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Interview
Deutsche VersionInterview mit Necrophobic (12.06.2006)
HH: Four years have passed by between your last record Bloodhymns and your new record Hrimthursum. The change of your record label was one reason for this long period of time I think. Why did you change from Hammerheart/Karmageddon to Regain Records?
Joakim: Hammerheart seemed to be a very professional label when we signed to them and they made us feel very priorited. They also bought our back catalogue from Black Mark Production and made all the old albums available again, so it really felt that we had ended up on a good label. They even paid tour support, something we did get from Black Mark. However, suddenly they told us, the bands, that they were heading for a bankruptcy and had to transform Hammerheart into Karmageddon and we started to get worried. At that time we also got the information that Regain Records was interested in Necrophobic, so I set up a meeting with Per (Label Manager) to talk things through. Then we had to end the agreement we had with Hammerheart and sign to Regain Records.
HH: Are you pleased with the work of Regain Records so far?
Joakim: Hell, yes...
HH: Bloodhymns was very well acclaimed in 2002. What about Hrimthursum, how were the reactions on it?
Joakim: Fucking awesome! It's getting so much good critics and reviews. We are almost getting spoiled now, ha ha. It's really great to get this much attention and we definately deserve it! It's our time now! We've been doing this for such a long time and have had to struggle and fight for everything ourselves, so it's definately time for us to get this huge attension.
HH: I like the song "Blinded By Light, Enlightened By Darkness" best, which song do you like best?
Joakim: Couldn't tell. I like them all, in different ways. This album has a lot to offer and even if it's close to 60 minutes long, filled with extreme metal music, there's not a weak place on it!
HH: Is there a song people like best?
Joakim: It's too early to say at this point as the album just got released, but we had two teasers in mp3-format on our website since a few weeks back and the fans have really liked them.
HH: On Hrimthursum you use female vocals several times. Who is responsible for the female vocals?
Joakim: Her name is Sandra and she used to sing with Therion, where Tobias (voc., b.) played session guitar live during 1996-1998. We had a little more time in the studio this time, so we had time to try out a lot of different ideas and we came up with a few places where we wanted to try our female vocals and the places we kept became killer, in my opinion. I usually don't like female vocals, but if it could help our sound leading to an even darker end evil feeling, it's great. As this time. We would never do anything to harm our sound, just find new ways to develop it to the better, without forgetting our past and our roots.
HH: Do you think this will be used more often on the forthcoming records? Honestly I hope not because I do not really like these vocal style on Hrimthursum.
Joakim: I'm sorry to hear that. I don't think so, myself, but as I just told you, we will use stuff to make our sound better, but not making it sound like... we have selled out, because we're not that kind of band. Never been and will never be. We've been doing our uncompromised music for such a long time and will keep doing it... forever!
HH: Hrimthursum, the title of your new record, is out of the old Edda and has something to do with frost giants, am I right? Why did you choose this title?
Joakim: Yes, you're right. Well, we started to have visions on how we wanted this album to sound and be visionalized and the most important thing was winter, ice and darkness. We brainstormed different titles and it ended up with Hrimthursum, that best represented what this album is all about.
HH: The introduction of Hrimthursum is called "The Slaughter Of Baby Jesus" which is quite striking. How did this title arise?
Joakim: As the lyrical content is more or less an idea how it would be if we could re-write the history, to destroy the religion that came to our country some 1000 years ago, an idea rose that we could start from the beginning, from where all this crap came from, so we made an intro about getting back to when Jesus was born and... slaughtered him. I know it's quite an offending title, but Tobias, who came up with it, wanted to have such a title, a not so poetical title, where he used words like the Americans is using. He heard it several times about when they referred to "BABY Jesus" here and there. He got so annoyed about it, so he wanted to call the intro "The Slaughter of Baby Jesus"...
HH: Imagine Hrimthursum is a car, what car would it be and why?
Joakim: It wouldn't be a car... it would be a tank. Big, hard, metal and explosive!
HH: You have plans for touring in Europe this summer. Do you play any festivals? Will you come to Germany too?
Joakim: We will leave for Spain next week to do a mini tour there. We haven't been to Spain before, so we're all exited to meet our Spanish fans. We have no German festivals booked for us this summer, which we feel is quite weird, but we will go on an European tour in the autumn, September-October and it will definately include some German dates, so keep your eyes and ears open.
HH: Thanks for you time! Any last words?
Joakim: Make sure you don't miss to buy our new album Hrimthursum! See you!