DIE BESTEN, OBSKURSTEN UND THRASHIGSTEN DEATH METAL- VIDEOS PART I

Hier soll um es eine natürlich rein subjektive Auswahl der besten, obskursten, thrashigsten oder anderweitig besonders hervorstechenden Death Metal Clips gehen, alt oder neu. Höchstwahrscheinlich wird bei einigen von Euch die ein oder andere Erinnerung aufploppen oder auch so manche nostalgisch-melancholische Erinnerung wach werden, ganz nach dem Motto: "Als dieses Video bei VIVA Metalla kam, habe ich gerade Abi gemacht " /  "meine erste Freundin kennengelernt und geschwängert" bzw. wahlweise irgendetwas anderes einsetzen. Gerade die alten Videoclips lebten und leben auch heute noch von ihrem teils billigen, leicht dilettantischen Charme, heutzutage hat wahrscheinlich jeder 13-Jährige mit der neuesten App schneller professionellere Ergebnisse. Aber so war damals zu Beginn / Mitte der 90er eben der technische Stand der Dinge, zudem war Death Metal nie als Hochglanzprodukt gedacht. Heutzutage gibt es immer öfters die aus meiner Sicht oftmals vollkommen seelenlosen mit künstlicher Intelligenz erzeugten Clips, die einfach nur langweilen. Aber fangen wir nun an... 

INTERVIEW FROSTSHOCK

"It was the best first year a band could wish for."

The newcomers from Frostshock are currently stirring up the underground with their self-titled debut album (read the review HERE). A good reason to find out more about the band's background and their excellent, explosive death/thrash mixture. The bandmembers, who likeable don't take themselves so deadly serious, are delighted and grateful for the recognition they are currently receiving. But read for yourself.
----------------------------------------

REVIEW FROSTSHOCK "FROSTSHOCK"

Rare are the moments when you are so unexpectedly overwhelmed by a piece of art, especially if you have never heard the artist's name before. In this case, the artist is a relatively new band from Germany, more precisely from Haltern am See in North Rhine-Westphalia, and goes by the name of Frostshock.   

Frostshock have been around since 2020 and have released an insanely strong album with their self-titled debut. They were able to prove their live qualities together with bands like Sodom at this year's Turock-Fest in Bochum. Fortunately, a friend of mine was among the visitors, so I heard about Frostshock by word of mouth, because the four musicians don't have a label behind them that could do any major advertising, the album is completely self-released. Given the outstanding quality of the music, pretty much any label from the heavier genre should have been able to get involved, but perhaps it was a conscious decision to do everything themselves, more on that in the upcoming interview with the band. 

INTERVIEW JOAKIM STERNER (NECROPHOBIC / UNHALLOW)

"In the summer of 1982, when I was at a summer camp, a guy there showed me Iron Maiden and I was hooked right away."

There was no specific reason for this interview, I had been carrying around the idea of doing a Necrophobic interview for a while. Since they say that the first experiences are among the most formative, it's also logical that "The nocturnal silence", Necrophobic's debut from 1993, made a lasting impression on me. Although it was by no means my first death metal album, it was one of the first that I got back then, along with bands like Unleashed, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Grave, Benediction, Bolt Thrower, Asphyx and Cannibal Corpse. Of course, it's difficult to filter out aspects like nostalgia, but when I listen to the album today with its outstanding songs, then one must definitely attest to the album being one of the strongest and most important albums in Swedish metal history, especially because it was already the anticipation of the fusion of death and black metal. And of course all albums of this band are exceptional, especially the last two captivate in a different, more refined way. Nevertheless, for this interview, I have concentrated on this debut album in particular. Drummer and founding member Joakim Sterner, who has another band called Unhallow at the start (more details in the interview), answered my questions.

REVIEW MEFISTO "PHOSPHORUS"

The legendary Mefisto, founded in Stockholm in 1984, are at the start with a new work. The new album is called "Phosphorus" and contains ten tracks with a running time of 50 minutes. It will be released on 13 July via GMR Music Group.

After disappearing into oblivion for almost three decades after their foundation, Mefisto have released three albums since then. Especially the last album of 2019, "Octagram" (Bathory had an "Octagon" album, Mefisto and Bathory are, so to speak, the primeval soup of Swedish extreme metal) was appealing, as it was a very dark and heavy work.

INTERVIEW TRIDENTIFER (ENGLISH)

"Tridentifer doesn't have to be out of the line, I don't want to reinvent death metal!"

Tridentifer from Kaiserslautern, or K-Town as some Americans say, play interesting old school death metal, which on the one hand owes its inspiration to the Swedish grandmasters of the subject like Entombed, Grave and Dismember, on the other hand has found its own little niche through the use of gloomy-scary synthesizer parts and doomy passages. The band has been around for almost ten years now and has released a few albums in that time. Guitarist Marco, who by the way used to be a member of the relatively well known Dark, answered all my questions.

First of all, tell me something about the band. When was the band founded? How did you know each other?

Hello Gerald, Hello Systematic Desensitization Zine! First of all thank you for the interest in our band! Then I'll start with the prehistory:

After my former band Redgrin (of which I was also a founding member and had spent many years) had been very slow, I decided to quit and go my own way.

Tridentifer was founded shortly before, on December 23, 2011 and was supposed to be a side project for my musical ideas, which I was always thwarted before. 

INTERVIEW TRIDENTIFER (DEUTSCH)

"Tridentifer muss nicht aus der Reihe fallen, ich möchte den Death Metal nicht neu erfinden!"

Tridentifer aus Kaiserslautern spielen interessanten Old School Death Metal, der seine Inspiration einerseits den schwedischen Großmeistern des Fachs wie Entombed, Grave und Dismember verdankt, andererseits durch den Einsatz von düster-schaurigen Synthesizer-Parts und doomigen Passagen seine eigene kleine Nische gefunden hat. Die Band gibt es nun auch schon fast zehn Jahre und sie hat es in dieser Zeit auf einige Veröffentlichungen gebracht. Gitarrist Marco, der früher übrigens mal bei den doch relativ bekannten Dark zugange war, stand mir ausführlich Rede und Antwort.

Erzähl doch erst einmal was zur Band. Wann wurde die Band gegründet? Woher kanntet Ihr Euch?

Hallo Gerald, Hallo Systematic Desensitization Zine! Erstmal Danke für das Interesse an unserer Band! Dann leg ich mal los, zur Vorgeschichte:

Nachdem es bei meiner damaligen Band Redgrin (bei der ich auch Gründungsmitglied war und viele Jahr verbracht hatte) doch schon sehr zäh voran ging, hatte ich mich dazu entschlossen auszusteigen und meinen eigenen Weg zu gehen.

Tridentifer wurde jedoch schon kurz davor, am 23.12.2011 gegründet und sollte eigentlich nur als Nebenprojekt für meine musikalischen Ideen dienen, bei denen ich zuvor irgendwie immer ausgebremst wurde.  

INTERVIEW SCARABREED

Scarabreed is a relatively new band from Switzerland that plays really good death / black metal. That shouldn't be surprising, since there are old scene veterans here, who already played with earlier, well-known bands. These days the band released their debut album called "Throne of the dark ages", a good reason for an interview.

Hello, I hope you are well, especially in times of the Corona pandemic. Please introduce the band, when did you form, how did it happen, did you know each other before? What did you release before the debut album? In which bands were you active before ?

Scarabreed: Thank you for your interest in Scarabreed and this interview.

Phillip: I have played with Denial and Amputate so far.

Markus: We have all been active in bands before, with Riccardo and Phillip I played in Amputate.

Riccardo: Also Amputate and Denial.

Thomas: I had played with a few bands and also helped out live a lot. I played with Azrael, Sabaism together with Marco from Damnatory and Chris from Sickening Gore, later with Innocent F.F. and 2Black and now you can see where this has brought me.   

INTERVIEW CARNAL GHOUL

Dieses Interview von mir mit CARNAL GHOUL wurde vor ca. sechs Jahren im Legacy Magazin veröffentlicht. Die Band scheint es leider nicht mehr zu geben, auch wenn es wohl nie eine offizielle Auflösungserklärung gab. Personell hat sich auch einiges geändert, Drummer Tormentor spielt nun nicht mehr bei Desaster, dafür aber mittlerweile bei der deutschen Thrash-Institution Sodom. Das im Interview angekündigte Debüt-Album hat nie das Licht der Welt erblickt, so bleibt die starke EP "The Grotesque Vault" wohl die einzige Veröffentlichung der Band. Seit 2015 gibt es jedoch die ziemlich guten Demonbreed (Debüt-Album namens " Where gods come to die"), in deren Reihen drei ehemalige Carnal Ghoul-Mitglieder tätig sind.

 Alles kann, nichts muss.

„Die Idee, CARNAL GHOUL zu gründen, besteht schon seit einigen Jahren. Als ich noch bei Lay Down Rotten spielte, haben wir zusammen mit Desaster ein Festival absolviert, ich glaube, es war das Party San, und ich habe mich mit Tormentor darüber unterhalten, mal ein gemeinsames Projekt zu starten. Da Tormentor gerne mal was aus der Death Metal-Ecke probieren wollte, und dies sowieso meine absolute Leidenschaft ist, nahmen wir CARNAL GHOUL in Angriff. Jedoch schlief das Ganze dann irgendwie ein, bis wir Anfang dieses Jahres endlich mal Zeit fanden das Ganze in die Tat umzusetzen und Songs zu schreiben. Mit Fernando, Ritsch und Johannes, der übrigens auch Gründungsmitglied von Lay Down Rotten ist, hatte ich schnell fähige Leute an der Hand, die Lust hatten, sich an der Band zu beteiligen. Ritsch ist übrigens mein Guitartech bei Milking The Goatmachine und Fernando spielt dort Schlagzeug und singt“, so Daniel Jakobi zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Band.   

INTERVIEW NIGHTBEARER

NIGHTBEARER are a new star in the death metal firmament. Enjoy this conversation with vocalist Michael about death metal (of course), fantasy literature and misspelled band logos. 

Hey, what exactly were the reasons for the founding of NIGHTBEARER ? Please tell us who’s in the band responsible for what? And what about Schlachtung!, does the band still exist, will you maybe return with new recordings and some more live appearances in the future?

NIGHTBEARER started basically as a two-piece side project of Dome and myself besides our other bands --Despised, Schlachtung!, Bloodwork, speaking for myself, and Despised, Hate Force One & Legion, speaking for Dome – without any bigger ambitions to play live or record more than one EP or so. After knowing each other quite a time and after doing the songwriting for Despised together, we realized that both of us had some old school death metal riffs and ideas in the closet and that it would be a shame not to use/record them. So we decided that we would finish the songs together, Dome would record the instruments and do mixing and I would take care of the lyrics, the vocals, the concept, promo, social media etc. To go full speed on stage we recruited fellow musicians from Hate Force One (Manuel, Florian) and Despised (Christian).