My review of Deus Ex Machina’s promo cd The War Inside left me behind with some questions. Their whole press kit was a bit vague to me. No clear bio or, for example, any explanation why they had loads of vocalists on this cd. I was also a bit surprised that The War Inside ended up at Metalrage. With all the respect but it looked like some home recording demo to me. As they’re from Singapore, an email interview seemed to be the right thing to do here. Only one day later I received an answer from these metalheads. Thanks to Ryan, thinks will get clearer for those who have read the review and know what I’m talking about.

 

“Firstly thanks for the review and the support from Metalrage. My name is Ryan, and I play all the guitars on the album. The rest of the guys are Mak on bass, Gene on drums and Rory on guitars.”  

 

“Deus Ex Machina did start of as a project after I left Azra-el. But it slowly started to evolve. I got in Gene after the initial drummer could not commit. Then Mak joined us for the bass guitar. The most painful thing was to find the right vocalist. The reason why we use many vocalists on the album was that we could not find ‘one’ after many months. That’s when I decided to rope in those guys. Funny thing was, each guy and lady, actually fit each song very well. Also, we thought it would be cool to do something with friends as well. And they are Lord Insanity of MeltgSnow, Subash of Truth Be Known/Kaliyuga, Kathi from the legendary Rudra, M.E (whom we can’t name for contractual reasons), myself on one track and Vivek from Sins of a Curse.”

  

“Currently, I session around a lot. For example, I will be playing with the Pakistani band Dusk for the recordings of their demo. Gene plays with Truth Be Known and Bhelliom. As we are all friends we respect each others schedule. And our situation is not that bad. We know this guy who once played in 7 or 8 bands at the same time! Now that was crazy!”

  

 

“It was not entirely the company’s fault. It was one liar within the company who took us for a ride, playing us around for several months. The CD’s never actually reached any of the stores when he told us it did. That delayed the initial release date. And he was not helping us out properly with our launch gig. He made a deal with the owner of the pub where we played. Part of this deal was made behind our backs. When the owner told me, I blew my top. He wanted to take a majority of the gate money as his “investment”, and not let any of the bands get anything. He never kept his word about many things, and on top of that, he was trying to steal money as well.” 

“Not really. The problem is that none of us really has got the time to run a webpage, let alone design one. But there is one in the works. Some kids help us out. It’s also a school project for them. So, yeah, we will definitely have one soon. And we will let Metalrage know about it. But currently all news can be found at www.myspace.com/demsg.”

 

“This was initially Mindseye’s idea. To help promote Sins of a Curse (SOAC). Vivek, their vocalist, and I were together in Azra-el since the 90’s and we are very, very close friends. The guitar and bass player from SOAC were also in Azra-el in its early incarnation. Besides, we’re all good friends, and we help each other out with band stuff. Our scene here is not really big at all, so we do what we can.”

 

 Any other things you’d like to share with us?

 

“Thanks again for this interview and the support. I hope this answers a lot of the unanswered questions. And for updates, CD purchases etc, please check out our MySpace.”