of a school history. And here we heard about you, listened to the album and sat down to read more, after what we’ve toured all our region along the planned route. We visited the monuments and the cemeteries". This purpose only is worth gathering a band! People come to the concerts and say, "Now I can distinguish the Mosin rifle and the Mauser visually". Hell yeah, hurray.

There is already a stack of postcards and guidebooks, which people present to us, we collect them. For example in Kyiv fans came and said: "We were in a museum in Europe and saw a flyer of 1914-1918, so the wish to buy this present for you appeared". And it happens permanently. People present books, music, some digged things from WWI.

— Interestingly, after watching documentaries and reading a few articles on Wikipedia, your music is perceived totally differently, I feel it deeper.

— In general, we play *blackened death*, once I read the article about us in a Google translation, so that is how our style sounds. But music of 1914 is incomplete if it goes without short stories of events. And when we have such technical possibilities, I’m trying to strengthen our show with video series, which visually convey the hardcore of this war: footage of torn corpses, miles of trenches, broken tanks, soldiers smiling 5 minutes before the attack and then their mutilated bodies, it also works its own. You come and just listen to the song of "j-j-j, gaw-gaw-gaw" for 5 minutes, but actually everything has a bigger message. That’s why I’m trying to describe what the song is about. For example the moment when 300 thousand of people died and almost 30 thousand of them were drowned in the swamp, died of exhaustion and were bitten by rats because they were weak, wounded and unable to get out of the funnels. Wounded in the stomach, you can't crawl anymore – you just settle at the bottom of the funnel and choke with the swamp, because you weren't pulled out, you can't shout, because there is a shootout, and you slowly choke with the swamp. It was the short description of "Paschenhell" track, which we sang with Dave Ingram. And when you understand this, the whole story, these deaths, you perceive the track a little differently. In principle, that is still the "j-j-j" but with a slightly greater semantic load.

— Now there is the question about label. You’re on Napalm Records from the second album. So, I’m interested if the label dictates you somehow what you should sound like or gives you any hints?

— Frankly saying, I did not have such experience that somebody dictates me what to do. But there were such tries with Тостер to tell us how and what we should sing, it’s understandable that we said "get lost". Such things didn’t happen with 1914 and it seems to me that such thing is acceptable for the person, who is your album producer. In this case only some adjustments are already possible, but on condition that you are a star of the world scale. If you’re Rihanna or Billie Eilish then you’ll be dictated to take this or that piece out, because some phrases may be perceived as something wrong, may be understood as some kind of harassment, or you may be accused of something later. But when you sing about dirt-guts-shit, basically, you a priori offend everyone just by the fact you sing about it.

— But at the same time 1914 honors it all, doesn’t it?

— Surely it is not war music for the war. 1914 is a pure 100% anti-military manifest. Except the history represence and the tribute to those events and victims, we want to show that the war is dirt. We don’t sing it as something good. I admire it in the context of history, memoirs, collecting artifacts, studying the behavioral patterns of homo-sapiens, which I still can not understand and put up in my head. There is no message here that the war is cool, every song says it’s dirt, death and swamp.

1914 in social networks:

https://x1914x.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/1914band
https://soundcloud.com/1914band
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIi5hWkPUWkWUXRN7KDKQiA
https://www.instagram.com/1914_official 

Translation by Oleksandr Poison Nechay