Review Fix Exclusive: Saintorment’s Romans Romanovs Talks Goals, New Album And More

Review Fix chats with Saintorment’s Romans Romanovs, who discusses the band’s origin, goals and their new album, “Defective Mind.”

Review Fix: How did you guys get together?

Romans Romanovs: The original Saintorment was formed by me and ED back in 2013 as they knew each other for a long time before they decided that they want to be creative.

But since then Saintorment has been reformed two times, so now the only real members of the band are Romans and Desolation. We met for the first by a pure coincidence actually – when Saintorment ordered a photo-set for their first album “Well of Sins” and Desolation got interested in their music while taking pictures and talking to the band members. Desolation was also an artist who had some musical projects on his own, thus his interest for the creative part was natural. Soon enough, me and Desolation started to meet in order to put their skills and minds together for the creative sake and compose music for the band. This seemed to work out nicely as the band achieved new heights and does not plan to stop even if the original members were “fired” due to their lack of interest and input in the band.

Review Fix: How What’s your creative process like?

Romanovs: This might vary or seem chaotic, but art is rather chaotic by its nature. I or Desolation might come up with a piece of lyrics, a drum-track or some kick-ass guitar riff and then it is just a matter of developing the idea together. There is a lot of trial and error, improvisation and arguing while searching for a “part” that will “click,” but in the end, we try to come to some compromise or ask our friends and relatives to listen to our pieces and comment upon them. We both think that some uninvolved “third party” listener is very important to the process because such people usually can spot and point out some mistakes or rough edges which we as the creators could not see/hear.


Review Fix: How What do you think makes this bad special?

Romanovs: For one it is its absolutely energizing, uncompromised, raw and inspiring live performances (when they happen). You should not judge about Saintorment before you actually see us live. You might not even be so fond of the music but the show itself will get your blood rushing and your head banging to the rhythm of thrash metal!

Then, I guess, we can say that we are really down-to-earth guys who do not mind speaking to people, hear them out… This might be a result of the fact that both Romans and Desolation do not come from, uhm… let us say “upper-class” families and are well-connected to the common folks. There is also that pure enthusiasm, to create music that will be listened to, recognized and loved, not just for money and contracts, but because there is some energy within us that we would like to share via sound.


Review Fix: How How would you describe your style?

Romanovs: You mean the genre Saintorment belongs to? This is a tricky question. It all started as a tribute to the classic Thrash and Heavy metal bands, such as early Metallica, Pantera, Motorhead… but there are also some other influences. I also love Children of Bodom for example, Desolation is no stranger to more modern styles of metal and electronic music. So, in the end, it is a crazy mix of Thrash/Speed metal (I usually refuse to play anything slower than 200 BPM, haha) with some Heavy metal influences in some of our songs. The second album showed more aggression and groove elements than the first one, some of which might be those “modern” elements brought by Desolation when he joined the forces with Romans. See this is what is great when there are many people who are involved in the process of composing the songs, – not only you gain a fresh perspective but also new fresh ideas which is vital in any form of art!


Review Fix: How What are your goals for this album?

Romanovs: I guess we can talk about it in the past tense as the album has already been released. The goals were of course to set new heights and to make a solid step up in every direction comparing to the first album. It is important to sound fresh so that listeners don’t get that feeling “oh man I have already heard this a thousand times,” you know? At the same time, the music should be recognizable as something from Saintorment. This also will definitely be one of the goals set for the third album. Otherwise, it was pretty common-sense stuff, like “play harder, play faster, play groovier”.

We also wanted to expand the circle of our listeners, introduce our music to the broader public and get some recognition overseas. Guess some of it worked out if we are getting interview requests from all over the world.


Review Fix: How What’s the standout song? Is there a story behind it?

Romanovs: This will no doubt be our title-song, “Defective Mind.” It is one of the most intense songs on the album and probably the most aggressive song Saintorment has produced so far.

The story has been quite simple. Romans and Desolation were brainstorming and putting lyrics together for the album. Desolation then wrote some verses containing the lyrics you can hear in the chorus, including “defective mind” line. It has been edited by Romans so that it became more or less identical to what we finally recorded. Then, Romans took a riff that has been composed earlier and developed it to a more aggressive and fast version, which has become an intro for the track. After that, we decided to build the rest of the track following the mood of the aggressive riff and the lines “defective mind”, so the text of the song is highly metaphorical and might appear unclear and gibberish, but this is conceptual and has been done on the purpose to represent the Defective Mind.

There you go, this is the story behind the song in a nutshell.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Romanovs: Of course our world-tour with Metallica or Kreator as our supporters, incredible fame and first ever performance on the Moon! Well, we guess that won’t happen “next”, but still…

What’s next is a massive amount of work on our third album. After all, it is imperative that it comes out better, stronger, groovier and catchier than our previous two! Given that Romans and Desolation now live in different cities it will be even more difficult, but the enthusiasm remains right there in our hearts, so the music and creativity will live on!