With "Reign Of The Reaper" Swedish epic doomsters Sorcerer recently released a superb fourth full-length album (read review here). I had the great pleasure talking to vocalist Anders Engberg via Zoom about the differences to its predecessor and the reasons for that and of course about the band, their influences and dreams and not to forget the album in general. Enjoy reading!

Michael

Hi Anders, how are you doing?

I'm doing great, actually. Riding on the waves of success (laughs).

Congratulations for "Reign Of The Reaper"! I hadn't expected such a strong album by you after I was a little bit disappointed with "Lamenting Of The Innocent". How glad are you with the receptions so far?

We're very very happy. We felt that we had a strong album but you never know. As you said, you weren't that happy with Lamenting Of The Innocent and we thought that it was great (laughs). So you never know but we always try to do our very best and only the best songs go on our albums and we're super happy with it.

Well, it wasn't a bad album at all but when I listened to it I thought, hm… something is missing. You have tightened the songs pretty much and didn't use these overlong parts anymore. How much was this a reaction to the fans' feedback to "Lamenting"?

A little bit but we also wanted to progress. When we go into the next album we think about if we are gonna change the cover artist, we gonna do some new things on the cover, do some other stuff with the lyrics and get some contemporary influences in music – so we always think it through. We always write music from the heart so to speak but this time we wanted to do a shorter album like in old-school format – A and B-side with a maximum of 50 minutes. That is what fits on a vinyl record to get quality. That was our main objective and as you said we have some pretty long tracks. I think the longest is like 6:40 or something (6:34; M.) so there are longer songs but not in the way we write sometimes with 8 or 9 minutes with a lot of instrumental parts and stuff like that. We actually had to cut down a few songs to make them fit into the format but in the end I feel that it's a really nice mix of songs that have different tempo and are different in style. I'm very happy with the finished result.

Apart from tightening the songs you have incorporated much more epic, catchy and rousing elements in tracks like the title track, 'Morning Star' or my favorite track 'Break Of Dawn'. Was this intentional or did you add these parts gradually?

When we started with our comeback album In The Shadow Of The Inverted Cross, most of the songs and ideas were written by Johnny Hagel, our original bass player. He's still around in the background. He writes stuff still but he doesn't play live anymore. So when we progressed from the first album into the second one, Peter Hallgren also started writing material for the album. Now we were three people writing music and for Lamenting Of The Innocent Justin Biggs, the bass player came in and wrote some stuff. We're always kind of progressing in the way we write. We don't think about "oh now we gonna do something contemporary that we will like"….it's not like that. We always write what we like and some of these songs that are on the album maybe should have been longer if we let us evolve in the same direction that we did before but we wanted to kind of progress a little bit and also I think that we wanted to widen our audience a little bit. With shorter songs maybe it's also good that you gonna be played on radio and stuff like that. Of course we think about that but we don't sacrifice our music writing to do it.

You already mentioned Johnny Hagel – he is listed as "musical director" and "a shadow member" on metal-archives...

He is the founding member of the band so he owns the spirit of the band. He helps us out with different stuff in the background, record label stuff, web page and so on. He wants to be involved but just this much. And he comes up with some ideas – I think 'Reign Of The Reaper' is his original idea but it doesn't sound like anything like it. He started that embryo of that song. It feels good to have his compass for the direction what we do. I've been around since the beginning also but we need to progress when we write music. That's the short story about Johnny. He's a good friend of mine and he's a good friend of the other guys.

Apart from the Tony Martin-era in Black Sabbath, I read that Manowar has a huge influence on you.

Yeah, at least for me but I can't answer for the rest of the guys (laughs). I really love Manowar.

So what do you think about their latest single with the absolutely not-matching German title?

They've seen better days but you can't erase the legacy that they got. I think they were really cool until "Kings Of Metal" but the best one is "Battle Hymns" I think. That's what Manowar is for me and when people relate to this in some of the songs, I don't know – maybe it is the choirs or the epic that they compare to Manowar. We are more melodic I think and more catch phrasing than they were.

Talking about the lyrics - while "Lamenting Of The Innocent" was about the witch hunts back in the 16th and 17th century, do we have another concept album with "Reign Of The Reaper"?

It's just coincidence really but when we started writing for this album we had like 15 musical ideas. We didn't have any title or anything. We were also in communication with the new guy that was gonna make the artwork for the album but somehow our time schedule didn't fit. So when we started writing the music and the melodies we still didn't have a cover art to match with the lyrics. So we panicked a little bit. We had to find this one work that we can use on the next album and we had to find something new to draw ideas from. We started looking at fantasy pages on the internet and it was our manager who found this image which actually became the album cover. He said that this was really cool and we fell in love with it. Then the detective work started to get to know who's done it. It turned out to be a guy in Sweden, 1 ½ hours from Stockholm up in the north. We asked him if we could use it and he agreed. That was a perfect match for what we wanted to do and what we feel where we are now. It's a good image to show what Sorcerer is all about. When we started writing lyrics we drew from that and I think because there is the reaper on the cover, a lot of the lyrics came to be about death in different perspectives. Death in battle, death in dying of old age…I together with Conny (Welén; M.) we write the melodies for the tracks and we always have some bullshit lyrics for the tracks. I have to sing something to present it to the other guys and some of that bullshit lyrics are actually pretty good so we used that. Justin our bass player who is Canadian, he is a really good lyricist. He takes these small bits and pieces of what we've done and writes the final lyrics. And that's the last thing that's finished before we go to the studio and record the album.

You have a special CD edition where you can get the "Reverence" EP. Why did you decide to record the EP?

When we did the EP, we did it like a break in between the old and the new album. First we wanted to do one cover song. We looked for a pop or kind of odd song first but we couldn't agree on a song to do. So we said instead "okay, let'́s do something from bands that we like". Each band member had to pick four songs and then we voted and it came out to be four songs. It was supposed to be a pandemic video production where you stand in your kitchen and play your instrument. We started to do the drums first and then Peter and Kristian started to do the guitars and when we got it back for doing the vocals it sounded so good that we thought that we have to do it in a proper way. We actually quit that idea of doing a live thing and recorded a proper EP. The songs were picked because we love them (laughs). That period of the 70s and 80s is where we come from.

I was pretty surprised that you covered Ozzy Osbourne on the EP and not Candlemass!

It was important to show where our influences come from. We already interacted with Johan (Längquist; M.) on Lamenting Of The Innocent so people already knew that we were really big Candlemass fans. Also the logo and the old English it's homage to Candlemass all the way.

So which of these bands would you choose to play with if you had a time machine?

I would love to have played with Black Sabbath, of course. Tony Martin has been a big influence on me and all those albums that he sang on along with the Dio-era. I'm not too fond of Ozzy-era in Black Sabbath although I love him as a solo artist. That's strange but that's how I feel. I think the Black Sabbath-eras are better without Ozzy. He brought better music on his own. I also had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Tony here in Stockholm together. We sang 'The Shining' together and I choired for him because he lost his high range and I did all the higher parts for him. That was pretty cool!

And which actual band would you like to play with? At the moment there are some new cool epic (doom) metal bands active like Thronehammer, Below, Crypt Sermon…..

I would love to tour with our label brother in Below. That would be really cool. Candlemass, Sorcerer and Below – that would be a nice trio.

Do you have some plans to do some gigs?

Of course! More than ever. We're going to play in Poland with our brothers in Doomocracy from Greece early next year. Then there is a festival on 20th of April in Lünen, Germany and we're going with Blind Guardian on a Northern Europe tour in Oslo, Gothenburg, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. In March we are having a show in Malmö…yeah, a lot of shows! And hopefully there will be some more festivals, too.

The last words belong to you!

We're so happy of the album and how the reception of it has been from journalists and from people that are writing us each and every day telling us how great it is. We can't wait to get out and play it for you live. We're not a touring band but we will do for sure about 20 shows and we try to go where it is most convenient because of the economic side. Europe and Scandinavia for sure and we will see how it works with England and US.

What has Johnny Cash to do with hemorrhoids? Well, about this and of course about the need of their latest EP "Panic Prayer" released by Inhuman Condition (read review here). I've talked with their vocalist / drummer Jeramie Kling in very spontaneous interview via Zoom. Check out their records if you still haven't heard them, this is really some old school death metal done by really enthusiastic and grounded guys! Enjoy reading! 

Michael

Jeramie, you just released a new EP with Inhuman Condition called "Panic Prayer" on which are three new songs, a Blue Öyster Cult cover and four live songs. Why did you decide to release this one? I mean, you just released your last full-length in 2022 and after this the cover song-EP with all the cover songs from "Fearsick"?

Yeah, we just put them all together because the fans were just like "please put these all in one plate" and we said yeah! That wasn't the point but okay if you guys are interested and so fuck it, let's do a bootleg. So we just bootlegged our own shit, it is what it is, here we are! So why? Man, I don't know. Taylor and I we're absolutely crazy. I say it all the time, there is like a screw broken in the on-position. It's not like hard to do it, it's not like it's easy but the creative bug is always flowing, it's always there. So we've released "Fearsick" and it was rolling a couple of months and I said a couple of new tunes would be cool. So we said maybe two new songs and maybe a cover, I don't know. So we jammed on something and basically wrote all of the final credits right then. Immediately after that we wrote "Civilized Holocaust" and we were like "wow, this is cool!". When I came home from the gym one day and just heard the Blue Öyster Cult song and was like "damn, if we did that in d-standard with nasty guitars and we just out on this and all of that that could be like fun. This could be a fucking killer!". So I went home and asked Taylor what he thought about "Godzilla" and he said that he'd love that. I mean that's kind of what happens, like I'll have an idea, he'll have an idea, we'll wanna run by each other and the other person goes "let's do it!". Green lightning. There is not much red lightning that we do to each other. And we said maybe instead of two songs and a cover, why don't we give a little bit more and put some live stuff on it? So we started scrubbing for some audio and we found some pretty killer ones and we settled on that. So we recorded all my drums, all the vocals, bass, guitar, everything. Then my grandmother passed away and I flew up to Michigan and her service was on a Tuesday at 11 AM. My family and I had a meeting with the preacher before and my grandmother never had no iconography around her house. She never talked about being religious and if she had faith, she kept that to herself and never pushed it on to anybody else. She didn't even have a picture of Jesus in her house and I've been over there a lot. There was never anything. So the preacher said that he wouldn't preach and what do we know about people who say that they don't ever do something? They pretty much just gonna do that. So he was talking like my grandmother was like holding Christ's hand her whole life and on the other side she doesn’t need her faith anymore because on the other side it will be redundant and  I became pretty mad about that. At that moment I wrote the entire chorus for "Panic Prayer" within a split second. I had a copy / paste pleasantries cause that's all the shit is. You're just saying whatever about you doesn't mean it, you're just saying it. After I flew home I also wrote all the drums and the whole bridge is very complex. If you listen to it - it's really tech. It's one of the most tech things that we've done so far.  So the day I came back home I told Taylor that we had to do another song, I tracked the drums in 30 minutes. Then the next day we left to go with Umbilicus, Taylors 70s rock band with Paul from Cannibal Corpse and did three shows straight in a row. But I had to puke these drums out immediately. And the next week we  watched "Escape From L.A." where at the end of the movie the president starts panicking because Cuba is invading and the guy from L.A. is threatening to blow up everything and he says "I have to go pray" and leaves the room and so Taylor said "wow, he said it like a panic prayer". So we had the title and it all came synonymously came in. And so Taylor wrote the guitars for it and they are so fantastic, the song is so aggressive! Especially we write the drums first and turn it over. We did "Tyrantula" like that as well. I wrote all the drums for it just with the metronome and I had an idea of how I wanted the vibe. And Taylor came up with an amazing slab of guitar riffs that hit me back (laughs). That's the reason why the EP got three new songs instead of only two ones.

So what about the "Civilized Holocaust"? Was it written with the impression of the war in Ukraine or is it more some fantasy lyrics that you deal with?

No, not with the Ukrainian war but if it's taken that way then, cool, because music is meant to be expressive. I tend to write about societal topics, people who I notice, who everybody notices. We're now coming out of dark ages to where we have names for, people who are sociopaths, narcissists, we understand what gaslighting is. When I was 20 I had no clue about any of that, when I was in my teens, I had no road map, no idea, I just met all these people and got fucked over (laughs). I mean I'm a nice guy, I'm trusting, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt so folks like that will take advantage of folks like me (laughs). I just write from a place of like "fuck yourself". If that comes across as like the situation is going on with Ukraine and Russia, okay…I mean it fits anywhere. It fits in your job, it fits in your family. It's just the time to start over, it's just a cycle. If you just see so many around you, you eventually come to a point where you say "I'm good, I don't want any more of this! Fuck right off, there's the door, get out of here!" (laughs).

Now that you've mentioned narcissists, what do you think about the process against Donald Trump? I remember we talked about him the last time, too.

Well, it's the same shit. It's a joke. It's television, not even good television. It's entertainment and unfortunately there are our leaders and it's whole-heartedly embarrassing on both sides. Biden isn't apt and on the other side is Trump and he isn't apt in another way. Trump illuminated things like he opened the door and let us all see what was going on behind the curtain and they shut the curtain. Now we know that what do we do with that information? Dug, dismiss, cover and hide? This is your decision! (laughs) It's a really scary world. I don't create for massive financial gain, I don't create because I go out for a show and people want to take photos with me or get stuff signed by me. I don't do it for that. I'm just a creative light bulb and it just happens and everything else is a byproduct. I love meeting people and I love taking photos and signing and especially when someone's says "hey this song moved me like that". That's what happened to me with The Absence that people telling me they were in a war and they put "Riders Of The Plague" on in their tank before they went in and were blasting cities and taking down buildings and shooting bad guys, whatever the term "bad guys" means cause that's all subjective, right? So these guys told me that this music really got them and thanked me, that's really touching. That's the point - to get somebody through a dark moment or illuminate something for someone. That's perfect and that's the real reason for doing it. Everything else is just secondary stuff.

Well, I totally agree with you – this should be the biggest reason for making music!

For me it is. Look what I got out about my grandmother. That just came out and now it's done. I had an emotional feeling about it and then I got to put it into something. Now everybody can hear it and if it means something else to some of them – perfect! That's exactly what it's supposed to mean. The actual and true intentions don't really matter. I mean "The Ring Of Fire" was in a hemorrhoid commercial for fucks sake! I mean you know that Johnny Cash wasn't talking about hemorrhoids but you pair that with the hemorrhoid commercial, haha! If you want it to fit and it means that, well then it means that, haha!

"Ring Of Fire" – what a cool metaphor, haha!!

Yeah, it was on daytime television and it was "Burn, burn, burn, the ring of fire…" and I was like come on….who the fuck authorized this? Johnny Cash stated "yeah, that's cool, we use that for this"? Holy shit, haha!!!

Coming back to Inhuman Condition and having a look at the covers – you still have that evil guy on the cover. Do you think it could become such an iconic figure like Eddie for Iron Maiden or the Rattlehead for Megadeth are?

Well, the kind of the way the band works is like lightning strikes. If it hits and something makes sense then - cool. When I was tracking the guitars I was sitting at my studio just as right now. Taylor was tracking his guitars and while he was tracking, we're doing like whole long takes and I had like three minutes to whatever, so I'm sitting there and started drawing with the pencil and drew some really scary looking stick figures. The third time I drew it, it looked pretty close "Fearsick" looks right now. I took a picture of it, dumped it on my wife's iPad, did some digital water coloring over it and got some color schemes going on. Then I sent it over to Dan (Goldsworthy; M.) and told him "I think the Rat God guy is gonna be here, I think he's gonna be pulling some bodies". I originally had him with a little wheelbarrow. Dan is so great, he homeruns that fucking shit every time! So he sent back the sketches and we were totally flashed. Something similar happened with the EP. Waking up in the morning I just had flashed of seeing like all black and then just like sank in a picture of I guess was the Rat God guy behind some blinds. And then I had like a street corner and drew it like a further away view. Again it was very rudimentary stuff but enough to get the point across. And Dan just could take and run with it and with what he came back for the EP was absolutely impressive for me. This cover rules! It more minimum, more of a focus yet none because there is no focus, it is so genius. So Dan thanked us for making it all black because it was his original idea, too. He was taken completely out of his comfort zone without having so many details nor a background and he was happy that he had to change his way to think about it. So I don't know, there are some other ideas and that does maybe incorporate the Rat God guy but maybe less of him. Maybe he's still there, maybe it's someone else. We don't really know, we're just kind of lighting our strike and it will tell us what to do.

You are working pretty fast usually so what about a new full-length album?

We actually have nothing written. But that doesn't mean that it could come like in an afternoon or like three afternoons. We were just talking that it would be really cool to make something new, maybe a new single or whatever. We have lots of stuff happening and it kinda comes. Something is itching and burning to go and do that. So it's there- I don't know if we're gonna do it next summer because that would be an incredible break. It might but I don't think it will be. We didn't intend to set up like this pace, it just kind of been coming. While some of it takes effort and work it's no force. It just kind of been boiling out. A bit of a break and some touring would have been great, too (laughs).

So what about touring? Do you have some plans for it? Maybe in Germany or a European tour?

We were actually talking with an agency over there and we have some stuff happening over here in the States. I mean it's obviously much easier over here but it looks good. Maybe next summer we'll see some shows over there. We got our fingers crossed and a lot of irons in the fire so there's lot of talks already. I hope it works, I love Germany. It's a beautiful country, amazing fans, even better sausages and Schnitzel. I don't drink beer but I love non-alcoholic Weizenbier, that's amazing!