MALFEITOR (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What are you currently up to?
Hello Tania!
Sure, anytime! My pleasure.
I’m currently busy working with tons of things. As beside the band I’ve got Sufficiently Studios where I express my creativity of mixing, mastering, artwork and layout design. Right now I’m working on some artworks for other bands. I like to support the underground scene as much as I can!
– If I’m not mistaken you were formed in 1990 and split-up in 1995. What motivated the band’s dissolution? And what kind of activity did you have during those years?
Yeah, we actually started earlier as a school band called Nexus, played a lot of punk and Sabbath- songs with growling vocals (totally slaughter of fine art haha), at 1990 we changed the name to Malfeitor and the musical direction towards death metal. It was actually our drummer Janne that came up with that name back in the days when he played in Mastication.
We were young and crazy death metal dudes, rehearsing, got drunk, played some gigs, went to gigs, got drunk…haha
The split up just happened, we didn’t have the motivation, life changes and we wanted to do other stuff.
– You reformed in 2010 and have just released your debut full-length album. What prompted the band’s comeback such in a different period for the music industry?
Longing for the unholy Malfeitor-riffing! Haha
When I left Blood Mortized in 2010, I instantly needed to fill my death metal veins with a replacement “drug”… Now I wanted to do something harder, with more focus on riffing, and instead of forming a new band, Mattias Parkkila and I thought that we should wake up the old beast… and here we are!
– And do you think everything would have been different if you would have released this “Dum Morior Orior” back in the 90’s?
I think so, maybe not the musical style as it’s almost the same as during the last line-up before break.
The album might have been more appreciated thou, not said it isn’t appreciated today, but now almost every review’s referring to other bands from that period instead of focusing on the actual songs.
Who knows, a release during that period might even have triggered us to stick together as a group.
– After these several years of hiatus; do you regret of having stopped the band back in the day? How has the Swedish scene changed during all these years?
I don’t regret that we split up as the situation was then, it was kind of inevitable, but I regret that we didn’t manage to get our lazy asses to the studio and record something.
I think the scene has changed some as there are a lot of bands now playing other styles of “death metal”, mixing genres etc. However this new revival of the old school style is something that I personally like.
Also, the exposure of bands has increased due to internet and easier recording possibilities.
Bands are now able to record their demos with their own equipment, spread it on concerts and through social media. I have a love/hate-relation to that haha
One boring thing is that you don’t see that much of this cool black and white, old school, DM advertisings in the city nowadays, as you did in the late 80-ties/early 90-ties. Now the majority of these ads have moved into all types of social media. I’m an oldie, I kind of liked the poles, walls and message boards that were overloaded with cool upcoming underground gigs haha
– As I said, you have recently unleashed “Dum Morior Orior”; how is its feedback being so far?
Really awesome, greater than expected! The album keeps getting high rates.
I’m actually surprised as the album is recorded and mixed independently in our own studios. This is not a mainstream product as many of today’s death metal releases are. Everything is mixed and produced by me, so this proves that if you put hard work into the music rather than chasing the perfect take of that guitar, vocal or drum, you’ll still be able to release a decent DM album in 2012.
– You have included on this record almost the whole “To Hell, Farewell” demo so, do you have more stuff written?
Actually we didn’t plan to release the demo at first, but when we got the offer we quickly recorded the demo, so that we could release a cassette for promotion (the old school way haha).
During the same time we got the deal with Hellthrasher Productions (CD) and Chaos Records (Vinyl).
Five of the tracks were then quickly released on a split together with Birch Mountain called “Dawn of silent decay”. Then we wanted to re-record the songs for the album, to give them a fair chance. So the tracks are slightly changed with some modified riffs and rhythms etc.
Right now we got some sketches for new songs, and I can guarantee that there will be great stuff coming up.
– Anyway the only track I can’t see of the demo is “The Pain Collector”; why didn’t you include this one as well?
The demo-tape is a rare collectors item, «The Pain Collector» shall not be released on any other media and that’s one of the reason that you should buy it hehe
And of course for the awesome cover art that is done by Daniel Devilish, who also did the awesome artwork for “Dum Morior Orior”.
Another cool thing with the tape is that there is only 66 hand numbered tapes out there, containing 6 songs, which gives us the magic number of 666!
– Though your music seems to be heavily rooted on Swedish Death Metal, it has a really heavy sound that can remind to US DM bands such as MORBID ANGEL or IMMOLATION so, what are your main musical influences?
Aaah! I like those two hehe Immolation is my no.1 favourite DM band.
Reviewers keep compare us to Swedish old school bands such as Entombed and Grave, and I actually don’t understand why, as I don’t see the link…sound wise, maybe a little, but song wise? I don’t know…
We don’t have any particular influence. I listen to a wide range of music and pick up influences from everywhere when I write music.
Sound wise we don’t try to sound like someone else. Yeah, we use the Boss HM2 pedal that brings some of that famous Swedish mid guitar tone, but we combine it with other pedals to get our own sound.
– And this being said; how could you describe “Dum Morior Orior” in just 3 words?
I’d go for “Organic”, “Unpolished” and “Evil”…
– As I said earlier, your music seems to be inspired by US bands as well so, could you say this is something can help you stand out among some other Swedeath bands?
Maybe, I have not checked out all Swedish bands that exist (Sweden has the most active metal bands per 100 000 citizens, in the world hehe)
Hopefully we don’t sound like copycats, I’d be surprised if someone thought so.
– In fact now it seems to be an urge for old school Death Metal; have you noticed this is a band?
Sure, but there is a lot of bands out there, of course in different styles of old school so there is a something for every taste.
– For instance only in Sweden we can find several bands taking this music style back. Does this competence make things harder for a band like you or maybe the opposite, as it seems people is really interested in this kind of music?
Don’t know, maybe it’s harder to stand out in the crowd, but at the same time there are a lot of bands doing almost identical stuff out there, so I guess we’re all in the same boat.
However, as the interest increase, so does the exposure… Today, information and promotion is spread easily on the internet, and fans of the genre also seek for new music to check out.
It’s all about getting the right advertisement, in time through all kinds of promotion.
– Finally, what the near-future plans are for MALFEITOR? Are you back to stay?
Let’s see what the future will bring! The album is just released. Hopefully we will start to write new tracks pretty soon, and when we got everything recorded and ready… we’ll go label-hunting! haha
– That has been everything from my side, thanks once more for your time. If you want to add some final words, feel free to do it.
Thanks for the interview Tania! And thanks for supporting true old school death metal!
Now, go and get our debut “Dum Morior Orior” and support the underground DM scene! We would love to get feedback from our fans, so please post your comments or pictures on our facebook/myspace-pages.
Stay hard and brutal!
Cheers!
