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We were lucky enough to have Gorefest drummer Ed Warby answer a few questions for us regarding their latest album, Rise To Ruin — check out our review here.

MouthForWar.net: Hey there. I hope everything is well in your part of the world. What’s going on in the Gorefest camp?

Ed Warby: Everything is great here! We’re gearing up for our upcoming euro tour, doing some warm-up shows, turning the new songs into live monsters, and enjoying all the positive feedback!

MFW: Just about everyone I know is stoked on the new album — and this is after they siad you couldn’t get any better than La Muerte. Did you make a concerted effort to outdo that comeback album?

EW: At the time of LM we probably couldn’t do any better, but I think Rise To Ruin kicks La Muerte‘s ass in every conceivable way: songwriting, playing, brutality, heaviness, production, vocals, artwork, etc. We didn’t set out to outdo ourselves, but we did have a subconscious desire to make this the ultimate GF album.

MFW: What sort of musical influences had an effect on this Rise to Ruins song writing?

EW: Metal, metal and more metal! Vintage death metal is a big source of inspiration obviously, but also classic rock (although we have learned to obscure those influences better and “metallize” them more if you will) and surprisingly enough, black metal.

MFW: The lyrics take on some serious social/global commentary. Do you all follow the world news heavily when writing songs or do you tend to focus on matters closer to home?

EW: JC [Jan-Chris De Koeijer] is the most politically aware and writes all the lyrics, but we all follow the news, both global and domestic, and not just when writing songs. His lyrics can be applied to both, although some are obviously about certain situations.

MFW: With social commentary in mind, what’s really pissing you off right now?

EW: I can only speak for myself, but our government is really pissing me off right now. They act as if they represent the voters, but every single decision they make at the moment is met with massive disapproval, and they don’t care at all. Case in point: a vast majority of our population wants another referendum on the proposed European constitution, but our goverment feels it’s “not necessary” and so they just go ahead. Truth is, they know many people are against it, so they’re afraid of the outcome. Democracy seems to have become a very shallow notion indeed. But I guess that is not just the case overhere…

MFW: Were there any musical concepts that you wanted to explore more in this album, but didn’t get a chance to try out?

EW: Not really, we always have total freedom to explore whatever we want (too much so, one could argue, haha). Oh yeah, we did want to re-record an Erase song, if you can call that a musical concept, but we ran out of time. Maybe another day!

MFW: You just announced a big European tour with Before The Fall and One Man Army & The Undead Quartet. Are there any other bands that may be popping in that fans should be on the look out for?

EW: The package will be the same for the whole tour, I honestly have no idea if there will be additional bands locally…

MFW: Which cities in particular are you really excited about?

EW: Rome is most exciting to me as Italian movie buff, can’t wait to visit the Profondo Rosso movie store! For the shows I’m most looking forward to the german dates, and spain is always great as well.

MFW: What’s in store for Gorefest in the near future?

EW: Playing lots of shows, giving Rise To Ruin the promotion that we weren’t able to give La Muerte last year. And enjoying ourselves!

MFW: Thanks for taking the time to answer our silly questions. Do you have anything else that you would like to tell your fans?

EW: Thanks for the support and see you guys on the road!