Prey for Nothing: From the Middle East to the World
Prey For Nothing, one of Israel’s longest-running metal bands
Hello Prey For Nothing! How are you? It’s a pleasure to interview you. How did the pandemic take you?
Greetings! It is our pleasure too! We are fine, as far as one can be in these crazy times. It seems that the hardest parts of this pandemic is behind us now, so here’s to a better future with more live shows and more free travelling!
According to your bio the band was born in 2006, so it’s already 15 years. How did the idea of creating the band come up?
The band was formed in early 2006. We had the idea of forming the band already back in 2004, actually. I was just a kid straight out of military service (mandatory here in Israel) and the other guys approached me to join efforts and play music inspired by the late Chuck Schuldiner of Death. I was a Death fanboy and was instantly hooked on the idea, but life happened and we haven’t really manage to clear time to play together until 2006 as mentioned above.
What are your musical influences?
We were initially influenced mainly by Death, but you have to add Carcass, Arch Enemy, Metallica and Testament into the mix. We wore our influences on our sleeves though, not trying to deny that we are celebrating metal music that we liked as kids through our own music, but I want to believe that since our first album we grew apart from those influences and became something of our own. I would add other bands like Candlemass, Overkill and even Lamb Of God and Killswitch Engage to our list of artists that dig, but those are less noticeable.
How would you define your musical style?
We mainly call our style ‘Melodic Death Metal’ but we know we don’t really fit the bill of other bands in the genre, especially not lately. Some people added ‘progressive’ to our style, so people won’t think they gonna find some At-The-Gates rip-off when they listen to us, so ‘Progressive Melodic Death Metal’ might be the most correct term, but it’s a mouthful, so we stick to ‘Melodic Death Metal’.
Who are the current members? (I guess they have changed after so many years).
The band today consist of me, Yotam, on vocals and Iftah Levy on drums and back vocals — we are the two original band members left from the debut album. In 2016 we were joined by two amazing guitar players, Michiel Rutten (ex-Fuelblooded) who moved to Israel from the Netherlands, and Dima Kogan who toured with Iftah when they both were session players on other bands. Recently we were joined by a new bass player, Anatoli ‘Tolik’ Kashenka, the youngster of our bunch.
Let’s talk about “Kivshan”, the band’s most recent musical work released last May. How was the editing and recording process?
We started recording Kivshan from mid to late 2019. We recorded the drums and vocals in Bardo Studio in Ramat Gan under the careful hand of Jonathan Kossov, while the guitar and bass part were recorded at home. Than we send everything to get mixed by the wonderful Victor Santura from Woodshed studios in Germany (who produced Obscura, Dark Fortress and many others). We got the final mastered version on March 2020, but than Covid19 struck so we got delayed with the release for about a year.
How many songs are included and what are the songs about? Any audio visual material?
We ended up with 9 songs, but that’s half the story. The first half of the album deals with the hardship of living in Israel, past and present, with all the baggage it brings. The title track, our first song in Hebrew, divide the album between it’s seconds part, which consist of 4 songs that are one piece called ‘The Pinnacle’, a twisted version of an old Israeli myth about salvation and redemption from the year 130 AD that tell the tales of Rabbi Akiva and his 3 friends who ventured into Heaven and found madness and despair instead of answers.
We currently have one video from of our opening track, called ‘Angels of Atheism’. We though it will be fitting to announce in advance that even if we’re coming from one of the most religious countries in the western world, we denounce the divine decree of any god. We are currently working on a video clip of our title track, Kivshan, but it will only see the light of day on 2022.
How did you do to publicize and promote it?
Basically, we are an independent band, but this day and age, most of the metal artists out there are like us, even when they are signed to a label. We knew that no one will take of our little musical baby with a better care than us, so we decided to promote ourselves, DIY and oldschool, like selling demo-taped back in the 80’s. So no label for now. The industry is at a tough spot as it is, asking a contract from a label now take a lot of patience and way too many Israeli bands died waiting for any kind of answer from any kind of label before they released their stuff. We chose not to fall to this paradigm.
How was it generally received, both by the public and the specialized press?
And it seems to be working! We get really great reviews so far, some people even announce it as the best Israeli metal album of all time, which is far-fetched by my account but I’m glad that people think so! We gathered some really good reviews so far from magazine all across the world, some of the declared that we are ‘the middle point between Metallica and Death’ which is funny because this is where we started from, as influences, and this is what we tried to get to people.
Where is it possible to obtain a copy?
The album is available through our bandcamp. This is our methods of keeping things alive and connected, like so many other artists out there. It’s no longer ‘underground’ — it became the norm for a lot of people — but think about it — wouldn’t you like to get a package from Israel?
With “Kivshan”, so far the band has 4 musical works. What inspires you to compose and create your songs?
Do you reflect the reality of your country or do you rely on personal experiences?
Our lyrics usually deal with situations in Israel, be it racism that is integrated to our point of view as a nation, to the suffocating religious institution. Those are my main points that get me started. Metal music usually channel negative emotions to positive outlooks, and this is what’s we’ve been doing for 4 albums by now. We use the music and lyrics as a mirror to reflect the turmoil our society, in Israel but sometimes the whole wide world, is stuck in. Most of our concepts derive from personal experience. We are not like the black metal scene in Norway in the 90’s. We are having a religious oppression in this day and age, not 700 years ago! Did you know that only barely a decade ago they decided to remove the ‘religion’ entry from people’s IDs? That’s crazy? Why would the government would care what god I follow? Why the hell would it be written in my ID in the first place? So those are the struggles we are having in person, and it’s obviously reflects on our music and lyrics.
I was really surprised when I found out that you are from Israel, a country with a very ancient culture and linked to religion.
How is rock seen in Israel?
What is it like to do rock in Israel and how is the scene in general?
Is there any support from the government or institutions towards rock?
Does this genre suffer from discrimination?
Well, I might sound pissed about it, but we are not really suffering from been a metal or a rock band. We don’t get funding from some government edicts or whatnot, but at least we are still in the clear even with our venomous criticism on Israel politics. But that’s because metal is conceived as a fringe genre. If we were the centre of attention, we would have been facing much more negative reactions because we dare to criticize things that regarded sacred and holy, both literally an figuratively.
But putting that aside, Israel inspired a lot of metal and rock artists. I am more of a metal kind of guy, but we have a long history of great musical bands and in the last 5 years we seen a flourish like no other in Israel professional metal acts. Bands like Walkways, Shredhead, Scardust, and of course everybody know about Orphaned Land and Melechesh, the Israeli metal scene is small but something to be proud of.
On a different subject.
As I said at the beginning, the band has been created for 16 years now.
How much has the band grown in all these years?
How do you feel so far?
What can we expect from Prey For Nothing in the future?
Even before the big line-up change, we had our share of growth and self discovery. But on Kivshan we really took it on ourselves to present something that will both sound familiar and new for a our small but strong fanbase. Our first two albums, especially our debut, Violence Divine from 2008, are held in high regard in the history of Israeli metal. By now we are considered veterans in our small scene and young bands look up to us, but while it is surely a compliment on its own, we have the pressure of writing and recording a better album, to do everything in our power to outdo ourselves. That way of thinking leads to the will to innovate, to change and to grow. Our third album, The Reasoning from 2014, wasn’t well received. It lacked the stellar production of the first two albums, and it might have gone a bit too far into the progressive side of things. In ‘Kivshan’ we are turning the table. We have the clearest product to date and this is by far our most diverse and rich album.
We can only hope that album number 5, which we have already started working on because there’s no time to waste and none of us is getting any younger, will takes those directions into account and will continue to both grow and still stay the same band as we keep on driving down this musical lane.
Also — we hope that in the future we will tour some more, but that’s almost never up to us, especially not with this pandemic going around.
Regarding the band.
What are the most immediate plans?
Do you already have any tour or show planned?
Any new video clip?
As mentioned above, we have another video clip in the making, but we believe that videos is what you do when you cannot tour. We really wish we could tour more, even before the pandemic it was a hard deal for Israel bands to fly over Europe or Asia with gear in toe and hope to rich as many people as possible as new audience. That’s the struggle of every metal artists in the end, from us to Iron Maiden, but the smaller the band the harder the tour, and on the top of that been an Israeli metal band is even harder. Just the logistic side of it is a pain, but this is our dream and what wouldn’t we do to achieve it.
Well Prey For Nothing, that’s all. Thank you again for your time and wish you the best of luck in your career. Before we finish, something you would like to say.
Thank you for this opportunity! One thing I would like to clarify is about politics. We got dismissed many times because we are coming from a controvertial country, to say the least. The last decade has painted Israel as the bad guys of the Middle East, as the oppressors. While there are some merits to this claim, it is not the whole picture. There are no good guys or bad guys in this situation — only people, on both sides of the border. We, as a metal band, criticize the actions handled both by our government for the last decade and a half and the regime on the other side. We are metal musicians, this is what we do. We know it will never be simple, and a lot of people has a lot to gain from an neverending conflict and war, but we do not. Please keep that in mind.
In short — I will always relate more to a metalhead from Iran, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine — than to an orthodox Jew. We are all brothers and sisters, no matter where we from.
Peace in the middle East!
Prey For Nothing online:
