We’ve been in tune with the good people of Everlasting Spew Records for some time now, even frequently referring to our friend Tito Vespasiani as a Death Metal guru given the constant stream of quality recommendations and high level knowledge for the more extreme side of metal music. Through hard work and dedication to the music, they’ve amassed what is easily among the best upcoming Extreme Metal labels in the world today.
One look through their Bandcamp and Official Website is all it takes to understand that you’ve struck gold. Everlasting Spews’ ability to find new and exciting talent from the international underground is second to none. Located in the Italian city of Brescia, they’ve managed to cover a lot of ground! That being the case, we’ve come here today to pick their brains of the owner / mastermind Giorgio and further understand what makes a label such as this tick within the modern day of metal music. Come take a journey with us as we peel back the curtains and peek into the darkness behind Everlasting Spew Records!
Hello there!
Hi guys! Thanks for the invite!
No problem at all. Let’s start from the beginning… How did you first get into extreme metal?
Well, I was raised up in a very small village pretty far from bigger cities or places where I could have met metalheads. This is not to act like a sort of Death Metal Cinderella *laughs*. Just meant I got in touch with extreme metal a lil bit late if compared to the average age I’m hearing around when this kind of questions comes up… I think I was 16 probably. I found out about this shop called “Magic Bus” in Brescia who was carrying a lot of heavy metal and most of all DEATH METAL. It was love at first sight of course! I started with the classics like Entombed, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Carcass, etc till I had the chance to witness a concert of a local Brutal Death Metal band called Agonia. Talking with the guys, especially with their singer Carlo and his girlfriend at that time Raffaella, I found out there were an infinite underground world made of tape trading, fanzines, underground labels and distros… So, basically those are the 2 main stages of me getting into extreme metal.
How did Everlasting Spew first come to be?
To tell the truth, Everlasting Spew is the second incarnation of me trying to manage a record label. In fact, from something around ’98/99 till ’06 I ran The Spew Records. At first, all alone and then with my friend Giovanni. We were very young and, most of all, we didn’t have enough money to seriously produce or manage a decent record label or mail-order. Anyway, we released Leng Tch’e first 2 albums, Sadochismo from Cock And Ball Torture, and several split EPs with bands like CSSO, Birdflesh, Splatterhouse, Machetazo… So, even if we were basically a lil bit more than kids, we had our own musical satisfactions.
Everything ended because the “scene”, and probably also me personally, were going through a difficult period. The energy was lacking and the “scene” was far from being satisfying. People were not buying anymore nor going to concerts so I thought why not stop it all?
After a 10 year hiatus, I dunno what happened. I probably missed this whole circus and here we are again with Everlasting Spew (which is sort of The Spew 2.0) improved on all the aspects – financially, technically, with a new, AMAZING team (Simone, Tito and Laura) and with a lot more experience to put on the table.
Is there a further story behind the name?
As Everlasting Spew is a sort of The Spew 2.0, it’s better starting with that one before. Don’t remember exactly if it was ‘97 or ‘98 that I was starting my own distro. At that time, we were writing each other (among the others) with Timo Ketola, the renowned underground artist who at that time was also the curator behind the mag Dauthus. While talking about the matter, he came up with the name and also the first version of what became the logo… a loooong and disgusting spew… I liked the idea of releases as something that needed to be expelled violently and so that’s how the name came out!
When it was time to start again with a new label in 2016, The Spew was not an option as, in the meanwhile, the label didn’t cease to exist but became, after several passages, a sub-label of another Italian label (Punishment 18). I wanted something that could have reminded people of the old one but that was, at the same time, a completely new name… I had this Immolation song stuck in my head for ages (Into Everlasting Fire) so why not Everlasting Spew?
How would you define the mission of Everlasting Spew?
The most important thing in what we’re doing is that all we release is music we like and that we would consider must-buy stuff, even if released by someone else – even if the “scene” at the moment is so crowded.
At the beginning, we wanted to have a very wide spectrum in the extreme metal genres. You can probably notice this in the first 6/7 releases we made. We had death metal, grind, doom, black, sludge… we dig all those genres but to be sincere, at the moment, being a small identity, we cannot afford to have such a wide range and we narrowed down the field only to Death Metal (being old school or modern and fast or slow, it doesn’t matter) and Grindcore… which are the genres in which we probably are more confident, the genres we dig more and that we can probably promote better among our customers. It’s not a big change actually, maybe someone would have not even recognized this if I didn’t talk about that.
Returning to the focus of the question, talking about the mission is difficult. Never really thought seriously about that but it could probably be resumed into the will to become one of the landmark labels for extreme music. Maybe we wont succeed but we are working with that focus in mind.
We want people to recognize the general quality in what we do even if they cannot be 100% into all the releases. Maybe they prefer a particular style or genre but we wanna transmit the idea of being trustworthy, hard workers, of being genuine and totally devoted to it.
I’d say you’re doing a fine job here. What’s your proudest moment with this label so far?
Running a label or even managing the whole promotion side of the things like Tito does can be a rollercoaster of emotions! You can be hyper euphoric for a few things that go in the proper way, one behind the other, and then you walk suddenly on a shit that ruins everything… Generally speaking, I can tell you that I have been very happy and proud when both Galvanizer and Assumption asked me if I was still interested in working with them. Those are two bands I got in touch with as soon as I started the label but, at that time, they were going to work with other labels. Having them writing me back after many months and choosing our label in the middle of other competitors, well, that was pure joy! Also, managing to close a deal with a band, beating the competition of a MUCH more bigger label is fun actually. A LOT of fun.
Are there any dream bands or potential targets you want to work with?
Well, my dream bands are probably already at a certain level that dreaming of having them with us would mean to reduce their standard and I would never ever wish ‘em something like this… I mean, what could I offer to a band like Suffocation or Horrendous or Cephalic Carnage or Pig Destroyer that they don’t already have from their current labels?
There are potential targets of course, we are following a few bands very closely and we have recently closed deals with bands that are still to be announced and its better not telling names before everything is public! We are from Italy, you know. We are superstitious!
Fair enough! You guys put out some amazing vinyl packages. How do you go about getting those beautiful colors?
Really, thanks for the cool words! Actually, I think there’s plenty of labels doing better than us in terms of color variations. We just try to give a mix that could fit good with the whole palette of the vinyl, from the sleeve to the insert… Maybe we were particularly lucky and we nailed them. We have the new vinyl from Maze Of Sothoth coming in few days and we will see if you’d like this one too. Also, Assumption and Convocation later this year among those already announced.
Very cool. Beyond vinyl, what are your plans moving forward? Which new releases should we be getting ready for?
We started 2018 with great responses for the Convocation, Galvanizer and Hellish God releases. We have just released Assumption’s debut album which is a joint venture with Sentient Ruin Laboratories, psychedelic Doom Death from Italy gathering a LOT of great feedback!
We also released Quantum Hierarchy’s debut EP, Death Metal in the vein of early Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel, Incantation and Myrkskog. We will give this EP away for free for all the orders above 15,00€ on the mail-order. We made the same with the Engulf EP and we had amazing results so we decided to repeat it with QH too.
Talking about Engulf, Hal has just finished crafting a second EP which will be released before the summer. If you enjoyed the first EP, you’ll definitely love this one!
Coming soon is also Valgrind’s new album “Blackest Horizon” and Construct Of Lethe’s “Exiler”. Those are two different faces of Death Metal. The first being much more linked to the 90s and somehow to some Heavy Metal scenarios or atmospheres, the second being instead more avant-gardish, more dissonant, and darker.
There’s more in the works of course. We have announced the Birdflesh comeback after 10 years and Serocs comeback with a new and improved lineup. There’s still another 4 releases to be announced so you just have to follow us on our daily updated Facebook page!
We are also trying to put all our catalogue on the major digital platforms and not only on Bandcamp. We will do it for all the new releases but we will slowly make available also the past ones too. We are also working on some freebies to give away with orders. I hope I can show you something soon!
Links: Facebook // Instagram // Twitter // Official Website // Bandcamp
