{"id":44982,"date":"2026-09-03T07:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orkus1.com\/an-interview-with-epta7-part-2-of-2\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T07:20:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T05:20:36","slug":"an-interview-with-epta7-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orkus1.com\/en\/an-interview-with-epta7-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with EPTA7 (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Irish-Italian industrial metal project EPTA7 was founded in Dublin in 2012. We\u2019re continuing our interview with the two founding members, Gianz and Miss Grey, about their new album, \u201cHere Come the Freaks.\u201d Did you miss the first part? No problem\u2014 you can read it here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

Orkus: \u201cThe Walls Breathe\u201d gives me goosebumps just listening to it. How did this track come about? <\/strong>Gianz:<\/strong> There\u2019s actually a very personal story behind this song that goes all the way back to my childhood, when I was about six or seven years old. I think every kid has some kind of strange little obsession. One of mine always surfaced whenever I visited my grandparents\u2019 homes. They lived in old houses that had previously belonged to other people, and I was fascinated by the idea of all the generations who had lived there. People had been born there, grown old, and probably died there, too. I wondered if perhaps something of them had been left behind. I had the strange habit of lying flat on my back on the floor and staring at the ceiling. From this completely different perspective, after staring for a long time, I could almost convince myself that the walls were moving slightly\u2014expanding and contracting, as if the house itself were breathing. And when I was alone in those houses, that feeling grew even stronger. The old furniture, ornaments, lamps, and objects around me seemed almost alive. Some of them had been there much longer than I had. I remember thinking: \u201cIf this lamp has been standing here for a hundred years, imagine everything it has seen.\u201d That idea stayed with me as I grew older and eventually evolved into something bigger: the notion that places and objects somehow absorb the emotions of the people around them. Imagine a three-hundred-year-old house where generations have been born, loved, suffered, and died. What if the walls could preserve something of all those lives? So the walls in the song aren\u2019t just haunted by ghosts. You remember.<\/strong> The house has absorbed so much human experience that it has almost become a living organism in its own right.<\/p>\n\n

O: First, an image or a scene from a movie comes to mind, and then the music takes shape. How can we picture that? <\/strong>EPTA7:<\/strong> Yes, absolutely. For us, it usually starts with an image, a scene, or even just a feeling. We see the world first and then try to find its sound. That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean we compose everything from scratch afterward. Sometimes we already have a bassline, a chorus, a few verses, or a musical idea that came about independently. It\u2019s almost as if fragments that originated independently eventually recognize each other and become part of the same story. <\/p>\n\n

O: Which scene from “Here Come the Freaks” has stuck with you the most?<\/strong>EPTA7:<\/strong> When we close our eyes and think of \u201cHere Come the Freaks,\u201d the image that sticks most strongly in our minds is definitely not a comforting one. We see the procession of freaks: outsiders, the marginalized, people who are viewed as strange or different, marching forward together while the so-called \u201cnormal\u201d people watch them in fear. They seem to be the monsters. But they\u2019re not. History has shown us time and again how dangerous it becomes when a society decides that a certain group is somehow different, abnormal, or threatening. <\/p>\n\n

O: In \u201cWalking Ghost,\u201d we\u2019re confronted with the realization, \u201cYou will die!\u201d Is there a story behind the song? <\/strong>EPTA7:<\/strong> Yes, although \u201cWalking Ghost\u201d is one of those songs whose meaning has never been fully defined\u2014not even for us. And maybe that\u2019s fitting, because it was actually the very first song ever written for EPTA7.One possible interpretation of \u201cWalking Ghost\u201d is that of an outsider who has become nearly invisible to society. You could imagine a homeless person walking down a busy street while hundreds of people pass him by without really noticing him. Or perhaps he\u2019s one of those strange street prophets carrying a sign announcing the end of the world. Everyone thinks he\u2019s crazy, but maybe he\u2019s just saying something no one wants to hear. Because \u201cYou will die!\u201d isn\u2019t really a threat. It\u2019s a <\/strong>Memento mori<\/em>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

O: How did the track \u201cKartoffeln\u201d come about?<\/strong>Gianz:<\/strong> This song has a much less philosophical origin\u2014and since I\u2019m telling this story to a German magazine, I suspect you\u2019ll really appreciate it! (laughs) Our first self-produced EPTA7 demo contained four tracks: \u201cWalking Ghost,\u201d \u201cEPTAsystem,\u201d \u201cMoon Canvas,\u201d and \u201cFallen Gabriel.\u201d After the release, we immediately continued writing new songs, and \u201cKartoffeln\u201d was the next song we worked on. We already had a guitar riff, and when we played it in the rehearsal room, we all agreed that it had a certain Rammstein vibe. Rammstein has always been a huge influence on me\u2014not just musically, but visually as well. Few bands have managed to blend music, visual language, performance, and identity into such a complete whole. One day, we were working on this very German-sounding riff in the rehearsal room, and I was eating fries. Miss Grey took in the whole situation\u2014the Rammstein-esque riff and me sitting there eating fries\u2014and came up with the obvious solution: \u201cLet\u2019s call it \u2018Potatoes\u2019!\u201d <\/strong>There was just one small problem that you Germans will, of course, spot right away: \u201cKartoffeln\u201d<\/em> doesn\u2019t mean \u201cfries\u201d! (laughs) It was actually supposed to be just a temporary working title. But we kept developing the song, nobody could come up with a better title, and at some point \u201cKartoffeln\u201d just became the official name. The song itself, however, is much darker than its title suggests. It\u2019s about a killer who roams the city looking for victims. But he\u2019s not just a bad person. He, too, is a freak\u2014someone who has been corrupted and transformed by the city. He wears a human mask to hide what he has become, and behind it, he commits terrible crimes. Yet while he hunts other people, he, too, is being hunted by something. Gradually, he realizes that someone is following him, and the hunter begins to feel the same fear as his victims. Eventually, we discover that what is pursuing him is EPTA7 itself\u2014the entity at the center of our world. <\/p>\n\n

O: What are the Irish and Italian industrial rock scenes like?<\/strong>Gianz:<\/strong> That\u2019s an interesting question, because in my experience, neither Ireland nor Italy has ever had a massive, clearly defined industrial rock scene, the kind you might associate with countries like Germany. In both countries, industrial tends to exist somewhere between other scenes\u2014metal, goth, electronic music, alternative\u2014and perhaps that\u2019s one of the reasons why EPTA7 has developed the way we have. We never really felt like we had to follow the rules of a particular scene. Italy, of course, has an enormous music culture. When I played there, however, industrial rock was still relatively underground compared to more traditional metal and rock. There\u2019s also something very Italian about drama, visual expressiveness, and strong emotions, and I think some of that inevitably found its way into our music. Ireland felt different. The scene was smaller, but Dublin in particular was very multicultural. You could meet musicians with completely different backgrounds and influences, and there was a certain freedom in that. When you\u2019re operating outside the mainstream of a genre anyway, you worry less about whether something is \u201cindustrial enough,\u201d \u201cmetal enough,\u201d or \u201celectronic enough.\u201d You just use whatever works. And maybe it even helped us to be outsiders in a clearly defined industrial scene. EPTA7 ultimately incorporated elements from industrial rock, metal, electronic music, post-punk, and film scores, without ever feeling completely at home anywhere. Of course, in an interview with a German magazine, we have to admit that you guys have a slight unfair advantage when it comes to industrial music! (laughs) But maybe that\u2019s exactly why an Irish-Italian take on it might sound a little different. <\/p>\n\n

Claudia Zinn-Zinnenburg<\/p>\n\n

Lineup:<\/strong>Miss Grey \u2013 bass, backing vocalsGianz Vukodlak \u2013 drums, percussion, sampler, backing vocals<\/p>\n\n

Check out the lyric video for “Fallen Gabriel”:<\/p>\n\n

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