Sanguis Imperem Want to Trample You With Caesar’s Legions

For Southern California death metal mercenaries Sanguis Imperem, it's not always about being brutal. Well, a lot of the time it is, as evidenced by their positively bestial, knuckle-dragging, crypt-robbing take on old-school death metal -- but there's more to this leather-clad quintet than meets the ear.

"We want to trample people under the feet of Caesar's legions," snarls guitarist R.S. "We want you to feel like you've been smashed by Romans. We're trying to point out the similarities between Rome then and now, plus they were brutal f---s!."

He goes on to explain, "We use it as a theme; we're not trying to be a political band, but we try to point out the similarities between the politics that are going on then and now, and how the kind of themes that were happening then are repeating themselves. History is doomed to be repeated," he finishes with a wry smile. Not your typical lyrics about blood, guts and decapitated virgins, eh? R.S. likes to confront his evil a little closer to home.

"There's a lot of bands that want to talk about darkness and evil, and that's cool. I love that s---, I'm not talking down on any band that wants to talk about Satan or whatever, and I'm sure most bands view Satan as the adversary to Judeo-Christian values and what not. But for us it's a little mundane. I just want get over it and talk about what we feel; we're all artists and we're more than musicians, we all like to write on our own, and we want to bring that to the band as well. My brother and I started the band in our house with an eight-track, and at the time we really were paying attention to themes like this, doing a lot of studying on our own about things, and we really wanted to express that through the music. We felt like it was the only true thing we could think of that we would want to talk about it. It was actually true to our ideals, true to our state of mind and everything."