Voodoo Terror Tribe is a hard-rock band known for its brutal thrash metal and industrial sound. They are a diverse group with many worldly influences, just releasing their new album “Sun Shining Cold.” Lead guitarist Emir Erkal, a driving force in the bands dominating esteem, informs College News magazine the history behind the band, how different genres impact their sound and what we can expect to hear next.
Voodoo Terror Tribe is a metal band that has embraced an industrial sound using synths to compliment dark melodies moving forward into their new 10-track arrangement. The music is good and fun to listen to. But what is surprising about Voodoo Terror Tribe is their determination story behind the music and how their influences interplay with the sound.
“Our sound has progressed over the years. We have more modern and industrial metal elements than ever before” – Emir Erkal
College News: Coming from Turkey must have an incredible influence on your music.
Emir Erkal: Yeah, of course. Coming from Turkey, I have a lot of Mediterranean, some Middle Eastern and influences stemming all the way back from the Roman empire. The melodies and sounds from all those different cultures are always in my head and sometimes they unconsciously go into my music.
CN: What is the story behind Voodoo Terror Tribe?
EE: I came from Turkey in early 2001. After I got here, I started looking for musicians. It took a while to find, but finally I found my drummer T-Bone. We put this band together around 2005 with two other guys at the time. We went through some bass player changes and then we finally found Gill, the singer we have today. We have two EPs and two albums and “Sun Shining Cold” is our third. This album has more of an electronic or industrial feel. We started adding keyboard samples to our songs on our previous EPs in 2012 and 2015 little by little. Now we have more keyboard samples and electronic sounds on every song. Our sound has progressed over the years. We have more modern and industrial metal elements than ever before. We worked with Cristian Machado from Ill Niño on this album who produced and worked with us side by side from the beginning to the end.
CN: What’s the difference between this album and your previous recordings?
EE: It is more melodic and modern. There are more catchy melodies. It is almost like a combination or a blend of all our work put together. We put a lot of thought into the arrangement. It was great to have that outside ear like Cristian. He gave us an extra artistic approach and vision. Because of him, melodically the songs are more powerful compared to our previous records.
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CN: What’s up with your latest single?
EE: “No Hell Like Home” was written by our singer Gill. It’s a song that was written backwards. Lyrically it’s about rebelling against your roots, the way you were raised and where you come from! The first video that we released from this album was “City of Sixes,” which was released early 2016. We filmed that with director Scott Hansen. He is a phenomenal director. He also makes cool horror movies. We went all the way to Virginia to film. It was a great experience. After that, we released a video for the song “Cell.” That came out cool. We also released a live video for “Lady in the Wolf,” but we are also planning to make a full-concept video. But currently we are focusing on promoting. We are also planning a tour soon and are working out the details.
CN: What else do you want your fans to know?
EE: The album “Sun Shining Cold” is available everywhere. You can download it from our website voodooterrortribe.com. It is in all the digital stores right now as well. You can also order a physical CD from Bandcamp. We put together a cool digipak! We highly recommend getting the CD. It is a support to us that we appreciate. Any kind of support like that we always put it back into our music.
