COMBICHRIST - An interview with Andy LaPlegua 

by David Lees

As their Evolution tour kicks off in Europe I got a chance to talk to Combichrist front man Andy LaPlegua about touring, controversy, side projects and video games.

How would you say the tour's going so far?

Great, it's only the third show on this specific trip, I mean there's been hundreds before but specifically on this trip it's the third show tonight, the first two shows went really well and I'm excited to be doing this one and I'm sure we're going to have a lot of fun tonight.

With the schedule you have it must sometimes feel like you're on a constant tour.

Yeah, well, but it's also...the thing is when you get to a certain point and you've been touring for a while you kinda get tired of being on the road but every single day when you actually get on-stage it's worth it. It's just the off-stage part, the whole day of routines, there is not exactly very interesting things to do and you don't really get to see the cities a lot, you see mostly the inside of the venue-

We're interrupted here by a beer delivery from tour manager Jan.

You said with the Making Monsters album that you wrote a lot of that on the road rather than in a studio and it brought something different to the album. Are you doing that again, have you been writing on this tour?

I have, but not for Combichrist really. I've been writing a lot but I'm writing...I have no idea what's going to happen with it and don't know when it'll come out but I've just been writing for a solo album which is more or less an acoustic thing and it's a lot of fun and very different to work on. There's no electronics it's just acoustic and vocals basically so it's been a lot of fun. If I'm ever going to be able to write another Combichrist album again I probably will have to write a lot of it on tour anyway. I don't think I have too much of a choice in the matter, you know. Unless I can finally take a solid break and just focus in the studio but we'll see whether that happens.

What's the solo project, what kind of style is it?

There's no name, I don't really have any name on it, it's probably just going to be under my name or something, it's just a mix of...I don't know...it's kind of folky but at the same time it's more like acoustic guitar bar music, almost.

There's been a lot of controversy about the use of misogynistic and racist imagery in the industrial scene since Adversary's video about you and Nachtmahr at Kinetik. I know you've addressed this subject over and over, but I was wondering if this controversy has caused you to rethink anything or has had an influence on the direction of Combichrist at all.

In one way it makes me want to do it more. But...just because I don't feel like I have to justify anything because it's like, you don't have to justify yourself if you're making a movie, why should you justify yourself if you're making an album? And it's a character, that's it. But at the same time there are other bands that are doing things that I think are completely ridiculous, I think it's ridiculous what they're doing and I think it's not even provocative and it's definitely not characters it's just doing it because...it's like kids do these things when they first start because they're kids, they don't know better. They want to provoke and they want to be...but some older artists should know better and they're provoking with things that are not provocative. It's just ridiculous. I never did anything to provoke, ever. I never wanted to do anything to provoke. I always did it with a smile and it was just always more like a joke than to provoke and obviously I've never been anything like the character behind Combichrist.

Every now and then the only thing that I think about is, you see people in the scene that might take what you're saying and what you're writing and take it seriously and you kind of readdress the thoughts to it and go “Should I tell them that I'm not serious about this?” (laughs) but at the same time, I've got other things to do than to tell people how to translate things into their own head. It's kind of like people blaming video games for things and you go “It's not the video game, it's this person would have done something regardless” because that's just how their psyche is. These people who do something horrible, they will blame it on something else. KMFDM got blamed for things for Columbine and they never had any lyrics saying “You should go to school and shoot a lot of kids”. Just because they listened to KMFDM doesn't mean it's KMFDM's fault that they go and do these things. People have to think for themselves. I just get provoked when people, like, think that...for example somebody stated that I was racist. Which is really funny, it's like “Based on what?” Oh, based on that you had a rebel flag shirt on. OK, I live in Atlanta, in Georgia. It's about 70% African American. If I were racist, first of all I probably wouldn't move to Atlanta. Second of all most of my friends there are African Americans. My studio complex, it's only hip-hop artists and I work with a lot of them including like, Ludacris and artists like that are in my building. The rebel flag was the Georgian state flag until 2001. It's just people are ignorant and they don't know what they're talking about and it just provokes me a little bit when people say...it doesn't provoke me that they state anything about me, it provokes me that they're ignorant enough to not know their history lesson when they're trying to be politically correct. At least know what you're talking about before you try to state something as political.

Do you feel that that kind of provocation element, that horror fantasy element is an integral part of industrial music and if so what do you do when it becomes passe and it stops shocking people?

Nothing shocks people. It's already passe. Everything's passe. Like I said, I never did it to shock people, I did it for entertainment. I like horror movies, I like 70's exploitation movies, I like grindhouse movies, I like these things as entertainment and nothing to do with my personal life or anything like that. I obviously don't behave like any of that but that's my inspiration, you know, that kind of what we've been doing, until lately, and it's not because I got shit for it it's just because I've done it, time to do something different.

But within the industrial scene it's been passe since before Combichrist started. It's been passe since the mid-90's. Skinny Puppy did it, NIN did it, everybody did it. Klinik, Laether Strip, everybody all had S&M songs, this is like 80's you know. Carlos Peron was all about gay sadomasochistic stuff and it's like, you know, everything's been done in the scene so it's not about being innovative any more it's about doing what's right for yourself and what you like to do and I think people try too hard to be something or do something. Just do what you're good at, you know, just be what you are and do what you are and write about things you want, not for provoking, not for the style of it but because you like to do it.

You're going to be doing an American tour with Icon of Coil in September. What inspired you to tour again as you said last year Icon of Coil was dead and it was only the odd one-off show you'd do?

It was. It was. It was SO dead. Then we headed off to do Australia. I'd been there already three times before that with Combichrist and I was talking to the guys and I was like “Hey guys, we should do this, you guys would really enjoy it because it's a lot of fun” and we decided to do the tour just for that trip and we had so much fun together, like, the chemistry was just right for everything and we had such a good balance between the three of us and on stage and everything, so we decided to write another album, we decided to do some more touring. When that album's going to be done, that's another question. We're working on it (laughs). We really are, we're really trying to get it, but it would have to be right, it's not going to be an album we would do just to do an album. After this long it'd have to be right, you know.

You're also involved in the new Devil May Cry game, on the soundtrack to that. I was just wondering how deep your involvement on that is, is it just licensing a few Combichrist songs or do you have any more input on it?

We're doing a very big part of it. There's a couple of other artists as well involved, that are amazing artists, but I've done a lot of new material for the game and also they have licensed a lot of other material from Combichrist as well so this is definitely a huge involvement in the game and I can't wait to see the game, it's going to be absolutely amazing. I've been going through all the raw material and stuff as I've been working on it and it's just absolutely amazing. It's been a crazy, crazy experience being able to work on such a game too. The only things I've done in the past is just like work on stuff that's kinda already done and to be able to be somehow a part of the creative process was really amazing.

Are you much of a gamer yourself?

When I have time. (laughs) I kinda got stuck with a couple of games and that's all I ever play. Gears of War and Halo are the only two things I always play because I get stuck on them. I don't have much time to play so when I do play it takes so long for me to get into other games since I've been playing these so much now. But yeah I love playing games.

I was wondering if you thought your support slot with Rammstein last year had opened up opportunities like these for you and if so do you have anything else coming up that's a bit different or unusual?

Nothing planned as for now, but the Rammstein tour definitely changed a lot for us. Not necessarily...I mean obviously we had openings here and there, stuff that opened up for us and attention that we didn't have before which is obviously an amazing opportunity. But I think the most important thing for us was that we got to play for an audience that we'd never played for before but without making any compromises on the band or on the style or what songs we were playing, we were still being 100% Combichrist and still able to play for something completely different. That was the best of the whole opportunity I think, that we could get to a different, bigger audience without compromising anything that had to do with the band.

Finally do you have any message for your UK fans?

Without you guys we're nothing so we appreciate every single show, you coming out, it's always good to see everybody out and the more we tour the more familiar faces we see every time we play so I'm looking forward to this one and I'm looking forward to the next time again, and hopefully the next time again and we'll see how many times we get to do it before we have to put it on the shelf (laughs)

Thanks very much for talking to us.

My pleasure.