Pic courtesy of: Pseudostratiffied Epithelium "Our music is death metal, we always wanted to play death metal… still we have some gore, grind, black sounds attached to our music; the grind sound is still part of our music, but the other two were pretty much influenced by some of our past members"

CR: Fernando, how are you? Why don’t we Star with a quick presentation of the band?
Fernando Baltodano: I’m fine thanks. Well Pseudostratiffied Epithelium is a Costarrican band that currently has 12 years of existence; 12 years since our first gig back in 1994 with Cenotaph. Before that the band had already release a demo tape in 1991, but neither do I nor my brother were in that first line up… the line up change drastically after that first demo; the only two people involved since that gig back in 94 are my brother and I.

CR: If someone wants to get a copy of that demo, where can they get it?
Fernando Baltodano: I don’t really have the original tape… but I have it in mp3 format, so if anyone is interested, they just need to get in touch with me and we’ll work something out.

CR: Why don’t you explain to some of our readers Pseudostratiffied Epithelium’s music proposal?
Fernando Baltodano: Our music is death metal, we always wanted to play death metal… still we have some gore, grind, black sounds attached to our music; the grind sound is still part of our music, but the other two were pretty much influenced by some of our past members. We have always write music inspired by bands like Death, Pestilence, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, the whole Florida old school sound.

CR: Why the name Pseudostratiffied Epithelium?
Fernando Baltodano: It’s a medical term, something related with a special kind of tissue that you can find in places like your nose and genitals. When I got in the band the name was already there, so, it really wasn’t my idea.

CR: How did you got involve in Pseudostratiffied Epithelium?
Fernando Baltodano: Well the first demo was recorded by Ronald Jiménez; he is now with Mummified, and Alfonso Pérez. After that demo something happened and Alfonso left the band, so Ronald started to look for new people and he got in touch with my brother Mauricio and Marco Mora to play bass; I was just starting to play the drums, but they gave me a chance and we just began to rehearse together. After just a couple of moths we got a solid five track work and decided to recorded, that’s how Sodimizing Children Corpses was born back in 1994. we recorded that EP here in San José, at The Mix Studio; I think that studio still stands but the owners or something are devoted Christians so…we got a change to record three albums there: Sodimizing Children Corpses, Sinistrous necromantika and Into the flames.

CR: How was the Costarrican death metal scene when you guys started to play?
Fernando Baltodano: Well back then we had Mantra and Sentence. When we started to play more and more gigs, other bands started to emerge; bands like Funeral now called Obliteration I think; we also had Mala influencia, they were thrash metal; there were a couple of good bands, but ones that really focused on death metal… just a few, very few.
Today I think there are a lot of bands playing all sorts of different metal genres; but the most loyal fan base is still focused around the most brutal acts.

CR: How was the whole metal movement perceived during those times?
Fernando Baltodano: Well by those times the incident in “La Fosforera” (A concert with many Costarrican and Central American metal bands, that got interrupted by the police because they thought the whole concert was a big drug, sex and satanic orgy, many were arrested, and after it a witch hunt began in the streets of San José, arresting people just because they were using a T-shirt with the logo of some metal band; many cd stores were closed because they sold metal albums) really hit the metal community hard. Once they almost arrested me just for walking in the streets with my Slayer shirt on, the whole media was talking about how evil and destructive metal music was, so it was a really though time to be playing and listening to metal.

CR: Can you tell us something about Grotesque gental dismemberment, Pseudo’s first demo?
Fernando Baltodano: I think that demo helped revolutionize the metal scene back then, because it brought a whole brutality aspect to our music, to Costarrican metal. Brutal death metal/grindcore with really scary vocals. The whole extreme brutality contained in that demo was something new to our metal scene; I really liked that demo, and the sound was pretty good.

CR: Do you think that demo established a path or a special sound that the band would follow years after its release?
Fernando Baltodano: I don’t think so. Something that I really like about this band is that every album has a totally different approach. We do try to keep our “essence” alive in every album, but we never want to do the same album over and over again. When we recorded our first EP, the band had a different line up, so there was a totally different sound in that record. Besides we recorded that EP in a more professional studio with the help of Álvaro Ezquivel a very recognized musician in Costa Rica, he helped us out a lot, even though he knew very little of metal.

CR: In that EP, Sodimizing children corpses, the lyrics are just like the title, brutal, gruesome, they are all about, rape, murder, and sex with little children corpses, why those topics? How was that EP received by the local scene?
Fernando Baltodano: It was something we though it will be cool at the moment; all the lyrics were made by our then singer Ronald Jiménez. What can I say…the guy is a very sick man! (Laughs) I think he’s gonna be very proud if he listens to me say that. A German magazine got a hold of that EP and named it the best title for and album during 1994, it was a sick title; still today it hits you right in the face.
There was a time when we were looking for a new guitar player, and this guy wanted to play with us, so we gave him the lyrics, and he quit, he said we were sick (Laughs). By those times the incident in La Fosforera was still in everybody’s mind, so a lot of people were kind of stepping away from metal, so the album and its lyrics didn’t really reached many people. Off course we had a couple of friends a little concerned about the lyrics but nothing big. The album was received as a piece of art… well the lyrics were interpreted by many as an art statement not as a violent desire.

CR: Tell about the next album, Sinistrous necromantika?
Fernando Baltodano: Well that was recorded in 1996; it was a Split cd with a black metal band Paganus Doctrina. We worked in that album with American Line, from Mexico.

CR: How did you guys got in touch with American Line productions?
Fernando Baltodano: Well that was thanks to Ronald, back in the day he was quite a tape trader, he got contacts all over the world, and that’s how he got in touch with Joel Morales from American Line, he was just starting to put that company together when we cut a deal with him. After a couple of conversations on the phone he send us our share of the material, when it got to the post office, the guy that worked there checking the packages, didn’t wanted to give us the records, because he said that they were too immoral, so you had to pay him a little extra cash to let it pass (laughs). The cover was drawn by a German, can’t remember his name right now.

	Pic courtesy of: Pseudostratiffied Epithelium "You have to get to a very high level of underground success to see any royalties. Maybe if you work with a Costarrican label, maybe then you can go to the company or the guy and ask him for your cut; but when working with a foreign label is very hard to actually go there and reclaim what’s rightfully yours"

CR: Did you guys get any money for that deal?
Fernando Baltodano: No… not really; we always get the Studio our selves and the record company only distributes the material, if they decide to release…say 500 copies, then they give us 20% of that; I don’t really know how the other bands over here work their deals, but that’s the way we do it.

CR: Lets get a little deeper into Sinistrous necromantika, that album has a lot of black metal influences in it, why?
Fernando Baltodano: That album was recorded in 1996, during that year there was some sort of black metal explosion, suddenly there were a lot of bands around; I have never been a big fan of black metal, but you never stop learning from every metal genre out there. I think that the fact that we were working on a Split album with a black metal band also influenced us, also Ronald by that time was really into black metal. The studio atmosphere also contributes to that black sound we achieve in that album, the equalization of the equipment and things like that, since we started to work on our songs when we decided to work along side Paganus Doctrina.
That was also our last effort with American Line, working with them had his ups and downs. The down part was the money, you know American keeps selling Sinistrous necromantika via Internet and we haven’t even seen any more copies of that album coming our way. They send us 80 copies when we agreed on the deal and since then not a penny or like I said a couple of more albums so that we can sell them. According to my mental notes, that album has probably sold around 5000 copies.

CR: Does the meaning of royalties exist for the Costarrican metal bands?
Fernando Baltodano: No, not at all. You have to get to a very high level of underground success to see any royalties. Maybe if you work with a Costarrican label, maybe then you can go to the company or the guy and ask him for your cut; but when working with a foreign label is very hard to actually go there and reclaim what’s rightfully yours. You know American can very well launch as many new copies of our albums, and we will never find out if it weren’t for the Internet, and still knowing there is nothing we can do, I have never signed any contracts, is always a verbal agreement.
The money side of this business really only applies when you are focusing on it, when you want to make some money out of it; but we just play metal because we love to. The thing that I like the most is to be able to record an album; you know to see your work in something real, in something that you can keep for many years. I’m lucky because I have my job and my profession, playing metal is just a passion of mine, I don’t want to get rich with it, and so if I see it like that, I’m thankful that someone actually distributes our material.

CR: In 2001 Pseudostratiffied Epithelium, records Into the flames, and its kind of your way back into pure death metal, you guys also got a deal with a Japanese label, tell us more about that album?
Fernando Baltodano: Well sometime after Sinistrous necromantika, Ronald leaves the band and Marco, Mauricio and I started to write new songs for a new album, so when we got like 7 new tracks we decided not to waste any time and get inside a studio. I think this is a very experimental record, because there are a lot of different guitar players that helped us during the recording process.
This album went to a really rough period, because we recorded it in 2001, and we have to wait until 2004 to release it. Somewhere around 2003 Víctor Mora from Subterranean productions offered us a deal, he wanted to distribute the record, but something went wrong and he couldn’t do it. So after looking everywhere for a deal this Japanese guy had acquired a copy of the Sinistrous necromantika record, he liked the band and wanted to distribute our new album. And that’s how we got the Bloodbath Records deal, so like I said earlier, working with American had his ups and downs, a Japanese label having one of our albums was definitely an up.

CR: Can we say then, that Into the Flames is up to date the best record ever made by the band?
Fernando Baltodano: For now it is. I like the record a lot, I’m very satisfied with the general sound of it, the guitars sound great, as well a the bass, the vocals are good too; I just never really liked the way the drums ended up sounding, but hey… that happens.

CR: Which moments would you say made the band what it is today?
Fernando Baltodano: El Salvador, 1996. We played in San Salvador and later in Guatemala. Those were the moments that made us believe that we could go far if we work hard. In Guatemala we played for 300 people, and that was a very large number for the place in which we where playing, the support from the people was just amazing. In San Salvador we played for 600 people, and that was a very large crow for us, back in those times the scene in El Salvador was just the best one from all over Central America, I don’t know how it is today, but back them it was definitely the best scene. You know El Salvador was way more supportive than the scene here in Costa Rica, it’s weird but we have a big number of great bands, but little fans… it’s very weird.

CR: Which album do you think is the most accepted one by the local scene?
Fernando Baltodano: Sinistrous necromantika definitely, they ask us for a couple of songs from that album in every gig. Maybe it was just because of the time in which the album came out… I don’t know. Out of the Grace of God is a song they always ask us to play from that album. Once a friend told me that he liked the band because it possessed a lot of strength you know, not because it was very technical or full of arrangements, but because of that force that he thought we inspire in every record. That’s something I really like about this band, we give our best in every show in every record, if a song becomes just too easy to play, then we start working on something more difficult to play. We have always tried to work as a unity, to develop a “band sound” and not a particular instrument or individual.

CR: You guys are about to launch a new record; why don’t you tell us something about it?
Fernando Baltodano: Well there is an interesting story about this new album; when we started to write the new songs, we started to have some problems with our bass player, so at the middle of the whole composition process we just stop working with him, and instead of looking for another bass player Mauricio and I just decided to do the whole album our selves. The record was written and recorded just by my brother and I; so you can say the album is a direct reflect of what we wanted to do from the very beginning.
This is a concept album sort of speak, is about the Iliad by Homer. The record tells the story of the Trojan War; there were a lot of interesting values that we thought were important for us to portray, like honor and valor. The whole book has a very special death meal smell, the battles are brutal, so we though it will fit well with our music; we also tried to place some epic sounds with in the mix. The whole idea is to get the listener inside the war, to make them feel inside that story… I think we did a good job.

	Pic courtesy of: Pseudostratiffied Epithelium "Look, you always have something to prove, its funny but the scene has changed a lot since we started the band, the friends with whom I use to listen to metal are now married, have children and don’t listen to metal anymore. Today there is a totally new generation of kids out there listening to metal, so you have to find a way to reach them"

CR: Can we say then, that this album is something like Bolt Thrower’s approach to music, talking about war and his values or different aspects?
Fernando Baltodano: No… not really, because we don’t focus exactly in the war it self, we focus on the individuals that were part of that war. For example we have a song about Achilles, and his reasons for being at that war, what is going to happen to him and were does he comes from. The album is about different passages of that war, is something like an analysis of the book… I have read that book like ten times already! The album has 8 tracks all based in different characters from he book, and an instrumental piece, that one is very experimental, the whole album is very experimental; we tried to placed some interesting and different guitar sounds on it, we played more with the melodies, of course it has his grindcore here and there, but it also has some progressive sounds.
We were trying to do something a little more original, if somebody say “hey that riff reminds me of…” then we just cut that song lose and started to work in something different.

CR: Where and when can we get this new album?
Fernando Baltodano: I think by July the record will be in Costa Rica, it’s called Dolonia. You can get it in Subterranean, Nightfall, Legacy and maybe Insomnio.

CR: How do this stores work the sales with you guys for example?
Fernando Baltodano: We give then the album, and they sell it! By commission if they sell a copy then they earn some money and some part of it goes to us. Some bands sell the records to the stores, but I have never felt that this is a good way to do business in Costa Rica, because selling a national cd is a very hard thing to do, so we rather just give them the albums, that way they make some money and so do we. I don’t like those rock stars kind of bands that demand for the stores to buy their records.

CR: Can we get it vie Internet?
Fernando Baltodano: Off course, I can get it for you too, just send me and email and will work something out.

CR: Is there any price difference if I buy it from the Internet or a local store?
Fernando Baltodano: If you buy it from me…I’ll give it to you cheaper (laughs)

CR: Do you see Pseudostratiffied Epithelium as an established band in Costa Rica; do you feel like you don’t have anything else to prove?
Fernando Baltodano: Look, you always have something to prove, its funny but the scene has changed a lot since we started the band, the friends with whom I use to listen to metal are now married, have children and don’t listen to metal anymore. Today there is a totally new generation of kids out there listening to metal, so you have to find a way to reach them. I remember back in 97 – 98 this guy Víctor Mora had a magazine Metal News and every month or something we had this Top 10 of the best Costarrican metal bands, and we were always among the top 3 no questions ask, but now, now you ask people and they may say that December’s Cold Winter, Mad Clown or others are way better now; there is a whole new generation of bands and fans. The old metal bands always have to face that obstacle of jumping from a generation to another.

CR: How do these new bands treat you guys?
Fernando Baltodano: Very good actually. Its funny because so many things have change, metal has change a great deal, before you only had a couple of genres you could listen to, now there are a lot of different styles, you can very well listen to some brutal music and also be into something way different but still inside the metal movement. The people that are more interested in our music and our band are the old school fan, the older people (laughs)

CR: How do you see the Costarrican scene these days, in terms of support for the local bands?
Fernando Baltodano: Well the support towards the local bands has never been great actually; but I remember a gig in Alianza China back in 97, an event put together by Craneo Metal; well in that gig there were about 700 people, it was great, everybody in the mosh pit when the bands were playing…that kind of support is no longer around, now days 150 people attending to a show is a major success. The support is very little; the Costarrican people don’t like to say “Hey man great work!” I don’t know why, maybe it’s a cultural thing, maybe they feel that if they praise someone from their own country they are being suck ups… I don’t know really. It’s very weird to see that many great bands start to arise from our country yet the number of fans just keep getting smaller and smaller. I remember when I use to go back in 89-90 to see Mantra play, all their gigs were packed with people, didn’t matter where they played; now days if you don’t give them a free beer and a nice comfortable place to seat, no body goes.
I think is a cultural thing, I have heard some people say “nice band, good music, they don’t look like they are Costarrican” and that’s just a disrespect towards the bands, the musicians, it’s a cultural thing, because they should say “we can do this and more”.
There are good sides in our scene these days, all the big international bands arriving in our country have given our bands a change to see how the professionals do it; you know Kreator, Helloween and such, but we have to change our way of thinking, we have to be able to say “great Kreator is playing tonight, and great Alastor S.E. is playing tomorrow”. The problem is that many people are listening to metal as a “fashion” not as a way of feeling the music.

CR: How do you think we can get out of these “indifference and mediocre” times our scene is living right now?
Fernando Baltodano: Basically, people need to just give the local bands a change, just a change to listen to their work, and attempting to the concerts, I mean is just 1500 colones for god sake! I remember that this pass Craneo Metal Death, the ticket was just that 1500 with a beer included… and some people were saying that it was too expensive… shit man what do you want!
We have a big problem with the way the Costarrican people see the work of its own country men and women; many great minds and artists have to leave the country in order to actually be recognized. I recommend to the bands to take more time recording and writing their material in order to send it out side; I love to play live don’t misunderstand me, but the people have shown us that is not worth the effort, is not worth all the hard work just to play in front of people that don’t really care about the music. There are some great metal fans, those few that really support the scene, I love those people, but sadly they are not many.

	Pic courtesy of: Pseudostratiffied Epithelium "Be humble, first of all, not because you have a demo tape, go around thinking you are it… don’t ever believe because you have an album you are a rock star"

CR: Which bands have influenced you and your music?
Fernando Baltodano: Death, Pestilence… basically that’s it (laughs) off course there are other bands that I like but those two really make and impression on me.

CR: What big name in metal you never really liked?
Fernando Baltodano: Pantera

CR: What would you say is the key for a band to become a… professional in music?
Fernando Baltodano: Be humble, first of all, not because you have a demo tape, go around thinking you are it… don’t ever believe because you have an album you are a rock star.
Practice, practice and more practice, every chance you get to do it, practice. That really helps you to be prepared for anything.

CR: What kind of music you never liked?
Fernando Baltodano: Reggae ton (laughs). Tropical music has never been my “cup of tea”. I do admit that there are great musicians playing that style, but you’ll never find me dancing to one of those things.

CR: What do you see in the future of Pseudostratiffied Epithelium?
Fernando Baltodano: Well I hope that this new record gets some good reviews, and that it gets to be distributed in a bigger way. We also want to record and EP of some unreleased and live material, that’s a project I have been interested in for a long time.
I will love to go and play in South America, in countries like Perú and Colombia for example; Mexico will be nice too, and I know that thanks to the whole piracy movement in Mexico pretty much every body has one of our albums (laughs). We have a proposal from El Salvador to go and play a couple of gigs… but we’ll see about that.

CR: Is there any age for a metal musician to call it quits?
Fernando Baltodano: No. I intend to play until the arthritis allow me to do so (laughs)

CR: Well Fernando it has been a pleasure, if you have any thing else to add, please do.
Fernando Baltodano: Well thank you; and I will like to say to the bands: keep working, focus on recording your material. I think that right now we have the best metal band we ever had, that’s why they need to record and record. And to the local fans, give the Costarrican bands a change, take some time to listen to their music, and keep supporting what you believe in.