DEATH BREATH
Taking Bad Breath to New Heights!
By: Interview with Nicke Andersson by Ryan Englund
Nicke Andersson is probably best known in the death metal world as founding member, drummer, and one of the chief songwriters for the legendary ENTOMBED. Together they created two of death metal’s most important and classic albums Left Hand Path and Clandestine (for which he also provided the lead vocals without being credited until years later). After 10 years with NIHILIST/ENTOMBED, Nicke decided to concentrate on his other project THE HELLACOPTERS, and left ENTOMBED and the death metal world behind.
Now, almost 10 years after he left the death metal world, he’s back in a big way. Nicke hooked up with Robert Pehrsson (who plays with THE HELLACOPTERS guitarist Robert Dahlqvist in THUNDER EXPRESS) to create a slab of back to the basics death metal called DEATH BREATH. Taking a nod from early DEATH, REPULSION, and AUTOPSY – and sprinkling it with a bit of Nicke’s Swedish death metal influence, they have spewed forth the album Stinking Up The Night. With songs like ‘Chopping Spree’, ‘Heading For Decapitation’ and ‘Coffins Of The Unembalmed Dead’, it’s almost like the good old days when it was fun to read along with the lyrics of an album. For the recording of the album, they even managed to snag REPULSION’s Scott Carlson as well as original GRAVE vocalist and former ENTOMBED band mate Jörgen Sandström on lead vocals for a few songs and also threw in DISMEMBER drummer Fred Estby for a quick backing scream. Nicke was swell enough to take some time during the week of DEATH BREATH’s first show ever to answer a few questions.
Resound: So what is DEATH BREATH? Is it a tribute to your influences? Is it your way of showing nowadays-metal bands what good death metal sounds like? Or is it just a couple guys having fun?
Nicke Andersson: DEATH BREATH is a band that plays death metal the way we know it, that’s all really. The reason we sound like we do is because we don’t have a clue about what death metal should sound like today. And yes, it’s fun.
Resound: Explain the writing process for the album and how long it took you to
create it.
Nicke: I wrote some songs and made demos of them. Robert did the same and we chose the ones we liked the most. ‘Coffins…’ and ‘Cthulhu…’ we did together. I don’t remember exactly but it didn’t take that long to put it together. The riffs just kept coming to me.
Resound: I haven’t had as much fun reading along with the lyrics to an album as I did for Stinking Up The Night since I was a young teenager. They are good and silly like old death metal but they are catchy as hell. Did you just throw a bunch of stuff together or did you write about anything specific?
Nicke: I’m glad you enjoyed the lyrics, though I don’t know if I’d consider our lyrics to be any sillier than other death metal lyrics. I think they suit the music. They’re about overwhelmingly bad breath, zombies, medieval decapitation, psychopaths, and Satan, among a few other things.
Resound: Talk about the artwork you did for the album.
Nicke: I’m useless at Photoshop so I did the rough work with a Xerox machine, a pair of scissors and some glue. Then I had my good friend Henrik Walse who is an art director to help me put it together.
Resound: You have called Stinking Up The Night DEATH BREATH’s debut album. Does that mean there will be more DEATH BREATH in the future?
Nicke: Yes, very much so. We have just finished the basic tracks for a mini album and we’re waiting to put the vocals down. Don’t know when it’ll be released though. We’ve got shit loads of songs, so we’ll probably record the next full-length album some time
next year.
Resound: Your first live show is next week (It was October 26th). What will DEATH BREATH’s live show be like?
Nicke: We just played the show and it was great. Again it’s death metal the only way we know it. It’s hard to tell when you’re in the middle of it I guess. I’m pretty sure we kicked ass. [Editor’s note – besides the DEATH BREATH songs that they played, they also included two REPULSION songs, as well as covers of GBH, DISCHARGE, CELTIC FROST and
BATHORY. Scott Carlson of REPULSION was there to play bass and do vocals, and Jörgen Sandström did vocals for two of his songs off the album.)
Resound: Do you plan to do any touring?
Nicke: No plans at the moment but we’ll see. I’m not against the idea.
Resound: You have said that reading Choosing Death was so much fun and that it brought back many memories. Talk about some of your favorite memories from the good old days of death metal.
Nicke: Being part of the scene back then is one of the better things that happened to me when I was a teenager. It meant a lot. The music was great and I really enjoyed the tape-trading thing.
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