Interview with death metal band from Denmark - DEIQUISITOR.
Answered quitarist and vocalist TFJ, thank you!
Translated Duzl, thank you!
Recenze/review - DEIQUISITOR - Humanoid (2021):
Ave DEIQUISITOR! I have been listening to your new album „Humanoid“ for some time now and I still discover something new in it, some new pieces of darkness. I have to say that I thought that your album will be great but this completely killed me. The album is great. How are your reactions from your fans and what about reviews?
Hail Jakub ! Thomas fro Deiquisitor here. Thanks for the kind words. The reactions to this album has been really great so far, we are also very satisfied with the production on this one. The sound is very close to how we sound in our rehearsalroom, and that was our plan. The production on our 2 previous releases were great, but it didn't really sound like us.
Have you played your new songs live already? How do they work with fans? Do you have any potential hit? For me it would be probably „Autonomous Warfare“.
I think „Empyrean lifeform“ is the only one of them we have played live, we were supposed to play a gig in Copenhagen i January this year with all the new tracks, but then everything closed down. I guess it's the same situation in nost countries. Hopefully things will get back to normal soon. I don't know which of the songs that could be like a kind of „hit“ song, everyone we have talked with about it, has different favorites, and that's great I think. My personal favorite is probably „Empyrean lifeform“.
How did you compose new material for „Humanoid“? How DEIQUISITOR compose?
Well, we have an untraditional way of composing songs. In most other bands the guitarist makes the riffs and composition, and then dictates the drummer how to play to these riffs. We do it the other way around, Henriks makes some drumpatterns with fills and everything which we record as we rehearse, and then afterwards I sit back at home listen closely to them, and get inspired to what kind of riffs that would fit the drums. Sometimes I can almost hear the notes for the riffs by listening to the fills. I guess that's because we have been making music together for so many years.
Who is the author of your lyrics? What are your lyrics about and where do you find inspiration?
On our previous album Henrik and Daniel made the lyrics for one song each, on this new one Henrik and I have made 3 each, I made the lyrics on side A, and Henrik the lyrics on side B. On the next one all 3 of us has contributed with lyrics. I think this is really great, it adds so much more diversity to the lyrics. And it is not possible for me to write interesting lyrics in the same speed as we compose tracks. We are very productive, in fact, we almost already have the tracks ready for the next one.
Who is the author of the cover or „Humanoid“? I really like this person´s work. How did you even chose the theme of the cover?
We always use the artwork of my brother M.F.Jorg on our full-length releases, and then on most of our promos and EP's, it is our close and old friend Brian H. We think their artwork fits our music perfectly, and in a way it is like it links the releases together when the artwork is recognizable. The both have very unique panting/drawing styles, but my brothers style is much more detailed and therfore more suitable for an LP cover.
The sound of the album is really great. It is dark, cold and sharp at the same time. In what studio did you recorded? Were you able to have any comments during the recording and at the final sound and mastering?
As I mentioned, we are very satisfied with the production on this one. This time we used a small studio in Copenhagen called No Masters Voice studio, and Marcus F.L. was the producer. It was really great to work with Marcus, a really cool guy, and very good at listening to how the bands want it to be. A few months before recording „Humanoid“, we recorded the 2 tracks for our EP „Religiously endorsed masochism“ in our own studio, and had a guy called Jesper Hviid to mix and master them. This EP is very brutal and dirty sounding compared to the other one. But it is like an ongoing process for us, to find the ideal sound for Deiquisitor. In order to find that sound, you'll have to experiment a lot with different ways of recording and mixing.
You guys play the classic, typical old death metal. You have never played anything else, you are an “orthodox” band. Personally, that is one of the reasons why I like your music. But have you ever thought about changing it a little bit? Just to change things up so the work of DEIQUISITOR is different?
We formed Deiquisitor back in 2013, before that we have been playing what you can describe as occult black warmetal for like 20 years, that was in our former band Blodfest and before that Solhverv. You can find all of the Blodfest releases in the Order of the Nonagram bandcamp site. That band was Henrik, my brother Martin and myself. But when my brother left the band to focus on his paintings an experimental electronic music, Henrik and I felt that we wanted to return to our deathmetal roots from the early 90's. And then we recruited Daniel who had been a close friend of ours for many years. His former band was called Purification Kommando, and played brutal war metal. We don't consider ourselves as being orthodox, we just find our inspiration in the bands we admired so much back in the early 90's, and create the music that feels natural for us. We don't have any plans of changing our style in any way, but we feel that we are developing our music a bit with every new release we make.
On concerts in the Czech Republic I often hear that there is not enough people going on concerts nowadays. I would like to know how is it in Denmark. For us you are a big country with a lot of bands and promoters. A lot of bands go to your country to play when they are on a tour. Do people go on death metal concerts in Denmark? And do you prefer playing in a small club or on big festivals?
Denmark is actually a small country compared to most other in Europe, but we do have a very strong metal scene, with a lot of great bands. Maybe it is because of our Viking genes that we are so much into the more violent forms of music. Regarding concerts, I think it is pretty much same all over Europe, the audience could be bigger but those who attend to the concerts are often very dedicated to this kind of music, and playing your music live is always a great experience. We definitely prefer to play in smaller clubs and at underground festivals, thats where you meet the people who really enjoys this kind of music. The bigger festivals are more for people that not necessarily loves this kind of music, but attends just for the party.
Nowadays, there is a lot of young bands who start to play “old school death metal”. Most of them are not very good, but there are some good bands who realize what is this music about. Do you have any favourite band which would be able to make those “good old days” alive again?
There's a lot of great danish bands that are very true to the „values“ of death metal as it was done back in the old days. I could mention bands like Undergang, Taphos, Phrenelith and Chaotian, all great bands and friends of ours.
People download music online in these days and they only use its digital form. How do you as a musician feel about this issue?
Well......it is impossible to stop people from doing that, I just hope that when they find a band that they really like, they will support the band by buying the releases. In that way it is ok to download some music, there are so many bands nowadays, and you can't afford to buy everything that comes out. So if you find a band you really like, you would want their music in good quality, with cover, lyrics and everything. Not as a lousy 128 kbps Mp3 file.
Are there any albums which have caught your attention recently?
That depends on what you mean by recently, when great old bands like Suffocation and Immolation releases something, it should capture anyones attention. But personaly, I am a great fan of Portal from Australia, and I am really looking forward to hear new stuff from them. Such a unique band.
Do you know and listen any Czech bands?
I don't really know any other Czech bands than Kaosquad who we played some gigs with when we visited Czech Rep. A really great live band, intense and brutal stuff and some cool guys. If there are any other Czech band you could recommend, please let me know. It would be great to hear.
What are DEIQUISITOR ´s plans for the next few months?
Hopefully things will get back to normal, and we will be able to play some live koncerts again,visiting some other countries, maybe Czech republic, that was a great experience for us. Besides that we will probably start recording songs for our next release soon.
Thank you for the interview and I wish you a lot of sold albums, hundreds of crazy fans and tons of great ideas.
Thanks for letting me do this interview, and thanks for your support Jakub
Recenze/review - DEIQUISITOR - Humanoid (2021):
about DEIQUISITOR on DEADLY STORM ZINE:
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