David: Nuked greetings from the toxic ruins of Germany to the Italian wastelands! I guess this has been put down in one or the other interview before, but can you give the readers of Nocturnal hall Magazine a brief summary of how CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY came together and some comments on the actual line-up?
C.O.T.: Fuck yeah, Dave!!! First of all thanks for your support! Well, put shortly C.O.T. rose up by three maniax with the intention to put post nuclear themes into music they like. The name CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY wasn’t a hard choice, because it stands for our common love for the legendary Carnivore (R.I.P. Peter Steele, we’ll never forget your influence). After the departure of our former guitarist due to the few time spend in the band and having no intentions to play a lot of live shows, we soon became a more united quartet ready to face the doomsday and spread apocalypse everywhere!

David: Though some of your major musical influences are clearly audible in the sound of CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY, what bands or albums do you personally think are most responsible for your raw Atomic Speed Metal/Punk?
C.O.T.: We don’t follow a clear standard of music direction… We just play what we like, taking inspiration from our favorites of course! It’s difficult to explain exactly the C.O.T. style but lot of Motörhead and Discharge mark our sound plus other British acts such as mid-period English Dogs & Broken Bones, early Sacrilege & Onslaught, the obscurity of Hellhammer or Amebix, the crustpunk of early Driller Killer & Anti-Cimex the harshness of early era Bathory and the hypercharge sound of Warfare. Probably this cocktail is the best way to describe CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY.

David: With all this influences and fascination for bands of the early 80s – how old are you and the rest of COT’s chaosmutant horde? Did you experienced this era directly or did you get into the music when those albums already had been released long ago? A side-note: I personally have to say that I was born just a few years too late (1977) and when I got into metal in 1988 many of my now-faves already had been released.
C.O.T.: Oh no, we haven’ t experienced this era, we’re young, none of us is over thirty, but we are angry and we live the scene hardly and with passion, we think that is not necessary to have lived in the eighties to be a fucking maniac!!!
Anyway we take lot of inspiration from bands that grew up in this period, because we believe that it was the best inspirational time for bands like us nowadays and we just try to think of our major influences. Also our time can look at various passionate bands, but the passage of years has created a strong aptitude difference.

David: So, as we talked about the musical influences of so called yesterday – are there any newer bands (say, from the last 10-15 years or so) which had an impact on you and whose sound is somewhere included in the music of CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY? While also obviously inspired by old school stuff, I hear some similarities to e.g. some of Impaled Nazarene’s (and M. Luttinen’s side-project Rocking Dildos) songs where they mixed up their full speed Black/Thrash Metal with quotes of Motörhead and Punk. Like in Let’s Fucking Die!, Motörpenis, 1999: Karmakeddon Warriors, Hardboiled & Still Hellbound. Do you know their (or other similar) music or did this just happened randomly?
C.O.T.: Probably the advent of Toxic Holocaust’ s thrash, the motorpunk of Inepsy and the innovative style of Bludwulf had some impact to the sound of C.O.T. Otherwise they’ re good friends of us… Sorry we didn’t take inspiration by that Impaled Nazarene stuff, but Astwulf really likes them since their beginning, in fact his favorite ImpNaz albums are Latex Cult and Rapture (“We are Satan Generation and we don’t give a fuck!!!”)

David: You only released some kind of promo (The Day After…) in CD-R format. All of the later stuff, including last month’s first full length It’s Time To Face The Doomsday is available only on vinyl. Apart from the far more fitting lively sound of vinyl and the further nod to the early metal era, I guess this also is a form of statement towards the “Generation-mp3” who quite often (not always!) are just grabby consumers than really enthusiastic fans, right?
C.O.T.: Our first promo or demo, call it as you prefer, was released on CD-R format cause it was the cheapest way for us. It was immediately pressed on professional tape limited to 200. We all like vinyl, but CDs, too. Probably our album will be released on CD format in the future. But you’re right - we don’t like the so called “Generation-mp3”, they don’t live the music, they only consume music in a cold fast way. Support bands buying their records and going to their gigs!!! Long live the underground!!!

David: Alright, let’s head over to another great thing about CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY – the damn cool post-apocalyptic image (ok, ok – I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff since my late childhood / early teen days). While this surely is to be found in many 80s Metal and (Crust)punk (just think of Amebix) bands, the main theme of wasteland roaming road warriors are the Mad Max movies and similar stuff. How did it come to this and did it sprung from one single mind or do all of you share the love for this scenery equally?
C.O.T.: Our former guitarist was really into post-apocalyptic movies, plus we all love that kind of cool imagery… from that came the idea to express them into C.O.T. lyrics. We do it in a catchy, simple way and not so philosophical or sophisticated. Our lyrics are a nuclear fist in your face! Like other bands in the past (Amebix, Rogue Male, Rankelson, Carnivore to name a few…) we think that the C.O.T. music reflects in a cool way that kind of bad-promising atomic future.

David: While many of the elder bands dealing with post-apocalyptic/nuclear imagery used covers by Ed Repka or those directly influenced by him, CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY took a more punk styled visual approach by using black and white artworks in a more simple (not to be understood in a negative way!) yet very direct and forceful way, which even now after a few releases is like a form of trademark together with the green logo. What’s your opinion on those mentioned colorful Repka-like paintings and do you think of also using “real” paintings for future releases?
C.O.T.: Well, there isn’t a main reason why C.O.T. uses simple b/w subjects for artwork, but we all like old album covers that, with few well minded details, offers a strong impact and immediately give the right input to the watcher to immerge himself into CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY entity. Think about Onslaught’s Power From Hell cover or Sacrilege’s Behind The Realm Of Madness, too. This doesn’t mean that we won’t have colored covers in future. We like obscure colors as deep violet or grey maybe added to our neon green that has become a sort of standard. Chany of Inepsy is one of the artists we like a lot for C.O.T. cover themes (he painted our last 7” EP and our album). We mind the concept and he got the right grim, dark style that C.O.T. needs to show its violent obscurity.

David: Apart from music and movies, was the post-apocalyptic theme also influenced by books of that matter? After listening your music and taking a look on the lyrics at first time, I directly thought of the “Dark Future” books from the late 80s (by Jack Yeovil aka Kim Newman), the “Deathlands” series, “Gogo Girls Of The Apocalypse” and many others. The “Dark Future” setting is full of road warriors, crazed out gang cults (e.g. women clad like the Statue of Liberty but wielding flamethrowers instead of a torch etc.) etc. It’s a genre I personally really love and CHILDREN OF TECHNOLOGY is the perfect soundtrack for it. So, do you have any “literary connections”?
C.O.T.: Sorry but we are not readers of post-atomic books. Just influenced by some cult comics like Judge Dredd, Lobo, Predator, Marvel 2099 series, Akira and goodies like that. Our lyrics are mostly inspired by our own vision of a post-catastrophic world.

David: For those (including me unfortunately) who haven’t seen you either live on stage or on your DVD: What to expect from your shows and are there any plans for gigs in Germany in the near future?
C.O.T.: Hah, our DVD contained the first two shows ever made by C.O.T.! So, at now, we don’t suggest it to recall what kind of show we do. There was lack of live experience in that shows, but it was cool to have them in video format, ‘cause we were very excited about our first appearance on stage! And now we are excited in every live too! But in a more raging and powerful way!! We toured Germany last winter (after Slovenia, Slovakia and Czech Republic) with 3 dates in Dresden, Berlin and Göttingen… bad you were no there!!! By the way we hope to return soon in your land…

David: Ok, that’s all for now, I guess. Time for you for some final words to our readers…
C.O.T.: Bastards, leave apart your common habits right now cause bombs are dropping down and it’ s time to face the doomsday for all of you!!! See you on the road!!!

David: Thanks a lot for your time and Nuke On!