Blog

By Kim Kelly.

Happy May Day! Around the world, May 1 is traditionally celebrated as International Workers Day (except in the U.S. where our craven authoritarian government pushes “Loyalty Day” on us instead). It’s a time for love, and solidarity, and joy, but is also a day for rage and protest. Normally, many of us would be in the streets today, but given the current reality of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the best thing we can do for our fellow humans right now is stay inside. One small silver lining there is that, right now, we have an opportunity to extend some support to our fellow members of the music community who are struggling to make ends meet right now—the bands and artists who are stuck at home alongside the rest of us, unable to tour or play live during what would usually be a busy springtime touring season.

Bandcamp will be waiving their fees today, which means that every penny of every purchase will go directly to artists. They did this last year, too, and the response was so enormous that their website could barely handle all the traffic (I have a feeling there will be a repeat this year, but at least now we know we’ll need to be patient in getting our precious new tunes). As a small token of my appreciation for their labor, I wanted to put together a little list of bands that I am especially excited to support today, and share a few of them with you (a much longer list of recommendations will be public on my Patreon as of 2PM EST). Some may be familiar to you already, and some may not, but all of them have two very important things in common: they’re actively trying to make the world a better place, and they fuckin’ hate Nazis (which you could roll up into one, really). Happy listening!


Voarm doesn’t just dabble in darkness; this Richmond black metal collective (gathered from the ashes of Argentinum Astrum) invites it in, offers it a cup of tea, and settles into its lightless, suffocating embrace. Their doom-laden spin on the genre summons up punishing, magisterial riffs, weighed down with swaths of smothering distortion, and beckons you closer into the abyss.

It’s been over a decade since we last heard from these black/death anti-civilization stalwarts, but recent stirrings of life on their end (and the enduring timeliness of their anti-racist, anti-oppressive, pro-environment message) made me want to include them on this list. As the world burns around us and an invisible plague lays bare the gaping structural flaws upon which our modern society has been hastily constructed, bands like Peregrine remind us that things don’t have to be this way.

These Texas troublemakers skirt the line between punk and metal, but their fierce leftist politics and battering-ram intensity make them the perfect candidates for mention on a day celebrating radical working class resistance. Their live presence is unsurpassed, and their music—a gritty melange of hardcore punk, crust, sludge, doom and even skramz— is the perfect soundtrack for an uprising.

This Boston outfit bends sharp fragments of noise to suit its paranoid vision, drafting in elements of grindcore, industrial, and depressive black metal as they go. Their debut LP is discomfiting, ambitious, and impossible to tear oneself away from once its horrors begin to unfurl.

Denver’s premier sludgy black/death miscreants are back with some new blood; this time, there’s some nice, rotten Domination vibes involved, and their death metal proclivities are on full display. This is just one teaser track for what hopefully will be a new album, but even that is enough to whet the appetites of the unholy (and I still haven’t gotten over their “Fuck Nazi Sympathy” cover).

One of the prime architects of post-black metal has uploaded some of his most cherished releases on Bandcamp, and not a moment too soon. I’m especially partial to the Manchester, UK artist’s 2009 self-titled EP, but there are lots of gems to sift through for those who enjoy their black metal with a twist of the experimental, the spacey, the emotional, and the strange.

Artwork by Guang Yang.

Straight outta the Bay Area’s hyper-capitalist hellscape, these California nightmares dole out bloody HM2 worship with sacrilegious glee. Sworn to the old school, rooted in the classics, and armed with the chops to pull off aggressive modern death without lapsing into proggy fretboard Olympics territory, Ripped to Shreds is a disgusting delight.

Artwork by Florian-Ayala Fauna.

Adzes’ raison d’etre has long been to churn out socially conscious, noisy, atmospheric sludge with teeth, and this latest entry into their anti-capitalist canon seems finds them even more woebegone over the fate of our dying planet. Taken off the band’s upcoming full-length debut, the pair of tracks currently live on Bandcamp tell a dreary tale of dashed hopes and burning radical potential.

The buzz around Cascadian black metal as a micro-genre has lain dormant for the past few years, but Awenden is a shining example of how lovely the form can be when executed well. Golden Hour offers shimmering melodic black metal that’s bursting with light, and aligned against the evils of empire, fascism, and civilization.

Talk about an antifascist metal (and hardcore) dream team. This four-way split between reactivated metalcore greats Racetraitor, antifascist war machine Neckbeard Deathcamp, high-intensity grind force Closet Witch, and raw black metal storm Haggathorn makes for an essential combination of brutality, integrity, and blastbeats.

By Kim Kelly.

Happy May Day! Around the world, May 1 is traditionally celebrated as International Workers Day (except in the U.S. where our craven authoritarian government pushes “Loyalty Day” on us instead). It’s a time for love, and solidarity, and joy, but is also a day for rage and protest. Normally, many of us would be in the streets today, but given the current reality of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the best thing we can do for our fellow humans right now is stay inside. One small silver lining there is that, right now, we have an opportunity to extend some support to our fellow members of the music community who are struggling to make ends meet right now—the bands and artists who are stuck at home alongside the rest of us, unable to tour or play live during what would usually be a busy springtime touring season.

Bandcamp will be waiving their fees today, which means that every penny of every purchase will go directly to artists. They did this last year, too, and the response was so enormous that their website could barely handle all the traffic (I have a feeling there will be a repeat this year, but at least now we know we’ll need to be patient in getting our precious new tunes). As a small token of my appreciation for their labor, I wanted to put together a little list of bands that I am especially excited to support today, and share a few of them with you (a much longer list of recommendations will be public on my Patreon as of 2PM EST). Some may be familiar to you already, and some may not, but all of them have two very important things in common: they’re actively trying to make the world a better place, and they fuckin’ hate Nazis (which you could roll up into one, really). Happy listening!


Voarm doesn’t just dabble in darkness; this Richmond black metal collective (gathered from the ashes of Argentinum Astrum) invites it in, offers it a cup of tea, and settles into its lightless, suffocating embrace. Their doom-laden spin on the genre summons up punishing, magisterial riffs, weighed down with swaths of smothering distortion, and beckons you closer into the abyss.

It’s been over a decade since we last heard from these black/death anti-civilization stalwarts, but recent stirrings of life on their end (and the enduring timeliness of their anti-racist, anti-oppressive, pro-environment message) made me want to include them on this list. As the world burns around us and an invisible plague lays bare the gaping structural flaws upon which our modern society has been hastily constructed, bands like Peregrine remind us that things don’t have to be this way.

These Texas troublemakers skirt the line between punk and metal, but their fierce leftist politics and battering-ram intensity make them the perfect candidates for mention on a day celebrating radical working class resistance. Their live presence is unsurpassed, and their music—a gritty melange of hardcore punk, crust, sludge, doom and even skramz— is the perfect soundtrack for an uprising.

This Boston outfit bends sharp fragments of noise to suit its paranoid vision, drafting in elements of grindcore, industrial, and depressive black metal as they go. Their debut LP is discomfiting, ambitious, and impossible to tear oneself away from once its horrors begin to unfurl.

Denver’s premier sludgy black/death miscreants are back with some new blood; this time, there’s some nice, rotten Domination vibes involved, and their death metal proclivities are on full display. This is just one teaser track for what hopefully will be a new album, but even that is enough to whet the appetites of the unholy (and I still haven’t gotten over their “Fuck Nazi Sympathy” cover).

One of the prime architects of post-black metal has uploaded some of his most cherished releases on Bandcamp, and not a moment too soon. I’m especially partial to the Manchester, UK artist’s 2009 self-titled EP, but there are lots of gems to sift through for those who enjoy their black metal with a twist of the experimental, the spacey, the emotional, and the strange.

Artwork by Guang Yang.

Straight outta the Bay Area’s hyper-capitalist hellscape, these California nightmares dole out bloody HM2 worship with sacrilegious glee. Sworn to the old school, rooted in the classics, and armed with the chops to pull off aggressive modern death without lapsing into proggy fretboard Olympics territory, Ripped to Shreds is a disgusting delight.

Artwork by Florian-Ayala Fauna.

Adzes’ raison d’etre has long been to churn out socially conscious, noisy, atmospheric sludge with teeth, and this latest entry into their anti-capitalist canon seems finds them even more woebegone over the fate of our dying planet. Taken off the band’s upcoming full-length debut, the pair of tracks currently live on Bandcamp tell a dreary tale of dashed hopes and burning radical potential.

The buzz around Cascadian black metal as a micro-genre has lain dormant for the past few years, but Awenden is a shining example of how lovely the form can be when executed well. Golden Hour offers shimmering melodic black metal that’s bursting with light, and aligned against the evils of empire, fascism, and civilization.

Talk about an antifascist metal (and hardcore) dream team. This four-way split between reactivated metalcore greats Racetraitor, antifascist war machine Neckbeard Deathcamp, high-intensity grind force Closet Witch, and raw black metal storm Haggathorn makes for an essential combination of brutality, integrity, and blastbeats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“III” is the title of the brand new album by the Greek/Italian constellation Dexter Ward, an album that sees the band venturing into music as well as lyrics that are even more epic than before. As Metal Squadron did back when the band released their second album, “Rendezvous With Destiny”  in 2016, we once more hooked up with singer Mark Dexter for a chat about the what’s happened in the camp since then.

“III” is out since a couple of weeks. What excites you most thinking about the release of the album?                                                                                   

– I guess it’s the fact I know we released our best album so far and it’s such a huge step forward compared to the previous one that I can’t help feeling excited and anxious about the feedback from the metal world. The master is ready since last November so all those long months we’ve been like a boiling cauldron, you got to take off the lid eventually or it’s going to explode.

Dexter Ward were supposed to perform at Up The Hammers in Greece at the day of the album release, an event the whole band was looking forward to, but as we all know, the whole festival was cancelled.  Mark still gives us some details of what the band was planning to do at this special occasion.                                                 

– We were going to play only a couple songs from the new album, the first single called “Return of the Blades” that we released at the end of 2019 and most people should be already familiar with, and “Conan the Barbarian” which is pretty straightforward and should work fine live. It was a balanced setlist with songs from our three records and some surprises. We were bringing back “Double Dragon” from “Neon Lights” and we wanted to play an old Battleroar song I wrote called “Egyptian Doom” from 2002, with Gus Makrikostas from the classic Battleroar lineup as special guest on bass. It’s our guitar player Akis favourite song from that album, that we incidentally recorded in his own studio (Versus Studio) back then. That’s when I met Akis for the first time.

It’s been almost four years since the last album came out, while there was also about the same time between «Neon Lights» and «Rendezvous With Destiny». Is this simply the time needed for you to write songs, rehearse them and record them?       

– No, not really! Most of the new album has been written between March and early June 2019, we did pre-production in the summer, started recording around September and finished mixing and mastering in November, a ten month period overall. After we released  “Rendezvous with Destiny” and played a few shows, we kind of lost the momentum and just got drowned in our everyday’s routines, jobs, families, commitments. What happens, at least with me, is that we go out and play and I’m all pumped up and in a great mood, the king of the world in denim and spikes and power chords, and then after the shows I go back home and I’m again Mr. Anonymous asshole! This is a titanic blow that kills the morale and slowly you get sucked into the gears of civil life and you’re fucked big time! This happens when you just play a few shows throughout the year, like one weekend now, another weekend four months later and so on, you can’t keep a steady focus and then months pass, seasons change and BAM! it’s four years!  So there I was around Winter 2018, in a kind of middle age crisis where I had lost the will to play and sing for the reason i just described, and we “froze” the band to see what happens, as R.J. MacReady would say, and a few months later, like magic I had never experienced before, I took the guitar and all the songs started to flow one after the other, the first being “The Eyes of Merlin” and the last “Return of the Blades” and we all felt re-energised and ready to kick ass again, the “hunger” came back stronger than ever.

Last time we spoke together, I remember Mark saying he was a bit concerned that people might had forgotten about the band between the release of «Neon Lights» and «Rendezvous With Destiny». Did he happen to have the same concerns this time, or does he feel that «Rendezvous With Destiny» established Dexter Ward more as a band with a loyal fanbase than «Neon Lights» did?                                           

– Yes sure I did, and to a certain extend it might have happened, because in the fast-moving and crowded scene of today, with lots of traditional metal releases each month, it’s very easy to be forgotten or to get overlooked when you finally come out again with something new. Unexpectedly, though, I also experienced more of the contrary effect: in fact, many young fans are getting in touch with us, new fans we didn’t have before, and the older ones that were following us in our Battleroar days seem to like this new album of ours even better than “Rendezvous With Destiny”.

Looking back at «Rendezvous With Destiny», what do you view as that album’s main strenghts and weaknesses? Did you approach the new album differently based on something you learnt while working on «Rendezvous With Destiny?»    

– Our second album still sounds great to my ears, in terms of production and progression from the debut, but in my opinion doesn’t possess the unity and character that “III” has. The reason is, the songs were composed through an arc of three-four years in different periods where we went through important personal changes in our private lives, and this affected the mood of the music and also the fact that, lyrically, it’s more like a collection of tunes about different topics, apart from the two songs about the Crusades. The new album is much more focused, music and lyrics, because except for “In the Days of Epic Metal” and “The Dragon of the Mist” that I wrote in the Summer of 2017, the other six came out all together so fast and on the wings of an excitement I hadn’t felt since I first joined Battleroar 20 years ago.

Dexter Ward has managed something that is more of an exception than a rule in today’s scene. The band has had a stable lineup for about ten years now. Is the secret behind the stable lineup that the members don’t see each other too often»?  

– I think if we lived closer to each other and possessed the luxury of rehearsal as a full band, we could do much more in terms of quantity and perhaps quality of releases and live shows. In the present conditions, I think we’re doing pretty good, if you consider that since we started the band in 2009, we have done no more than 15 rehearsals all together. What happens is we’re all very good friends and can’t wait to see each other. I won’t deny distance keeps things fresh in a way, but it’s not the reason why we’re still together today. And afterall I’m the only member living abroad, the guys meet quite often in Athens, although their instrumental rehearsals are not extremely frequent.

You have a brand new logo supporting the new album. It looks extremely old school and is in stark contrast to the previous logo which was more modern looking. Did you simply have to change the logo to fit with the artwork of the cover, or did you want to make a mark and maybe underline some musical changes, with the music in my opinion being more epic, with a new logo and a different looking artwork?                 

– The main reason is I never liked our old logo, and only last year i discovered Manolis (Karazeris, guitar) never really liked it either. When we formed the band, that was the last of our priorities. We just wanted to go back on stage with our new music, and we settled on a functional logo that through the years I started considering devoid of soul and character. So, much before we had completed the songwriting for the new album, I sketched a very raw version of the new logo on a small piece of paper, that was the guideline from which Alexandros Vasilopoulos realized the logo that you can see today. The same thing happened later with the cover art, also done by Alexandros, who had painted the cover for the first Battleroar album. We wanted an old school, hand painted cover, and that’s exactly what he delivered. The new logo, and the cover art, they tell a story even before you play the record. I have never been more satisfied about any of our previous artworks as I am with new one. Although the new logo fits great with the epic style of “III” I don’t think it’s a “one trick pony”. We’re going to keep this one for a long time, even in albums with more “varied” and perhaps more contemporary lyrical themes, “More contemporary” for me means the Vietnam War or the middle eighties!

The title of the upcoming album is «III». Sounds like something you settle for when you can’t really find a good, fitting title right?                                                                         

– It was a planned and deliberate choice that carried a meaning. We didn’t want a fancier or more catchy title to take the listener’s attention away from the music itself. The roman numerals convey a sense of ancestral solemnity, and the number III is highly symbolic, for example the three swords depicted on the cover art represent the three crosses on the Golgotha. We talked about perhaps using “Return of the Blades” as a title, but whereas the word “Return” implies some sort of comeback, I wanted to keep this album as “out of time” as I could, because I think this concept of being “vague” in a chronological sense is often the trademark of great heavy metal songs and albums.

«Return Of The Blades» is both the opener of the album, and was also released as the first taster from «III». Why do Mark feel it fits both purposes?                     

– Because it represents a re-energised, fresh, up tempo version of the band that pushes the pedal to the epic and wipes out of the way the idea that we are a static “mid-tempo” kind of heavy metal band cause we’re not. “Rendezvous With Destiny” was a relatively more slower paced album, just because of the song selection, but we do like to write faster songs and this new album is much more compact and powerful than the previous. Lyrically, “Return Of The Blades”  is the ideal “continuation” of another song me and Manolis had written for Battleroar called “Hyrkanian Blades”, which in turn was the name of my personal project way back in 2000. I think it’s good to have a galloping opener that makes things clear about what’s going to come next!

Last time we spoke you went into details about how surprised you are by how a song you have written turns out and how the arrangements almost feel new to you. Where there songs on this new album that turned out very different from how you thought when you composed them?                                                    

– No, this time we really focused on keeping the flavour, the attitude and the details that were present in the original demos I had recorded. This was important because what makes this album strong, is the spirit, the energy that permeates it, and through which the songs came to life. There were no big changes of sort, except for the fact that the songs sound 100 times better than they did in the demos! For example, I like to improvise vocal harmonies and to use choirs whenever I can, I don’t like to record the same line many times the same way but it’s often required when you do bridges and choruses et cetera, so I find relief in being creative during the recording process and adding extra layers that weren’t in the demos, this way I manage to keep myself interested and to surprise the band with little new, positive things.

On the last album, guitarist Akis contributed a song in the form of «Knights Of Jerusalem», but on “III” all songs are written by Mark himself.                                       

– Yes, but Akis had a very heavy hand on this album since he’s responsible for all the pre-production arrangements, and also added some new parts such as the intro to “Soldiers of Light” or the orchestral arrangement to the intro of “In the Days of Epic Metal”, fixed and in many cases rewrote the drum parts together with Stelios (Darakis, drums) and came out with the most amazing leads and ideas. I understand it might sound like an unusual statement in this case, but this album featured a level of teamwork unsurpassed for our band, we all gave our best and beyond.

I remember you being very satisfied with the producer, Thimios Krikos and his Devasoundz studio which you used last time, still you haven’t gone for him this time…

– Our guitar player Akis is a very talented sound engineer and producer himself, and he finally managed to build his own home studio. He had worked together with Thimios for some time, and we’re all in very good relationship. The main reason was we wanted to find our own personal sound with “III” and we thought that we could accomplish that only by doing the engineering and the production on our own.  Which means Akis did a hell of a job and the result states that creativity and a good ear can make the difference much more than hugely expensive equipment. I recorded vocals here in Italy and all instruments were done in Athens. Another reason, not equally important but nevertheless substantial, was that we had to decide based on our budget, and this solution allowed us to contain the project costs.

In general, mostly judging from the song titles, it seems like the lyrics are more fantasy-based this time. In the past you had these type of lyrics as well, but not to such an extent.

– I grew tired of singing about modern war or the USA, not because I didn’t like those    subjects anymore, but mainly because I didn’t feel I had anything else to add on the matter. Almost everything I had to say had been explored on our first two albums. I have, however, other songs in demo form such as “Veterans”, “Flight of the Intruder”,“Airborne Rangers” or “American Ninja” that might, or might not, see the light on a future Dexter Ward release, but those songs were already old, written from 2012 to 2016, and instead I wanted an album made of new, fresh sounding songs, some kind of “reboot” for the band. After the little “crisis” I had in late 2018, I surrounded myself with the albums, the books and the movies that first prompted me to become a musician and most of them were epic in nature, heroic fantasy based, that’s why with the new album I went full circle and back to my beginnings. It was not a premeditate move, it just happened that way.

«In The Days Of Epic Metal» -that’s one song title for you. Canada’s Breaker called their EP and   one of their songs «In Days Of Heavy Metal» of course, but where did you get the idea for the lyrics to this track from? The phrase «Soldiers Of Light» is part of this song as well, so is «In The Days Of Epic Metal» and the song «Soldiers Of Light» linked together in any way?

– The title is in fact a tribute to the Breaker song that I really love, but there’s no further similarity. The lyrics of our song apparently speak of Norse mythology and a fallen warrior theme, but they are to be seen as a metaphor for something totally different. Of course every listener can relate to the song in a different personal way, but my “Days of Epic Metal” were the days when I first went to Greece in 2002 with a few demos recorded in a very primitive way on my own, and I had never sung with any band, and never imagined I would become part of one of the most flourishing european underground heavy metal scenes, it really was, at the time. The song speaks of the magic and the friendship, the dreams that came true, and the will and the passion that made us reach goals that, theoretically, we should have never even dreamed to pursue, but we did and succeeded and that’s what the song is about. Now for “Soldiers of Light”, the two songs are not connected, I just unconsciously used the same phrase. However, the concept of one that fights for the Light comes from our motto “Metal for the Light!” that was in the booklet of our debut album, and became the title of a song on “Rendezvous With Destiny”. It’s taken from the U.S. White Metal imagery and tradition of bands like Bloodgood, Emerald (U.S.), Zion, etc. from which Dexter Ward are strongly inspired, and in the past we did songs in that direction, such as “Youngblood”, “Evil Nightmares”, “Fighting for the Cross”, and  on the new one, the aforementioned “Soldiers of Light”.

Dexter Ward on Facebook

 

I have had the chance to speak to Niklas Stålvind, singer and guitarist in Wolf a few times already, but a quick search through the archives here at Metal Squadron reveals that none of those interviews are to be found here. Well, time to do something about it, as the band just released a new album “Feeding The Machine”. The following interview was also the title story in the March edition of Scream Magazine.

Niklas, if you look back at your last album, «Devil’s Seed», how do you view that album today both as an album standing on its own as well as a part of the Wolf-discography?

– After we released it, I was very proud of it and thought it was one of our best albums. The production is simply amazing, but after a while I started thinking that the album lacks some fast songs. Also, the production sounds very deep and expensive. If you listen to it with really good headphones or on an expensive stereo, you can really hear the depth of it all. I thought like: Okay, we have done this now, we can not take this thing further, or it simply wouldn’t be Wolf anymore. We wanted to go back and do more aggressive, in your face, simple, straight forward heavy metal. That’s the feeling I got after a while. I discussed it with the rest of the band, and they were feeling exactly the same. We should be doing more simple, straight up heavy metal.

Does this mean that you felt you were at a crossroad when you started working on this new album?

– For me personally, it felt like that. For every album since «The Black Flame”, and especially since «Ravenous», I have been writing mostly about personal stuff. It’s my way of dealing with life. Most of the songs on «The Devil’s Seed» deal with the fact that I got burnt out in 2012 and was really in bad shape. When I got back together and started working on recovering , the album was therapy for me, and it deals a lot about my recovery. This new album is also very personal and terapeutic for me. It deals a lot about deeper issues in the past, from my youth. My life took a really strange turn when I was 16 or 17, and I have never gone back trying to understand it. Now I felt like I really had to do it to become a whole human being, if you know what I mean. My method of dealing with deeper issues in life has always been to write music. So I view “Feeding The Machine” as a completely different different animal compared to “The Devil’s Seed” which is like a thing from the past, at least that’s what it feels like now.

So what happened when you were like 16-17 years old, that turned your life around, as you put it?

– Well, I had a life crisis, like many teenagers. I met the wong people at the wrong time, when I was most vunerable. That lead me to very strange ways, it’s very personal so I dont think I am ready to really openly discuss it yet. My personality is that I am an «all or nothing»-guy. I’ve always been like that. I get really obsessed by things. By that time, I thought I had found the answer to life and universe and everything, you know. And after a while, reality catches up, and you feel confused and depressed again. That was a really weird time. I dont know how to say it, but I just realized I had been wasting many, many years on something that wasn’t really good for me. And when I moved on, because I couldn’t understand how I could be so stupid, I just moved on, put the lid on and never talked to anyone about it. I just kept it to myself. When I look back now in old diaries, it’s like several years of my youth are just gone. There are stuff I can’t recall, I can’t remember when I did stuff or in what order. It’s all like a blur. When I had written the last song, it felt like it was out on the other side.

So you did actually write a diary at this time?

-Yes, I did. I write sporadically, but mostly when I suffer. When I really feel good, I forget about writing. My diaries are very deep and soul searching. I also went back to check old calendars, because I was really confused. What the fuck happened between those years? There were like four or five years when everything was really, really crazy. I am glad I did write, but when I look back at those diaries, it’s like a completely different person has written them. And it was, of course. Its been many years, we change all the time and move on. Some traces of the past are still present in our consciousness. Some people say they are exactly the same as when they were 16, and they’re kind of proud of it. Not me, I am not that person. In 10 years time I will not be the same person as I am today. I think that’s a natural thing. I write very personal, but I try to write so that anyone can get something out of the songs. It’s not about me, it’s about the listener. I also try to write for the person that just want to grab a beer, headbang and crank the stereo on a Saturday night. You don’t need a degree from the University, to be able to enjoy Wolf. Even though we write music like that, there are often people, often very unexcpected people, like young girls in the twenties, saying they have been listening to Wolf and that our music has been very important for them in times of struggle. I have experienced it many, many times. They don’t look like metal heads at all. I find that fascinating.

Niklas says he doesn’t know why the time was right to write songs about this period in his life right now, but he tries to explain.

– One day I saw something on the Internet that reminded me of this period in my life, it might have been a documentary or something like that. I’ve have always known for my whole adult life that this is something I need to get to the bottom of. I can’t pretend that it never happened. I just knew that someday I had to deal with it, and now was the right time. I was dealing with this thing for two or three years, and I am really glad I did. I guess it’s what most artists do from time to time, its our way of dealing with life and trying to understand it.

When I feel a little down, I don’t always want to listen to music, but when I do, I always get in a better mood.

– Yeah! I went to Prague once. That’s the only time I went somewhere for a vacation. I am an extremely boring person, I just sit in my studio, go to work and do boring daddy stuff. I am not a vacation kind of guy, and I dont go on adventures. But this time, when I was a bit depressed, I went to Prague, and followed in Franz Kaffka’s steps because I had read his books. I went to the place where he is buried, and visited his grave, and there were lots and lots of notes and stuff that people had put on his grave. I realized that «Wow, he really had an impact on people, not only me, but thousands and thousands of people.” I picked up one of the notes to read it, I felt a little like spying. It said something along the lines of: “Thank you so much for writing those novels. It makes me feel like I am not alone.” That’s exactly what happens when you are sad and depressed and listen to sad music, or when I am frustrated and angry, I feel better off when I play extremely aggressive music. You get the feeling you are not alone, someone else has also been there. That’s the beautiful thing about art, I think.

You spoke about when you felt burnt out some years ago. Was it mostly in your body or in your head?

– I was diagnosed with fatigue syndrome and it just hit me like a big hammer in the head. I was leaving my kids for day care and was at my way to work, this was in April 2011. Suddenly I got a text message from my wife. I was working on a at the time crazy schedule, not 9-5, but evenings, mornings and weekends. And she was also working like that, and we had just bought a house. My work was really demanding, working with drug addicts with diagnoses, they were really crazy. I got the text message, and opened my calendar to see, and it was all a blur with colour coded stuff, all our schedules. I then got dizzy, it was like someone hit me with a baseball bat in the head. Everything went blurry, and it felt like I was on a big ocean with huge waves. It was very unpleasant, so I just sat there for thirty minutes outside daycare and I couldn’t get myself to start the car. When I finally did, it felt like I was on one big carousel, so I had to stop on the next parking lot. I then called the ambulance, and they were ready to come and help me. I told them I would just sit there for a while to see if I got any better, but later I had to go to the hospital and after a while I was diagnosed with fatigue syndrome. It felt like the brain just shut off. It was a terrible experience. A lot of my friends have been through exactly the same thing. It is really common, at least here in Sweden. People early in their career, who start their own family and have a demanding job, are often hit by this. You work your ass off, and both parents have to work, because otherwise you can’t live. I was really, really sick. I couldn’t drive my car for two weeks, and just sat in my arm chair staring at the wall. I couldn’t do anything. Then I got some really good help, I saw a therapist and she helped me a lot. That’s when I started writing the lyrics for “The Devil’s Seed”. It was a way of dealing with it all.

The songs on “Feeding The Machine” were written during a quite long period of time. Niklas thinks that is something the listener might be able to hear. 

– I think the first song I wrote was “Shoot To Kill”, which I wrote in late 2014 if I remember correctly. It felt like: This is the start for the new record, and this is gonna be the opening track. The song is very classic Wolf-style and has all the Wolf-ingredients. But after that, I started to try to go into different territories and explore a bit of other sounds and landscapes. Some songs got half finished before I threw them out. And there was another entire song where I had written and recorded everything except bass guitar, and I totally forgot about it. It was something I did as a therapeutic thing, and then I realized that it wasn’t good for the album, so I put it away. The long writing period hopefully means that the album is quite diverse, without too many repetitions of one or two songs. My intention was that the listener shouldn’t get bored of the album because everything sound the same.

Do you have an outline before you start to write of what type of songs you are going to include, or do you write individual tracks, fast, slow, heavy ones and just put them together?

-This time I really tried to think of the album as a whole. It feels like I really wrote an album. Simon (Johansson, guitar) wrote one song which he sent to me, and I tried to fit that one into the whole album concept as well. I always had this album overview, with the opening track, the title track…not completely song for song, but making sure it contained certain elements. More so than on every Wolf-album in the past, this is not a bunch of songs thrown together, its really an album concept, music wise. With the lyrics of course, it’s always like that. You are writing an album, probably going through a period in your life. The lyrics reflect the person you are then.

Some time ago, Wolf got a new rhythm section, and it seems the new guys just made it to the new album.

– For a bunch of different reasons, it took us a year to finish the album recordings. We had recorded bass and drums with the old members, but then they left, both of them. We had no idea how to proceed, but Simon and I decided to finish the album no matter what. But during this process, we got two new members in the band. It felt like destiny actually, not that I believe in that stuff . We hadn’t even started searching for new members. when we found them through mutual contacts. Mike Wead from King Diamond is a friend of ours and he helped Simon out in the studio. They were brainstorming about the new drummer, and Mike suggested Johan Koleberg, a guy he had seen perform in Gothenburg recently. It turned out he was an old friend of Pontus Egberg who is also in King Diamond. One thing led to another, and it turned out Johan was looking for a band and Pontus was also interested in joining on bass guitar. It is really weird how everything came together. When the old members, Anders (Modd, bass) and Richard (Holmgren, drums) left, they left us in a really, really bad situation. We had an album recorded, but were just half a band. At the same time, I never tried to make them feel guilty. They really felt they had to move on, and I respected their decision. There were no hard feelings from my side. When we got the new members on board, I really can’t describe the feeling. I was so excited. When we heard them play for the first time, we realized that «this is it». We didn’t have to look any further. We soon realized that we had to release the new album with the new members. It took a couple of weeks more, and then we had new drums and the bass recorded. As the main songwriter in the band, those songs are my babies, and I don’t take lightly on my art. When I heard what Johan and Pontus did with the songs, it felt very right, and it felt like the songs were finally home. I think it was great to get some new blood in the band. I have lots of respect and admiration for the new guys.

When you are an original member that has been in the band since the very beginning, maybe you need some fresh blood once in a while to continue doing what you are doing?

– Yeah, I think so. It has happened before, that members have grown tired. They felt like: «this is not me anymore». Every time it has happened, I just went: «OK». When relationships end you just know it. It’s exactly like you said, an injection of new blood. Sure, I would have loved if I had been in a band like Rush, where three guys (RIP, Neal Peart) know each other inside out, but Wolf isn’t that kind of band, and I am really glad we got some new faces.

The title of the album, “Feeeding The Machine”, is it aimed at social media or Facebook in general?

– Those are the things that inspired me, but I have heard other interpretations of the title as well. A long time has passed since I wrote the song, so right now I have a different perspective and also see it from a totally different angle. But when I wrote it, it was about social media and what it does to us, and how we keep feeding this machine all the time. It’s not only good, you know. When you create a really powerful machine, then you should be aware that someone could take over the control over that machine.

Take the algorithms, for instance, if you put a like on something at Facebook, you end up getting more of the same stuff that you liked in the first place. And if you are are a member of a group on Facebook and have some radical views on things, you can think your opinions are normal, because people in these groups agree with you.

–Things can be used for good or bad. It’s not like social media is bad, but it can surely be bad. And it can surely take control of you before you know it. I think you got to be aware, I have the song «The Raven» on the new album for instance. It’s a song about how or cell phones are now controlling us, and not vice versa. The new technology is great, but it is also comes with a risk. The thing is, not only are you using it, it is using you. Or someone is using you. If you use Facebook, you are the goods. It’s a reason why you don’t have to pay for Facebook. It’s the same thing with Google. Google and Facebook own the fucking world now. And they surely have an agenda. I love the new technology, but you got to be aware. We think a million thoughts a day, but if you really think about it, you will see that you have changed the way you are thinking due to the social media. You think more like a “YouTuber” or a someone using Facebook. I have noticed that I think more in terms of Facebook statuses now, where the fuck did that come from? It is both interesting and scary, and more people need to be aware of these things. Don’t be a fucking brainwashed zombie without a thought of your own!

I noticed one nice thing on your Facebook-page recently, where a guy wrote that he was a fan of the band, but didn’t like the new song you had put out. He got a really nice reply, which is something I think most bands wouldn’t have bothered to do. Something along the lines of: «There is another video coming. Hope you like that one».

– It’s usually me or Simon writing on that page, and it was me answering that particular comment. When I read the comment, I felt a little like I do when I read comments beneath videos at YouTube. Those comments are often very negative and nasty, but you have to remember they often come from random people who see your video in their feed and might not even be a fan of the band or this kind of music at all. In some cultures, people think that their opinions actually matters. «The singer is just a poser…blabla…this is nothing special». Ok, but why do you think someone bothers what you think? When I first read the comment, I felt it was one of those negative things, but I tried to answer him in a polite way, and then it turned out it he was really a Wolf-fan, he just didn’t like this song that much. If I had been a douchebag, we would probably have lost a fan. Funny that you noticed it, because that comment made me think a bit as well, how I turned it to something positive.

Wolf has done a version of Angel Witch’ classic «Atlantis» for the new album. According to Niklas it wasn’t exactly an easy task. 

– The original bass player in Wolf owned the vinyl of their debut album. I borrowed it from him and really liked it, and especially this track. It is really good, with the harmonies, and the kind of flamenco guitar thing. I also like how the song is built up. So “Atlantis” has always been with me, and I always felt we should cover it one day. Now we needed a bonus track, as we used the bonus tracks as an ordinary tracks on the album, because we felt they were too good. I thought of “Atlantis”, as we had to find a song that we could record really fast. Simon was producing it and I got things together, Johan came in to do the drums, and he hardly knew the song at all, so Simon had to tell him what to do. I then came to the studio and learned the song my way and then it was back to do the vocals. The problem was that all the lyrics I could find on the internet was very disappointing. I couldn’t beleive that an English speaking guy had written this, it was just some weird, random bullshit. I had a suspicion they weren’t correct. I couldn’t hear all the words the singer was singing either, because of his English accent and because it was recorded a long time ago and his vocals weren’t really clear. I was a bit frustrated, but then it turned out our drummer is friends with the drummer in Angel Witch.

Yeah, Fredrik Jansson. He is Swedish.

– I had no idea, but Simon knew who he was. In the end, it turned out he was one of my Facebook-friends as well. So we asked him if he could find the lyrics. He sent us the lyrics from a Japanese vinyl-release and they were even worse! We just laughed at it, and asked if Fredrik could check with Kevin Heybourne if he had the lyrics. I then got a SMS from Kevin five minutes before I was going to do the vocals. I corrected the lyrics, and did the song in two takes. I love the result, the song sound very spontaneous.

Wolf on Facebook

With the album “Poltergeist”, released earlier this year through Pure Steel, Mindless Sinner has really upped their game. The album is a big improvement on its predecessor. I made an appointment with singer Christer Göransson and phoned him to get some details about both the past, present and future.

The band went under some other names before you settled for the moniker you are using today, why did the name become Mindless Sinner in the early eigthies?

– We started out as Purple Haze in 1981 and then we changed the name to Genocide after the Judas Priest song. Then after a year, or a year and half, we changed it again into Mindless Sinner. A good friend of mine came up with the name. We were really struggling to find a decent name, and that person, he also got the name for the band Axe Witch by the way, came with this suggestion  which we accepted without further hesitation.

The figure, or should we maybe say man, that is part of the front cover of  your very first release «Master Of Evil» is also there the two latest albums as well. What’s the story? 

– The record label made the cover for our first release . We didnt know about it until the “Master Of Evil”came out, so by then it was already way too late. The first time we saw it, we all thought it was awful, but with time, the cover art has grown on us. When we decided to get together again as a band, we thought this Mr. Evil-guy, as we call him, should be our mascot. You know, like Eddie is for Maiden or The Pumpkin is for Helloween. So yeah, in the end the whole thing turned out better than we first thought.

The EP is musically a bit different from the album that followed. Did your influences change from the EP to the first album or was there pressure from the record company?

– I think the music just evolved, you know. We had several bands influencing us back in the day, but we tried to mix it up and make our own thing out of it. Bands like Holocaust, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Judas Priest and Saxon certainly were important. We didn’t change our sound on purpose, “Turn On The Power” just ended up that way.

The bands you mentioned are all British, but if you listen to a song like “I’m Gonna (Have Some Fun)” from “Turn On The Power”, I guess a lot of people will think of Mötley Crüe…

– Yeah, but Mötley Crüe was never a great influence on our band. Okay, so we listened to them, but there was nothing more. Most of our influences are British.

I like the fact that you mention Holocaust as a source of inspiration. People know the track “Heavy Metal Mania” of course, which Gamma Ray covered, as well as “The Small Hours” which got the same treatment by Metallica, and perhaps also the totally crushing “Death Or Glory”, but that’s pretty much it. I don’t hear them mentioned often.

– I love that band. We got to play with Holocaust at the first edition of Muskelrock we did back in 2014. They were on the bill as well, and I got to meet the band, and even though there are only one original member left nowadays, I probably acted as a typical fan boy. I told them how much I love the first record . The latest album I think is pretty good as well, but of course the first one, “The Nightcomers” is definitely the classic.

According to Christer there were not a lot of metal bands in the same area as Mindless Sinner during the mid eighties. 

– Axe Witch as I mentioned is from Linköping as well. We often played together and are great friends. There were some others act as well. You have to remember that Mindless Sinner was actually a rather small band. We never toured or anything, only did some gigs around in Sweden.

Are you surprised now to see how many fans you actually have around the globe?

– It feels like an unbelievable dream, really. To get to do  live shows, to come to other countries with the purpose of performing our own music, has been great. Also seeing that people really appreciate our music. The gig we did at Muskelrock in 2014 was great. We didn’t expect anything when we entered the stage, but soon people were singing along to our songs. We looked at each other and said something like “What the hell!” We have played in the UK, and in Spain, France, Norway, Austria and in the United States. We have to pinch ourselves because this is what we wanted to do back in the day, but never got a chance to do.

After a while you shortened the name to Mindless. Why did you release only one album under this new moniker?

– Because our drummer, Tommy who is back in the band now, left us back in 1990, one year after the release of the album “Missing Pieces”. We all thought that without him, it wasn’t the same anymore., so we decided to lay the band to rest, and started another band with the drummer from Axe Witch, called Skinny Horse. We recorded one album with that band. However, we made another album with Mindless as well, but it was never released back then. It was released later though, on a double CD from a German company (Metal For Muthas“). The album “Missing Pieces” featued on the first CD, and the second one, called “Missing Songs” was on the other disc.

In retrospect do you view the name change and the transformation into a more commercial sound as something you shouldn’t have done?

– It was the sign of the times, so to speak. At that point we never regretted it, but looking back at it now, of course we shouldn’t have done it. It was quite a bad mistake. We should just have stuck to our guns and continued playing the style people enjoyed.

If you look back at these first recordings, which of them are you most satisfied with?

– If you speak in terms of playing- and singing, I must say the “Missing Pieces”-album. However I am more proud of “Turn On The Power”, when it comes to the songs, the style and the music. But I would say the craftsmanship is better on “Missing Pieces”. We were all pretty new to things when we did the first EP,  it was the first time we were in a studio ever. The songs are good on that one, but the production is rather weak.

You already did a minor reunion around 2000, but no album was released back then. Why was this attempt so short lived?

– It all happened because we celebrated our 20^th anniversary as a band. We formed in 1981 and this took place in 2001. Even if we hadn’t played for years, we were still very good friends. We were never arguing or anything. At first we just wanted to do one gig to celebrate 20 years together as Mindless Sinner but then we expanded to two gigs, as we got an offer from Motala Metal Festival. After that we spoke about maybe doing an album or at least recording some new songs, but the idea faded out after a while.

What have you done musically in the ten year or so from the first to the last comeback?

– After the album we did with Skinny Horse (“No Pain, No Gain”) came out in 1993, we played shows around Sweden with that band for about one year. Then we split up, and the guitar player Magnus Danneblad and I, and the Mindless Sinner-drummer Tommy, got together with another guy on bass and formed a new band called Everlone, which was more in the vein of Foo Fighters and The Wildhearts. A mixture of punk, metal, rock and pop maybe. We made six albums with that band and played with Everlone until 1998 I think. Then we laid it to rest and did pretty much nothing until we got Mindless Sinner back together again for our 20 years anniversary. We reunited Everlone in 2007 and played together until 2013, when the bass player got a heart attack and died. Without him, the band wasn’t any fun anymore, so we disbanded. In the same time period we got an offer from Muskelrock do a 30 year anniversary show for “Master Of Evil”, so we decided to start Mindless Sinner up again.

Today you got the same lineup you had on “Turn Of The Power” It’s rather unusal to see such an old band with so many members from the classic, if not orginal, lineup on board. What is the secret?

– I don’t know. It’s just like I said: We are good friends and have never stopped seeing each other. We rely each other and know each other. Everbody is also around the same age.

It appears that Pure Steel Records, who  released both the comeback album “The New Messiah” as well as “Poltergeist”, came recommended from one of the important persons in the scene nowadays.

– It happened at Keep It True in Germany, when we played there in 2015. I spoke to the organizer, Oliver Weinsheimer and asked him if he knew any good labels, because we wanted to do a comeback album. I had already sent out the album to a couple of labels, Pure Steel and some others and asked him what he thought was the best fit for us. He suggested that we should go for Pure Steel, so that’s what we did.

The first album, “The New Messiah” was released later in 2015. Are you still satisfied with it? Was there something about it you wanted to improve for “Poltergeist”?

– “The New Messiah” is a great album, but to be honest, the production is not very good. We did it ourselves, as we have our own studio. We recorded everything there and mixed the album ourselves. We did the same with “Poltergeist”, but the record company thought we could do better with the mix, so we had Robert Romagna, who works for Pure Steel, to do a new mix for us and he lifted the album a hundred times. We swallowed our pride in letting him do it, but in the end it proved a great decision. When you create music, it’s not easy to kill your dalrings. You think you can do things best yourself, but it’s not always right.

Do you see a difference in songwriting when you compare the two  latest albums?

– Maybe. Not on purpose, but maybe. I think the songs on the last album, “Poltergeist” are better overall. Out of 10 songs on “The New Messiah” around seven are pretty good, while three or four are not up to the same standard. On the new one, I personally struggle to find a weak song at all. For this new record we only did ten songs, while for  “The New Messiah”, we had thirteen or fourteen tracks, so we left out three or four.

On these two latest album, the booklets tell me that all songs and lyrics are by Mindless Sinner. Christer explains further…

– What happens is: If I have an idea, I bring it with me to the guys,. All the others have their input and we rehearse and arrange it together, so it is definitely a band effort. Or maybe me and the guitar players have a more or less finished song, but the others have their input anyway, and some things are changed. We do it together, so it doesn’t matter who has the idea. It’s always a collective effort, that’s why it says “All songs and lyrics by Mindless Sinner”.  We usually meet face to face to write music.  I am almost helpless with the new technology, but the two guitarists have their own equipment at home, so they record things, and bring it along so we can hear it.

Are all the ideas on the two latest albums new, or have you also used some songs or at least ideas you had laying around?

– No old ideas or songs were used on “Poltergeist”. On “The New Messiah” however, there is some old stuff, the song “Step Into The Fire” is from an old demo from 1986. So, we re-recorded that one, and used some old bits and pieces of  some old lyrics as well.

Speaking about the lyrics, it appears that not all of them are written by Christer.

– No, on this album I have written all lyrics but three. Our guitarist Jerker Edman did three songs and I did seven. I think it’s rather difficult to write lyrics, to be honest. English isn’t my native language, and I always tend to think that my lyrics are really bad compared to those of other bands. I am very much a lyric guy, I listen mostly to the vocals and the lyrics when I enjoy music.

In 2018 you released a live album titled “Keeping It True” containing the concert you did at Keep It True, first as a CD-R but also on vinyl. 

– The festival recorded every band, and when we got the recordings, we thought they sounded pretty good, so we decided to put them out as a live album. We didn’t print up that many of each format, but I think we have broke even with it now. We are satisfied with the result, we played quite early in the morning, and things were really stressful. We arrived at the airport in Frankfurt, rented a car drive to the hotel to leave our bags and then to the venue. Even though it was a lot of stress, I think the performance as documented on this live album is good.

“Poltergeist” is the title of the album as well as the name of the opening song, which you also did a video for. I guess this must mean that you feel it’s one of the best songs on the album?

– Yes, it is. One of them, that is. We really wanted to do a video for the title track. We made it ourselves, and it didn’t cost anything. I turned out quite cool nevertheless. It’s the guitar player Magnus who as done the editing and directing.

The album has generally received good reviews and and a strong reception from fans. Is that important for you at this point in your career?

– Absolutely! It’s always great to have some good reviews and compliments from fans. One thing that feels a bit strange though, is that a lot of people say that we sound like Hammerfall. It really must be the other way around, or? We formed in 1981 and they formed in the early nineties or something. So how can we sound like them? We sound like we have always done.

It’s easy to think that bands at the point in their career where Mindless Sinner is now, operates more short term, but the Swedes are already working on a fourth album.

-We have some ideas already for the next one. When you have finished a record, like we have done now with “Poltergeist”, you feel you are done with it. You really shouldn’t think like that, because now is the time to perform those songs from  live. The new album is pretty far away, but for sure it will not take another five years.

Speaking about playing live. It must be harder for you to make a setlist these days, with two relatively new albums out?

– Yeah, it’s hard. People want to hear the old stuff, and I understand that perfectly. When I see Judas Priest, I want to hear the old songs as well, not the new ones. But we don’t want to be purely a nostalgic act. We are proud of the new music we have made, and we want to move forward. You asked me about the reviews, another thing that is often mentioned is that we sound old. That’s not strange at all, because we are an old band. We are not a new band trying to sound old, we are an old band!

What is the force that drives you these days? There is not any money to be made playing this kind of music.

– It’s the music, you know. The music is our lives. We live and breathe the music. We have done it for so long, without it there would be nothing. We think it’s fun too. We appreciate it more these days than in the beginning, as we don’t take everything so serious anymore. We take things more as they come. Don’t misunderstand me, of  course we are serious about what we do, but back in the day it was a disaster if we couldn’t get a gig.

Mindless Sinner on Facebook

 

 

Before “social distancing” was trending on Twitter and the live music industry closed down, I ventured to Nashville to catch some music.

Before “social distancing” was trending on Twitter and the live music industry closed down, I ventured to Nashville to catch some music.

Having an archive with close to 200 interviews without a single feature on Portugal’s Ironsword is a fucking tragedy. It must have been Tann himself who sent me the 1998 promo tape for a review in Scream Magazine more than 20 years ago, and even though I have loved all their album since the self titled debut, I believe this is the very first time I have spoken to the man who is certainly one of the best songwriters of the European heavy metal scene for the last two decades.  “Servants Of Steel” is the title of the new album, and Tann is the man answering all the questions.

How do you view your last effort «None But The Brave” released in 2015? In my opinion it was a very good album, although not your strongest release. What do you view as the strenghts and weaknessess of that particular release?

– I honestely think it’s a good album and I was extremely pleased about the way everyhing turned out. I’ve always seen «None But the Brave» as the missing link between «Return of the Warrior» and «Overlords of Chaos». The feedback I got from some fans and press made me understand that people were expecting «Overlords of Chaos» part II, although everyone seemed to enjoy the album, somehow they were dissapointed about the direction we went. It had mixed reviews, some claimed it was our best album to date, others claimed it was our weakest. «Overlords of Chaos» was a very demanding and challenging album to write. It was much more complex in song structure than any other previous album. I wasn’t in the mood to repeat the same formula, that’s why I tried a different approach and wrote stuff that was much more direct, raw and in your face. To put it simple «Overlords of Chaos» was our «Open the Gates» and «Mystification», while «None But the Brave» was our «Metal» and «Crystal Logic».

Prior to this new album, Ironsword released an EP, “In The Coils Of Set” featuring along with the title track, two songs that are exclusive for this release,  «Disciples» and «Fallen Brothers». Tann gives us an Insight into what the intention was with this particular release.

– We wrote 15 songs, but only 12 were part of the original track list for “Servants Of Steel”, so we had three songs that could be used as bonus material somehow. Our label Alma Mater Records, had the idea to release this collector’s limited edition EP prior to the new album. «Disciples» and «Fallen Brothers» are the only songs that were written after Mark Shelton passed away. Sure they sound different from anything we’ve done before, but that was the main goal anyway.

It seems like the song “Disciples” could be like a tribute to Mark Shelton.

– You can say that. «Disciples», «Fallen Brothers» and the entire «Servants of Steel» album is dedicated to Mark Shelton. «Disciples» is a song about following the footsteps of our idols and their spirit and feeling still lives through our music.

“Fallen Brothers” is a very special song when it comes to Ironsword, as it is by far the longest song you have recorded on an album, more than double the length of “Overlords Of Chaos” which I believe held the title for the longest Ironsword-track until  now. Was this track planned to be of such length, or did it just evolve into a really long one?

– It was planned to do this 15 minute long, epic song. I already had some ideas and we started jamming in our rehearsal room. It was an easy song to write and everything came together really nice. I’m sure no one was expecting a song like that from us. We really stepped out of our comfort zone with this one. To me it’s the music that matters and as long as it sounds great, I really have no problems in dealing with it nowadays. I know in the end that we will always remain faithful to our own identity and attitude. I believe by doing this we keep our music interesting and exciting.

Is it possible to step out of the comfort zone more often and remain faithful to Ironsword’s identity and attitude?

– I think the song «Fallen Brothers» proves that. It’s something I would never imagined doing in the past. Songs like «Keepers of the Crypt» and «Isle of the Damned» are other examples, as both are a bit more progressive. I remember writing material for «Return of the Warrior» and «Overlords of Chaos» which I placed on the shelf because i thought it was way over the top back then. It was probably a mixed feeling of insecurity and uncertainty holding me back. Sometimes you’re so attached to a certain style, it’s hard to let it go. Nowadays I don’t think too much about it! If it sounds great and our identity is still present, I don’t try to improve or change it.

Tann has a new bass player, Jorge playing on the new album. He shares some thoughts about Jorge’s contribution on “Servants Of Steel”, and also has some information on why Aires, who played on the last album, is not in the band anymore.

– Aires is the bass player of Moonspell and due to his commitment with the band it would be too hard for him to play in both bands. That’s why he didn’t stay longer in the band. Jorge joined the band while we were still mastering «None But The Brave». I know him since the late eighties, and he always was a dedicated and hardworking bass player. He’s got that Steve Harris meets D.D.Verni vibe. He brought some cool and refreshing ideas to the band. Our drummer João Monteiro also did an amazing job on the new album. Both are important pieces in the band and somehow help restrain my craziness a bit.

How is the craziness reflected in the song writing?

– Sometimes I just get carried away! That’s it, no big deal. I’m a bit of a clown joking all the time and I improvise a lot when writing music out of the normal standards. This happens until we reach a final conclusion and we have a lot of fun doing it.

You write both the lyrics as well as the music on your own. Are there any room for band democracy in Ironsword, or do you make all the decisions regarding gigs, festivals, merchandise and so on? Is it hard finding members as they know they won’t be very involved in the creative side of things?

– No, all decisions are made within the band, no matter the subject, even though the final word is mine. Probably, I was more bossy in the past than I am today. João and Jorge respect the fact I am the founding member, main composer and writing all the lyrics. They understand that for all this to work, I should keep doing it. Everyone is involved with ideas, share opinions, each one puts his own input in the music, so there’s room for everyone to shine. We were really focused during the songwriting process. We were in the same mindset for the entire time. I guess you can be much more creative when you’re collaborating with other people. It provides a more enriching and fulfilling experience.

How do you work with the other musicians to make sure you are in the same mindset, as you say?

– I guess this is just the result of playing together for so many years, knowing each musically and what to expect, so things just flow naturally. We all shared the same goals and we were not going in different directions.

You have been on a few underground labels in the past, Miskatonic and Shadow Kingdom, and I have to admit I was a little surprised to find out that Alma Mater is releasing both the EP as well as the album. What can you say about the work your former labels did for the band, and what lead you to believe that Alma Mater can do a good job for you?

– Miskatonic and Shadow Kingdom Records did everything possible to support the band. I am eternally thankful for everything they have done, and there is absolutely no bad blood between our former labels and the band. Alma Mater Records is a young label with a policy of investing in Portuguese heavy metal talent. They saw huge potential in Ironsword and made us an offer we simply could not refuse. Our records are still hard to find in several countries, so having a very good distribution and good promotion is very important and I believe and trust in the work of Alma Mater Records just like they believed in us. They are very professional and their support has been tireless.

“This is definately the most challenging album ever written and stands out from all previous works.», you said about “Servants Of Steel” in the press release. Why was the album so challenging to write, and how do you feel it differs from what you have done in the past?

– Our goal is always to re-invent ourselves for each release without losing our own identity. I don’t like to repeat the same formula over and over. So, after 25 years and this new one being our fifth album, I guess it’s pretty normal trying a different approach in songwriting, arrangements, vocal harmonies etc. That’s why it was so challenging for me during the whole creative process. I wanted complex stuff, out of the norm song structures. I was just letting myself go with my bandmates, pushing the boundaries of each other’s playing. It stands out from all previous works for me because of the stronger playing, the musicianship and the powerful riffs. I’m not saying it’s our best album to date, as I like to leave that to our dedicated followers to decide.

It’s interesting to see that the band has used Harris Johns for the mix and mastering. He is most known as a legendary producer of course, but I can’t remember seeing his name on many records these days.

– Harris is back in activity. He has done the last Protector album. We had a list of several well known producers of the so called old school scene, that somehow could boost our sound even more. Harris Johns was on top of my list. It was Alma Mater Records that got in touch with him first. He was one of the first producers showing interest in working with us. He really liked our music and already had ideas to improve our sound. The man is a legend and he’s so cool to work with. We all gave him total freedom to mix and master the album. I am extremely pleased of having his blueprint on our album. It did surpass all my expectations and it was a dream of mine come true. That wall of sound is just mindblowing!

I really fell in love with the track “Tower Of The Elephant” at first listen. What a totally crushing, poser destroying track. Tell me about how the idea for this heavy as hell track came to you and how worked out both the music and the lyrics?

– Thank you for the kind words. «Tower of the Elephant» is an adaptation from the original Robert E. Howard tale. This is one of few slowest songs on the album with a catchy sing a long chorus and several melodic parts. Classic epic heavy metal from start to finish. You can clearly hear some Angel Witch and Manowar-influences in this song.

Robert E. Howard is obviously important for you, as you have also used his works in the past. What is it about his writing that is such a good match for the music of Ironsword?

– I remember most of the power metal bands from the early to mid-nineties were singing about Tolkien, namely «The Lord of the Rings» or the Vikings. To be honest, I never really liked Tolkien. So, when I started the band, there weren’t too many lyrical options for me, according to my tastes. Probably, it would make sense to sing about the history of my own country, the conquests and the Portuguese discoveries, but several other Portuguese bands have done that in the past. Our music was more raw, aggressive and unpolished than all those power metal bands. To sum up, it was barbaric. As a teenager, the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie and of course «The Savage Sword of Conan» comics had a huge impact on me, even before I knew who Howard really was. Reading the original Conan stories only came several years later. So, probably it’s just a reflection of all this, I honestly don’t know. All I know is that this Robert E. Howard-thing somehow became naturally our trademark over the years. It suits our musical style perfectly.

What is your personal fave song on the album, and which one do you look most forward to playing live?

– My fave songs on the new album are «Keepers of the Crypt», «Isle of the Damned», «Red Nails» and «Son of Crom». «Isle of the Damned» is probably the one I look most forward to play live simply because it is such an intense song with several tempo changes and totally out of the norm. It will be interesting to say the least.

Obviously Ironsword was always hugely influenced by Manilla Road. What was Mark Shelton’s biggest contribution to the metal scene in your opinion? And what is it about him and his band that have influenced Ironsword the most?

– Everything….from Shark’s singing style, guitar soloing, songwriting, the list goes on and on. He’s definately the father of epic metal Music, and I can point out his passion for heavy metal, for playing and creating music, his loyalty to the fans, his honest views, his resilience, I guess that’s the biggest contribution and lesson to a lot of underground bands like Ironsword. I’m glad in the later years, they got the recognition they truly deserve.

Asked about what his favourite Manilla Road-releases are, struggles just as much as most of our would probably do.

– That is really a though question because I love all of them from «Invasion» to «The Courts of Chaos» and all for different reasons, but to answer your question I will pick up the ones I probably heard most or made most impact on me. «Metal» to me is where I think the band really started this epic metal thing, people might say «Crystal Logic», but I believe they already achieved that with «Metal». Definately the one that inspired me the most in the early albums of Ironsword, specially Mark’s rough vocals. Then «Crystal Logic» which I think it’s everyone’s fave album. That’s a classic! Then, I would say «The Deluge». It’s a very addictive album. The songwriting is totally out of the norm. Randy Foxe’s drumming, Mark’s vocals, guitar soloing, all that is simply out of this world. Songs like «Dementia», «Taken by Storm» and «Friction In Mass» are completely wild and crazy. Still to this day it always makes me think: «What the hell are they playing here?».

On the new album, Bryan Hellroadie Patrick is guesting on a couple of songs. What is he contributing that you couldn’t do yourself with your rather diverse voice?

– I’ve always had in mind Mark Shelton to do some guest vocals on our new album. I was fortunate enough of having him as guest on “Overlords Of Chaos” album and I was hoping he could do it again. Unfortunately, when he sadly passed away, I knew that the only person that made sense by doing this was Hellroadie, and it was not a question of having someone to do the parts I could hardly sing. I really wanted him to be a part of this humble tribute and homage from our side. Mark and Bryan shared vocals not only on stage but on the latest Manilla Road recordings as well. I wanted somehow to recreate that feeling. Afterall, I’m a Roadster for life and I take as a huge compliment when people label us the “European Manilla Road”!

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