Interview about Bleeding Utopia with Andreas Moren, the guitar player of the band.
Greetings Andreas, how things are going?
Hello. Doing great!
When was Bleeding Utopia founded?
The idea for the band was formed in 2003 by me under the name of Operation Sideffect. Did one demo under that name and then changed the name to Delicious Deformed to play live, because the thought was to make a real band out of it but everything just slowly faded away because everyone had other bands and so on. But later in 2009 when I came from a previous band, Astral Carneval, I quited this band and decided to bring the old songs back and form the band that became Bleeding Utopia. Bleeding Utopia was formed in Nov. 2009 but wasn’t complete until late april 2010 when Jocke (guitar) joined the band.
One EP released and two albums, the latest release is ”Darkest Potency” from 2013. Tell me about it.
”Darkest Potency” was released on April 30th 2014. Well it’s a heavy, dark album. It is more simple than our debut album ”Demons to some…Gods to others” (2012). New singer,well new-ish. It’s the bass player that took over the microphone when Henrik left the band to be a full time dad. So we wrote ”Darkest Potency” to fit his voice. We spent like a year to write and re-write songs for this album to fit the new style of Bleeding Utopia. We simplified things a lot and focused more on atmosphere and catchy choruses. We wanted it to be heavier, faster, darker and more simple than our debut. And I think we did a great job.
Same, tell me a few words about the EP and the release from 2012,”Demons To Some, Gods To Others’’.
Well the EP was recorded in june 2010 in our rehearsal place. I had all the songs done (almost) for our debut album but we learned 4 songs and recorded the EP just to have something to pass around and pick up gigs with. It got good reviews and people start talking about us. Then in early 2011 we recorded ”Demons to some…Gods to others” and signed a deal with Italian label WormHoleDeath for the release of that album. The album was more or less songs that I had written between 2003 and 2010. The album was ”ok” received in Sweden but out side Sweden people really liked it. It got good reviews and we toured Finland , Sweden and Norway on the Scandinavian Aggression Tour in September 2012 as a pre-album-release-tour. The album was released October 1st 2012. On that tour we met Ipe (playing in Haterial at the time) and become good friends.
Will you release new materials soon?
Right now we are more focused on playing a lot of gigs around Sweden and the rest of Europe. But we are always writing new stuff. We are sitting right now and checking and sorting riffs from our ”riff-bank”, some we will keep and do cool songs out of and some we will throw in the trash. Right now we have fragments of a couple of songs and a lot of ideas. So I think we will focus 2015/2016 on playing a lot live and hopefully record a new album in late 2016 that will be released in late 2016 or early 2017.
What are Bleeding Utopia’s influences?
A lot of bands. But bands like At The Gates, Dismember, Amon Amarth, Behemoth, Blach Dahlia Murder are big influences but also old Metallica, Testament and so on. I think we have a weak spot for bands from the early 90’s. We like the song writing, melodies and attitude, but we are also influenced by some newer bands, but I think our heart is in the early Swedish metal scen in the 90’s but we do it in a newer kind of way…we do it our way.
What are the lyrical themes and who mainly writes the music?
The lyrics is about serial killers, armageddon, fears and destruction is different ways. Destruction of the world or maybe just YOUR world. I write all the foundations of the lyrics then David (vocals) go through them and see what has to be changed so it will flow more into the song. I like to write lyrics that you can create a short film in your head when you read the lyrics and listen to the music…and hopefully it is not the same film in everyones heads. I like to write lyrics that you can form your own imagination around. For me it is a lyric about armageddon but for you maybe its a story about your wife death and how your world got smashed to pieces, and another one maybe for me it about standing your ground and be true to your self and never let go of your dreams and for you its just a song about an account battlefield, you know what I mean? It sounds cheesy but that is the way I like to write lyrics. Its is also I that write most of the music. I write some foundations and easy arrangements and then , if needed, we sit down and try different arrangements and if there is something missing in the song or if there is something that don’t have to be in the song, then we ad or remove stuff. So everyone is a part of the final product.
Are there any shows confirmed for this year?
No, no gigs confirmed for the remaining of 2015. But we are trying to get back to Finland in early 2016 and to do some small tours around Sweden and we are checking around for some European tours for 2016, so if everything goes as planned we will have a lot to do in 2016.
Do you have a message for the Bleeding Utopia fans?
Stay in school, don’t do drug….because then you have more money to buy our CD, LP, t-shirts and going to our shows hahaha.
Thank you Andreas for your time, cheers and rock on!
Rock on!
https://www.facebook.com/BleedingUtopia
If you really would like to support Antichrist, you can just Share our article.
You can also support Antichrist by sending a couple bucks to cover some webhosting expenses. =>> PayPal