Interview with Curby, organizer of the Obscene Extreme Festival

Obscene Extreme can be described as a freak friendly extreme music open air festival. This year, the epic event is taking place in Svojsice near Pardubice, Czech Republic, 16-18 July.

The price for the ticket is 35 EUR until July 1st and 40 EUR at the gate. The festival has basically no limit as the place can take in 10.000 fans. Don’t worry about your place on festival if you’ll buy ticket at the gate! To make things even better, the ticket includes a festival CD that you’ll get at the gate. Perfect for making your tent neighbor’s ears bleed :)

If you love extreme music and a crazy crowd, Obscene Extreme is the festival for you. Remember, silence sucks!

Vile Noise will be at the event and before we go we wanted to get a few words from the organizer. Speaking with us is the man behind it all – Curby.

Give our readers a brief overview of the festival’s past and how it all started. How many attendees do you expect this year?

Obscene Extreme was born like answer to such a great German event Fuck The Commerce. I visited this fest back in 1998 for the very first time and also I always wanted to do a large festival in Czech for really extreme music because and event of this type was missing in Europe.

To be honest I wanted to do just one festival and stop it, but reactions of fans, bands and all people were simply amazing and that’s why I continue with this work still today. I reallt enjoy this weekend as in tge beginning, people are still going crazy for grindcore and I can see many satisfied die-hard grind freaks that really love this event. All of this gives me the will to continue and do it even better next year. I still feel big passion for this type of music even I’m listening to grind from 85. How many fans will we have this year? 5000 maniacs!!!

What is the lineup?

Excellent! Seriously, it’s the best festival line-up so far, a perfect mix of grindcore, crust, hardcore, thrash core, death metal, gore grind and more!!! For a full list of bands along with information about them check out this page.

I can just remind few names that will play OEF 2009 – NAPALM DEATH (definitely, after 10 years!!!), MUNICIPAL WASTE, BLOOD DUSTER, DISFEAR, RATOS DE PORAO, WOLFBRIGADE, VENOMOUS CONCEPT, HAIL OF BULLETS, MOB 47, MACHETAZO, BIRDFLESH, MUMAKIL, DESECRATION, LIVIDITY, DEAD INFECTION, OXIDISED RAZOR, CAPTAIN CLEANOFF and son on. All together 60 bands from all around the world!

Here’s something a lot of upcoming bands are wondering about – do you approach bands that you wish to be in the lineup, is there a selection process where bands can submit their material for consideration or is everything handled by agents?

No, I actually contact a lot of new bands by myself, or I just like their myspace songs or whatever. Every year I choose from over 400 bands so it’s not that easy to get to final line-up, it all depends on various conditions: deal with band, style they play, how intense live they’re and so on. It’s really an uneasy job mate :)

How do you deal with last-minute cancellations or drastic changes in case something unexpected occurs?

Shit happens sometimes of course, but we’re well-known that we were always very fair to our supporters! Of course we immediately update our webpage about those sad news and we’re trying to get a suitable replacement, even it’s really hard sometimes since usually those changes are very last minute.

How much staff is behind the Obscene Extreme festival?

Hahahaha, good joke! I’m working on OEF all year long, that’s it! I do everything: promotion, booking, ordering toilets, book hotels, flights, selling tickets, ordering shuttle buses for bands, whatever you can think…and Martin is doing all layout/webpage work…that’s how is it all year long… Naturally at the festival time we have a lot of helpers/friends/crew that make it much easier for us. Most of them are long-time OEF crew so they know their job pretty well.

Do you sell most tickets through pre-sale or is demand very strong right at the festival?

We sell our tickets as pre-sale last few years but most of our fans are buying tickets at the gates. It’s easier and there’s enough place for everybody who will come to OEF, that new festival venue in Svojsice can take in 10.000 people and that’s enough for OEF!!!