MPTY: Hey guys! Greetings from Romania and merry Christmas, happy
Hanukkah and all that stuff. Having fun with the holidays? :)

Rentokill:Hey, hello back! Well, honestly we weren’t too busy with celebrating Christmas and that stuff, but we were happy to have a few days off to concentrate on writing new songs and recording them in our practice room. I was on holiday over one weekend, and now everybody is back with new energy to get the new material ready.

Tell us a bit about yourselves. How long have you been
playing?
How many albums have you put out?

Considering the time where Rentokill has been working seriously, this band consists in this form for five years now, and besides a few demos we put out originally, we have released two albums, „Back to Convenience“ in 2004 and „AntiChorus“, which we recorded in 2006, and which finally came out in 2007.
We always considered this band to be very politically oriented, which of course influeces our songs and lyrics, but also the ways we try to live our lifes. But i guess that’s quite a normal thing for many punkrock/hardcore bands. We see ourselves as a band that plays live as much as possible, being part of a wide punkrock community, not only in Austria.
I would say we feel at home all over Europe.

Tell us your opinion about the Austrian scene. Are there lots
of good bands out there? How about the audience?

Since Austria is a rather small country, it was and IS really interesting to see what’s going on in the scene, actually. After Graz and Linz had established quite strong communities around ten years ago, many bands from other areas could take advantage of their experiences, it seemed to me. Somehow you could see that it’s possible to book your tours yourself, put out records regularly, and work together instead of against each other. We really feel happy to be part of that scene, as we’re happy to be part of the local band’s collective „Neustadtpunk.net“. i’d suggest you visit their website to check out all the bands there. Also, check our „RedLightsFlash“, being number one punkrock/hc export from this country. Try to get hold of „TheCretins“, „The Plague Mass“, HDNX, it’s really worth it!

You’ve played with bands such as The Unseen, Strike
Anywhere, Good Riddance, etc. What shows did you enjoy most?

I loved the show with Against Me! In the EKH in 2005, because they were really nice people, and we had a really great time together. The show with Good Riddance was very good, of course, there was a big crowd, and we did quite a good show, as i remember. Recently. Nothing can to pour show with The Unseen in Berlin last November. We were taken very good care of by the Mutti’s Booking Crew, went along well with the other Bands, but the audience was the best! Althoug we were supposed to be the first band of the evening, the room was full already, and there was a circle pit in the crowd starting during the first song! We had never experienced something like that, it was amazing!

Tell us a bit about your lyrics. What are your usual topics?
What do you like singing about?

Especially on „AntiChorus“, many of the topics had to do with modern mass media, it’s influence on the society and our opinions. As you can see, Austria’s biggest newspaper – the „Kronen Zeitung“ – reaches more than half of this country’s population. Yet being a very conservative, almost right-wing oriented source of information, you can see how parts of this country’s mentality is influenced by it.
Naturally, we had issues about environmental policies on the last album, a song about the war in Chechnia, the exploitation of this planet as well as the animals on it, vegan lifestyle and so on. Quite average for a political punkrock band i would say.

Your latest release was the Antichorus LP in 2006, right?
Anything planned for the near future?

It was recorded in 2006, yes, but it came out in 2007. Right now, we’re recording new songs, 3 of them might go onto a split release with another band, and the others are more of an outlook for how the next album could look like. We are in desperate need of a new member, since our former bass player left us at the end of last year due to personal reasons. However, once those first new recordings are finished we will concentrate on more new material, to be able to put out our 3rd full-lenght as soon as possible :)

How about a tour? Thinking about making a quick stop in
Romania
?

We know that we have never made it to your country so far, unfortunately. We are setting up touring plans for he rest of this year right now, and it would be really nice to set something up for Romania as well. We will see. If you have any advice where to go, whom to ask for booking us one show or two, it would be really appreciated!

Tell us about your influences. What bands influenced your
Sound or lyrics?

In the beginning, i have been influenced by bands like Bad Religion, Minor Threat or Fugazi mainly, i would say. I liked Black Flag a lot, but – according to the lyrics – i was always impressed by politically oriented stuff, and less the „i have a problem with this society...“ stuff. We all like the bands already mentioned above, and there’s many good new bands coming up, from Europe as well as from north america. Especially with the opportunities of the WorldWideWeb you can access so much new music, and from touring alone, we know that there’s so many great bands out there that need to be heard.

What do you think about the internet? Is it useful for
promoting punk-rock and the DIY scene?

In the end, i think that the internet has brought more profits to today’s punkrockers than it did harm. The music industry keeps complaining that downloads and CD sharing ruins the artists, and it’s hard to draw a line sometimes. But since everybody can access new music in a second today, it’s a rather fair game i would say.
On the other hand, major music industry seems to be afraid of not gaining as much money as it did 5 years ago, and you can see them pushing major acts on major music festivals more than ever before. I think it comes to the point where everybody should accknowledge the internet as an open source for information, also according to punkrock music and the DIY scene. It’s no help if people suddenly prefer sitting at home watching youtube crap to going out to a small punkrock show. But as i said, in the end it has brought more positive than negative effects, unless you want to be a major pop music star, hitting the charts, making music to make money. Who wants that, anyway?

That’s about it for now guys. You have the last word. We
Hope to see you around here for a show sometime. :)

Last words for everyone :)
Well, first of all, thank you for the interview, really good to know people like you are out there working on their own DIY stuff! We’ll stay a band deeply rooted to the DIY ethics, and so you can be sure that we’ll be on the road in Romania one day, too.
Work together for change in this fucked up world, there’s nothing to loose anyway!
Wish you all the best, hope to see you soon

thanks to Jack and Rentokill

all photos (C)Rentokill

contact:rentokill.com

Interview by:Alex