"The Bulgarian crowd just broke our hearts! With happiness!"

Less than a year ago we did an interview with Benediction's bass player Frank Healy right before the band's first ever show in Sofia, Bulgaria - at the 20 Years Nuclear Blast Festival in November 2007, promoted by Tangra Mega Rock. This performance turned into one of the best ever concerts by the British death metal masters, so here they are again - coming back to Sofia (together with Holy Moses) on October 17, 2008, with a brand-new album - "Killing Music"! Let's talk about it with Frank Healy again...

Vassil Varbanov: Mr. Frank Healy, hello!

Frank Healy: Hello! How are you, mate?

V. V.: Great! Welcome to the world of Bulgarian media again. How are you, man?

F. H.: I'm good! Nice to hear you voice again - you arranged one of our favourite gigs ever!

V. V.: It's been some eight month since that gig. What happened to Benediction during this time?

F. H.: We did that gig, then we did a few more festivals, and then it was like, "Fuck, maybe we'd better write an album!" We realised we've been touring for five years and playing festivals for a year, so it was time to do an album. Everybody started pointing out that it's been seven years - we didn't realise that ourselves! So that's what we did - not long after we did Bulgaria we started writing, and here we are now.

V. V.: Are you completely satisfied with "Killing Music"?

F. H.: Everybody says that this is the best release we've ever done. You know, when you listen to an album and you say, "Fuck, that's the one!" It's the most definitive Benediction album, I would say - that's the one we want to be remembered for.

V. V.: Does this mean there won't be any next Benediction albums?

F. H.: Ha-ha, no, next albums may be better! You know, although we haven't released any CDs in seven years, we had a lot of music, so when we started the "Killing Music" sessions we had about 40 songs. We recorded well over half of them. There's a lot of material, so the next album is basically ready. We're not gonna give you a seven-year break anymore.

V. V.: Tell us more about the title, please. "Killing Music" - is this some sort of irony?

F. H.: You can take it as you wanna take it. If you ask any five of the band members, you'll get a different answer. The idea of the whole is album is that when you see that title, you know what you're gonna be getting - you won't get ballads. It's a statement of intent. This is what you're gonna be getting - killing music. No whimpy ballads, no crap, no solos - just straight in your face music.

V. V.: There are some quite interesting guest appearances on your new album. Why the hell do you have Markus Staiger of Nuclear Blast on it?

F. H.: He-he, he didn't know he was! He just came over to see us, and... You know, when we make a friend, we make a friend of a lifetime. He's as much a part of Benediction as I am, so he came over to see how the album was doing - right then it happened that we were doing the backing vocals, and we said, "You wanna give it a try?", and he was like, "I've never been on an album before..." And he's been running a label for 20 years! So we made him do it. He had no choice - he just was there singing backing vocals, ha-ha! One of the guys from GBH was also there, so Markus met one of his heroes, as he's a big punk rock fan, and they both sing backing vocals on our album. It was a nice feeling and... We collect friends everywhere, we like to keep in touch with them. Take Billy Gould for example - through making friends with you in Bulgaria, we made friends with Billy. Also, we take as friends for life the Bulgarian people, as this was one of the best shows we've ever had - this mad crowd that didn't stop from the beginning to the end... So that's for Markus - he was forced to do it. Otherwise we'd kill him!

V. V.: In which song can we hear Markus' vocals?

F. H.: He's doing the backing vocals on "Seeing Through My Eyes", which is a Broken Bones cover.

V. V.: You mentioned that your set at the 20 Years Nuclear Blast Festival in Sofia was one of your best shows ever. I believe however that this won't be your last visit to Bulgaria, right?

F. H.: No, I'm quite glad we'll be coming back to Sofia on October 17, 2008. Last year we just couldn't believe the reaction we got. Even the footage we got from the show was amazing, so we used it in our new video. The Bulgarian crowd just broke our hearts! With happiness!

Copyright: Tangra Mega Rock