Joe: You've recently vomited forth your fourth LP Latex Cult along with a new EP Motorpenis. The new direction seems to be more "hardcore punk" than you've ever played before. How did this new direction come about?
IN: Well, I personally like a lot of bands such as Terveet Kadet, Driller Killer, D.R.I., old Accused, etc. so I guess i comes a bit from there. But lots of people kept telling us that we sound like punk already when our 1st CD came out and after been listening to some punk shit, I can find some similarities. But let's also make clear even if we do like punk as music, I must certainly not don't like their lyrics/ideologies at all, Impaled Nazarene is a metal band.

Joe: Aside from the new LP and EP, the only song I've heard is a song called "Hate" off the Blackend compilation. Which album was that song from?
IN: That comes from our 2nd CD Ugra Karma.

Joe: "Hate" is one of my favorite Black Metal songs of all time. Where is the sample 'Because you were inspired by the Devil'(from that song) from and do you have any comments on the song?
IN: The sample is taken from the movie The Name of the Rose, a brilliant movie starring Sean Connery an based on a book by Umberto Eco. Personally I would have preferred if we would have left the keyboards out of the song.. Actually "Hate" is one of our worst songs, hah!

Joe: Impaled Nazarene have a reputation for getting fucked up on alcoholic beverages and causing chaos. What kinds of destructive things have you done when under the influence?
IN: We do??? Yes, we do drink a lot but I am not quite sure if we cause so much chaos or not. There's some things I could tell you but as it just mainly brings back more hangovers, I rather let it be.

Joe: On Latex Cult, many of the songs are under 2 minutes long and "Goat War" even clocks in at 52 seconds. Was the idea for ultra-short songs done in the spirit of hardcore/punk or was it just improvised?
IN: First of all, on all of our CD's we have had short tracks and secondly I hate long songs generally. And I hate songs CD's too. By the way, "Hate" is our longest song we have ever written.

Joe: Your lyrics seem to be more about nihilism and destruction in general, than about the Occult although they're still Satanic. Is Impaled Nazarene an "Occult" band?
IN: I don't really see us occult band or black metal band. First of all musically we are different and as you pointed out, lyrically we are more chaos/cynical/nihilistic/misanthropic direction. Nowadays the so-called occult lyrics is nothing but singing a bout a fucking forest or trolls which for me is just a bunch of fucking greenpeace hippie shit. Black metal really is about new-age hippie shit.

Joe: You've been described as "Nuclear Metal". What does this mean?
IN: It is just a term I came up with as I wanted to have a fit sounding description of how we sound. We are like nuclear power: Powerful & Deadly and you never know when we will explode.

Joe: Going back to the question about your hardcore influences, you did covers of songs by Terveet Kadet, Faff-Bey, and Gang Green, all of which are legendary hardcore bands. What cover song from Motorpenis do you like best and why?
IN: Very hard question as I like them all as a matter of fact. I choose the excellent "Transvestite" by Terveet Kadet.

Joe: The cover art for Latex Cult is very interesting. How did you get the artwork and what is a "Latex Cult" all about?
IN: The cover is done by English artist David Palser and it is pretty much his idea. I was in London filming the Diablos Rising video and he cast a plastic copy of my head and eventually added lots of other shit on it. At that time we had no idea what we call our CD so it was kind of weird situation. I just told him to do some kind of cyber-sex oriented sculpture. As for the title, we were looking for something related to sex(as lots of our lyrics deal with sex) and in the end, we chose Latex Cult. And we wanted to have an English title this time so we don't have to explain to everybody what #&%#@%$ means.

Joe: Your longtime bassist Taneli Jarva left the band to concentrate on his main project Sentenced. Where did you get your new bassist Jani Lehtosarri?
IN: We have known Jani Lehtosaari for years and moreover he comes from Belial and so does our guitar player and drummer. By the way, Taneli Jarva has also now left Sentenced!

Joe: What kind of lives do you live outside of Impaled Nazarene? Would you say they're as destructive and hateful?
IN: I think our lives are destructive to our liver only. We are people that keep it pretty silent actually, personally I stay at home and love to have my Jack Daniels and a good Mercator cigar and watch some movies or do music.

Joe: What are your tour plans?
IN: We did in May 29 dates here in Europe with Cannibal Corpse, Dark Tranquility, Immolation, Vader. It was brilliant tour as we got pretty different audience than we would have normally drawn if we would have just headlined ourselves. And then we are again here- we are caught in a trap in a way. We release CD, we do a European tour and that's it. It seems it is impossible for us to get any gigs outside Europe and that is fucking irritating.

Joe: Any last comments?
IN: Anybody interested can write us at: Impaled Nazarene, PB 24, 1000 Brussel 3/, BELGIUM. Please enclose I.R.C. or $1. Thanks for the interview and keep on crashing heads.