Demiurg interview with

                    Rogga Johansson

                                 By
                                    

                   Merlin Alderslade

1. Much of the focus on death metal in recent years has fallen towards more melodic bands such as In Flames, Soilwork and Arch Enemy. Do you hope to change that?

If you ask me I think we are very melodic too, so I don’t think we´ll change anything. Demiurg is one of the more commercial projects I´ve done so for me this band is almost too catchy and polished. But to answer your question, i don’t think we´ll be bale to change much at all. Easily digested music will always be topping the charts, and band like In Flames will never go out of style as they provide exactly what the mass wants.

2.  You have been together for a relatively short amount of time, and yet seem to be getting a fair bit of recognition already! Why do you think that is?

That’s an easy question to answer, having Dan Swanö and Ed Warby in the band makes people interested in checking us out. Then maybe they keep listening because they like the music and not only because they are familiar with some of the members.

3.  Your line up features both clean vocals and classic ‘growling’ death metal vocals. Why did you decide to feature both styles?

It was just something we haven’t tried before, and having it done by Pär from Satariel is very cool too as he´s one of my fave singers in metal.

4. Your new album is titled ‘The Hate Chamber’. If you could lock one person in a Hate Chamber who would it be?

Why not like 99% of humanity? We´re utterly stupid, and would deserve it. Of course there´s more specific person I´d like to lock up but mentioning them here wouldn’t do anything to further it.

5. You have said yourselves that your style draws influence from acts as diverse as Grave and Bolt Thrower to those of Satyricon and Sepultura. How did those latter black and thrash metal elements creep into your music?

I´ve been playing death metal as well as crust and industrial music for fucken ages. So when the idea of Demiurg came up I though it´d be cool to draw some influences from later stuff that hadn´t been something that inspired me before. Like the groove of later Sepultura and later Satyricon and Khold. Song like Monolithany, Flesh Festival and The Apocalyptic are very inspired by especially Sepultura during their Roots period.

6. You are on a label that features, amongst others, former Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5 and instrumentalist Paul Gilbert, what do you think the advantages are of being on a label that deals with so many different genres?

So far I haven’t discovered any advantage really haha. More the other way around, that we might be too hard to be able to sell to their regular fan base.

7. Talk us through the recording process for the album…

It went like the debut pretty much, I wrote the music and record the guitars at my studio. Then all members contributed with their parts at different studios around Sweden and in Holland. Very simple and cheap but rather boring way of doing it. But the budget didn’t allow us to get together to rehearse or mix the album, so this is the way it had to be done. The result turned out very good anyway, don’t you think?

8.  Will we be seeing Demiurg strut their stuff over here in the UK?

As this is a project more than a band live shows wont be done. Simply based on that Dan and Ed are very busy and we have no tour support either, so getting together to rehearse isn’t something we could get done without huge costs.

9. What can fans expect from your live show?

As mentioned above not much haha.

10. Finally, who has the best death metal exports: Sweden or the US?

Sweden of course. Best selling exports I guess the US have though, Cannibal Corpse and stuff like that seems to still sell and all that new death metal seems to sell too.

Thanks guys!

Interviewed by Merlin Alderslade