Vomitory - Entrevista

1 – Ulf Dalegren decided to leave the band in September 2005. What happened?
His reasons are of private nature, so I won't go into any details out of respect for Ulf, but it was a decision that he made after long and very careful consideration. We are still very good friends and there were no bad blood involved in his departure from Vomitory. Life looks different now when you're over 30, compared to when you're in the late teens playing in a death metal band, and naturally everyone has to make certain priorities in life, and that's basically what Ulf had to do.

2 – You have a new guitar player, Peter Ostlund (also playing with the German thrashers The Law). How did he contributed in the new record with his Thrash Metal oriented guitar playing?
Peter also plays guitar in his other band, the Swedish thrashers The Law. Peter may be a total thrash-head, but in Vomitory it’s all about death metal. Peter has actually written three songs on the new album – The Burning Black, Defiled And Inferior and Heresy. His way of writing songs differs slightly from mine. There are a few moments on the new album where Peter’s thrash influences really shine through, the middle part in Defiled And Inferior and the verse riff in Heresy. Peter has a lot of cool ideas that honestly aren’t anything groundbreaking, but new to Vomitory, and that’s very cool.

3 – There is a 3 years gap between the release of the previous record “Primal Massacre” and this new one. What happened during this period?
There was a period after we did some summer festivals after the release of Primal Massacre in 2004, where we found ourselves in some kind of creative vacuum. None in the band had any inspiration to do anything, whether it was writing new songs or trying to get more shows. We just sat on our asses and did nothing. Time went by and in mid 2005, things started to happen. We got a festival in Italy confirmed as well as two small tours by the end of that year in the UK and Ireland and in The Netherlands. But short after we did that Italian festival in September 2005, long-time guitarist Ulf Dalegren decided to leave the band, so we had to find a replacement very quickly so we still could do those two small tours. Our good friend, Lord K Philipson of The Project Hate and my band mate in God Among Insects, helped us out on those tours. At the time of those tours, we had already talked to Peter Östlund about joining Vomitory, so when we had them done, Peter joined right away. After a couple of months and one show with Peter in the band, we began writing seriously for the new album. In all, it took us a little less than one year to finish all the material, so then in December we finally recorded the new album.

4 – The new album is faster and more brutal than the previous records but at the same time it has lots of heavy mid-tempo and groove oriented parts. Did it just come up like this or did you wanted it to be this way?
This is something we were very aware of when we began working on the new album. We wanted a little more variation on the new album to make it more interesting for both ourselves and for the listeners. I don’t think we forced this in any way, it came quite naturally. The majority of the material is still in the good ol’ Vomitory vein though, but it’s nice to have a little more variation in the material and that’s is one of the things we’ve developed. We even have one song that are slow in its entirety, Whispers From The Dead, and that’s the first time we have such a song on an album.

5 - Are you satisfied with this new album, the songs, the recording process, production, final product?
I am extremely satisfied with the new album! I’m so excited about everything about it – the songs, the production, the performances, the recording process, the artwork and the final product. This feels like a very solid album. Everything fit together so well – the production with the songs, the songs with the lyrics, the lyrics with the artwork, the artwork with the entire content of the album and so on. The recording process went incredibly smooth. The atmosphere was very relaxed throughout the whole process, but still we were very focused on our work. This time we also worked with a new producer in a new studio, Rikard Löfgren and his Leon Music Studios. Rikard did a fantastic job for us on this album! The production is absolutely top-notch! We also went with a photo-based artwork and layout this time. It’s really brutal, yet very artistic. It’s a bit different from the ordinary death metal covers, but you can’t be mistaken on what this album is all about! Chaos Media is responsible for the killer artwork. And as we talked about earlier, the variation in the material is also something that we are very happy with, as well as the insane intensity in some of the songs.

6 – The cover artwork for this record is a little bit brutal. Well, I have seen two different artworks, a simple one with the weapon and another one with the dead body in the back. Which one is the original frontcover? It doesn’t affect me because I’m used to this kind of pictures / frontcovers but aren’t you afraid that it can affect and even push back some Metal fans that listen to Death Metal but doesn’t like this kind of pictures?
The original is the one with the weapon in the foreground and the bloody trails that leads to the mutilated body that’s in the background, slightly out of focus. That one was too brutal and obscene for the European distributor so we had to make a milder version of the cover, with only the bloody weapon – a morning star – and the Vomitory logo + title. That cover comes as a paper slipcase around the CD case, which has the original cover on the booklet. Hell no, we’re not afraid of that, and if someone gets offended – cool! That’s the whole idea. We play death metal and we're not trying to hide that in any way. Death metal was meant to be extreme and nothing for the mainstream audience.

7 – There’s also a special edition of the record with a bonus live DVD. What can you tell me about this live recording?
Yes, the first version that is available now is the CD+DVD version. The DVD contains two live shows: Strasbourg/France (2004) from the No Mercy Festivals and Summer Breeze Open Air in Germany (2004). It's the first time we have official live footage released, so I'm sure the die-hard Vomitory fans will appreciate it!

8 – Do you have a tour prepared to promote the record?
We are currently working on getting a European tour together for this autumn to promote the album. Nothing is confirmed yet, but our management has a few things going on for us. There will be a few festivals during the summer though. Maryland Death Fest in Baltimore, U.S.A., which will be our first show in the US ever, Sweden Rock Festival in Sölvesborg/Sweden and With Full Force in Germany. There may be a couple of more festival shows but we're still waiting for confirmation.

9 – You can leave now a final message if you want to.
Thank you for the interview! Check our website, www.vomitory.net for news about upcoming festivals, tours and shows. More dates will come soon. And of course, check out our brand new album, Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize, for some serious brutality! Cheerz!

Questions: RDS
Answers: Tobias Gustafsson (Drummer)

Metal Blade: www.metalblade.de
Vomitory: www.vomitory.net