Hi! “Swarming Angels & Flies” kicks off with a massive impact. How did you capture that raw energy, and what does it represent for the rest of the album?
Hello! That raw energy came from what we ourselves want to hear, and also from a creative urge to get a lot of that shit out of our system, challenging ourselves as musicians and as a band, broadening our creative and also performative capacity. It’s a very physical record, unlike what we’ve done before, and full of experience with live energy that the previous two albums were lacking in, so a lot of it is about capturing that spontaneous live feel, and it makes us especially excited to get to perform.
Having live contexts as reference points adds something new I think to that way we approach the entire creative process, because that’s a really good source of life and energy, and what ends up working and what doesn’t.
Looking back at Visions of Purgatory, how has your songwriting approach evolved over the years?
I think we’ve gone through phases where we’ve had a hunger to explore new ideas and incorporate new influences, and over time that builds up, and the fruit of that becomes something fresh and different. In the beginning it was much more simple and narrow, but that’s what was appropriate for the time.
The jump from the 1st to the 2nd album came from discovering a shit ton of new stuff that we all bonded over and kept diving down rabbit holes, while at the same time being kind of “done” with what came before. So the earlier songs are more straightforward and thrashy, and with Alkahest it got more experimental and we were trying to work with the songs to give them more depth. Eventually that results in knowing what works and what doesn’t, and so since those earliest songs we wrote we kept moving forward simply put, doing what felt right.
Although the songs on our new album are significantly more focused and aggressive than Alkahest, we still retain the way we work with the songs and the way we think that came from Alkahest, but maybe each song doesn’t have to be so long and experimental.
Songwriting is something we put a lot of effort into, and over time we learned how to work with the material more, and you have to kind of fail sometimes to learn. It’s easy to think that working with the material more, giving it more depth, means that each song should be super long and super complex, but often simplicity is all a song needs, and I think Swarming Angels & Flies capitalizes a lot – what the song actually needs.
Despite your youth, your music carries such intensity. What fuels that drive – is it personal growth or more about the world around you?
The intensity of our music I think comes from an insatiable hunger to move forward and to never quite reach “it” so to say. Each album and often each song represents what we’ve wanted to achieve for that specific time and place and to do it to the best of our ability, so we’ve experienced a certain intensity with each album so far, but you lose it if you just stay in one and the same place, and this is the culmination of what we went through with the previous two records.
With Alkahest what was important was to take a step back and focus inwards a bit more, but now it’s kind of exploded outwards again.
How do you prepare yourself physically and mentally to match the energy on stage?
Physically I don’t really do too much. I hit a couch or something with my drum sticks for about 5 minutes and then tell myself that I’m warmed up and that the adrenaline is gonna help any way. Often that turns out not to work very well and I always speed up more than I should and I get a bit too tired too quickly, so our shows tend to be very intense and physical.
Mentally for me there’s no way of preparing. Starting the first song is pretty much enough and something switches in the brain. As soon as we’re ready to go I automatically just enter live mode and go ooga booga
The title Swarming Angels & Flies brings to mind both beauty and decay. How do these themes come through in the music and lyrics?
For the music aspect I think the contrast is what generates the individuality of a song, both in relation to other songs that differ but also internally, having more than a surface with nothing underneath. If a song shifts between varying tempos and types of riffs that capture different feels, it usually also ends up feeling more complete by the end, and it gets its own identity and purpose.
That kind of dynamic is quite important in our approach to being creative and performing, and it’s the most engaging as musicians. If you’re locked into one “mode” or whatever all the time it kind of loses its meaning eventually and you’re forced to confront some difference to keep being creative.
If you could talk to your younger selves back when you started, what advice would you give them about the music industry?
Maybe to look out for shitty deals that look promising on the outside, but will give little to nothing in return, and that you don’t have to say yes to everything. I think we’ve been pretty lucky on that front though.
Since your debut album, what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about the music industry?
The previous answer kind of applies here too I think. When it comes to standing your ground and not saying yes to everything that looks cool, and music wise doing your own thing completely and not changing to “fit in”, it tends to really work out in the end anyway, even if you have to make compromises. There is a balance to be recognized there
Emil Eriksson played a role in this album even though he’s no longer in the band. How did working with him on this record differ from past experiences?
It didn’t really differ significantly, he did his part and came with his input. But after some years you go through some challenges and things change and sometimes people end up finding themselves in the wrong time and place, so we had to part with Emil because we simply felt he wasn’t the man for the band, nor was the band for him.
Signing with Century Media and heading out on a European tour is huge. What part of this next chapter are you most excited about?
More of the same I guess! We got a taste for touring, so that really fueled us, so to keep heading down that road will only bring good. Writing new and better material for newer and bigger audiences, and keep touring is where it’s at for us!
Your fans are eager to see Swarming Angels & Flies live. What can they expect from your upcoming shows, and how are you preparing to bring that energy to the stage?
That energy largely comes from the stage in the first place so I think we have the best recipe for live shows we’ve ever had. We’re quite minimalist on stage in the sense of not having the most grand intro with a bunch of stuff on stage etc, it’s really just us four on stage bringing out what we’ve so patiently waited for people to hear and to participate in. Everything that we’ve wanted to accomplish on stage so far I think has been refined and cranked up in terms of intensity and dynamic, which work together very well.
At such a young age, how do you deal with the pressure of growing visibility and the high expectations from fans and critics?
I’m always open to hear what fans and critics have to say, both good and bad, because it’s healthy to get perspective, and various people say very opposing things to each other whether good or bad, that alone is a kind of win, because then those individuals have had a unique experience.
But I also don’t feel too much “pressure” in that sense, because we’re all certain in what we’re doing and what we want.
While recording Swarming Angels & Flies, did anything surprise or challenge you in a way you didn’t expect?
One thing I learned the hard way as a drummer was to NOT save the hardest songs last. Having 2 days to record is all fine and well, but to save the harder ones until the end is something I would want to avoid in the future!
Another thing was how much more proud I am of this album in its execution over Alkahest, because we used zero metronome for this and used a lot for Alkahest because I wanted it to be more tight sounding, but this album ended up sounding more tight and also more organic. It also felt more free and fun to record that way.
Where do you see Sarcator fitting into the wider extreme metal scene today? What makes you stand out from the new wave of bands emerging?
Our refusal to commit to one genre and still manage to tie a whole heap of different things together is something I guess is very important and something we try to do, because it’s the most natural for us. Our influences and where we wanted in the beginning was a more narrow kind of “fuck off” black thrash thing, but the irony of that for us turned out to be that to truly live that attitude out we had to say fuck off to ourselves in some sense and try to challenge ourselves and develop. That’s what all the old black thrash bands did, that genre didn’t come from nowhere, but developed from people who moved forward. So for us that kind of old school love and attitude coupled with freely incorporating very different things is very crucial. If we made the first album 2 more times the intensity of “Swarming” would be nowhere to be found I’m convinced.
If you had to describe Swarming Angels & Flies in just three words, what would they be and why? Thank you for your time!
Get the job done.
https://sarcator.lnk.to/SAAF-Album
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