Photos by Anna Vibeke Johansson – Nation North
(Following their It Never Ends… comeback album in 2022, which arrived 30 years after their debut, the Danish death metal band Maceration will soon return with a new one named Serpent Devourment that’s set for release by Emanzipation Productions on January 31st. What we have for you today is a very good interview by our contributor Zoltar of Maceration‘s Jakob Schultz.)
So yeah, fuckin’ sue me: I never really liked Maceration‘s 1992 debut A Serenade in Agony. Ok, let me correct this: I liked it but I never loved it you know? It felt exactly like what it was supposed to be, that is, an almost too-ambitious-for-its-own-good attempt by some locally popular thrashers (in that case, Invocator), after having sniffed in the air that the tide had turned to catch up with the times and thus what was THE thing back then, aka death metal.
But the production somehow didn’t fit and the songs were too long, the biggest draw for me being the presence of then nineteen-years-old Dan Swanö from Edge of Sanity and the fact that his trip to Denmark to meet up and record his vocal parts allowed him to quickly snap a picture of an eerie layer of clouds from the plane’s window which ended up as the cover artwork for Pan.Thy.Monium’s debut album Dawn Of Dreams (yes, I’m that kind of nerd, sorry not sorry).
So even with the surprising return, yet still as a session member only, of Swanö three decades later on their comeback album It Never Ends… I didn’t have high expectations to be fair. That is until I saw Ola Larsson‘s sublime Cthulhuesque artwork and listened to its opening track, “Lost In Depravity”. Full of, wait, freakin’ drenched in, HM-2 delight and far more in-your-face and damn brutal than its clumsy predecessor, it simply ripped. And on the top of it, Swanö gave one of his (and it seems last as a growler) vilest performance ever, as if wanting to show his former friends in Bloodbath how it’s done. Did I like it? Boy, I freakin’ worshipped that album from the get-go. Check mate.
Three years later, with Larsson providing his nightmarish visions but Swanö officially replaced by their live frontman of two years, Jan Bermann Jepsen, Maceration strike back with their third album Serpent Devourment and it is as Swedish-sounding and catchy as its predecessor, nevermind the band being officially based in Esbjerg, Denmark. Former Invocator – he left after their debut Excursion Demise was released through Black Mark, wanting to focus then on Maceration – and mainman Jakob Schulz spills the beans for us.
Let’s face it: having once again enlisted Dan Swanö for the vocals on It Never Ends… was obviously a huge selling-point AND a good way to link this comeback album to the thirty years old A Serenade Of Agony. Weren’t you afraid that the absence of Dan on the new album would disappoint some?
Of course we had some thoughts about it. However, Dan was never a part of the band other than being the sessions singer. He never played live or wanted to play live. So it was obviously a very good idea to bring him in on the vocals on the comeback album and draw the red line to the debut. At first we didn’t even think he would like to do it but he got into it and growled his lungs out for the first time in many years. We’ve been playing a lot of concerts with our real line-up and we knew Jan was the right person to take up the heritage after Dan. And we also thought this was the right time to do it since as we are a band playing live it makes sense. And what he did on the new album is so convincing that we are just stoked about it.
Let us be clear: did you try to convince Dan to once again give it a shot, and thus had to pick up plan B when he said no? Or was it the plan from the start to fully integrate Jan, who’s been doing shows with you since 2022?
We talked about it and we knew we wanted to engage Dan again for mixing and producing the album. Yet he warned us from the start: I will not growl again ever. I destroyed my voice the last time and I can’t do it anymore. So we knew it was time to move on with Jan, who is a superb growler.
What would you say the differences are between Jan and Dan?
Jan has always been into Edge of Sanity and being inspired by Dan. The difference is that Jan maybe has a deeper growl, but there are still similarities with Dan – they both have a very clear way of singing the words even if growling so you actually can very easily hear the lyrics. We always like that since the first album, and since Jan also did some backing vocals on It Never Ends… with Dan it was just a very natural process.
Since you’ve started playing live again soon after the release of It Never Ends… and considering the stylistic gap in between the two albums, do you even perform tracks off your debut on stage?
Oh we do actually. We have been playing “Silent Lay The Gentle Lamb”, “Transmogrified”, “Pain and Pleasure Incarnate” and a lot of others. These three songs will also still be on the setlist in the future since they are probably trademark songs from our debut and they have similarities to some of the material on It Never Ends…
Considering the SweDeath left-turn you did with your second album, didn’t this trigger some Swedish musicians to come to you like ‘hands off, it’s mine! And for a start, you guys are Danish, not Swedish!’?
Not at all. We have always been using the HM2. Both in INVOCATOR back then and in MACERATION. We loved the Swedish sound as soon as we heard. The Left Hand Path and we even tried to have the same kind of sound on our debut but we just never succeeded because, back in 1992, there was no producer in Denmark with the right knowledge and skills to help us. But on It Never Ends…it came naturally and we got only positive feedback from other musicians who like it a lot.
You have a new, young drummer named Nikolai Kaltoft. Was it his idea to incorporate for instance some blastbeats, just to make sure the new album wouldn’t end up being just a nostalgia trip?
Nikolai is an awesome drummer and with the new album we had not the same pressure as on the comeback album. Now we felt more confident and we more did go for what we wanted than rather maybe thinking of “it has to sound a bit like the debut”. Nikolai had free hands to do what he wanted and it came out great, and what I like about the new album is it’s more varied and energetic.
Whose voice is it we can hear at the very end of “For The End Of Alone”’ and what is this strange speech about?
It’s mine. I got the idea after I found quotes the Norwegian artist and painter Edwarch Munch wrote. He was a very unique painter – well-known for his painting ‘The Scream’ – and his quotes from his writings just fitted so great into our lyrical universe about the darkness of mind. In the end of “The Den of Misery” we also have one of his quotes.
I saw your former comrade in Invocator, Jacob Hansen, who also played drums on Maceration’s debut album before becoming a high-profile producer, doing bass with Asinhell, Volbeat’s Michael Poulsen’s death metal project, at Hellfest last June and you could see he was having a blast. Did you ever try to get him involved at some point when you decided to put Maceration back together?
Jacob and I will always be friends, but when we began working on the new MACERATION album, we didn’t think he would come back because if he should, he should have recorded the drums like on the debut. I have talked with him about it and we had some laughs about it because he doesn’t understand how he could play the drums that good and fast back then, so it was just meant to be on the debut album. He continued INVOCATOR back then when I moved on with MACERATION.
I love Ola Larsson, who did both the cover artwork for It Never Ends… and Serpent Devourment. As already proven with Sulphur Aeon, his paintings have a huge Lovecraftian vibe and those he did for you are no exception. But is it really representative of your lyrical content?
I think our lyrics have different levels and can be understood in different ways and the Lovecraftian feel has always been part of our way of doing lyrics and music. And we just love what Ola Larsson does. His work has an atmosphere which suits our music so well.
Now that you’ve put out two albums back-to-back leaning towards the same style, and thus defining in the process what Maceration really stands for, does it mean that, more than ever, your 1992 debut now sticks out more than ever like a sore thumb? Do you have any regrets? Or maybe you don’t because you see this version of Maceration as not the ‘real’ version so to speak?
No regrets. That album sounds the way it does and that’s the charm of it. It was done as a side project and we put a lot of time into it. Some of the songs are still representative of MACERATION and the songs were some of the first death metal songs from Denmark, so I am proud of being part of it.
Maceration’s very first gig in your hometown of Esbjerg on June 8th 1990 was opening for Darkthrone, back when the Norwegians were still playing a very technical form of death metal. A rough recording of said concert was later released, along with an actual book with many pictures from that evening. What are your memories of that special evening? Isn’t it weird that somehow your very first gig as Maceration ended up being so legendary somehow?
Back then we loved DARKTHRONE and the style and sound they had. We actually never understood why they changed to black metal, because we loved their death metal style. It was awesome to have them here. MACERATION’s first gig – it sounds actually not that good but it was history in the making, so again it’s just part of a journey of how things were back then.
On a sidenote, if I’m not mistaken, you set up the Heartburn Music label with Björn from Horned Almighty to reissue some classic Danish extreme metal albums on vinyl. Alas, after two years and eight releases if I’m not mistaken, including the last to date album of your former band Invocator, it was put to rest. Why? Was it because it wasn’t financially viable?
Sadly, you are right. We released some fine albums on vinyl back then. It was just too much work and it wasn’t financially viable either. We did it for the love of metal and vinyl, but in the end, we didn’t have the time to do it anymore.
I remember you saying at some point that you were ‘burnt out’ on the whole underground metal thing, after being in various bands or writing for one of Denmark biggest metal magazine, METALIZED. Did the return of Maceration somehow change your mind?
I had indeed a period where I was focusing on other things like family, and also had some tragedy strike my family, so I had to focus on other stuff. I was the editor of Metalized – and also a co-founder back in 1988 – also a lot of work and in the end I burned out and stopped. I always had the idea to get back to playing music and when Emanzipation and (boss and WITHERING SURFACE/THORIUM vocalist) Michael said they would like to bring back MACERATION, it was a lot easier to get things going and do the comeback. It’s great to be back and we have a lot of fun when we are on stage, it’s like back in the days.
https://maceration.bandcamp.com/album/serpent-devourment
https://www.facebook.com/maceration
https://www.instagram.com/macerationdenmark/
Glad to see Maceration back in action. That is wild to hear about that 1990 concert of Maceration and Darkthrone. I wish I was there.