Hey! Thanks for the opportunity, it's great being in the same net with some big sharks!
You belong to the minority of bands that play music without guitars. How did you come up with this idea? Maybe you haven’t found guitar player or because of some other reasons?
I think we started out just with bass and drums, thinking that maybe in the future we'll find a guitar player, but then decided to keep it that way, as it seemed to be just fine. I play power chords with big fuzz, imitating a guitar, but it sounds heavier than guitar... because it's bass! If you disagree we can go on a wrestling match... Everything is just easier and more fun with less people. Also I believe it looks more fascinating from viewers perception when it's only three of us on stage and we have no guitars. But that's a matter of taste, i suppose.
I know, that’s pretty generic question, but still we need to fill this gap. Tell us a story of Farsas, when did it come out from meat grinder?)))
First off we started playing some stuff back in summer of 2009, but that wasn't a really serious attempt. We continued after about 6 months and it was just me and Slavka, as drum'n'bass duo, we came up with a few songs and Kiras joined to record vocals for our first demo in early 2010. Both of these guys were already veterans of Lithuanian grindcore, playing in such bands as Disforija and Karma Jawless, while I only played in a sludge/post-metal band before that. So that's when the meat grinder started spinning... We had some gigs, wrote material and we recorded Sveciuose Pas Ervyda, which was released by Human Discount Recs of Italy (cheers, Marco!). We then stopped the mincing process and had a side project called Vezys. It lived for two terribly drunk concerts, one of which has a really really shameful story to tell... involving somebody drinking too much moonshine, pooping himself and not being able to perform... but I will not tell who was that. After we cleaned our pants we started Farsas again in 2012, we recorded Bedu turgus and we haven't stopped since.
I am not the only guy who’s interested in Lithuanian scene. Tell us about your local bands, and also about Baltic scene, please.
Well, it seems that we are the only active grindcore band in Lithuania at the moment, I'm not sure about Latvia, but Estonia has a band that I totally love – Sociasylum . I don't think that they call themselves grindcore or powerviolence, but it certainly has some of that. They are really great guys too, so check them out!
As for the history of Lithuanian grind – we had P.K.I.K.T., Disforija, Karma Jawless and that is the holy trinity of our grindcore. We had this situation where there was 10 people in the scene and 5 bands and like 50 side projects... I also played slow goregrind under name of Dinozauras, Slavka had his goregrind band Analinis Oratorius, Kiras had noisecore band - Anal Safyra... overall Lithuania had a really strong shitcore scene, which seems dead now, but I'm really not the guy to tell more about it, sorry.
You took part in Spazz tribute, wrote new material… What to expect from Farsas next? As far as I get this from Youtube teaser, next release would be much faster.
Yeah, we recently recorded 20 new songs, including two cover songs, SPAZZ for the tribute and P.K.I.K.T. Cover, to respect the veterans of Lithuanian grind! The album will be released sometime soon on Epileptic Media (http://epilepticmedia.blogspot.com/) limited to 80 cassette copies. I think the new record is much more what we wanted to do than the previous albums – overall it's a bit faster, but we still do a little bit of everything. i guess we cannot hide our love for powerviolence, goregrind, crust and all the extreme stuff. We also finished filming our DIY video clip Per pikti, kad pasidziaugt, check it out video
What to expect from us? I have no idea. Maybe another album in two years, maybe not. We will play in one big festival in Lithuania, other than that we don't have plans for now.
I remember that you had your own little grindcore fest… Tell us about it, please. What famous grindcore bands took part in it? When and where, etc.?
It's called Ont Grind'u fest, which is happening in north-west of Lithuania. Mini obscene extreme, as we like to call it. It's in north of Lithuania, almost in the middle of nowhere. The priest of nearby town Labardziai tried forbidding this satanic festival because cows did not give any milk after it happened. It had Pulmonary Fibrosis perform there a few years ago, last year we had Bestial Vomit, Human Fault and Sociasylum playing... Well, this year it's going to be the 8th time this fest happens! So feel free to contact me or the organizers if you want to play, i'm sure we can figure something out! The dates are August 14-15 in Labardziai, Lithuania
What do you think about women in grindcore?
Grindcore is for everybody, i believe, but i don't like when bands receive so much extra attention just because of some chick playing in there... on a side note - Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation are really fucking mean!
Not many people know the fact that Lithuania is the motherland of the most strong man on Earth – Zydrunas Savickas! So here’s the question – what weight can you lift?)
I don't know how much can we lift, but i know that we're the heaviest band in Lithuania. Just three of us weight about 330-340kg, so that's probably heavier than your regular 5 member death metal band grin emoticon
How Farsas affects your everyday life?
It's definitely a source of good emotion. Though sometimes it feels like it takes too much time or too much effort, but it always pays off in good emotion. Whether it was people saying that the show was awesome, or when you finally listen to mixed and mastered songs, or when you finish creating a song together and hear all 3 of us playing it in the rehearsal – it always puts a smile on my face. And when you keep doing a thing that you like and enjoy, people will notice and appreciate that sooner or later.
Cinema culture already infiltrated our life. Do you have your personal top-5 of the movies you like?
Kiras is our movie guy, he has a blogspot with around 1000 horror movie reviews!
My favourites are probably these in no order:
Stalker (1979)
Solyaris (1972)
The Battery (2012)
Altered States (1980)
Jacob's Ladder (1990)
Here comes the question that’s not about music, nevertheless it’s very serious. What things would you call “humanity’s curse”, cancer that don’t let us leave in peace?
Hm... Cancer might be some kind of natural reaction, like leucocytes fighting infection. But cancer takes without judging, it's merciless. But humanity's curse? It's the humanity itself is it's curse. It's meant to kill itself out.
Lukrecijus, how come that you love bass so much? Why not sax, for example?)
I can't play anything else! Even 4 strings are sometimes too much for me. Seriously, the low and manly sound makes me aroused. Bwooom.
Every human being dreams of something. What are your dreams?
Stressless life is my dream. I'm working to achieve it someday! Now on more realistic dreams? Going on a tour with Farsas would be cool, i think, or just playing a few shows abroad of our own country. But our day-jobs won't allow it quite soon.
Thank you so much for this interview! Keep on doing what you do, guys, no matter the difficulties! STAY GRIND!)
Thank you, Alex, for this opportunity. Keep up this amazing blog!
For more info:
