OTEP : Reinventing the style

-O : It’s our first time in Europe and it’s different here than it is in the States but it was very exciting to play here, where all the fans are insane ! We really enjoyed experiencing their madness very much !

-Were there as many people as in the States ?

-O : Yes, there were many people that day...

-Did it rain ?

-O : We were inside but yes, I was raining ! It’s always raining in England !

-Talking about the Ozzfest, can we say that Sharon Osbourne is your good angel ?

-O : Oh yes, sure, I love Sharon, without her, we wouldn’t have been on the Ozzfest, as she chose us personally last year already and this year again. She’s an amazing person, she believes in what we do and I’m very thankful for her support.

-You started your career with the EP ‘Jihad’, which has been retitled in Europe and banned in Usa after the september eleven : how did you react to this ?

-O : I didn’t like it. The label did that and I objected in saying that it was silly the way they reacted about it

The name ‘Jihad’ has nothing to do with what happened on september 11th, with the planes, it’s a bad coïncidence, this name has nothing to do with what they do or attempt to do by attacking the World Trade Center because some people turned it not into a struggle but a holy war, and we obviously don’t support any sort of terrorism.

-After the Ozzfest, you entered studio without even a demo to record with Terry Date : how did you meet him and what albums he produced did you like ?

-O : We met Terry when we did a private showcase for the label ; he was invited by the label and so he came and, after the show, he said that he wanted to work with this band. So I met him the following day for a lunch, and we discussed my plans for the record and what the band wanted to do. He was amazing with me, he really has been fantastic !

-How was it to work with him and will you do it again ?

-O : I will, I look forward to work with Terry again : he was so creative and such a thinker, so smart and such a nice guy either and it was so great to have someone like Terry, he’s a God when it comes to sound, he believed in the band and he wanted to do it so, yes, I ‘d love to work with Terry again.

-You wrote and recorded this first album very quickly, as if everything was already in your head, and you seemed ready to put it on record, which is amazing when certain bands spend months and sometimes years to produce bad lp’s ...

-O : No, in fact we didn’t have anything at all, we just went in and, for one month, we worked six days a week about twelve hours a day, and we couldn’t write fast enough, it just came out of us, so once we got together in the band, the songs just wrote themselves, they came up quickly.

-Yes, we can say that it’s live and constructed at the same time.... About the lyrics, what would you say if I say that only a woman could have written such powerful and meaningful lyrics with this level of credibility ?

-O : I think that male artists are afraid to be vulnerable, that’s why ; I think this record has so many different sides, it’s a complete assault on the senses, so yes I think.

-With your musical and extra musical tastes, don’t you feel lonely amongst the metal world, or at the contrary does it participate to a desire to make the bands and the audience evolve an mature ?

-O : Sometimes, it’s a little bit lonely to be a woman in it, but we’re making music we wanna make and people seems to like it, so hopefully it will inspire others to dig a little deeper and writes good music !

-What is your part in the conception of the covert art ?

-O : Myself and the art director Paul Brown, we sort of put this thing together, we sort of brainstormed and we pulled all this together and myself and the Capitol art director Wendy Dougan we designed the book and the poetry at the top. I really like it, I’m very proud of this record.

-Did you design the website of the band yourself ?

-O : Yes, to an extent. There's also a very talented young man, Raymond Lou at Capitol Records, who's also a moderator on the message board, he did a fantastic job, translating what we did with the record into the Web site. He sent it to me and I approved it. We were really excited about the whole thing.

-How do you share the work in the within the band ?

-O : I write all the lyrics and for the music, everybody brings his ideas and we mix it together.

-You said you had a great taste for Europe, through art, books, paintings...do you feel more universal than American ?

-O : I don’t know, but I just wish that here, there's more focus on the integrity in art and literature. In the USA, it’s more entertainment-based and relying on hedonism. I wish that people would focus more on art than they do. I think I’m much more connected with America because I was born there, but I’m eager to build an understanding of Europe, I studied it for a long time, books and things but actually it’s the first time I see it really, and it’s amazing !

-Would you consider to live in Europe ?

-O : I don’t know, I’m not sure yet, I wasn’t here enough, I haven’t seen enough...

-Will you come to France ?

-O : Oh yes, I would love to visit Paris, I wished we came on this trip...

-The Jim Morrison’s tomb for example?

-O : YES ! He was a master. I’m just an apprentice !

-You know, one day, he started too himself !

(laughs)

-So, are you a big reader yourself ?

-O : I try, I try the best I can, but we’re very busy right now. I really enjoy to read a lot, but nowadays I don’t have that much time.

-And when finding some time for that, do you prefer poetry, novels or...

-O : Poetry, for the most part.

-Who are your favorite writers ?

-O : Baudelaire’s « Flowers of Evil » is one of my favorite books ; I love the beat poets too, like Jack Kerouac and Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Giovani, ...are some of my favorite poets.

-Would you consider to stop being a singer to start a writing career ?

-O : I’d enjoy that very much, that would be a dream come true : I started drawing very early on and I evolved to writing : I love singing and performing, but my greatest passion probably still is writing poetry, that’s the way I feel the most complete. Yes, I would like to see myself have that opportunity one day.

-It seem that you have steps in your life : do you see Otep like one of those steps ?

-O : I think so, I think that this band is one sort of the creatures we’ve created and something else could come out of this, it’s possible. That’s what this album is about, experiment art, growing and evolving itself.

-When I first heard the record, I felt that you wanted everything you had in you in it, as if it wouldn’t be important if it was only one album in Otep’s career, but this record was essential for you...

-O : Oh yes, definitely : I don’t like those records where you can only find two good songs in it, and the rest is just boring and redundant. I think that it’s very important that every song is treated as a masterpiece, like when you walk in a art gallery and you look at all the different paintings : you wouldn’t do two good paintings and the rest is garbage but that each of them is a masterpiece of its own, and that’s what I wanted. I come from a visual background, I don’t have any music training, so all my philosophy on art is from a visual point of view so I have to apply it to music and I think that it’s a difference from what I’m experiencing with people having an extensive music background at the beginning, they are all highly trained musicians, so it needs a little adjustment to each other’s philosophy, but it‘ll be a second record, Otep Book n° 2 !

-What would you do if you weren’t in a band ? Spoken word artist ?

-O : Yes, but I would probably have some elements of music involved. There’s lot of things I wanna try, but if I wasn’t doing a band, I would still be writing and still be studying, still be trying to be a communicator in some form or fashion.

-It’s surprising to see that your biggest influences weren’t in the metal domain : why did you choose this kind of music for Otep ?

-O : I wanted to do something really aggressive, something really really heavy, and I ‘m lucky enough today that the band have the same hunger as well. I wanted to make a sound very brutal and emotional, this sort of foundation of the metal just seemed to be perfect for that.

-When I heard the Ep, ‘Jihad’, some things reminded me of PJ Harvey...

-O : Oh yes, PJ Harvey is great, I like her a lot...

-You had a first video for ‘Tric’, and another one for ‘Blood pigs’ : do you think that image is prolonging the work on the music and the lyrics for you ?

-O : I ‘m really involved but our budget was very small. We wanted to do something reflecting really what we were, I didn't want to do one of those big video productions, I wanted to keep it...real, I wanted to make sure that people understood that it was really more about music than anything else, and so, we and the director did something pretty nice, very basic and brutal, it’s more an advertisement for the live shows because basically, that's just live footage. I think that, at this point, videos are pretty silly, and I’m hoping to see some sort of a revolution in that. The same art director I work with on this is also working on the video and he’s amazing.

-It’s like the Tool’s or Bjork’s videos, like short films instead of common stuff : I suppose you tend more to that ?

-O : Yes, absolutely.

-Would the DVD format and the image a nice prolongation for « Sevas tra » ?

-O : Well, I have this idea to make a very artistic and surreal sort of film based on every song of the record, so each song would have a video, because it’s too difficult to pick and choose what song deserves it. That’s always still a possibility for the future as well.

-Would you consider yourself to act or direct in a movie ?

-O : In fact, I prefer the contact I have on stage. But I’ve been asked recently by two different people, one of them being a producer, a well known producer and a friend of mine too, to star in a film of his and last night after the show, there was a director there that's putting a film together. That's beyond the scope of everything I thought about, because I don’t understand acting, but if it was the right sort of project, the right story, if it was artistic and done properly, I might consider it, but...

-Yes, if it’s to play with Richard Gere... !

-O : Yeah, right ! ! !

-But would you like to write a score ?

-O : Yes, definitely, I would love to.

-Did you already have reactions for your LP ?

-O : At the moment, on the website, the message board is going insane, and even the Ozzfest message board was full of great appreciations about the show and the record : we worked very hard and we’re very proud of what has been accomplished.

-And next, after book one, book two ?

-O : Exactly !

The library in Alexandria started like that : one book after another. Then went the fire, so time to go to see something else. Book are made to be written. But writers are made to be free. Or not to be !

(Interview made in London on May 29th 2002 by Jean Paul Coillard and Mister X)

Visit Otep's official site : www.otep.com

‘Seves tra’ is available on Capitol/ EMI

Many thanks to Tania and Virginie for their most precious help and to Xen F.Lang for his niceness !