An Interview with Julien Truchan of Benighted

​My guest today is Julien Truchan, vocalist for the French band Benighted. Benighted plays in the realm of extreme metal, and can be described as brutal death grind.

The band started in 1998 and has 11 albums out. Their latest release, Ekbom, is on the Season of Mist label. I think six of their releases are on Season of Mist- the last six of them.
So yeah, so Ekbom is on that label, and it was released in 2024, so that’s their latest one. And the definition of Ekbom is: a psychiatric condition where individuals are convinced that they are infested with bugs or parasites on or under their skin. Lovely! In their Discogs write up, one of their pressings is listed as “blood red liquid filled” and limited to 50 copies. So I believe that it’s two clear discs pressed with liquid in between. Not only are they extreme, they’re somewhat psychedelic too! I did this interview, and I saw Benighted on the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise this past February. It’s a great event, and I’ve gone for years in a row, and the majority of bands that play on the cruise are from countries outside the US. I saw one of their performances, which was completely over the top, relentless and really joyful at the same time. I guess I just like my music heavy!Julien is a psychiatric nurse, and he will talk about how his job impacts the subject matter of Benighted’s albums.

He’s got the greatest death grunt, and I do say this about so many vocals, but I really do love the gas mask and gurgling vocals, and I truly admire those who can perform extended syllables using this vocal technique. And Julien Truchan is one of the best in this field.

So let’s talk to him.

Diane: We’re speaking with Julien from Benighted. What part of France are you from?
Julien: Actually, I live in a very small village one hour on the west side of Lyon. The delicious name of Misérieux; it really sounds like misery. It’s pretty funny, but, yeah, it’s a very lost village, but it’s very peaceful. I love it like that.

D: But that seems to go with the theme of what you do for a living and the lyrics that you bring to your music.

J: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Actually, I’m a nurse in psychiatry for more than, Oh my god, 23 years now! I love my job. I’m very lucky. I won’t complain about it, because I can use every everything that passionates me. I can put it in my job, and it helps the patients. So, for example, I do a lot of music with them. I do sports. Every Friday afternoon, I bring them to a dog shelter to take care of the dogs. Every I would say, workstation we have together, it has some purpose, and as it’s something very pleasant to do. They don’t even realize that they’re working on their symptoms, just having fun and doing stuff with me.

D: That’s amazing to be able to take mental health. I have thoughts about it that are just much more like, “oh my god, this is horrible,” and you are very delightful and positive.

J: I try to but I NEED to be in my job because, of course, most of my patients have terrible history. My job is to help them feel better, not to keep them at the same level of sadness and delusional stuff, right?

D: So then, from what I understand, most of your material is, well, you write all your material for the band, is that correct? And a lot of it is from your work. So do you need the outlet to …

J: Like, a catharsis or something like that? You mean something like that? Exactly. I mean it’s very it’s a very good balance for me between my job and Benighted because I use music in my job, but I also use my professional experience to write lyrics in Benighted. And I mean, Benighted doesn’t have any political message or stuff, but it has the function to talk about psychiatry in the reality of the symptoms and not in the gigantic cliches we can find in the movies or what the media wants people to think about schizophrenia and stuff like that. So I try to write lyrics which really stick to the reality of the symptoms of someone suffering with the disease. And every album is talking about one person, and his childhood trauma, how he falls sick, and then what happens after, and now he’s entering his sickness.

D: So each album is about one, one person?

J: One person, yes of course, not one of my patients in particular, because then you have to protect them.

D: So you are creating that

J: Exactly. But of course, I’m inspired a lot from what I see, but none of my patients can recognize himself. Of course, in one of Benighted’s albums, fortunately.

D: Do your patients know that you do Benighted?

J: Yeah.

D: They DO??

J: Yes and that’s very funny. Because, for example, I know when I would be back from the cruise, they will come to me and say, “Hey, Julien, how was it, and can you show us some pictures?” I have a very good connection with my patients. I love that. Of course, they don’t like the music I do, but I find it very funny. I remember one of them came to me sometimes say, You’re a bit crazy too, to do what you do, right? And then I said, “aren’t we all?” (laughter)

D: Well, that’s a very good blanket statement in general. Yeah, exactly. Have a little I mean, being on this cruise, it’s like we’re all on this mission, and we’re all crazy.

J: Exactly, if you stop and you think about it, it’s completely crazy, what we experiencing right now.

D: Yes, it totally is. I did want to ask you, did you change from two to one guitars by necessity?

J: Well, the lineup of Benighted was great at this time, and Fabien was really involved in the band, but he started to have some health issues because of the river, because we all have side jobs and united it’s, it’s a relentless thing to handle. You don’t have any time to rest. And he started to have really some physical problems because of that, because he was too tired, and he missed three shows because he was just not able to get into his car to come to the show. So at some point I was like, Man, I don’t want you to have an accident or something because you wanted to come to a show; just take care of yourself. We’ll continue with one guitar. And we decided to, as I’ve done Benighted since 1998, I didn’t want to take a second guitarist again; welcome a new member. We had too many lineup changes, so we decided, like, for example, Decapitated to use a sample guitar, and Manu doing the other guitars, and it works perfectly like that.

D: Cool, Oh, that’s good. So what phobia or weird habit do you have?

J: My friends make always a lot of fun of me, because I’m Sharkophobic. I’m afraid of sharks. I guess I watch too many horror movies.
And my girlfriend, she’s from the very south of France, and when we go to the sea together, I never go far in the water, because I’m like, ‘there might be sharks.’And she’s like, ‘No, there are no sharks in this area’, But I say, “you never know. I don’t want to be the first one to be bitten.” My friends make a lot of fun of me because of that. I mean, of course, where I live, close to Lyon. It’s pretty peaceful. Concerning sharks. There is no sea. I have a weirdest thing, but I could talk about phobia or something for me.

D: That’s very funny. What’s your musical upbringing? Or when did you start playing music?

J: Actually, I started playing death metal by accident because I was a teenager and I wasn’t listening to music at all. But with my best friend, Olivia, from a Benighted guitarist member. We were huge fans of horror movies when we were teenagers. We watched horror movies every weekend together, and I went to a shop, and there was a tape of Cannibal Corpse- Butchered at Birth, and the cover was so cool, we said “let’s discover what kind of music it is.” And at first I hated it. My ears were not prepared for this kind of aggression. And so that’s what also why when people say, well, Julien, your music is just noise, I totally understand you. I had the same reaction when I listened to it. But I remember, at this time I was making my friends listen to it and I said, “look, I bought something. I don’t understand shit. Why do they do this kind of stupid vocals? Wait, what is the point? And making them listen. My ears started to get used to the music, and I started to understand what was played. Then I thought it was not so bad after all. And with Olivier, he was playing guitar, he said, Let’s try to make a band like this. And that’s actually how it started, because I don’t play any instrument. So I said, I will try to do this kind of vocal growl technique and how everything started, actually.

D: That’s wonderful
J: By mistake!

D: What’s your favorite horror movie?

J: Oh, The Exorcist, for sure.

D: when they put in the extra 20 minutes, do you prefer with or without?

J: Oh, I don’t see huge difference.

D: They put in the crab walk

J: Yeah. But I mean, it doesn’t affect a lot of the movie. I like the original version, but I like to do the extended version. To watch the extended version sometime, but I don’t think this one was really a huge difference for the movie. Or even, or something.

D: I remember seeing it then because it was, the 20th anniversary or something, or maybe longer, when they put in that extra footage. I saw it in the theater when it came out, and I had to have my mother take me. I’m sitting there, and my mother just says, “You’re grounded. I’m leaving”. And she left, and I watched the rest of the movie. You know, I read the book, and I had to see this movie. I didn’t think they would do all the things in the movie. And luckily, my mother left just at the desecration of the statues. She said, “Oh, you’re in big trouble”. But she left me there. But anyway, the reaction in the movie theater at the time, nobody had ever seen anything like that. It was freaky. So then fast forward, when they added that however many minutes it was, and I went to the theater to see that and people were laughing, wasn’t so scary. In the beginning, she’s in the doctor’s office and she’s cursing when she’s eight years old. Well, that happens now. It didn’t happen in the 70s.

J: It’s a very different context now.

D: It was really weird to see. And so I like the original more because of that. It didn’t really age well because people are just much more horrifying to each other now.

J: It became kind of benign. But this time it was, it was a revolution for the cinema. I mean, we didn’t have many movies scary like this.

D: Oh yeah, for sure. What’s your favorite type of venue, and you have a favorite venue to play.

J: Actually, I have two different size of venues because I like very big festivals, of course, and my favorite would be Brutal Assault in Czech Republic. I love this festival. We play again this year, and I’m really looking forward to go there, because it’s in some kind of fortress outside. You feel that there’s a lot of history in the walls. So it’s kind of weird when you are there: “where am I?” Yeah, it’s really beautiful and creepy at the same time. And I also like the very grindcore concert. It’s in small venue. In Lyon, we have a venue called the Rock n’Eat Live, a very good friend of mine, and we made a concert a few months ago. It’s a great memory, because that’s exactly the kind of- I mean when I’m singing, I have people at 10 centimeters from my face. I fucking love this atmosphere, this grindcore atmosphere, where
everybody is on stage in the pit and everywhere, everybody’s jumping I really love this kind of venues too.
D: When I saw your (on the boat)in The Studio/Lounge,I thought the room was going to explode.

J: We were very happy about the reactions, yes!

D: Oh, my god, yeah, it was, it was absolutely great. What bands did you watch while you were here?

J: I’m a huge fan of Death Metal, so I cannot, I cannot miss bands like Suffocation. I just saw Decapitated. I had the time to see them, I just, left five minutes before the end of the show! Suffocation, Decapitated, Beyond Creation, Krisiun who are very good friends of mine. I love them. And surprisingly, I went to the Dirkschneider concert, and I was really amazed by the performance of Udo. Such great vocals. It was like, wow. And something pretty funny, I’m not a fan of Symphony X at all, but I watched the show, and the sound was great. Watching every musician that the singer was, he sings so fucking good. It was really a very good surprise for me. I mean, I’m definitely not the kind of fan of this kind of music, but I had a very nice moment today for sure.

D: Anything you want to say to the listeners?

J: Well, thank you for listening to this, first. And my band, I invite everybody to discover our music. If you like brutal stuff, because, yeah, it’s intense stuff that we do.

D: Thank you.

Thanks to Julien for such an uplifting conversation, considering some of Benighted song titles are Hostile, Scars, and Mom, I Love You The Wrong Way, I didn’t really know what to expect!

Check Benighted out! They also have a Facebook presence and Instagram and probably many other things. And this talk was conducted on the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise, which is always a great event, where I took some of the live photos. And thank you so much to the staff there for handling the interview schedule. If you haven’t gone, I would recommend it. Imagine 5000 people running around a boat trying to get to four stages and talk to each other, and an amazing sense of community and chaos at the same time. It’s pretty cool. Anyway, on to the next one…

The full link to my index of shows can be found on WFMU

Benighted playing to a packed house on the 2025 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise.