Gutalax

When I it comes to music styles – Gutalax are quite unique. The noted creators of the genre “Gore & Roll”, their music is fast, hard, and humorous with lyrics sang in a guttural vocalisation of pig noises.

First formed in the Czech Republic in 2009, they have released 6 studio albums, the first being “Shit Beast” in 2011 which received critical acclaim led to them being a regular at festivals across Europe and since the release of their most recent album in 2021 “The Shitpendables” they have toured pretty much nonstop!

So, I was pretty excited to to be asked to photograph the band on the first night of their Spanish tour here in my hometown of Valencia, at the amazing Peter Rock Club.

About an hour before the venue opened the street outside started filling up with people dressed in sewerage cleaning outfits, armed with toilet brushes and toilet rolls. Yep, these are Gutlalax fans!

The gig was nothing short of insane – a hard, non-stop assault of music from the band and the fans whipped into a frenzy of toilet roll throwing, brush waving and multiple walls of death. Like all amazing gigs it seemed to go on forever and yet was over too soon.

After the gig I caught up with Maty (lead singer) for a beer and a chat:

Maty – after all of our emails it’s great to finally meet you! First night of the tour here at Peter Rock Club in Valencia, did you enjoy it?

Love it – I fucking love it! Last time we played Valencia was 2014, ten years ago it was good. Now we are back I could not image a better gig, just amazing!

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that until recently I had not heard of “Gutalax” – my 15-year-old daughter told me “That I was old and needed to check you out!

You know whats good about this - the new fans are grooving with us. We have the older fans and new kids, and they all love it. They are actually dancing, no mobiles phones - just going for it.

For people like me who haven’t yet discovered Gutlalax – how would you describe yourselves?

We are a mobile party – we love to party; we love people who love to party, and we all love to party together. We are disco music (LOL), we are music for people who love to switch off their brains and just have a good time. Just like we do.

This year you are celebrating 15 years of Gutlalax, that’s a pretty impressive milestone!

It goes so fucking fast! We have had so many great shows and great times, but it has gone so fast we are looking for the minimum of another 15 years. We are enjoying the birthday year and have a lot of plans, but mainly we are just happy to be here and enjoying the gigs!

Most of your songs focus on “Shit” – why is that?

Yeah – because everyone knows shit! We all have to take a shit, why not you know. Its nature, its pure – everyone has to shit, beautiful people, ugly people, animals, everything all over the world and that why we sing about it!  We are like the National Geographic of the music industry.  We play Gore & Roll, we are disco music about shit.

Any plans to make more Diarrhero videos and give him his own series?

Maybe. We have plenty of big plans for the future to make things maybe even a movie. Our friend who is very talented made this, so there no problem making more. We are already working ideas for our next video – which isn’t a cartoon but lets see what happens with Diarrhero in the future.

The quality of your music musics are really excellent, funny, well animated and very professionally produced. Who is behind the production?

Thank you – we are lucky we have really good people around us and all of our videos are made with friends and buy our friends. We have an incredible team of people who are fucking cool at what they do!

I can image touring and gigging can be pretty intense, how do you like to relax when you are at home?

Like most people I spend time with family and just kick back, Im also a big movie fan so I like to watch movies.  My favourite movie is “The Thing” John Carpenter. It’s the fucking best!

It’s been 3 years since you released your last album “Shitpendables”  - any new releases coming in 2024?

Yeah, all being planned I can promise this. We are playing almost every weekend, but we will try and do our best and release something special. Its our anniversary year so something will happen.

What are your favourite venues to play?

We love to play fucking everywhere because we love to play!  All of our shows are special and unique - today was something different, I loved it! I finished 3 beers and almost a bottle of whiskey on stage! We love to play, we love to spend time together,

And finally, a message to your fans.

Thank you for 15 years and supporting Gutalax.  We love you and lets party for the next 15 fucking years!

Words and photos by: Rhyan Paul