Band: MORBIT
Country of origin: Russia
Style: dark metal
Questions by: Kai Mathias Stalhammar
Answers supplied by: JJ Nott North (band's manager)
 

Last year MORBIT turned 10 years. What’s the band been living through these years?

JJ Nott North: Since August 1998 MORBIT recorded 4 albums, including band’s most successful - "Sweet Music" (2000) and "Reflections" (2001). "Reflections" was completed at Manimal Productions affiliate with FONO Records. We’ve been active in negotiating with Metal Agen Records and recorded ARIA’a 1100 for "Tribute To ARIA" compilation. Briefly, MORBIT keeps on challenging heavy metal of Russia and CIS and is pushing fiercely to get into metal elite.

Are you planning on celebrating 10-year anniversary with some special event? It’s rumoured MORBIT made a video.

JJNN: Not of what I heard. We were strongly hoping to lead a big time live in Ulyanovsk, but it turned a non-starter. Local authorities would turn extremely opposing and hostile to the idea. As of video, there is a 30-second promo track run at band’s official.
 
After 10 years you stay devoted to underground. How come?

JJNN: In CIS underground lives its own life and very special one. It lacks normal relations and ties within as it happens in other countries. Few recorders that we delt with turned less cooperative and decent agents too. But more important,sever contract violators. Hope I answered your question, did I?

You mentioned Moon Records in our previous conversation. They say, Moon is not a dream studio. How was it like working with them?

JJNN: That was the studio we recorded our first album at. It developped  a nice cover design too. But should I say, release was delayed by 12 months. Understandingly, we were forced to look for another studio, especially after we didn’t agree to release there band’s next album in 1999. This said, you can say it’s far from being a dream studio.

What’s in future for MORBIT?

JJNN: As I said, we reached critical level at which we whether die or make a major breakthrough.

Is DertoD Records a sort of personal business founded to support MORBIT or rather an independent label?

JJNN: In 1993-1998 it used to be a distributing company which had its own releases along with distributing other labels’ products. Afterwards it went dead, we swapped for Manimal Productions.

What company do you have as a distributor?

JJNN: We’ve been distributing our records ourselves during last 2-3 years. Basically, recording companies are our distributors too solely responsible for delivering band’s albums to retailers.

Any foreign credentials?

JJNN: We negotiated with a few labels, including Nuclear Blast, Massacre Records, Repulse. Some French label appeared to praise what we do. Lamination magazine, a couple of Finnish and Polish publications granted MORBIT with comments and reviews. Some underground labels distribute very limited number of record copies. But this is pretty much it. We agreed with Manimal Records it sends our new album to western recording offices.

MORBIT was joined by a new frontman somewhat 2,5 years ago. Why did you decide to have a new singer and how did you find Dm Big?

JJNN: In 1999 band experimented a lot. It was time to refill tanks with new  trends. Dm Big is an old friend of ours. He made first album covers.

MORBIT is very much in black metal lately, at least judging by latest two albums, don't you think?

JJNN: MORBIT doesn’t stick to some definite musical style. Black metal is just an ingredient in MORBIT’s music cocktail.

How could you explain that students and graduates in liberal arts are not keen on extreme music?

JJNN: I don’t really know. Probably their heads are stuffed with all this bullshit that tears them away from tough and surviving reality. On the contrary, we live through it all.

Do you have any professionally trained musicians in the band?

JJNN: None of them. I believe it helped us a lot in forming band’s exquisite sound generated by lead guitar Mik Hhael. And this puts MORBIT apart from all those professional teams.

Sorry, I didn’t ask it in the beginnig of the interview, but some words on "Sweet Music" and "Reflections" albums.

JJNN: "Sweet Music" is a pretty unexpected compilation of remixes of band’s last years’ hits, couple of new singles, couple of lives, covers of QUEEN, RAMMSTEIN, EURYTHMICS and couple of bonus tracks. "Reflections: Chronicles Of Amber" (2001) is a newly released album which I believe is the true face of MORBIT. We tried to mix up as many extreme styles as possible enriching it with new progressive solutions.

Few words to say good-bye.

JJNN: I highly recommend "Reflections" to see what we are, and give a keen eye to underground from CIS. Russian underground is trully pulsating, believe me.
 

MORBIT contact -
Email: morbit@mail.ru