GOREGRIND, ANIME AND BEER: A CHAT WITH JULIEN PROUST

ROYAL BLUNT·JULY 14, 2024

Metal and other hard and heavy genres are a spiritual home for many eccentric and original people. Escaping the stifling uniformity of modern social institutions and giving a new, more individual shape to ones life and relationships with fellow men, is the hope an promise of much of what we punks and metalheads do. Creativity and individualism, that’s really where it’s at when it comes to alternative, DIY culture of the different hard and heavy scenes. You don’t meet someone as intense and bohemian as the French fellow Julian Proust every day. Just a look at the things he’s involved in is impressive: he’s one of the founders of the long running French webzine Horns Up, he played in multiple Death Metal bands and currently has a solo Gore-noise project, he runs a retro gaming website focused on J-RPGs, and professionally he’s a business partner in multiple beer breweries and restaurants. He’s a great connoisseur of Japanese “nerd culture” (in other words he’s a weeb ) and also a East Asian metal and pop music. You can catch him in his hometown throwing a Grindcore concert or DJing at a K-pop party.

We had a blast talking to him about French metal, Asian metal, K-pop, Asian nerd culture and what makes him tick in general. It’s a refreshing look into a hyperactive but very original mind.

SOMETHING BETWEEN A HYPERACTIVE NERD AND SCIENTIST WEEB

Hi Julien. Can we start with who you are? Give us a small overview of what you do – Metal and non Metal related.

 

Hey, as a starter I’d like to thank you for giving me the floor in your media. So I’m Julien, something between a hyperactive nerd and scientist weeb. My life now is devoted to fully enjoying it by doing what I want to do when I want to do it. I entered the job market after following a PhD in biology which finally brought me into the realm of craft beer. Nowadays I co-own a beer brand in Taiwan called Formosa Brewing Co., a brewery in France called Kosho Brewers (with a Japanese inspired name), a craft beer restaurant in France called Le Lovecraft and a craft beer bar in Tokyo called The Den, newly opened and I just signed on a new ecolodge project in Costa Rica.

METAL MUSIC CREATES THE NETWORK THAT MAKES ALL OF THESE PROJECT FEASIBLE 

You might think that’s for the non Metal related part but it’s not, as Metal music creates the network that make all of these projects feasible. I’m never alone on my projects and I’m never the cornerstone. I’m well surrounded by Metalheads anywhere I turn. As a musician I was the former singer of the Swiss Brutal Death Metal band Kakothanasy, drummer in stupid Grind-FM Swiss band called Nostalgicle and the reason why we met is because I’m the real fake drummer from B.0g-dan-Of² Conspiracy a Gore-noise project that mix ultra brutality and… quantum mechanics (for real!).

Finally, I’m a writer like you, I write stuff on a French metal webzine called Horns Up.

WORKING HARD, PLAYING HARD

Obviously you’re a busy man, how do you get so much done? Do you have some kind of ADHD that drives you towards workaholism, or are you just a very “type A” personality?

 

I just don’t sleep and I’m from the 80’s. At this time ADHD didn’t exist, so I guess I’m not ADHD. But on a more serious note, like I said before I’m no cornerstone of any of my business except maybe Kosho Brewers in France. I’m more a help for my partners than the real boss working on all of these projects. I manage my time and allocate it at the right place and time. During the week I wake up at 5AM, I work around one hour for overseas projects (because of jet lag), after that I work under my mother in law during the day. At 5PM I start to work on my project in France and I try to stop at 6PM (mostly I stop at 8PM sadly). You can be sure that at 9PM I’m already asleep haha. All of that stops on Thursday, from Friday to Sunday it’s party time. So you might think I work too much, but I party really hard as well, so it’s fine by me.

 So you might think I work too much, but I party really hard as well, so it’s fine by me.

 

Tell me a bit about your interest in making music. Your gorenoise project is of an absurdist nature, why don’t you stick to guitars and a couple of chords and play punk, for example? Have you been involved in other bands before?

 

Like I said before I was involved in more conventional bands in the past if Brutal Death Metal and Blasting Punk can be said to be

 conventional. But I’m fed up with normal music. I think I’m too old now for classic shit. I need something ultra brutal, ultra noisy, that transcends the concept of music because if not, I’m bored. It’s really hard for me nowadays to listen to bands like Brodequin or Dying Fetus even if I have to admit their new albums are killers, I can’t listen to it the whole day like before. I’m too quickly bored by their conventional way of making their unconventional music.

BORED BY THE CONVENTIONAL WAY OF MAKING UNCONVENTIONAL MUSIC

 

Because of all that, my only way to still vibrate with passion in music is to make it my own way. People will think I’m lazy, I am,

 some others I’m crazy, I’m not, I’m just a pure product of evolution. I need new steps, to discover new sensations. If real artists can’t feed me, I’ll feed myself with my own stupidity.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO FOLLOW ONES PASSION AND DEVELOP FRIENDSHIPS

 

Let’s talk about your webzine – how did you start it, what have you achieved and what you would perhaps still want to achieve. 

 

Horns Up is my third French webzine I’m involved with. I started to write for a beautiful webzine called Imm3moria but the boss was really special, so I decided to quit to write for another medium that was called U-Zine. Horns Up is the fusion between U-zine and a Youtube channel called 2Guys1TV. We wanted to be more video oriented (you have to keep up with the times) and they wanted to make written content. Our collaboration made perfect sense. I never wanted to achieve anything with that. I was just writing reviews for videogames and following my passion I wanted to write about Metal music.

I really have no goals, only friendship.

Nowadays I’m more like a community manager for the webzine than a real writer. I still continue to write long format articles mostly about metal in Asia or science oriented stuff (they do have relevance to metal music). But I’m fine like that. I think I’m still in Horns Up because I love the team more than because I’m writing stuff. They’re really nice people, really talented with a good approach to Metal music. I continue to learn a lot from them, and I’m still in, mostly because of them. I’ve helped them to develop the video part and now they’ve spread out their own wings. I really have no goals, only friendship.

We’re 100% auto financed, 100% free, 100% pure in what we write. 

Was it part of your mission to promote French bands? Do you think there is a subgenre or a scene in France that is underrecognized abroad? I feel like I’ve never heard of any French Metalcore or deathcore bands for example. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing haha.