On the back of the release of their superb album Colossal, just over a year ago, Baest have been getting the road miles in and having fun along the way. Tours with Arch Enemy and Bleed From Within in the US and a set of European Festivals this year have seen the band spread the music far and wide. In part one of our interview, Baest talk about the festival run, the freedom they found making Colossal, and what happens when those songs reach the stage.
The UK leg of their Colossal starts next Tuesday at The Joiners, the iconic Southampton venue, and runs to the Downstairs at The Dome on 9 October 2026.
I spoke to the band recently, just after they had completed a three-day festival run across the Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden. The Brutal Assault Festival may have been rainy, but Baest found plenty of people ready to party with them.
“Kudos to Brutal Assault and how they handle things there,” vocalist Simon Olsen told MetalTalk. “It’s top-notch. It has something which is much more special than all the others. It’s a fucking cool place to be.”
Plan B Malmö was fun too. Hot, the show was in a historic setting. “It’s a legendary place to play,” Olsen said. “We haven’t played there before. But it’s always a great show up in Sweden. In terms of cultural icons they have in their music scene, [you could think they would not] care a shit about a small Danish fucking Death Metal band. But they always show up and have a shit load of fun. We have a lot of fans in Sweden.”
Their show at Copenhagen Metal Fest was a success too, and on the second biggest stage at the second biggest mainstream festival in Denmark. “The audience is Mrs and Mr Denmark,” Olsen said, “which is like a saying we have in Danish. It’s like the everyday average guy who wants to party and listen to the pop from the radio. A lot of Danish pop bands are represented at that festival. So we were very, very grateful to close that scene on the Saturday night.”
Guitarist Lasse Revsbech says their approach is to “get in there and do our best. You have such a small room of time, and with so many other bands playing, you just have to make that impression.”
“You try to reach out to the guys that haven’t heard you before,” Olsen said, “and then try to make them come and see your shows. Buy a ticket to a headline show. The festivals for us are like a showroom, where we can show what we’re made of. Full energy, of course. It’s be yourself on stage, and try to reach that guy in the back who’s like, fuck, yeah, what is this? Well, here it is.”
Colossal has been out there for over a year now. For Baest, it has been their best-received album to date. “People are singing along to the new songs as well,” Lasse said, “and we haven’t been too active touring with it yet. This is the first time we ever said, OK, let the album live a little bit before we tour with it. We used to do the other thing a lot. But now people have actually listened to the songs more than a couple of times, and that’s just awesome. I think it’s our best-received album ever, actually, so that’s what we live for.”
The album is still brutal, but that band took a different approach with Colossal. The album opens with an AC/DC style riff and hi-hat.
“We couldn’t hold it in much more,” Lasse said. “So we just decided we’ll put all the rock riffs that we’ve been writing over the course of our lives. Simon let loose his vocals. We started saying to each other, right, that’s not Death Metal enough. But now we can’t hold it back anymore. We were having so much fun with it.”
Simon Olsen says it was a natural process of evolving. “The first couple of albums, we were thinking around the albums and concepts. Now we let the guard down and just fucking did what we think is fun. The sound from the last EP, Justitia, was also a natural evolution. We were trying to get some of those riffs in there, with that certain style. Now we were just like, let’s try it. It’s fun to work with.”
Stormbringer really kicks in around the 18-second mark, and I love the title track too. There is a real old-school Death Metal style there. The theme running across the whole colossal album, to me, takes inspiration from some of the classic rock guitarists from the ’80s/’90s.
“It’s funny you mentioned it,” Olsen said, “because Colossus is the first song we made for that album, which came out two years prior to the actual album. Then you mention Stormbringer, which was the last song that made it.” It is cool to see the breadth of styles.
Lasse notices the Adrian Smith photo behind me. “Depraved World, the main riff is a riff I started writing when I was 14 years old and based on a Maiden song. We took it all in. No holding us back. Let’s have a melody here. Let’s have a brutal-ass riff here because why not? You know, why not?”
“That makes people happy, and that’s the fun part of it,” Olsen says. “The dynamic and the contrast in the music. I spoke to a good friend a couple of years and a couple of beers ago, who said some of the most rocking things in music are in the contrasts. That’s what makes people listen. So I guess in my raging drunkness, I actually wrote it down on my phone because I thought it was a great sentence.”
It is this that makes Collosal such a great record to listen to as a whole and certainly not in the Spotify single-track mode. You can notice the benefits of taking their time. To be able to develop the songs and try them out live must be a pretty cool thing to do.
“It is,” Olsen says, “and it’s always a challenge as well. Playing a song for the first time is very nerve-wracking for me. It’s also fun to experience your songs as a live performer, because when you’ve done it for a long time now, you know the old tricks. You try to work your way through the song. What kind of energy this does to an audience and to yourself. It’s very amusing, very challenging and very fun to do.”
Baest are very much a live band, and this was their approach to Colossal. Necro Sapiens, released in 2021, was a no-click-track approach pushed by the question of confidence and why not just play it.
“I guess it’s easy if you have to use backing tracks live, sequences and being mixed with the screens,” drummer Sebastian Abildsten said, “We’ll try to avoid it as long as we can. Hopefully we’ll never do it, but if we really blow up and we have to, I’ll take it. [laughs]”
Our conversation with Baest continues in part two, out tomorrow. Tour tickets are available via baestband.com.
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