Good day! Hope you`re doing well. Let`s start this small talk with your band bio.

The band was formed in 2017 when Ana and Luisma, from the Goregrind band HAEMORRHAGE, talked to Jose (who played with them in Haemorrhage for years) to start a Crust/Punk project with the purpose of playing together again. Luisma (with whom I shared the origins of the death metal band AVULSED) we had talked many times about doing something different from what we had done together so he asked me if I wanted to join the band on bass. After Jose left Último Gobierno in the summer of 2018, we started working on our first tracks, releasing a couple of songs to move around the media: “Don’t Blame the Victims” and “Justice for Sota”, which caught the attention of several record labels. In 2019 the band entered the studio to record the 7 songs that will make up their first EP, “Life Kills” which was released on CD by the Italian label Spikerot Records. In August 2020 the American label BLOODY SCYTHE RECORDS also took an interest in us and released the cassette version of “Life Kills”. During the whole long period of the Covid-19 pandemic the band was working hard to compose their first full-length. “Another War Victim” was released in 2021 by the Spanish label Hecatombe Records. A new work with 14 unreleased tracks, much more powerful and fast… Punk / Crust / D beat influenced by the great classics of the 80’s, with a brutal, direct and uncompromising style, where once again we combine male and female vocals being one of the hallmarks of the band. Now in 2022 the time has come for the release of our next work, a new Mini-LP, edited in 10″ Vinyl format and titled “Starvation”.

Your 3d album is finally out, but we need more details about it. Could you open some secrets of the
recording?

Well, the pandemic period was hard on the life of the groups. We took it also as an opportunity to write a lot of songs, work on them and record them. We had plenty of time to do that so we said why not? When it came time to record our first full length we had so many good songs in our opinion that we decided to record them all and leave a few for the album and others for a future work which is what we have now released. The pademia period meant that we had to do a lot of work in our own homes individually and that’s what we did. Then we recorded everything in our own studios at home and Luisma did the mixing. He put a lot of time and dedication into the mixing so the result was very good. It was a different experience but I think the result was so positive that we might do it again in the future.

Remind me please which labels help you out with a physical record?

From the first minute we started the band and recorded our first two sample songs we have had a lot of interest from some labels. The first ones who bet on us were the Italian label Spikerot Records who released our Debut EP “Life Kills”. Bloody Scythe records from USA was interested in releasing it on cassette version and they did it. Our first full length was released by a label from our country, Hecatombe Records, which has a lot of experience in the underground extreme music scene. For our most recent work there has been a great collaboration with several labels, the Belgian Loner Cult and the Spanish labels, Romantic Song Records, As Crust As Fuck and Hecatombe Records that has repeated again.

After a close look at your cover art and music, the main themes are war and starvation. Why are these so important to you?

Our songs talk about everything that we don’t like, that bothers us and that we want to denounce, so to speak, but we are also clear that we don’t want to tell people what to think or do, everyone is different. We like to express what we feel and if someone likes it then fine, and if they don’t then we don’t really care. Yes, war and its atrocities, as well as the hunger that many people suffer in this world are topics that we touch very closely but we also give a touch of attention about animal abuse, evictions, suicide, rape and how its victims are criminalized, the environment and how the human being is obsessed with destroying it, the control to which governments submit us, the injustice against the weakest…

You all have music experiences besides Depopulation Department. In what bands you were and are
involved?

Jose and Luisma started together with DEVOURMENT, what we could call the embryo of what later became HAEMORRHAGE. As everyone knows Luisma and Ana are still going at it and Jose has intermittently been a part of the band recording and playing with them when they have needed him. Jose also had a brief stint with the legendary Hardcore / Punk band ULTIMO GOBIERNO before joining DEPOPULATION DEPARTMENT. Luisma and Ana also have a project called STEELFORCE, a band where they play with former CARCASS guitarist Carlo Regadas, and where they play classic Heavy Metal covers. And finally, I was part of AVULSED (where I was in the original line-up with Luisma), from the beginning until the recording of their first album.

Do you think that our planet is overflooded with humans and we have no resources for so many people?

Well, there are many of us, it is true, but I think that this should not be a problem today. The problem comes from the mismanagement of the planet’s resources and the greed of a few means that the rest cannot have the quality of life that everyone deserves. We live in a capitalist society that leaves you marked depending on how lucky you are to be born in one part of the planet or another. What is clear to me is that if human beings continue with their desire for self-destruction, depleting the resources that the planet provides us with without looking for alternatives that make it sustainable, the day will come when we will all be overwhelmed. I believe that the education of our children and the next generations must be a priority, so that they learn to take care of the planet and to show solidarity and fairness when it comes to distributing wealth.

What inspired you to create your lyrics? News, history or something else?

Yes of course, the news, history, social networks, documentaries… there are many ways to get informed, to see what is happening in the world, to see the opinions of some and others and of course the most important thing, dissecting everything to create our own opinion about the issues we are talking about. In our case and for our music it wouldn’t make sense to talk about “Dungeons and Dragons”, hahahahaha.

As far as I know, you’re from Madrid. Could you describe an underground movement in your city, is there a lot of fans of extreme music?

All the members of the band live in towns in the periphery very close to the capital Madrid, so we know very well what’s going on around here. I can tell you that despite living in an area with a large number of people we are not many followers within the extreme music, there is also a lot of diversification of styles, some with more followers than others although there are also many people who are within several of them, as soon as they listen to Death Metal or Grind as they also like Punk, Crust or Hardcore. Maybe the biggest problem we have is that there are not many shops or specialized catalogs and in Madrid there are not a lot of small or medium-sized venues where you can organize concerts. The whole pandemic era has also made things very difficult and some of these places have had to close their doors. The location of our country, in the south of Europe, also doesn’t help bands from outside our borders to come and play with their tours, it’s always a bad thing that we have suffered from. We hope that little by little we can grow in all aspects.

Maybe a bit strange question, but what’s your motto?

Ha, ha, ha… well, it’s a strange question but I’ll try to answer it in the best possible way. Here is a “saying” or “Phrase” that I don’t know what translation it will have in English language… “Live and let live”, which would be something like, “do what you believe and want, but let others do the same”. All of course with some rules of coexistence…

If you could change one global event in the history of humanity, what would it be?

Just one??? there would be thousands… maybe the first one that comes to my mind quickly would be WWII… all this caused for six years the destruction of thousands of homes and families, forced many people to leave their homes, forced many children to witness the murder of their parents, caused poverty, hunger, discrimination, persecution, fear… all this caused by the rise of fascism in Italy and the coming to power of the nazis and all that it meant afterward… Undoubtedly one of the black spots in history. Fuck fascism!

Thank you so much for this opportunity to tell people about the life of the Depopulation Department! A couple of final words from you, please)

Our thanks go to you for all the help you have given us from the beginning and above all for being there even in the most difficult times your country is going through. Thank you very much to all the readers of Good Guys Go Grind for spending your precious time reading this interview. It only remains for us to tell you to seek out some of our music and have as much fun listening to it as we had making it.

Contacts: Bandcamp page  /  Facebook page