As the old saying goes "If it ain't broken, don't fix it". These words describe exactly what black/thrash metal is, a movement that has never been spoiled with any trends that have plagued other sub-genres, and a simple idea that doesn't need to be presented in other forms or make it unnecessarily complicated. Its essence has been carried from one generation to another for over 4 decades, keeping the unholy flame of pure old school metal burning and the gates closed for those unworthy to enter. Case and point are the UK based band Devastator from Derby, England, who have been actively raising hell for a total of 7 years of their entire existence, and in fact they are yet to raise even more hell when their new album "Conjurers Of Cruelty" is released on March 1st via Listenable Records. For this occasion, I had the opportunity to exchange words with the band's vocalist and bassist Thomas Collings, aka Nachtghul, via a scheduled Zoom meeting that was held on January 25th. It was a really big pleasure to speak with him, because it turned out to be a very nice and detailed conversation regarding Devastator's successful seven-year run, the work on "Conjurers Of Cruelty", the last year's remaster and re-release of their debut album "Baptised In Blasphemy", and other interesting bits along the way. My fellow black-thrashing maniacs, feel free to join me on this journey, as I dissect and explore the ritualistic and abusive world of the band Devastator with Nachtghul. Enjoy!

Vladimir

Greetings Thomas. How are you doing brother?

I'm good, there's a lot going on right now. People tend to think when you finish making an album "that's it, you can finally relax", but no, there's all the other stuff that comes along with it like filming for videos and doing press, but we all do it for the love of what we're doing, so yeah, we're keeping busy.

So, it's basically like a calm before the storm.

Yeah, that's the good way of putting it, calm before the storm.

I recently listened to "Conjurers Of Cruelty", and I must say that this is one violent and massive beast of an album that left me quite surprised, successfully surpassing all the expectations I had. Especially after going back and forth by listening to the new album and "Baptised In Blasphemy", I thought that this one really takes it all the way to the extreme, basically passing all the borders and making each of the songs stand out in their own way. How was it working on this album all the way from the bottom up?

Realistically, for the making of this album, it was different in the sense than it was with Baptised In Blasphemy. For Baptised, we had basically just recorded everything we've written pretty much that felt was ready, and that was essentially recording our live set with the first album, so the way that the first album worked out was, the way you would hear it, is the way we were playing live at the time. This time around, we spent a lot more time individually, crafting our own songs because at the time we weren't living in the same city, now we do all live in the same city, I was the odd one out. So, we spent a lot more time personally, crafting our songs for this new album and we were able to get them to the point when were individually quite happy with them to present them to the rehearsal room and then put them together, and ultimately, we get to spend a little more time together with them instead of just it being the early material and the early stuff that had been worked straight away and straight off the bat. This time, we really wanted to concentrate on it like "okay so, maybe let's take in a slightly different direction" as opposed to what people would think. I think there was a concept that was in mind but it wasn't really an active one until we finally came to the conclusion that we want to subvert the expectations of what people might have. We think those expectations would probably have been a bit more of let's say "Baptised In Blasphemy Part 2" and a bit more focused on the "black n' roll", and that's where the natural progression of introducing a bit more of a violent black metal, death metal and more the use of atmosphere and almost a melancholic sort of vibe mixed in with the melodic side. So, building the album before going to record it, we did focus a lot on making sure that the material was as good as possible, we rehearsed it quite extensively, we dedicated some time pretty much in the beginning in 2023 until we all get together. This was before I moved back to the area where the band is based, we dedicated sometime in the beginning of that year and really focused on rehearsing the material in making sure we were ready before we went in, and obviously in the background of that was the Listenable Records deal, so that was quite an inspiration as well, quite motivating, it's been like "we've gotta get this right". And from the sounds of it, and after reading your fantastic review today, thank you very much by the way, we felt that we've achieved that, but we also managed to subvert expectations because a lot of people may have thought they were gonna get another "black n' roll" album, a very maybe Midnight-ish sort of record or something like that, and we really didn't want to do that again because ultimately you could only take that "black n' roll" thing so far, and I think bands like Midnight are best at doing that. So, what can we possibly do that they haven't done in that style and everything as much? We were able to kind of make our own way and do our own thing with this, in my opinion anyway. I think this is definitely the album where the band is really coming to its sound.

Yes, I agree. But one can't deny the fact that this album incorporated a lot of different ideas that were perfectly mixed together from like very cult black and thrash metal albums, ideas that from Celtic Frost to Teutonic thrash metal classics and stuff like Aura Noir, Deathhammer and Nifelheim of the black/thrash classics. Were there any particular albums or bands that were the strongest influences on this album, both on the visual and musical aspect?

I definitely think that there was some Dissection coming in, especially early towards the end of the writing process, but I can only speak for myself for the tracks that I wrote, cause of the ten on the album I think I did six or seven, and then obviously the other two bonus tracks that we added those as well, but on the more black metal stuff and the more sort of melodic sounding passages, I think Dissection creeped in a bit more there. But as with the first one, very much the strongest influences were the Teutonic thrash with Sodom, the early Kreator and Destruction, especially the thrashier bits, but obviously the "black n' roll" still comes through in stuff like Black Witchery, the old Venom stuff, the old Bathory stuff and of course Motorhead is a massive one too. The one thing that really kind of shined through was the one the more different tracks that we tried we honestly didn't even think it was even gonna make it on the album, because at the time we were demoing and we were writing, and it was so vastly different to everything else, was 'Bestial Rites' which is basically a love letter to the Brazilian black metal and Brazilian death metal, Sepultura's "Morbid Visions" sort of vibe. You could say that "Morbid Visions" had a bit to play, Venom's "Black Metal" definitely in there, Venom's "Possessed" probably as well, along with Aura Noir's "Black Thrash Attack" and maybe the first Nifelheim album and Dissection across their three studio albums definitely. I guess those were kind of the vibes that came through like everything and we are not very shy in admitting that a lot our influences are heavily worn on our sleeves, and much how you are extremely into black/thrash, if you can put on the album, we sit down and go "oh, where did that come from?", I could probably tell you where that came from, band and album.

That's really strong material that you have on this album, you have a total of 10 songs, all of them are great and they are all superb in their own way. I'd like to know if any of these new songs stand out to you as one of your personal favorites?

Our favorites changed every day when we were recording and we were finishing the songs musically and putting the vocals on, and 'Ritual Abuse' is definitely one of our favorites, that was one of the last ones I wrote and the last for the demos we submitted before the rehearsals, and we added that ending, that extended sort of black metal ending in rehearsals and then obviously R. Amun came up with the ending for like an acoustic guitar, the flamenco thing like you said, he really brought the atmosphere of that song together cause it goes straight like from this Teutonic thrashy track to this kind of blistering black metal. So 'Ritual Abuse' is one of my favorites, and 'Rabid Morbid Death'. Interesting story with that one is that this is probably the oldest song on the album, we've been playing that song in a different sort of incarnation live since 2018, but then it got shelved because it wasn't really working properly. Then you go back and you refine your material, and then it became a great song, because what really made it for me was the bridge in the middle where it slows down and it has that black metal riff and then that sweet solo. As soon as I had heard the finished version, I went "that is one of my favorites absolutely". So, for me it's 'Rabid Morbid Death' and 'Ritual Abuse'. We like all the songs on the album, because if we didn't like them, they wouldn't make the cut, but we feel that every song has something different to give but it is unmistakably the same band, like they don't sound like ten different bands, they all like the same band with the same vibe and same feel, but they just bring in something a little bit different every time. But those two songs, 'Rabid Morbid Death' and 'Ritual Abuse', are two of my favorites for sure.

On top of that you also have two bonus tracks that only appear on the CD release in particular, 'Liar In Wait' and 'Death Forever', which are also excellent bangers and gave you a bonus round up if you want to continue on to the very end. How come you decided to include these two tracks specifically for the CD release?

So, 'Liar In Wait' and 'Death Forever' being sort of slated as bonus tracks, was actually due to vinyl pressing space issue, so we didn't really know there would be any restrictions on how many songs we could put on the record. When we did the deal with Listenable Records, we went into Godhand Initiative studios first and did 'Liar In Wait' and 'Death Forever', and then we presented them to the label and that was a sort of like a taste of what is to come. They liked those singles and then we released those singles, and they're the last songs as we did as an independent/unsigned band. Ultimately, these two songs are still on the record in our eyes, so we went in and re-recorded them when we did the full album, back in the same studio again with the same producer and the same equipment, everything else with trying to get the same sound. But when the label came to us and said "your album is too long", we were like "oh, okay, what do we do?" and we have to make a decision in our eyes that we've got to cut these two tracks, since we already released these two songs as singles, they were already out there and people could listen to them, the re-recorded versions don't really sound too different, there's a couple of textual differences here and there but it's the same drum kit, and it's just different micing positions, so we made the decision to move them to the bonus tracks and the label's idea was "well we could do these as a CD exclusive". But you know, that's great because in my mind that reminds me of the whole Japanese press records where it's like the Japanese always get a bonus track and the rest of us in the west don't get to hear it because it never comes out. The only reason we did that was simply because we couldn't get them all on vinyl, we didn't want to sacrifice anything that was brand new that hadn't been heard, we wanted to get all of the stuff that hadn't been heard straight out there. So, it's unfortunate, but it's a manufacturing thing in the end and it wasn't really like a taste thing or that we were just going to give it to the CD people, because it would be disingenuous of us to say "oh we'll put it up on the CD, but we'll also put it on streaming", when there's already a version of those two tracks out there on streaming anyway. It was purely a manufacturing thing, but at the same time it's a little bit of a bonus because a lot of people are into CDs, so you give or take.

Yeah of course, because people these days prefer buying CDs more than vinyls because they are more affordable so in the end it wasn't a big loss if you think about it. Since you also mentioned the deal with Listenable Records, this comes to my next question. You also remastered and re-released your debut album "Baptised In Blasphemy" that was on November 24th last year with an updated cover art and 8 bonus tracks, which was not that long before you announced "Conjurers Of Cruelty" and its official release date. What's the story behind the remaster and re-release of your debut?

When we were discussing with Listenable Records back in early 2023/January 2023, we came to them and they were like "okay, we would like you to do an album and a multi album deal", but they said that they were fans of the first record, that was the important part because that's where the intention came from, it was a mutual friend of ours, Dom Lawson who works for Metal Hammer and The Guardian, he passed the first album over to Listenable and said "you've got to check this out", and they got in touch with us and asked us what we were doing and what are our plans. When we came to put pens/paper to the deal, Listenable said "look we want to reissue the first album as well", they just wanted to reissue it, there was no talks about remastering or bonus tracks, but the label did say "it would be could if we could get some bonus tracks to make it stand out from the first version". So, we obviously had to have the conversation with the previous label that released the first version, that was always a role in contract anyway, that was like a one-year contract with a role over it that we wouldn't press any more of the vinyl for it on the first label, because we couldn't afford it, and it was a full independent label, they did a very good work but it's the limitations with independent labels. So, we asked them and they said "yes of course, the album is yours and it's your rights and you retain the whole thing". It was all fine and we came back to Listenable and said "yeah, we have the rights, so, we could do this reissue", and so we did that. When we were doing pre-production meetings for Conjurers Of Cruelty with our producer and audio mage Mr. Ben Gaines, we told him that we were reissuing the first album he jumped at the chance to remix and remaster the first album, he begged us basically and we said "okay, we'll see if we can get the master tapes", so we contacted the original producer Natt Webb at RatCat, which is a studio situated in a village not too far from where I am now, and he was more than happy to hand over the masters so Ben could go and remix and remaster. We went to Listenable again after said "look, we've got the remix/remaster, we also have all of these live tracks that we had recorded at Bloodstock festival", which you know the footage is out there, I mean the footage is great but the audio is kind of rawer a bit, sort of powerful, and it was hot on that day, when we were playing that show, but you know the intensity is still there, there's still good recordings, so we thought that this could be a prime opportunity to get some live material out as well, so we said to Listenable "look, we've got eight bonus tracks, we've got the original 'Merciless Onslaught' single", which was an only a digital release, so we could remix and remaster all this, and we can do that. Obviously further down the line we were doing the discussions for the layout, there was the talk of new artwork as well and obviously the original artist who did the first version, Chris Hancock, he did a fantastic job, he's our drummer J. Scarlett's tattooist, so we didn't want to disrespect him by removing his art completely, so we had his art put on the inside of the CD and the vinyl in the sleeves, and then we got a new artist Mikael Felix, who did the new cover art and he did a fantastic job, we really thought we approached it a little bit more differently how he gave it more of an elegant look to the goat as opposed to the scratchy sort of rough hand drawn thing, it really did set itself apart from the first press. It went quite smoothly really, I did a lot of the inner graphic design, I put a lot of that together when we worked closely with Listenable Records on that because as a band we'd like to have some creative control over how our stuff looks, not just how it sounds, there were few ideas passed back and forth that were rejected by us because it just didn't feel right, and then I presented a few more ideas to them and I went like "okay, can we get this?" and it was about us coming together to create what you now have as that reissue, and we think it came along really great and sound wise, we really kind of got it right when he remixed and remastered it, he just turned it up that little notch that we needed to really punch properly and it's really noticeable. A lot of people told us as well that you can really tell it's been properly looked at under the microscope and made just a little bit more fierce than the first version, so we're really happy with it. But obviously like you said it wasn't too long after Conjurers Of Cruelty was announced, we didn't really have a schedule planned and placed in front of us for Conjurers following Baptised, that email came to us from Listenable that said "look, we've got to announce Conjurers here in 2023 at the end", because the offices are closing up for Christmas, they went "look, we've got to get the announcement out, can we get a single out as well?", and we were like "oh, okay", so a bit rushed because we've only submitted the album to them in October, we were like "okay right, we've got to get a lyric video together, at least for 'Ritual Abuse'", because we're still here talking with the director and editor of the next video which comes out in February, the month before the album comes out, we didn't really have any music video yet, we were like "okay, we have to get a lyric video together". So, our lead guitar player R. Amun is a handy videographer/video editor, and he does a lot of lyric videos and visualizers to date, he jumped on and created the 'Ritual Abuse' video, so that's how that came, and before you know it Conjurers Of Cruelty is finally announced, an album that we've been talking about for two years always saying "it's coming, it's coming!" and now eventually it's real. It's been quite well in terms of that, getting the reissue and then immediately following that like "alright, here's the one thing you've been all waiting for".

Yeah, since you mentioned the overall improvement with this re-release, like you said it was raised one bar higher, and I'd probably say that this improvement makes it kind of closer to "Conjurers Of Cruelty", like one step closer to that excellence, and of course as I heard the album I said "yes, that's it". This is like a build up for this kind of black-thrashing extravaganza as I would like to call it.

Yeah, I like it.

I've known you for some time ever since I discovered your YouTube channel where you post covers on either guitar or bass. Besides myself obviously, has your channel helped in raising awareness of your band Devastator?

I wouldn't say it raised awareness of Devastator, but let's say it has helped a lot. There are people that have recognized me from my channel and discovered Devastator through that, people that I've actually met in real life. I remember one time of it happening was at Bloodstock festival, it was the first one back after the covid in 2021, at the time I was still drinking alcohol and I was very eager to go out and party with my band. We were walking through the festival grounds and on the back of our jackets we've got the logo, so my drummer gets spotted, and this teenager comes in like "Oh Devastator! Where did you get that patch?!", then he turns around and the kid's like "Oh you are in Devastator!", I turn around and he goes "And you are on YouTube!", so he's like "I discovered Devastator through your channel!" and I'm like "that's cool, thank you very much for watching the little covers that I do and for taking time to listen to the band as well". So, it has happened before and it's great as well, I mean the YouTube thing was never a very serious thing for me it was just something that I started doing when I was a teenager, I did on a different channel and then I moved to a new channel when I lost my login details, and then I made the channel that I have now. I kind of just do it more or less when I have time now, because of me recently moving and then I started with a new day job, obviously as you do when you move to a new city, and obviously as soon as I got back when I moved it was time to start rehearsing with Devastator's stuff that was going on, we went out playing shows with the recent run was at the end of last year. Then, ultimately finding time to play music in between, playing your music is a bit like "Oh Christ, I've literally just done a load of my own music, the last thing I wanna do is start learning someone else's music and be filming it". I'll come back to the channel again, I've got a list of videos I wanna do and I'll get onto it. I'm yet to play my new black Ibanez Destroyer bass in a video, so I think that needs its debut, I'm yet to pick up a decent song, I'm thinking about doing a Devastatorsong, and then we'll see if there's gonna be like any introductions to the band, and I've got a few Devastator's videos on my channel, but yeah, I could do another one quite easily like a little bass playthrough. It kind of does and it doesn't, it's hard to tell without someone telling that they came from the channel, you don't really know, but yeah there's obviously that one in Bloodstock.

Once you mentioned the black Ibanez Destroyer bass that leads me to my next question. Which of the guitars or basses that you own are your personal favorites?

These two, the red and black Ibanez Destroyer bass. I've very much been a person who just played whatever bass is available, I've never really found a bass that has been like "this is the one", and before I played this, I played an Aria bass which was great, it was super light, really thin, you could really go around it very quickly, and then after I played a Retrovibe, a copy of Rickenbacker with Rickenbacker electronics, so it sounded amazing, but the neck was very thick and that didn't feel great to play with this kind of music. Then came the opportunity I could get my hands on the original 1984 Ibanez Destroyer, which was the red one. I bought it from Japan, I sort of closed my eyes and pressed pay online because it was a lot of money that had to go into getting that over here, and I don't regret it a single mingle bit, it's one of the best basses, it sounds great, it feels great, it's got enough weight to it, and then I obviously came by this black Ibanez Destroyer as well, which is the most recent version that isn't those Killswitch Engage signature models which seemed to be the only versions that you could get, readily put together. That one is a lot lighter and with that one I could move a lot quicker. So, at the minute, the black Destroyer bass is now my go to one, the red one is a bit more of a studio bass, the red one was used for Conjurers Of Cruelty album, and the black one came just after I finished recording bass, which is a bit of shame, but since then the black one's been going out on shows with me. Then the red one kind of becomes a studio bass and a rehearsal bass, when it's needed as a backup bass, but yeah, those Ibanez Destroyers I just feel very comfortable with, I love their look, their sound, and with Ibanez I really feel like I could recommend some instruments that I really like, after years of just playing whatever I could get my hands on, just so I can play bass, I think I will stick with Ibanez after a long time.

The next question that I wanted to ask you is a peculiar one. Since both of us are fans of the black/thrash metal movement, something that I discussed with a friend of mine about the black/thrash metal movement is that this is basically a rare case when a sub-genre stayed faithful to its roots for many years and was not ruined or even corrupted by a use of overly fancy or hipster ideas that plagued other metal sub-genres. Of course, there are a lot of nitpicking people who criticize black/thrash bands by calling them generic or repetitive, but obviously they can't comprehend the fact that they are just looking for a needle in a haystack. How do you put yourself in this position? Do you think that this sub-genre is something that basically has no room for anything "that isn't pure" so to speak?

Yeah, I kind of feel that it's always been very much of an underdog sort of metal sub-genre, isn't it? From the early days it existed before it was called black/thrash, cause you listened to Sodom's "Obsessed By Cruelty" and Destruction's "Sentence Of Death", to me that's black/thrash and very much it has been. Aura Noir does put it pretty much perfectly with the music that they created, I mean they are the ugliest band in the world and they have always been an underground band. We all think that there is something very honest about this style of music, because it is very primitive and it is very underground. If you could say like how it's a "working man's man", or something along those lines, you could say black/thrash is metal for the metal fans in a way, cause it digs itself, it's very true to itself, and it's very true to its roots, and its roots go far, they don't just go to black metal or thrash metal, you will find that a lot of black/thrash goes to speed metal and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and a lot of these early styles of metal which are very much deep in people's enjoyment of metal, like you don't find that much people that sit there and dislike Judas Priest or early Iron Maiden, or that kind of very feelgood heavy metal from its earliest days, and I think black/thrash has that vibe with very much the sort of metal for the dirty beard swirling metalhead. It's never been trendy, it's never faulted, there's always been bands that experimented with it, like there's Absu for one I would say they experimented a little bit but they always remained very true to themselves, and even newer bands like Daeva, they are fantastic and they remind me ultimately of Absu, it's an American black/thrash band so of course it's going to remind me of the other American black/thrash metal band. But it's still very true to its sound and I feel that even in the black/thrash scene that's happening not just in the west but around the world, no people sit there and say they all sound the same, it's repetitive etc. etc. If it's not broken, don't fix it, and at least in my ears a lot of these bands are still doing something that sets each other apart. For example, Hellripper doesn't sound like Midnight, but they are both within the same wheelhouse weirdly enough, I would still put them together, we don't sound like Hellripper, but we are still in the same wheelhouse. I don't think these bands ever set out to recreate the wheel. Because why? I think a lot of them are wearing their influences on their sleeves and it shows, and that's great because more of it is more fun for everyone else surely. I think there's a lot of an obsession in metal at the minute where it's like "oh you have to be doing completely different otherwise there's no point", We've had this stuff ourselves, we had people that have emailed us anonymously and even emailed the label saying "Oh I'm sick of this, you give nothing new to the table, it's just generic it's been done before", etc. etc. And it's like "well, we must be doing something right, because you've gone out of your way to find our email address and the label's email address to tell us you don't like us", so therefore in my mind we've done something where we've gotten your attention. I mean, am I wrong? *chuckles*

Yeah, you are not wrong, I can definitely tell you that you basically proved your point there. But since you mentioned Hellripper, the funny thing is, when "Warlock's Grim and Withered Hags" was released last year, and I am even about to see Hellripper in Hungary next weekend, I thought to myself "Goddamn, this is one of the best works of black/thrash with some speed metal in the modern era, there's no way that any band right now at this very moment is gonna come out with another excellent album or as excellent or even more excellent than this one" and then I hear "Conjurers Of Cruelty" and I was like "Yeah, okay, I guess I've been proven wrong". Do you think you could make something that I could call a "dream tour", that Devastator and Hellripper tour the USA and Europe? Would you all be for that idea?

Absolutely. I mean, James, Max, Clarky and Joe are all good friends of ours, we played with Hellripper three times, it was actually our local scene in the beginning, it was always kind of like when we were playing the locals and all that, and Hellripper was just getting "The Affair Of The Poisons" released on Peaceville and it was like "Oh man, what a dream lineup it would be to have Devastatorand Hellripper on the same built", and then it got booked and it was sold out, it was packed, it was insane, and then after it's been always sort of a rarity when those two bands get to play together. The lineup is just perfect, it's a marriage made in hell to have those two on the lineup. The last time we were with the Hellripper guys was at a thrash metal festival here in this town of Derby in England, it was us, Hellripper, Gama Bomb, and a few other of the UK thrash bands, and it was great, it was great to see the boys again and see them play even more stuff with Warlock's. One of the best shows we played with Hellripper was in Glasgow in Scotland, not too far from where Hellripper are from and it was sold out again, and it turns out it was also the release show for "Warlock's Grim And Withered Hags", so the audience was very hungry, really excited and we were able to get that same reaction, and to have successful shows anywhere else in the UK, or in Europe or even in the States, then absolutely we would do it again, it would take no convincing. We would absolutely go on the road with Hellripper, it's one of those things that we want to do, we've talked about it, it's just finding out when is the right time and the right places, and when we could get it together but I think it will happen, and it will happen hopefully soon. Sooner rather than later, but either way it's going to happen at some point.

I guess that gave me a very rotten idea that in case I come across James McBain before the show in Hungary, then I guess I'll have to pressure him to do this tour because I wanna see both bands sharing the same stage. At some point, that has to happen, not just for like a one-off show, but it has to happen for the entire world to see. Like you said, it's a marriage made in hell.

Yeah, absolutely, we would do it again. But yeah, fun fact about Conjurers Of Cruelty, you'd be the first person we've told this, James McBain was almost on the album.

Oh really?

Almost, yes. We had two more guests that were slated to come on the album, James was one of them, and the other was the Demolition Man Tony Dolan, who's a friend of ours as well. Unfortunately, when it came to do vocals, it was about a week before Venom Inc. was going to the States, they were to do their second leg that they did with Mike Hickey instead of Jeff, cause Jeff had to sit the tour out, and Tony said week before the tour that there was no way he could get to the studio and do it, and we couldn't delay cause Listenable Records needed the album and then I spoke to James again, and he said that the same thing, like he was going out to do shows, I think it was the end of the Goat Vomit Nightmare run that he was doing last year, and he wasn't able to do it either, so unfortunately we weren't able to get two of those guys on the album. However, we kind of come to this thing like every release will have a guest or two guest musicians come in, so those two will be on the next one for sure, there's no doubt about that.

Yeah, that basically leaves the doors open for the third album that will just have to give the chance for either of the two to appear and have a guest vocal appearance, that would be actually cool.

We'll make it happen.

Alright Thomas, it's time to wrap this up. Once again, thank you so much for taking your time, it was really amazing talking to you. I just have to say that I am really looking forward to the release of "Conjurers Of Cruelty" and seeing Devastator live at some point. Are there any final words for the fans?

First of all, thank you for asking me to come on and do this, it's been great to do and thank you for your review as well, that was a great read that really kind of made my day, especially after a long working day and then getting to read that with a positive response that we were already getting with for this new album is fantastic, so thank you for that. And thank you to everyone who has supported this band for the last seven years, it's been a very wild ride, especially these last couple of years, we're really happy with how things are going. We really got that there is so much support behind us, and we can't wait for you to listen to what we've done because we are incredibly proud of Conjurers Of Cruelty and we really think you'll enjoy it. We hope that you'll play it again, and again, and again, and again, because you should, we don't know when we'll get the next one after that, so play it again, and again, and again, and again *chuckles*. But in all seriousness, thank you to everyone for your support, it's been great and we have so much more to show you and so much more to share with you, so it's gonna be good, we're glad to have you all on the good ride.