German Thron worked constantly to get a good reputation in the black metal scene and with their latest album "Dust" which was released in 2023 (read review here) they finally got the attention they truly deserve. This album was (at least for me) one of the black metal highlights last year and it’s still great to listen to when I give it a spin in my stereo. After having contact for a long time writing some messages with their guitarist PVIII, we finally met at "The Heretic March" to talk about the band. Enjoy reading and sorry for that massive delay in the release!

Michael

Hi, can you introduce Thron to our readers?

Sure. The band started in 2015 with me as guitarist. I have played guitar since 1989 and have always been in some rock, death or black metal bands since then. Around 2010 I was completely fed up with metal and was into some other music stuff. I also listen to prog and stuff like this. 2015 I was hot for metal again and I have a home studio where I also produced for some bands. So I recorded some riffs on my own and showed it to one of my best friends, the actual Thron vocalist, and he wanted to put some vocals on that. So we had these demos and I sent it around and all of a sudden we had a record deal with an Italian label, Clavis Secretorvm, and so we thought that we should form a band out of that. We asked some friends of ours for help and so we did our first gigs. This all wasn't intentional and spontaneous.

The last album was really a killer one. Did "Dust" help you to gain more popularity?

Yes, for sure. Though popularity is always a little bit of a difficult term because people imagine that you are present everywhere and you are everybody's darling. This isn't the case but we got quite a boost that some more people care about us, buy our albums and that we got more offers to play live. Not that we are getting daily or weekly gig requests but it got more.

…and you had a gig together with Carcass. How was that?

Great! Carcass is a band from my youth and I saw them back in 1994 the first time live with "Heartwork". The promoter who did the show did it just a half-an-hour drive from my home in Switzerland. It was at "Kiff" which is probably the coolest location in Switzerland and I know the guy for many years. So he told me that he is doing Carcass and that he would like to have us as support.

I know that you are working in a social service and so do some others in your band. Isn't it a contradiction to work in this profession on the one hand and to play black metal on the other?

Yes (laughs). I even work for the Catholic Church. It is a contradiction and it is one I can fully live with. I can separate both quite well. I think that I have a lot of characteristics that I have in music and in the band which I can also bring into my job. And there are also a lot of skills I need for my job I also can bring into the band. I can organize things well, I like structure and both at work and in the band it depends a lot on me. I don't have to pray at work and have no point of contact except that it is the employer. I work with fantastic people who also listen to metal or punk (laughs). Of course you can argue about the institution of Church – I am not a Christian but an Atheist – but I focus on my clients who need my help and so I don't give a shit who is the employer. My clients with whom I have worked with for 20 years need me and are dependent on me and I help them in their daily routine.

Do you have a certain black metal philosophy in the band?

No. The term black metal is…well, some say that it is black metal if it has a Satanic background so the terms are quite different when it comes to the meaning. I mean, we’re all Atheists in the band and the music has priority for us. Lyrics are important, too but our style isn't dependent from that. They shall convey certain feelings but we aren't Satanists or Occultists. We don't have neither a religious nor a political agenda, we just do what we are feeling without thinking too much about that.

And provoking isn't also that thing anymore, I guess. You had "Abysmal" cover which was a little bit ambiguous…

Well, actually I noticed it first after the reactions to this came. Then I thought "oh, yes!". The picture already existed and I was attracted by it. The colors and everything and so I thought that I'd like to have it as an album cover. After that I was told that this was a vagina… A lot of lyrics on the album dealt with that your body is the temple for you personally and this I actually associated with the cover and didn't intend any provocation with this.

Talking about the influences from the 90s that you have, we already talked about this before, they are much more to hear than on the previous albums – Sentenced, old Paradise Lost and all these bands. Do you think that you will continue quoting these influences in the future?

I still cannot say this. I have some thoughts on the new record and this means not that the album has to have a certain sound. But I collect ideas and out of this it develops a certain direction sometimes. The ideas I have at the moment tend toward the direction that it sounds a little bit more chaotic and not that accessible like in the past. But these are just some tendencies. I am not adverse to anything but I like it if you don't repeat yourself too much. We are at a point with album #4 where we can say that this or that sounds like Thron but I still want to challenge our sound and don't want to rest on what we do. As a musician there is always this thin red line between evolution because you don't want to repeat the same shit every day and on the other side there are the fans who get upset about that. I was always the guy with all my bands who said that I especially have to be at peace with myself. Fans are important but I do music especially for myself. The creative process of writing music is extremely important for me, sometimes even more important than playing gigs. This is great, too but to act out and having written a song at home just on my own is great, almost like having sex (laughs). I don't want to describe priorities there. If I get the idea to incorporate some jazz parts, some other guys in the band may say that I am weird and maybe I will consider what they're saying or maybe not. I don't want to be limited. Of course I know that I cannot write a hip hop record with the name Thron but at the same time I demand from the listener that he gets into this. If he thinks that isn't Thron anymore, I don't want to listen to them anymore, that's fine so just listen to our old records. We aren't dependent from this just like other bands who have to earn their money with their music. I had this in the past with one band that got the money from that. There it was always said that you can't do this or that and I don't want to get into this kind of situation.

So this means that you can comprehend the new Dust Bolt album, too?

Well, comprehend…I have heard two songs so far and I am honestly not a modern thrash fan. I prefer black thrash like Slaughter Messiah or brutal thrash like Dark Angel or Demolition Hammer. This typical Bay Area thrash I was never really into so when I read the news about Dust Bolt I thought that it is great what they are doing. I listened to the songs and it isn't really my cup of tea but I think it is great that they are doing what they are doing now. If people yell that they should rename themselves – what's the use of it? The band wants to do this and it was the same with my old band Fear My Thoughts. We did some melodic death albums and then our former singer quit. So we thought if we should search for another one who sounds similar to him or do we use the chance and do what we really want to do for several years now. So we picked out a highly melodic vocalist and did some prog-alternative rock like Porcupine Tree. The reviews were all great but our fans said that we should have done this under another name. We said that it is our name and we can do whatever we want with it (laughs). Or Carcass with "Swansong" for instance. They did it because they wanted to play this kind of music. Entombed with "Wolverine Blues" also! They all wanted to go further more and not do ten times the same record. This certain spirit I felt with "Dust". The 90s, especially the second half of them, were musically very difficult for me. I grew up with thrash and death metal in 90/91, also black metal in 93/94 and from that point on a lot of bands started to experiment. Death metal was dead, black metal was over its zenith and I personally found a lot of things some bands did really awful but some bands brought that what they did much more forth – Edge Of Sanity, Tiamat with "Wildhoney" which is a really very important record for me, Sentenced with "Amok" or "North From Here" – everything later became too gothic for me. Band that dared something, this was a thing I also wanted to do. Nowadays there are bands like Chapel Of Disease or Slaegt who try to discover something new.

Sounds good, I am excited about what will come out. Do you stay at Listenable for the next album?

Yes, we signed a new contract for several albums. They wanted to keep us on their roster and pushed us quite well. We got super support from them. I remember from my old bands that you got the studio paid back from the label in the early 2000s but now you maybe get some money but you have to pay most of the efforts on your own. Listenable still is a label which is very old school and pays the studio for you. I know contracts from other bands that have to pay money to get signed. And after that you have to pay the studio, press and everything else, too (laughs). We also got other offers but Listenable did the best offer.

Is there any schedule for the new album?

Probably the label will ask sometime because they are used to us doing an album every two years (laughs). But I must say that I want to take a little bit more time for that, also in my private life there are many things to deal with…usually I already have written new songs when the album is released. But not this time. As I said, I have some ideas and it is good to have this time span between release and writing new stuff now. But more I cannot say. Maybe we will record a new album in a year, or one and a half years but I don't want to determine anything right now.

Do you have any tour plans for this year?

Well, since we all have families with children, this is quite tricky. But our vocalist is going on tour with Swiss Malphas. They also play black metal but a little bit rougher in the Watain direction. They are a little bit younger and also play Party.San and want to be on the road. I want to play cool shows, but no rush! Maybe there will be a mini tour with The Spirit and one with Craft. Our drummer is pretty networked and so this might happen. But this would be all just weekend gigs. But we do some festivals like Summer Breeze, Hellfest and a festival in Vienna. It is fine for us to be on the road for two or three days but that's it.

Last question – what are you looking forward to most this year?

Well, playing Hellfest for the first time and Baden in Blut where we perform the second time will be cool. Summer Breeze we do also for the second time will also be great.

If you thought that melodic-death metal already offered everything that was possible in this genre than obviously you haven’t listened to Darkane yet. Brutal music at times even going into an extreme blast combined with almost jazz-like arrangements and the unlimited musicianship of the members creates a unique atmosphere almost unheard of in any kind of band out there. You will not sing their songs on the street and not because they are lame, but rather so complex you won’t be able to remember a full song until you listen to it at least a few times. And that’s better than good, enough of nice melodies, it’s time for some serious ass kicking. It seems that Christofer Malmstrom (guitar) has the same point of view, so without wasting any more of your precious time, here is what he had to say...

Chris


First off, congratulations on a great second album, "Insanity". It seems that the reactions are mostly positive? How does that make you feel?

Thank you. It feels really great. Most critics are very positive; there are some people that prefer our first album but most of them like "Insanity" better and of course that feels great.

This is your second album and some people might still not know Darkane. Could you give a brief history of the band?

We started in 1998. Before Darkane, for seven years, three of us (me, the drummer and bass player) had a band called Agretator which played very technical music. During those seven years we ran out of inspirations and Peter and I decided to start a new band. We formed Darkane, in summer of 1998 we recorded our first album "Rusted Angel" and now our second one "Insanity".

What happened within the band that Lawrence Mackrory left Darkane?

He has his own band called Forcefeed and he wanted to focus on that band. When we recorded "Rusted Angel" he told us that he wanted to be on the tour with "Rusted Angel" but we should look for another singer for the next album.
So we asked our friend Andreas Sydow if he wanted to try for Darkane so he did and it worked out pretty well for us and he’s permanent member of the band now.

Are you satisfied with War Music’s work and promotion? You added Century Media and Nuclear Blast to the list of your promoting labels.

Well, for "Rusted Angel" wasn’t that much but now since we also have Century Media and Nuclear Blast they do all the promotion and everything looks great.

It’s almost three years since your debut. What took you so long to release "Insanity"?

First of all, it was quite hard for us to find a good time to enter the studio because Daniel Bergstrand - our producer, has a lot of bands; he’s booked all the time. Then we started to deal with all the labels like Century Media and Nuclear Blast, and when all the papers were signed, we recorded "Insanity". We were ready to release it a long time ago but labels wanted to promote it quite hard and that took another few months.

Rusted Angel and Insanity sound great, is that why you’re sticking to Daniel Bergstrand’s Dug Out Production instead of using Abyss or Fredman like most of your peers do?

Yeah, most of the bands use Fredman, but we don’t want to be like most of them [laughs]. Of course Daniel Bergstrand produces a lot of bands too, but most of them are bands that we really like. Strapping Young Lad or Meshuggah are our biggest influences and that’s why we wanted to be with him. We also feel that Daniel is a part of Darkane sound, he has a lot of ideas and he’s not afraid of experimenting with vocals and things like that. And we totally trust him and his talent.

Ok, on both albums you use the additions of orchestra and choir. How did you come up with that idea?

We were on the tour in Europe with Marduk, also from Sweden, and they had a very cool intro, music from the movie Omen. We thought that was really cool, but we also thought that it would be even better if we wrote our own intro. So we tried that. We hired some musicians from a symphonic orchestra and asked few friends to sign in the choir. That was cool and quite an odd thing to do.

Do you write the notes for them? I bet they don’t listen to metal every day...

Peter and I wrote the intro and I wrote the outro. Both of us listen to classical music a lot, I studied classical music, jazz, music theory and things like that so it was quite natural for us to do since we’ve been into it for so long. Although it took us a few days to write that intro cause we never did anything that big before.

You are one of the songwriters in Darkane, how do you go about writing new material? Do you have a specific process that you go through?

Well, yeah you can say that. I write guitar riffs and Peter does the rhythm section and then once a week we get together and we put our ideas into a song. If he has a cool rhythm he will ask me to add a melody or I would ask for killer drum’s parts to my riffs. I think we work very well with each other and that’s basically the way we write our songs.

Are you 100% satisfied with this album or would you change something if you had a chance?

I’m 90% satisfied. You always find something that you could do better. The sound of this album is very big but it’s not as brutal as it was on "Rusted Angel". On "Rusted Angel" we recorded four rhythm guitars and on "Insanity" we recorded just two. Of course you can hear more what’s going on in guitars department much better on "Insanity" but it’s not that brutal any more. A like it but I think the sound could be a little more brutal.

I’m sure there’ll be a bonus tracks on the Japanese release. What is it going to be?

It will be the live version of the song Convicted from "Rusted Angel". It was recorded in our hometown when Lawrence was still singing with us.

How is the underground in Sweden, is everyone familiar with each other? Are you in contact with other metal bands, and bands who play different kinds of music?

We know In Flames, Soilwork, Meshuggah but it’s not really an underground [laughs]. We don’t hang out though, ‘cause we live far away from each other and only festivals, tours or things like that give us the opportunity to meet new bands. Although we live in this same town with Soilwork...

You guys have to be very good friend of Soilwork, so many side projects feature members of both bands (Terror 2000, Defaced).

Yeah, you can say we’re almost like brothers.

With US distribution by Century Media, any chance we'll see you guys on tour in the States? Does Darkane have any tour plans at the moment?

Yes, we have plans, but I don’t think Century Media has any right now [laughs]. I would really like to come to the States, it’s one of my biggest dreams but Century wants to know the album sales figures before they bring us over. I really hope someday they will but nothing is planned yet.

Whose face is on the cover of Insanity?

I don’t know who it is. It’s not one of us. [laughs]

What are your expectations for Darkane in the future?

I really hope to play as many live shows as possible. That’s what I really like. I’m more live person, I don’t like being in the studio. I just hope to record good CDs so people will like it and buy it so we can go on with what we do.

Are there any bizarre stories of the band you would like to share with us?

Well, there is one with our guitarist Klas... One night he was very drunk in the studio and he fell, broke his head and passed out. So, we got him into the hospital and the doctor wanted to shave his head because he had a really bad cut. So, Peter and the rest of the guys had to almost beg the doctor to save his hair ‘cause he plays in the band and it’s one of the most important things to him. Of course Klas woke up next day and had no idea what happened and where he was... Maybe it’s not that cool story anymore but for sure it was then! [laughs]

Your album has just been released but have you already written any new songs? If so, in what way do they differ from the "old" stuff if at all?

We don’t have any complete songs yet, only some ideas. The only thing I can say we won’t be less brutal and we won’t slow down. We’ll try to be as brutal as possible but still with melody...

What has been your favorite release so far this year?

I didn’t listen to too many new releases yet, but so far definitely Soilwork’s "Predator’s Portrait" and it’s not because we are good friend. [laughs] They are really good musicians and this album is just great.

How often do you practice on the guitar?

I did practice a lot when I was in school, instead of studying. [laughs] I used to practice 6-7 hours a day before I turned twenty but now it’s about hour or two a day.

What do you do for a living outside of Darkane?

I work in school but not as a teacher. [laughs] It’s more like a teacher’s help. All the guys outside the band have regular jobs. From music we get enough money to buy new guitars or stuff like that, that’s all.

Thanks for your time! Is there anything you would like to add?

I hope that all metalheads in the States will check out the "Insanity"... I just want to say that it takes a few tries until people understand this material. Yesterday I had interviews with European magazines and almost all of them told me that it took them almost 20 listens until they fully understood it. So, be patient... [laughs]