One of those bands that has become a constant in the Death Metal scene is Deranged. Their no-bullshit blasting Death Metal has appealed to many people and their latest self-titled album will for sure satisfy every fan of some serious blasting stuff. And to make sure that this band gets the attention it deserves, I had a little chat with Rikard. Thanks to Danny for adding some cool questions.
The new album has just been released. How are the reactions so far? What’s your feeling on it now, is it exactly the way you wanted it to be? Why did you choose a self-titled album, didn’t you have enough inspiration to come up with a good title or is there a special reason for it? What are your expectations of this album?
Mean, there are always people that think we suck no matter what we’ll do, you know. Ha, ha, ha. It’s cool. Just a matter of taste you know. I’m satisfied with it. I’m not like 100% satisfied though. There’s always shit we could have done better and in a different way. At the end of the day, guess I’ll never be 100% satisfied with any record we’ll do anyway. Ha, ha, ha. As for entitling the disc ‘Deranged’, simple is good. Honestly, personally I’m quite fed up with a lot of those standard Death Metal titles you know. We entitled our last CD ‘III’ and people don’t get it. Fuck man, it was our third CD therefore the name ‘III’. It’s rather fun. People always seem to want to find a deeper meaning with everything. The expectations? Just to spread the name you know. We’re on Listenable nowadays and the new CD has been out for like 3-4 weeks and they have already done like 10 times as much promotion as was done for ‘Rated-X’ and ‘High on Blood’ together so I guess that my expectations are already fulfilled. Ha, ha, ha.
This self-titled album is your fourth full-length album, besides a couple of mini-albums. How do you reflect on your previous releases? Would you change certain things or leave them as they are, as they reflect your best effort at that time? I remember an interview that Rikard did with Unholy Terror zine in ’99 in which he stated that he hates ‘Rated-X’. Comment please.
I do think they suck man. Ha, ha, ha. It’s fucking crap. Worthless shit. Nothing to comment really. Take a listen to our early shit and you’ll hear for yourself. Ha, ha, ha. I wouldn’t like to change anything though. What’s done is done and I’m more concerned about the present and especially the future.
You follow the Do It Yourself way, which means that you try to make it on your own as much as possible. Would you sign to a ‘big’ label like Nuclear Blast or Metal Blade if they would offer you a good deal?
The D.I.Y. thing is not a big deal. Mean, when we started out not too many people would deal with a band like Deranged. Fuck, our first full-length was released when the whole melodic Death Metal and/or Black Metal trend reached its peak you know. To be honest, we had no one to do the shit for us so we fucking did it ourselves. Better that than to just sit around and wait for someone to do the shit for you. As for signing to a bigger label, I don’t know what they would do better really. They have more cash but I doubt they would invest that in a Death Metal band like Deranged. You have to face the facts, record companies are like any other company, they want to make money and the bigger they are, the more cash they want to make. Just because you sign to a big label doesn’t necessarily mean you can do all the shit you want to do. Quite the opposite you know.
In the same interview that I mentioned earlier, Rikard already stated that he dislikes trigger drums. And this is again printed on the promo letter and the back cover of the promo. Why does he reject trigger drums, is it the sound that the use of them creates or the fact that they help the drummer too much?
It’s not a big deal. It’s Listenable that wrote that on the promo sheet you know. Ha, ha, ha. He has given me Hell because of that. Ha, ha, ha. To keep it short, if I can choose I would rather play without triggers. We have always been after a more “natural sound” you know. And yeah, it does “help” the drummer a lot! Ha, ha, ha. God damn, we’re a metal band, not some fucking cheesy 80s disco band. Triggers suck!
Another vocalist left (your fourth so far if I’m correct), this time it was Johan Anderberg who quit. Is the real reason indeed that he wanted to secure his job or was there some more stuff going on? Why do all your singers only stay with you for a short time, do you pick on them or something?! You’ve recruited a new vocalist and a new bass player. Who are they (it’s not written in the promo), and were they in a band prior to Deranged?
He told me he was tired of the whole thing so. Anderberg is the first member to eventually quit the band on his own you know. Ha, ha, ha. Anderberg was in the band longer than any other singer we’ve had, I guess. New bass player is Jörgen Bylander that used to be in Defaced Creation and new singer is Rogga that is also in Paganizer.
You’ve had your share of record labels. ‘X-Rated’ was released by Repulse, ‘High on Blood’ on Regain Records (the label of your former singer Per Gyllenbäck) and now you’re on Listenable Records. Weren’t you satisfied with Repulse and Regain? You’ve released 2 albums on Listenable so you probably are satisfied with their work for you, right? For how many albums is the contract?
No offence to either Repulse or Regain, okay? But if you ask me they could have done better work. That’s all in the past anyway. We wanted to leave Regain and were free to do so as well, although we had signed for more CDs which was a nice gesture from their side. We were searching for a new label and we had like 5 or 6 cool labels interested and Listenable was obviously one of them. They didn’t give us the best deal, nor were they the biggest, but they would get back to me the fastest and give me straight and honest answers which I appreciate and it just felt like the best thing. I’m glad we eventually hooked up with them. It’s probably the best label I have ever worked with and right now, we don’t have anything to complain about. To be honest, I can’t remember how many CDs we signed for. Ha, ha, ha.
You’ve toured quite a lot. What tour was the best experience for you, and what tour was the worst one? You play mostly smaller tours and in smaller clubs. Wouldn’t you like to do a bigger tour as support for Morbid Angel or so, or play at an edition of the No Mercy festival? Or does this clash with your DIY attitude? Recently, you’ve been to Japan for a tour. How was the experience, how were the people? If you had the possibility to organise your own tour, in what country would you like to play and with what band? What tours are being planned for Deranged in the future?
We just did a 3-4 week tour with Immolation, Destroyer 666, Decapitated and Soul Demise and it’s the best tour we’ve done so far. The worst? Probably some fucking trip I set up by myself. Ha, ha, ha. It would have ruled to play support act to Morbid Angel man. No shit. We would never do a No Mercy festival tour though. Seems to be a nightmare. Fucking 6 or 7 bands each night. We usually want to do gigs with 2 or 3 bands total on the bill. Once again for the D.I.Y. thing, as said, there wasn’t anyone doing shit for us so we did it ourselves. If we’d had someone we would naturally have been concentrating fully on the actual music you know. Japan was cool. No shit. The first and so far only time we have played outside Europe so that was cool. We had been touring all over Europe the last couple of years so it was fun to try some new territories you know. I would like to play shitloads more in France! We’ve done a few gigs down there and on most of the shows the audience has been basically insane and that shit rules! We’ll tour with any fucking metal or core band as long as we get along fine with them.
Are the lyrics an important aspect for Deranged? What topics interest you enough to write lyrics about? From what source (books, TV, reality) do you get your inspiration? As the promo doesn’t have the lyrics, I don’t know what they’re about. However when I look at a title like ‘Cum on Command’ I could think that this is an anti-porn lyric. Is it, or am I in a state of insanity?
Anti-porn? Quite the opposite in that case. Ha, ha, ha. Honestly, all of our lyrics are heavily based on horror/splatter movies and it’s been so since the fucking start. Fuck, everything we do with Deranged and “are” Deranged is either heavily based on or taken from horror/splatter movies. Everything from the fucking band name to shirt designs. ‘Cum on Command’, it’s rather fun. As mentioned, we just did that tour with Immolation etc. and I would be answering interviews more or less every night and more or less everyone was questioning me about ‘Cum on Command’. Fuck man, that lyric took me like 4 or 5 minutes to write and if I remember right, it was written the day before we eventually started to record the CD.
Another thing that could point to critical social lyrics is the sample you’ve used in ‘La Orgia de los Muerto’. It’s from Jonestown if I’m correct. Musically, this song reminds me of Impetigo’s ‘Cannibal Ballet’, was this done on purpose or am I still delirious?
Now when you say it, it reminds me a bit of ‘Cannibal Ballet’. No, nothing we planned or whatever. It’s what one can call the same type of track though. You know what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s indeed a speech by Jim Jones. Most people don’t get that track. Ha, ha, ha.
Yeah, I’m like very clever and all, ha!…By which bands is Deranged influenced? To what bands do the band members listen, is it mainly metal or also stuff like classical music or jazz?
We’re not influenced by any special bands. I listen to all kinds of shit. Anything from The Beatles to early Napalm Death.
Could you give me a top 5 of your favourite all-time albums and a top 5 of your current favourite albums?
That’s a hard one.
All-time top 5 albums would maybe be:
Kiss – Destroyer
Slayer – Reign in Blood
Napalm Death – Scum
Suffocation – Effigy of the Forgotten
Deep Purple – In Rock
Current:
Fu Manchu – The Action Is Go
Nile – Black Seeds of Vengeance
Cathedral – Endtyme
Morte Macabre – Symphonic Holocaust
The Hellacopters – High Visibility
The Swedish metal scene is quite big. It seems that almost everyone plays in a band (or 2, or 3, or.) and many bands complain that there is no support between the bands. What’s your opinion on the scene in Sweden? It seems that the so-called “Gothenburg-style” has faded now, and some more bands start to play some good Swedish Death Metal again. With bands like Dismember, Vomitory and Coercion this style never vanished but it seems that it’s coming back now. Even Unleashed has reformed and rumours are that even Entombed are going back to their roots. And fortunately Jörgen Sandström (ex-Grave) is back on the grunting front with The Project Hate, I love his grunt. What’s your opinion on this development? Are there new Swedish bands you want us to check out?
As kinda mentioned, it’s not a secret that melodic Death Metal and/or Black Metal has dominated the Scandinavian scene the last couple of years and yes, it seems to fade away so to say. I don’t care man. Ha, ha, ha. As always whenever a new trend pops up, there’ll always be people jumping on the bandwagon. The brutal shit seems to be on its way back though. There’s lots of “new” bands popping up in Sweden right now which is kick-ass cool. Insision, Soils of Fate, Kaamos, Scurvy, Throneaeon and Soils of Fate, just to mention a few. All certainly worth checking out. The scene in Sweden is needless to say big man. Mean, we have a population of 8.5 million people, although there’s shitloads of bands over here which is cool. As for this “development” you’re talking about, trends go up and down you know.
What’s your opinion on Napster and the whole discussion around it? Does the free music really lower the total of albums that will be sold? Or does this actually promote the bands and increase the amount of sold records?
It’s weird, as it almost only seems to be big fucking bands that have their financial future all fixed up nagging about Napster. Ha, ha, ha. I don’t give a fuck man. If someone wants to download one of our tracks, fucking do it you know. We’re not earning any bigger money out of the band anyway. Ha, ha, ha. At the end of the day, guess that extreme metal bands as Deranged obviously can be categorised as having very little to worry about as people into this kind of music usually want the whole product. Fucking booklet, the pro-copied CD and shit. I want it anyway. The actual cover artwork is a big part of the actual CD you know.
Your album has just been out for a while now, have you already written any new songs? If so, in what way do they differ from the old stuff if they differ at all?
We have like 4 new tracks. Compared to the old shit, maybe more intense. Otherwise…
What’s your opinion on Black Metal and the Black Metal image, are there some bands you like?
Boring and no. Not my cup of tea. To be honest, haven’t checked any newer Black Metal releases out either. Most new CDs I do check out, I get for free and no one ever sends me any Black Metal releases. Ha, ha, ha.
For some people, the underground has gotten a lot worse as the old ways of communicating tend to decrease to a minimum. They claim that the internet and e-mail are not underground and do not have the same feeling that letters and printed magazines evoke. Would you agree with them or do you think that this development of communication is beneficial? You also have a website so you must agree with at least part of the new possibilities that the internet offers us.
E-mail beats the shit out of ordinary letters man. No shit. It’s simply great to not have your desk all stacked with papers and shit. Also, e-mail is so much cheaper and shitloads faster. Still, guess that some people do like the usual letters better. It’s alright. Good old fanzines beat the shit out of any website though. Although a website can be updated daily I do prefer zines. Nothing beats the feeling of taking a shit and reading a new zine. Ha, ha, ha. Sites are still cool, don’t get me wrong, but if I have to choose I would go for paper. It’s so much cheaper doing a website though so I can certainly see why people start to put their mags up on the net instead. It costs a fortune to print a zine.
The unavoidable last question, thank you for doing this interview and write down everything I forgot, contact address or final words.
Thanks to you for the interview. Be sure to check the new CD out and keep it deranged!!!
