With a new album and an impending immensely busy touring schedule, Mat Maurer of Mortal Sin takes some time out to talk to Mary Boukouvalas about touring, recording, death and Dexter.

Hi Mat. Thanks for taking the time out to talk to aureview. Are you relaxing at the moment or working on some new stuff?

No, I’m working on my other job at the moment.

What’s your other job?

I’m an operations manager for a recruiting company. It’s still in the industry. I’m still getting out for concerts and stuff.

How long is it since the band, as it stands now, have continued to work together, what are some of the things that have helped you all remain in the group, because you’ve stood the test of time really –for over 25 years?

Just the passion. You know the full line up you know there is only me and Andy the original band members but there is the drummer and one of the guitarist that has been with us now nearly six years for that’s longer than any other member I don’t know I feel that we’re fighting for a cause. It’s one of those things where you’re raising the flag. You don’t want to give up on those things. It’s a fun thing to do. We just keep doing it.

What advice would you give new bands to maintain the essential cohesion?

It’s one of those things where it’s the same as any kind of relationship, I suppose. You gotta give and you gotta take. Having five people in a band there is five different thoughts, five different personalities and five different all sorts of things. You’ve got to get on together and it’s always the sort of the situation where you’ve got to deal with what you’ve got to deal with.

You and Andy have been there right from the start and I would say you’ve had quite a large impact and a lasting impact on the thrash genre. What do you think? How do you think you’ve contributed to the actual genre?

In Australia for sure, we were probably one of the first bands, I don’t know if we were the first but one of the first. You know it’s one of those things where the young bands will hopefully look up to us and say Mortal Sin did this and Mortal Sin did that. Hopefully we can be an inspiration to some young kids who want to play thrash music. And the fact that we’ve done so much on the international stage … I guess… it’s like anything – like with Samantha Stosur just winning the tennis in America -that inspired young tennis kids. Hopefully what we do will inspire young musos to jump up and say they did it, surely we can do it.

How do you feel your music fits into what’s actually happening in the world today, especially with politics. One of your first songs, Lebanon, is still so relevant.

That’s why we ran Part 2 of Lebanon as well because we thought why not run it twenty years later when the exact same thing happened again. We tend to write, well I’m the main writer, I’m sort of passionate about current affairs. If there’s something to be told why not tell it. It’s interesting when you can come up with subjects that are controversial or keep the interest of certain people. I like it when kids come up and say: wow man I really liked what you said in that song it was great you attacked it in a certain way; it’s an issue that no other band will touch; it’s something that is close to what our lives are run by. Hopefully you can write stuff that people can relate to. If you can do that I feel the music comes across stronger because they get it. They understand what you are saying.

It does make people think, hopefully …

Hopefully. Sure there’s a lot of people out there that just want to listen to their music and feel the power of it, they don’t really care what the song says. Then you get another lot of people who really want to know what are you talking about, what are you saying, what do you stand for. It’s good too. It’s just one of those things where we’ll stand for whatever we can stand for and we’ll say whatever we can say and if it means something to someone great because it means a lot to us you know.

How different are the song meanings, and also the actual recording process, of the new album “Psychology Of Death”?

Where do you want me to start -the recording process?

Yes, let’s do recording process and then we’ll do song meanings.

We approached things really differently this time. Normally what we would do we would a lot of pre-production. You know we would have all the songs finished we would have a good listen to all the songs let’s go and record them. This time around, we just went into the studio and we just laid down the drum tracks just so that we could get going. We were taking so long to write the album, you know we thought we’d never get the bloody thing out. We are always notorious slow writers. Well I am, I know that. We went in and did the drums first then we laid everything down. It was really different than how we normally do it but the end product was a really good sound; it was what we wanted. It was well produced. It was strong it was clean it was crunchy the production was really good so the end product is that, you know, we are all really proud of it.

Who produced it?

Darren Jenkins from jENK Productions. He’s done quite a few of the bands. He’s an Aussie guy, lives up the central coast. He used to be guitarist for Cryogenic many years ago. He’s a sound guy now. He did a really good job. We are really pleased with it.

Now, some of the songs of this album and the theme that runs through it: the album title, it is called Psychology Of Death; there’s a lot more metal type themes rather than political type themes as we’d normally tend to do. There are still some political themes - Deny is a really strong political commentary song which talks about homeless people and druggos and if they die, they are just sort of pushed underneath the carpet; no-one seems to care. It’s a kind of situation where the song screams out to the government: “do you deny that there is a problem”. I think it’s an interesting sort of tack where the line in the song says: “the victim was a homeless man that no one ever knew, now he’s in a body bag”; that kind of thing. It’s like so much happens these days that no-one cares any more. So many people will die and we’re all sort of blasé about it. Well, no, we’re all humans; everyone who dies, everyone should matter to us, especially the government because they won’t do anything about it.
That’s one point in one song. There’s are a lot of metal themes. Psychology of Death is based on the Dexter TV series. Basically I wanted to write a song about what’s inside the mind of a serial killer; what makes a serial killer a serial killer. I wanted to make this a battle between a psychiatrist who starts tracking a serial killer; a battle of wits between a psychiatrist and a serial killer. That’s what Psychology Of Death is about. Things like that you sort of taken right through the album. It’s a really strong album this one.

It sure is. I am looking forward to your tour with Destruction. Have you played with them before?

We did one show with them in Norway. We played a festival there – they were on after us. That was pretty cool.

What is your upcoming touring schedule like because I read that you’ve been given a spot in the Thrashfest Classics?

Yeah with Sepultura and Exodus. It’s a pretty big tour; they did the tour last year. Kreator headlined and it was a very successful tour so they’re getting all the bands and it’s called the classics tour where all the bands play songs from their feature albums. They’re all gonna play songs off their signature album. It’s gonna be really good for us as well. It’s going to be 25 shows in 25 days right through Europe. Yeah it’s gonna be a killer.

Well done on getting that gig. Do you feel that you’ve got more recognition overseas than here?

We feel that but it’s probably only because it’s bigger over there. In our heyday Mortal Sin were the bees knees; everyone knew who Mortal Sin was. I guess time’s passed and people move on so we don’t have a major record label pushing us anymore. I think our name is still out there but it’s hard to say where we stand compared to days passed. In Europe for sure we’re sort of big in a way but we’re nowhere near as big as anyone like Kreator or Exodus or Testament. It’s hard to compare. I guess we don’t live over there. We don’t tour over there enough to be able to tell whether we’ve got it. And we haven’t even done our own headline shows. You can’t. When we played with Overkill in 2008, the people are there to see Overkill they’re not there specifically to see Mortal Sin but we went down really well so I guess you could say we gained a lot of fans I suppose it will be the same on this tour coming up. Most people there will be there to see the whole package. It’s a show to end all shows it’s a good line up I guess we won’t really know what the support is for us till we get there and we can guage what sort of support we’ll get.

Where do you want to go with this? Do you think you’ll keep touring more in future?

I don’t see why not. It’s one of those things where a lot depends on the album you put out if you put out a really good album and you go out on tour and the support grows that’s where your record company or your agency turns around and goes we got to book you guys more we got to get you more shows.

How do you feel with your new recorded songs? How do they translate into the live environment?

Really good. We’ve been playing about four songs at all the shows that we’ve been playing lately. They've gone over really well. The crowd have been screaming for them. You know when you go and see a band and they play their new albums and you go I don’t want to hear your new music, I want to hear you’re old stuff. It’s kinda hard because you want to play your new songs. We’ve been lucky. We’ve been playing the new songs and everyone’s been yeah …man ….keep playing, keep playing. We haven’t come across anyone who has said nah I don’t want to hear your new songs. It’s because they’re loving them.

How do you think the new stuff has evolved? I know you said the meaning of the songs are different but how is the music different? How do you think you’ve grown as a band with this last record.

It’s not necessarily different, it’s just how you approach it. Probably more how you can do it and I think this time we’ve delivered it better than we’ve ever delivered it. I’m not saying that anything we’ve done in the past is poor or bad. I think we’ve finally figured it out. We’ve clicked together as a band and everything just gelled in the studio and everything worked to get the songs sounding how they should have sounded. When we were first writing, we wanted to write an album that was just going to slap people in the face and go: wow we never expected that from Mortal Sin. That’s exactly the reaction that we’re getting People are saying that exact thing. Wow I never expected that from you guys. We kind of pulled off what we aimed for and as I said it’s not a matter of evolving, it’s a matter of putting what you’ve got in your head onto a record; making it sound how you want to sound and I think we’ve just been able to do that this time.

Just going back to touring for a few questions -you’ve toured with such amazing artists, who has been your most favourite over the years?

It’s hard to say everyone is different in their own right it’s just one of those things where you enjoy them all for different reasons. I think possibly doing the 2008 Overkill tour in Europe is the one that stands out mainly because the guys were just so good. The guys from Overkill were really friendly and we went into cities we’d never played before and it wasn’t the first time we’d travelled around Europe but it was just enjoyable; it was just a really good time so maybe that one just by a little bit.

Of all the places you have gone on tour, what’s your personal favourite?

Let’s divide it up: my favourite city to play would have to be Waken. It’s like any metal head died and went to heaven. You go to this place and think wow there’s 60 to 80 thousand people just like me, all dressed the same as me, all here to have a good time and you think man I’ve died and I am in paradise. So to play at and to be at that’s definitely the place.

But as far as cities go that I just enjoy being in or that I ever wanted to tour in: New York. We visited New York in 1990 and did a show at the Cat Club. Just to be in such an amazing city. I mean the show we played was a small club but being in New York just to say I’ve been in New York that’s probably the number one city to go to.

I know the saying is: what happens on tour stays on tour, but are there any stories you’d like to share, or can share?

I don’t know … how long have you got?
Different experiences everywhere you go. You know I like to sightsee. Whenever I go somewhere I love to get out and check out the castles, especially in Europe. You know I love old things, you’re walking around in Hamburg, you see things that have been there since 1400, you’re like oh man, this is amazing. For me personally that’s what I enjoy about touring. I just love to see different things and different places. As far as touring as a group go they’ve been all sorts of things that have happened. I guess you just don’t want to tell those sorts of things.

If you had to put together a festival of bands together, old or new, who would you choose and why?

Really old skool - Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, cause they’re not around any more. I’ve seen Pink Floyd, seen some of the bigger bands, seen Metallica, played with Metallica. I’d like to put something together like old Woodstock ’69 or something like that. Those were the times, the turning point in music history.

Well I hope you get the recognition you deserve with this new album. Thanks so much for your time.

No worries. Thank you.

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Catch Mortal Sin, supporting German thrash legends 'Destruction', on their Australian Tour in early November 2011.

Psychology of Death is out now through NoiseArt Records/Riot Entertainment.