INTERVIEW SLAUGHTERDAY

Slaughterday, the creative duo from Leer in Lower Saxony, Germany, have been delivering high quality old school death metal since 2013. These days their third album called "Ancient Death Triumph" is released, a welcome occasion for a talk with vocalist and drummer Bernd.

Hey, first of all I hope you’re doing well during these unordinary times. Did you have to cancel some of the gigs and / or are some of them postponed to a later date ? Could you play some gigs since the outbreak of corona (or should I better say „outbreak of evil“ ).

Hey Gerald, we are doing well, although the corona situation is really fatiguing these times. Unfortunately, we had to cancel some shows at the end of the year and some festivals got postponed. It feels weird to release an album, knowing that you will not be able to promote it by playing live shows. The postponement of some festivals also put us on hold for the year after next. Until then we will not be the centre of attention anymore so maybe we have to wait for another album release again. Luckily we are not affected jobwise.  

Your new album „Ancient death triumph“ sounds great ! It seems to  focus more on speed again and shows a more melodic approach, so sometimes I had to think to newer Carcass or maybe Death (especially the melodic part in „Expulsed to decay“ is fantastic !) Was this the result of some kind of conscious decision ? Or did you maybe want to show that your musical abilities are much bigger than maybe most peple think ? To sum up, maybe you have now your own small niche in death metal, cause most bands play rotten death metal or more progressive, melodic, more technical death metal. You combine  the best of both worlds so to speak. Looking at your whole discography, how would you describe the development of Slaughterday within the narrow limits of death metal ?

Thanks for your kind words. As usual we didn’t plan anything in advance or make any decisions on how the new record should sound like. I think that Slaughterday always was about combining old school death metal with morbid melodies and classic songwriting. It’s all about the power of the riff, the atmosphere, punishing caveman drumming and memorable songs, the way it used to be in the old days. Sometimes I am really fed up with people saying that this style is nothing new or not original. Those people have never really understood the band and our intentions. It has never been about showing off our abilities or to prove that we can play our instruments. In our own personal Slaughterday universe we can go in whatever direction we want, be it the slower, melodic, fast, doomy or punky stuff. Comparing “Ancient Death Triumph” to the previous albums I would say that this time everything is well balanced. The songs are not too sprawling as on our first album “Nightmare Vortex” and not that compact as on our second album “Laws Of The Occult”. But I agree with your point that on the new album Death and Carcass were a huge influence. We definitely thought of Chuck Schuldiner and Bill Steer while working on some of the melodic parts and the intro.

What can you tell us about the very impressive artwork and the artist who created it ? It differs from the previous covers concering the style and illustrates the album title „Ancient death triumph“ perfectly I think. In general I think you payed a lot attention to the artworks, when I look at the previous full lengts,  the „Nightmare Vortex“ artwork is great, being a more typical death metal artwork, and the „Laws of the occult“-artwork was superb again.

Jens and I both agreed that this time we have to come up with an even more impressive artwork than before. We personally think that a proper artwork is as important as having good songs and a professional production. I was following Adam Burke (Nightjar Illustrations) on Instagram for some time and I really liked what he was doing. After having seen his artwork for the new Temple of Void album I directly got in touch with him and asked him to do the artwork for our new album. Actually I thought he was too busy back then but he agreed and after having sent him a very rough sketch he converted our ideas into this amazing piece of art. We just let him do his job and it didn’t need any further instructions or corrections. It was a great collaboration and we couldn’t be happier with the final result.

You did a cover of Anvil’s „Thumb hang“. Why did you choose this song ? And the Anvil-bassist played on that song as well, how did this happen ? Wouldn’t an Anvil / Slaughterday Tour be cool (okay, some Anvil Fans woule be offendend by the sound of Slaughterday I think ) ? Your thoughts about the documentary „The story of Anvil“ ?

We have always been huge Anvil fans and we really enjoyed their documentary. I think that “This is Thirteen” is a really underrated album of the Anvil back catalogue and when listening to the song “Thumb Hang” I always thought that this one would really sound well as a death metal version. In 2017 we had the possibility to meet Anvil  in person when they were recording the “Pounding the Pavement” album at Jörg Uken’s Soundlodge Studio. We had a barbecue together and we listened to their stories. It really felt a little bit like being right in the thick of this documentary. To ask Chris Robertson to play on that song was Jörg Uken’s idea. When we recorded the album he just wrote a message to Chris and we were happy that he agreed. I am not sure whether Anvil fans would like to see Slaughterday supporting Anvil on a tour, I just know that Lips hates Death Metal so I think this wouldn’t be a good idea. 

Furthermore you did some other cover versions as well from Trouble, Amorphis, Acheron, Hallows Eve and Pentagram. Did some bands give you feedback or did you somewhere read if the bands or their ex-members took notice of your cover versions ?

To be honest we didn’t get any feedback from any of those bands or their members. It would be great to hear if they like our version of course, but I think Slaughterday is maybe too small to get that attention. I could imagine to get some feedback from the Anvil guys or at least Chris Robertson, who played bass on that song. We’ll see.

Please tell us about the lyrics of the album ! If you look at them first they seem to be typical death metal lyrics, but maybe you want to explain more about some underlying thoughts.

Maybe you are right and they look like typical Death Metal lyrics, but all I can say is that I put a lot of effort into writing them. My approach to the lyrics is that they add to the atmosphere of the song to make it sound as cool as possible. It’s not about getting a message across or any political stuff like Napalm Death do for example. It’s somehow comparable to a horror movie with a very dark and dense atmosphere. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. You need to find a cool song title, a catchy chorus, cool and powerful sounding works and finally everything has to fit to the phrasing I have in mind. Concerning the topics there is a lot of stuff about demons, nightmare and apocalyptic visions on “Ancient Death Triumph”. Usually I take inspiration from my favourite horror movies, paintings, stuff I have read about and my own sick mind. 

You stayed since the beginning of your career as a band at FDA Records. As an outside investor I think that this label does a very good job in promotion, they have a god rooster and I think a lot of people buy FDA Records-releases blindly, because they know that it stands for quality and a certain kind of death metal (with some stylistic exceptions). Some other bands such as Chapel of Disease or Entrails left and were signed by Van Records or Metal Blade. Is FDA Records the perfect label for Slaughterday or existed thoughts to go to a bigger label if maybe there had been offers ?

Rico and FDA Records have always provided good work. We still have a contract for another release and after that we will see what happens then. I would have to lie if I said that I would not care about a request from a label like Metal Blade, but we are no daydreamers. We know where we stand as a band and we are grateful for everything FDA have done for us so far. 

Your thoughts about death metal in 2020 ? In my opinion, the scene is stronger or even better than ever, there are countless top-releases every month, and-in contrast- to some other trends, for example the wave of occult rock bands some years ago- the number of great bands and releases didn’t ebb since some years ago „Old school death metal“ seemed to be the next big thing, as everything going in circles.

I absolutely agree with you. I think that due to the variety of labels for every niche of metal, all different genres of metal coexist. This has been going on for quite a while now and instead of having a few big labels telling everyone what “the next big thing” is, the people can decide for themselves. Each label can establish its profile and doesn’t have change the direction each time to follow the trend and survive. For the bands this is great as well as they don’t have to change their style and can do whatever they want and as long as they want. There are enough cool labels out there to release the most extraordinary sub genres. 

Why did you change your band logo ? To be honest, I prefer the older one. Did you want to get rid of the pentagram and the tentacles that were part of the old logo?

Actually, we changed the band logo, because the new one looks better on a shirt. It’s a little bit more compact, so it can be printed in bigger letters. Another reason is indeed to get rid of the Necronomicon seal and the tentacles as we began to move away from the Lovecraft influence on the “Abattoir” EP. On the first two records and the on the “Ravenous” EP my lyrics were highly influenced by the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

So, please some thoughts concerning the following keywords /bands:

Abscess: The punky brother of Autopsy. On our new album, the middle part of the song “Apocalyptic Dreams” and the main riff of “Malformed Assimilation are inspired by them.

Asphyx: Great band and they always deliver on stage. There is a song on our new album called “Expulsed From Decay” which has a middle part which we call “the Asphyx part”.

Autopsy: Gods! Huge influence and responsible for the band’s name as everyone knows. Chris Reifert is also one of my biggest influences as a vocalist and I’m a huge fan of his drumming as well. 

Benediction: What can I say?! Everyone knows “Subconscious Terror”, “Transcend The Rubicon” and of course “The Grand Leveller” which has always been my favourite Benediction album.

Coffins: Not really my cup of tea, but always fun to watch live.

LIK: Maybe the best Dismember copy and they are doing a great job playing this kind of HM2 Death Metal, but I have to admit that I like the original more.

Runemagick: Another great and underrated band. My favourite is and will always be “Enter The Realm Of Death”. Very dark and evil atmosphere!

Unanimated: This is melodic Death Metal that I really enjoy. “Ancient God of Evil” is a classic.

Vader: Still really good, but I prefer their older material. “The Ultimate Incantation” is killer! Very enjoyable live as they are always as tight as an atomic clock.

The last words are yours!

Thank you very much for the interview. I really enjoyed your questions and I would like to thank you very much for your support. Our new album “Ancient Death Triumph” is out now. You won’t be disappointed if you’re into old school death metal of the late 80s/early 90 with bands like Death, Autopsy, Carcass and Massacre. Check it out!!!