PAGANIZER (Sweden)

Greetings & hail to you!! How are you there & what's Paganizer currently doing nowadays?

I'm doing fine! Too little money and too many beers to buy but that's life I guess... Currently we are rehearsing to get a live set in shape for any possible gigs to come during the year aswell as we are trying out new material for future releases.

Paganizer now in the process of the 4th full-lengthy album, "Murder, Death, Kill". Can you tell me a little bit about this upcoming album, describe about the feel of this album?

The album has been out maybe a month soon and the reactions are good as hell so far. It was recorded at Soundlab Studio with Mieszko from NASUM behind the mixing desk and the songs are pretty much in the same vein as on our previous album "Dead unburied" but a bit more varied perhaps. The feel of the music on the album is really brutal but still quite catchy death metal in the vein of the old gods that used to reign the scene here in Sweden and the rest of the world. Total Swedish death metal so to speak.

 
How about the concept of this album, it's that the same like the last releases or the sound will more melodic, heavy, aggressive or symphonic?

Maybe a bit more aggressive than the last album, but I really can't tell actually. Some may find it a bit more diverse however as we have focised on more midpaced song to balance the faster even more aggressive ones this time around. I think there are songs for everyones taste on the new album.

How many songs will feature in this album, it's feature any old songs?

Nine songs and a intro done by Mieszko and ourselves will be on the album. No old songs, only new material is featured. Actually we are always thinking about re-recording old stuff and we will probably do it in the future but this time we didn´t have the time in the studio to focus on anything else than the new material unfortunatly.

What's this album lyrics base about, what's the real message you want the listener to know by this album?

As usual we deal with mostly the death and disullusions of humanity. I have no personal beliefs I need to spew out on our listeners apart from that they should keep away from all organized religion as it´s the death of individual thinking. I´m no humanist as I really hate most people that I encounter outside my family and circle of freinds so the perpetual stupidity and perversions of mankind will provide me with material for lyrics for quite some time I think...

As I take a look in this circle time, there a lot of metal bands use to sing the song in their own language & I've already listen to blodsrit sang in his mother tongue language, don't you have this plan?

Funny you should ask that as we have a song on the new album with Swedish lyrics called "Du vaknar som död" (Swedish for "You wake up dead"). We mainly sing in English since it´s the accepted language for metal lyrics but with our kind of vocals we could easily do all songs in Swedish and no one would hear the difference...haha! We will most probably do some more songs from now on in our native tounge as it sounded really cool and worked out well for us.

Since the last 2 years, Paganizer released an albumin every years, promoting total death in 2001 & dead unburied in 2002, it's a must? it's also mean that you guys have a lot of stuff!! how did you compose all the songs?

It´s not really a must to release an album every year but I write music all the time so I could easily release two albums every year aswell... We have already material for two new albums which we will record the coming year and next year if everything works out well. I write all the music now but on the latest two albums our other guitarplayer also have written one or two riffs in a song... I like to write the music and will continue to do so.

Anyway how's the feedback of both 2 releases?how's the sales?

The feedback has been great, not many bad reveiws at all so it´s nice really. The sales I have not much input on but i know that the "Dead Unburied" and "Promoting..." albums are sold out and will be re-pressed in 2000 copies each now in may by Forever Underground. That´s cool as it shows we actually manage to sell some albums after all.

As I saw ,since the debut deadbanger until this upcoming release the band never miss to put the words dead or death in the album title,why?what these words really mean to you?

Haha, you noticed that? It´s just something we decided to go with like a theme for the albums. It also narrows down the options when it comes to decided the album titles. I think the word suits us fine as we play death metal and in the future I think we will actually continue with it as far as we can.

Promoting total death was being re-released recently with the new cover art, actually what's the main reason of this reissue?

The reason as I mentioned is that the original pressing is sold out and as we are not satisfied with the cover artwork (it sucks...) we decided to have a new one on the new printing. While we were changing thgins we also thought it would be cool to include a couple of bonus tracks which are "Skinned" and "Bloodneed", two songs that sound veeery much Entombed/Dismember and will much likely appeal to people into our music.

Back to the band,in 1999 i got a little bit shocked when you guys decided to sign a deal with psychic scream because you're the first foreign band under that lable,what actually struck you with PSE?

I knew Eric from PSE fom the internet and when we offered him to release our demo we actually decided after a while to do a whole album and that whas what happened. Unfortunatly the other mebers in Paganizer at that time wanted to play more thrash than death metal so the debut album turned out too soft and melodic for my taste but all that has changed now as you can hear...

Why paganizer didn't stay with them anumore? anyway,how's the deal with Xtreem music?

We recorded "Promoting..." for PSE (but it was supposed to be called "Forged in hell" then) but then they got into cencorship trouble and I haven´t heard from Eric in many years now. After that Forever Underground heard the material and released it for us which suited us fine. The deal with Xtreem Music is only for the new album and after that we will see what happens.

Paganizer's songs always changing from time to time,since the early days of stormfire until the last release,dead unburied,there's must always a lot of improvement that you brought through the releases.how did you manage to improve your music?

As I mentioned in a earlier question the members back then in Paganizer didn´t have the same visions as i had and that´s why the music turned out the way it did. Nowadays I´m the only remaining original member and I run the band as I want to and now it also sounds the way I want it to. The musical improvement on the other hand is that we now for example have a really good drummer that can play the way I want him to and I have also matured as a guitarplayer, on Stormfire I only wrote the msuic but couldn´t really play it very well as I was a crappy guitarist... I´m still crappy but I manage to play what I write...haha!

Both of you already have your own bands, so I gonna ask about your old band,how's dead sun & blizzard nowadays? As I refer to the band's name, sometimes i'm thinking do you guys really paganism?what do you think about wicca, druidism or do you belive os satanism ideology?

My and Dea´s band Dead Sun is pretty much put on ice as Dea is no longer in Paganizer either. Blizzard has changed name to Shifty Hawk and that band is now where all the old Paganizer members are playing nowadays. They are playing some kind of stoner rock like Kuyss I think. About our name Paganizer you assume right that it sprung from our views on life and reluctance to confess to any organized religion. I don´t care for any religion or belief like druidism or so, I have my personal beliefs that something happens after death and that we all will in some way be held responsible for our lives in some way but I can´t really feel any connection to any organized beliefs at all. Only death is real is my motto you know, haha!

Paganizer play a kind of melodic death metal & there were a lots more such that types of genre there,but what do you think about swedish early 'pure death metal' act like unleashed,centinex & grave?

I don´t think we are that melodic? You must still refer to the debut album when you say that and i think we have showed on our last three albums that the debut album was the child of the other members of Paganizer. I concider some of the songs on Stormfire the true debut of Paganizer and then I prefer to say that the first real album was "Promoting..." actually. I like very much the bands you mentioned, especially Grave that are my all time favourite band of all categories but also Unleashed´s first albums and all the stuff by Centinex is really great releases.

Did you heard anything from asia/malaysia?any great bands did you know from here?

I´ve heard very much Asian stuff like Abigor, Grind Buto, Herriot, Ritul Orchestra, Unveiled, Trauma and so on. I really think the black metal bands are all crap...haha! But I feel that way for most European black metal aswell so... bands I like is especially Trauma and Unveiled that play really brutal and good music. Herriot is also very good and reminds me of Swedish melodic stuff in the Gothenburg vein of death metal.

What's Paganizer future plans? before we end this interview,anything you want to add & what's your final words?

I will most likely do the vocals on the comeback of Edge Of Sanity later this year and for Paganizer we will look for liveshows and keep writing new material for coming albums to be released. My final words must be; if you´re into oldschool BRUTAL Swedish death you must check out our latest two albums "DEAD UNBURIED" and "MURDER DEATH KILL"! I think you will enjoy them! Thanx for the interview!