As it turns out, their debut album Applied Schizophrenic Science is one hell of an album! All of the raving in the magazines is quite deserved. They unleash a truly fantastic mixture of death and grind – with the legacy of the two brothers Carlos and Elias’ old black metal band CIMMERIAN PATH shining through in brief, but nonetheless massively effective passages. If you haven’t checked it out yet, better do it soon! With Beirut being the last stop on our journey, I thought it would be great to finish it off with an interview with these cats. Elias (the nice guy that I found he is) said yes right off the bat.

Before telling you about hanging out with Elias (32), the guitarist and the vocalist responsible for the high shrieks, and Cyril (26), the bassist who dishes out the frog vocals (Carlos, the drummer could unfortunately not come…), let me tell you that I have once again figured out that metal is universal. In both Iran and Syria , I met true metal heads. As one can imagine, life is difficult in these areas for people with an extreme taste. Downloading is option number one (even for OATH TO VANQUISH in the considerably more liberal Lebanon , but more on that later). In Iran , I met a guy called Arash in some back alley studio, where they produced pop and hip hop (Bordering on the illegal … so don’t dis them too soon!), he was excited to meet a fellow metal enthusiast. You should have seen him react to the new HATE ETERNAL album! Metal gets you everywhere. And in Damascus as well, I met Ali who sported a Live Cannibalism shirt. Not something he wears on the streets every day, let me assure you. Prospects that metal is going to be accepted in their countries are slim, if not utterly black. I wish them all the best, though!

When I got to Beirut and got used to the soldiers and Armored Personnel Carriers posting on every street corner (Hey, they’re the good guys. I was actually relieved to see them everywhere.), I gave Elias a call to set up the interview. I was surprised to hear a clear British accent on the other end of the line. Turns out that Elias spent time in kindergarten in England and went to university in Birmingham . International as many Lebanese are, he also lived in Nigeria as well. Soon enough, I was sitting in a bar which might have been back home in Copenhagen for all I know, drinking the local delicacy (a beer called Almaza) and saying hey to Cyril, Elias, their cover artist for their new EP and her boyfriend (a soon-to-be doctor who introduced himself with “I cut up dead people.”).

Elias (left) and Cyril (right) putting up the horns at one of Beirut's many bars.

OATH TO VANQUISH (OTV) was only formed in 2001, but the roots of their metal obsession go back many years before that. The brothers Elias and Carlos have been active in the Lebanese metal scene since the late 80s and were main members in a symphonic black metal band called CIMMERIAN PATH, which was the first Lebanese band to actually release material in Lebanon. While that band was unraveling, they got involved with Cyril in the band ARMORY. However, that band was not to be either and lucky for us, they decided to form OTV.

Not resting idly on the laurels of their debut, the band is currently in the process of putting out a new EP. While I write this, they are hopefully in the process of recording their new songs. With some luck, we might even see the new platter called In Dire Consequence on the streets in April on Grindethic. In contrast to last time, where they recorded everything themselves in a DYI-studio, they are booking a professional studio this time around. The new songs are supposedly even more ‘all across the board’ and more extreme: Faster, more brutal and more eclectic. Cyril even promised me that their will be some Latin-flavored passages on there! That might not appeal to all those DEVOURMENT-fetishizers out there, but anyone who heard Applied Schizophrenic Science will not be surprised that they can squeeze even more variability into their songs. No wonder that they know what they are doing: All three have classical music backgrounds and know where up and down are on the fret board! Of course, this diverse style is rooted in their personal musical taste as well: Jazz, Classical, French music, PINK FLOYD, 80s new romantics à la DEPECHE MODE, THE CURE and DEAD CAN DANCE are among their personal favorites as well.

Being from Lebanon , it has not been an easy road to gain the kind of exposure OTV has attracted over the last couple of years. This is the reason that they work so hard at promoting themselves abroad: Every band out of Lebanon (or anywhere in the Middle East , I suppose) has to work at least twice as hard as their European counterparts (And with the crap that gets released here that seems quite a plausible suggestion…). Smart business people as the Lebanese are, it seems to have worked. With Grindethic, they also have a label covering their back. It goes a long way in giving its bands as much exposure as it can. This has included touring Europe in the summer of 2006 with shows in Germany , Sweden and Denmark . They even secured a spot at the Roskilde Festival outside of Copenhagen that year. I’m still not quite sure how they got that gig!

Even though Lebanon is one of the most open of the Arab countries (And you feel that in Beirut , especially when you arrive there from Syria and Iran as we did.), it still is a music collector’s nightmare. Buying extreme metal in the local Virgin Megastore (no kidding!) is still not possible. Instead, when you want to get a hold of the latest DYING FETUS you still have to be sent a copy from abroad in the most unsuspecting package. If the postal service happens to open it, the CDs are gone in a heartbeat… This is why the band buys as many albums when they are abroad and get them in with one simple trick. You just wear your boxers until they are filthy and greasy enough. It is then very unlikely that the border guards will take a closer look what lies underneath your dirty nighties. Quite an appropriate place for gore grind too, come to think of it.

After a night of drinking and some late-night snacks. And yes, I look like a drunken fool and there's belly hair sticking out...

Of course, the local metal scene is small as well – and actually shrinking according to Cyril and Elias. The best days were apparently towards the end of the civil war and in the transition period afterwards. 1988 was the best time for finding metal parties, as Elias recalls. Back then, you could find metal gigs at the beach every other day of the week with four stacks of amps blasting out into the Mediterranean ! After that, it went downhill slowly. In the middle of the 90s, you could get arrested for wearing a big old pentagram around your neck or having a SEPULTURA ‘S’ tattooed on your arm. Desperate times indeed. There are some bands around in Lebanon these days, but they play mostly covers and the few original bands have quite a way to go yet, as Elias tells me. Gigs are rare as well. A band usually has to do most of the work for the show themselves, meaning that they go onto the stage exhausted already. Fortunately, the fans make up for the efforts in kind and flail about during the whole show. But the days where Elias could play in front of 3000 people (!) are over (forever?). None of the bars and venues are eager to have metal bands, too: They don’t attract enough people and they don’t use enough drugs. That’s right, the people putting up shows prefer Arab pop and techno shows because the dealers can sell more dope! What the fuck…?

In a country where everyone is political, it is obvious that we covered the subject extensively as well (Hey, I am a political ‘scientist’, too. What can I do??). But I will spare you all the details on those matters – more so because I was getting more and more buzzed on Almazas and Whisky Sours… What it boiled down to, however, was that Elias would like to kill all politicians and that religion was the root of all evil (And their argument rings truer in Beirut than any Norwegian black metal band can claim to be!). Lebanon needs a leader; not a politician, but a business manager who knows how to run the place, as Elias puts it.

The rest of the evening was spent talking about bands, musicians (Elias met a shit load of people in Birmingham , including Bruce Dickinson and Tony Iommi!) and probably girls, who knows … (There’s always girls, I suppose.) After having finished our last drink and discovering that Elias and I had to get up way too early the next morning, we drove to a local 24/7 restaurant where we got some local snacks to top of what was an amazing night in a fantastic city. When Elias drove me home, I was pleased. Especially so when after not having listened to metal in more than a week, his loudspeakers in the car were blasting Far Beyond Driven. Sweet surrender… Thanks again for a blast! I’m definitely looking forward to the new songs. As should all of you!