I’ll never get tired of repeating how much I’m obsessed with all those sounds and bands that for one reason or another can be traced back to that primordial soup that emerged in the British underground of the 80s and known as “stenchcore”. Fortunately, I can share my love for certain sounds with bands like the Portuguese Corrupted Human Behavior, authors of a splendid debut last year of epic, apocalyptic and bellicose crust punk. Luckily with Kizas, Crostas and Tiago I share not only a musical passion but also the same vision of what punk music has been and must continue to be: a “symbol of resistance” and a threat. In the days when I was writing these questions Corrupted Human Behavior and mainly Crostas were hit by state repression for resisting the eviction of a squat in Lisbon. Complete solidarity and complicity with Crostas, with the 13 comrades arrested for defending Ladra Squat and with everyone who fight against State and Capital and suffer police repression! Let’s not stop making punk a threat to this existing of exploitation, oppression and misery!
Hello dear Corrupted Human Behavior! Let’s start the interview with some obvious biographical notes, would you like to tell us your story? But above all, what is hidden behind your fascinating name and what do you want to convey with it?
Hello dear Disastro Sonoro and dedicated readers, we started this band in mid 2019 when the political situation in our home city of Porto started to tremble and we took the initiative to create a band that would help spread our ideals. As a group of politically revolted friends we started to play together and define our sound both aesthetically and ideologically.
Corrupted Human Behavior is the way we found to indicate the greediness and selfishness that lives inside every capitalist pig that rules our world and way of life because cops, fascists and capitalists are corrupted in a way their humanity is long gone, stiped away by the corruption of money and doing nothing more than terrorism. Its a critique to the Fascist leaders of our modern world but also taking steps back in time to understand that this corruption has been wandering around our minds and cuminities for centuries.
As soon as one comes across your first work and looks at the cover artwork, an acrid stench-crust smell is immediately in the air. What is your relationship with certain sounds? Which are your main influences? But above all, what exactly does it mean for you to play this “sub-genre” of punk?
Me (Kizas) and Crostas started this project when we were underage, and dream that we wanted to accomplish for a long time and for that we listened to lot crust, our main influences since the beginning were always Sacrilege, Bolt Thrower, Amebix as well as Instinct of Survival and Swordwielder and of course Carnage and Misantropia, both bands from Portugal.
For us stenchore is a way to not only write powerful lyrics with meaning along with jawbreaking riffs but not being rebels without a cause. This metallic crust gives us and idea of what the horrors our people and our martyrs have suffered struggling to survive this chaotic social structures that is capitalism and imperialism. The king skull killed in the cover artwork is a direct comparisson to Imperialist leaders that taint our world and that seek to destroy the working class in order to fullfill their foul ideologies. For us, playing stenchcore means resistance, means not giving up the fight and obviously a way for us to sing about all the martyrs that have died in the fight for revolution all aorund the world.
Reqviem for a Broken Blade, the instrumental intro that opens your album, perfectly succeeds in calling to mind landscapes and atmospheres that recall battlefields (among jingling swords, horses neighing and war screams), apocalyptic scenarios and feelings of desolation, destruction and death. What fascinates you about this apocalyptic and warlike imagery typical of certain stenchcore? What do you want to convey by using these images and atmospheres?
The shadows of our kings still perpetuate today. The hordes of orcs come to reality when we take a look at our everyday lives and see the efforts made by the greedy in order to destroy what we fought to create. We try to capture this exact feeling in our sound and imagery not to escape reality but to give us hope and strength to fight on with our ideals, as what we scream about is real and affects us all directly. All escapists seem to want to flee from our daily reality, but we do not, we seek to make people understand that this horrors that can only be described in fantasy are real, affects real people and are real stories. In the afftermath of all the battles fought in this world, all the mothers kept screaming in wrath, and we can ear this screaming in the winds everyday of our lives, and for that we must do whatever we can to fight back the imperialist notion that their war is bringing peace.
In your lyrics you deal with topical issues such as the oppression and control of the state in our lives or the destruction of the ecosystem in the name of profit, showing how punk in all its forms is not only a musical genre but a means to take clear political positions. So what does playing punk mean to you? Do you still see in punk a possibility of attack and threat to this system of exploitation, devastation and oppression?
Punk was, is and always will be a threat to every greedy organisation set to exploit and dominate us. It is a symbol of resistance be it in gigs, squats or the streets and that is why we put all our efforts in this cause, not only musically but also politically. Punk is more than grabbing a guitar and screaming to a microphone, it’s mutual aid and fighting back that gives it meaning and that’s why it will always be a threat.
We try to help as much as we can everyone around us and to be present in the street and in the squats, we try to learn with everyone we meet along the way and everywere we play, for us punk started with simple symbology and ended up in a life long fight against the un-human system.
In this period I managed to interview two more interesting Portuguese bands, Nagasaki Sunrise and Carnage, bands that showed me that there is a quite fertile and active hardcore punk scene in Portugal. What can you tell us about the scene in your country? Are there collectives and squats resisting repression, organizing concerts and benefits and working to keep the scene alive?
Besides the bands that already exist there are new bands being formed such as , Dishuman, Diskrasüki, Päria and Nukke. There are a lot of squats and organizations in Lisbon such as A-da-Machada where we played a gig last month and Disgraça. Recently our bassist Crostas was arrested with another 13 people during an eviction of Ladra squat in the center of Lisbon where they fought the police and after that he and some of them created a band called Polluted Existence.
What is the political situation in Portugal? As bands and individuals are you active in particular paths of struggle, from anti-fascism to solidarity with comrades affected by state repression?
We are all part of any struggle that helps anyone fight against capitalist exploitation and fascism. With the rise of far right parties in Portugal in recent years we feel the need to clean our streets in any way we can and will continue to do so as long as it’s necessary. In our gigs we always incite people to do what they can to stop this from happening, we try to create a safe enviroment for us all. And everytime we see a nazi we punch him.
Are you already working on a new record? Do you have plans for concerts and tours in the near future or is the pandemic situation still preventing you from thinking about all this?
We’ve been working on a new record during this summer with a dear friend of ours and we hope to release it sometime in the next few months. We’ve also been playing some gigs and with the lockdown situation becoming more light here we have much more to come hopefully enough to make a tour, who knows.
We have unfortunately come to the conclusion of this interview, so all that’s left is for me to leave this space for you to say whatever you want or think might be important to those who will read! I send you a big hug my dear friends!
We ask everyone to take a stand and to directly help in what we can, we sugest Kopi and squats around the world, or the current situation in northern syria were kurds are being directly affected by turskish fascism. We encourage all to take a stand against fascism, racism , imperialism and any other kind of right wing power seekers. Also to spray the notion that everyone is capable of doing something against this sytematic horror, that we should not be afraid to fight, be it with a pen, a guitar or a sword, tho sing is to fight if the accuracy is enough, of course!
Also we want to thank you a lot, personally and in the name of our band!