Interview with Hassan Omer of Foreskin!

Here we interview Hassan Umer, vocalist for the crossover band Foreskin.

FF: How did Foreskin come to form?

Umer: To play a style of music that no one seems to care about here, not even the metal crowd. Most bands that put out original material were either Modern Death/Thrash, Prog or Lamb of God worship. And we're cool with that - it's just that it was time to introduce the Pakistani Metal scene to the wonderful world of microsongs, thrash breaks, d-beats and retarded vocals.

FF: I've read that Foreskin started off as a punk band, the influence still shows but what made you start leaning more torwards crossover?

Umer: To be honest, we weren't completely punk but we had a lot more punk in us as compared to metal which you can hear in the first demo. I guess it was a natural progression to get thrashier, especially once we started jamming and playing live. But me and Amar have a side project called The Circumsized where we intend to do the type of retarded punk shit we did earlier, perhaps even finally record some of our old Foreskin punk shit.

FF: All the members of the band have seperate projects would you say that Foreskin is the main project?

Umer: It used to be the main project, but we played our last gig in January. We basically split the band up in 2 projects - Necropedophile which is gonna be a death metal band with Me, Faaiz and Omair, and The Circumsized with me and Amar. To be honest, the band was to split up but after the encouraging response the BITP demotape got, we decided to continue only in the 'studio' and further improve our sound. But yeah, it's definitely gonna take a back seat to everything else we have going on.

FF: Are there any great metal bands from Pakistan that you'd like to plug?

Umer: Haha yeah sure. Odyssey is an amazing progressive metal act and is probably the best live act in the country regardless of genre. Takatak's a brutal act, they've got the perfect balance for a metal band and really know how to kick it live. Other than that, there's Downfall Humanity who play kickass death/thrash, Necktarium who do this ambient black metal shit, Berserker with their Morbid Angel worship, Dementia is a monstrous groove metal band, and I just fucking love the latest addition to the scene, Myosis, who do some straight up doom metal." and my favorite Pakistani band MARG who make the most awesome hard rocking punk/metal this side of the subcontinent.

FF: How often do you guys get gigs? (with any of your projects)

Umer: Well "opportunities" come for metal bands every other month and sometimes every other weekend, it's just a matter of having the contacts to get you up there on a stage. We played a total of only 4 gigs from July til January, passed on like 3 others because of line up issues.

FF: What do you guys have planned for upcoming releases?

Umer: Well we might finally decide to re-record our old "Attack of the Radioactive Posers" EP which we lost in a hard drive crash back in August, just days before it was to go for printing and shit. But only if we get the time, since it's not our 'main' project anymore. I'm actually interested in doing some split releases, that's actually a great way to spread the word.

FF: Yeah splits are a great way to gain some exposure. Are there any bands you want to do a split with in particular?

Umer: I'd love to do a split with Agnostic Front or Suicidal Tendencies! Hahaha. But seriously, I don't think there's any particular band I want to do a split with (it'll probably end up being a band I'm connected with, or involves a friend), I think what matters is that they play a similar type of music and actually want to put out a split with us.

FF: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Umer: Yeah, would just like to give a shout out to the Lahore Mosh Crew and the Islamabad Metalheads, you guys rule.