Intervista Witchery (Patrik Jensen)

Long time no see. Actually Witchery are dead hot and ready to strike back, offering good excessive ultraspeed, raw and intense Metal once again. Here they are the gravediggers, in the person of Patrik Jensen, answering the questions of our interview.

Hello, welcome to True Metal. Finally a new album, between a release and another it goes a bit of time. This is because you want to take things slowly and be sure to work well or the music business is an ugly beast and coming out with a new album is getting tougher and tougher? What happened to the band over the last six years?

Yes, finally a new Witchery album! But the long wait since the last one wasn’t caused by needing a lot of time to write good songs or the music industry being indifferent or difficult. It’s been due to that almost all of Witchery’s members have other bands that cause conflicting schedules. Witchery likes to rehearse and write the music together in the rehearsal space, but doing so demands the presence of the band members. This has been the problem for Witchery since the early 2000’s. That’s when Arch Enemy and The Haunted both started to go really good and when Martin Axenrot joined Opeth. Before 2001 we released almost an album per year, but after that it got significantly more difficult to meet up. This was the reason to Martin offering his place in the band for another drummer to step in. You can rehearse without both guitarists being present, or the singer being present or the bass player, but you need to have the drummer there for it to be a real rehearsal. Martin gracefully offering his spot to Chris gave us a lot more time to dedicate to Witchery, and thus the new album came as a result of this newly-found Witchery-time.

How would you introduce “In His Infernal Majesty’s Service” to the audience? What adds or distinguishes this album from your past production?

I think the production on this album is very true to Witchery really sounds like as a band. Unpolished, abrasive, raw.. Daniel Bergstrand did a really great job with the production. Witchery has always been a “to the point”-band. We don’t dabble around with super long intros etc. Im personally a huge fam of early AC/DC and Motorhead, so that “no nonsense” attitude in writing music is important to me. You’ll get to hear a lot of energy and enthusiasm on the album. We value feeling and a sense of purpose in the takes/recordings of our songs more that them being 110% tight and clean. It’s a popular thing with recordings today that you need to make them super sterile and lifeless just so everything tics perfectly along with the computer clock, but we prefer the more organic way of playing and recording music. Id rather look a painting done by a human with faults and errors than look at a painting done by a robot that has no mess and keeps the lines perfectly.

At a lyrical level what are the most interesting aspects of the album? Song titles like “Levay-athan”, or “Zoroast” surely make you a little curious.

Usually Witchery lyrics are short horror stories, but on this album I have taken a step towards writing more about what is happening in the real world. The song Nosferatu is such a song. “Pitchforks brandished in an age of distrust” is a line taken from that song. It was written and recorded before the notion of “fake news” became a commonly known term. Its about lies and distrust sweeping across countries and across borders causing people to become enraged with each other over false premises. And it spreads like a “plague”, hence the reference to Nosferatu, who in the old movie travels to London (I believe?) to bite/infect more people. Levay-athan is about religious people in general and how surprisingly little grip they have of reality (I mean, intelligent design over evolution? Mankind has only been around for 6,000 years? Since Adam and Eve… Come on..). The lyrics for Zoroast on the other hand are not connected to reality, more than there was a religion by that name a very long time ago (actually the proto-religion for Judaism, Christianity and Islam).

The textual aspect (together with artworks and music, of course) has always seemed very important to me regarding Witchery’s universe. I personally think that the band has a sarcastic and ironic attitude that many other bands do miss. This makes your profile quite unique What do you think about that?

I think we might have had that more in the beginning, but that has been left behind more and more. It might have made the band unique, but it also was in the way of people taking the band seriously. We might not be a super active band, but we are super serious about or music. So, we have left that behind, Id say more that 15 years ago (although, in Witchery’s time universe, that’s just two albums ago haha).

It is expected some Italian live date?

I would certainly hope so! We have played a few times in Italy, albeit a long time ago, but we certainly want to go play there again. If anyone reads this and has any connections with getting us on shows or festivals, please help us out!

How have adapted the new band members Christofer Barkensjö and Angus Norder? What was their contribution to the band, in your opinion?

Well, apart from both Chris and Angus making it possible to rehearse regularly again, I think Angus’ voice in incredible. I think he could carry whole albums on his shoulders alone just because of his voice! Chris a very similar style to Witchery’s first drummer Mique, so with him in the band we suddenly sound like we did back on “Restless and Dead”. I enjoy that extra feeling of energy in the band, so I think both Angus and Chris fit perfectly into the band!

Is fairly widely believed that your best works are the first two album, “Restless & Dead”, and “Dead, Hot & Ready”. What do you think about this statement?

That’s absolutely fine by me. I have a few favorite albums by certain groups that do not fit with the general conception of what their best albums are, so “to each his own”, I say. I think my favorite Witchery album might be either Symphonies for the Devil of the new album (In His Infernal Majesty’s Service). Those two albums you mention have also been out the longest time, and as such have had the longest time to make an impression with the listener. I think that our new album will become such a favorite too given a little time.

Something else to add at the last minute?

Just that we want to play Italy!!!! haha

Thanks for your time and good luck for each future step!

Thank you very much for you time and support! See you in Italy!

Interview by Marco Tripodi