Interview with Erik & UNDER THE CHURCH
UNDER THE CHURCH is a fairly young Underground band hailing from Iceland & Sweden and delivering classic Old School Death Metal since 2012. I took the chance to talk with founding member Erik about the band and their latest European tour.
1. Have you ever had any complaints by one of the Christian religions for mis-using the name of their temples?
Erik: Ha! No, not yet… I guess we´re not really on the religious radar. It´s a good name and I think it grows on.
2. In September 2016 you went on tour with Dutch ENTRAPMENT for four dates in Germany and the Netherlands. How come that it was just a very small amount of gigs and how did you pair up with ENTRAPMENT in the first place?
Erik: Well, we would´ve of course wanted the tour to be for several weeks, but the cold hard truth is that we´re all family men in the band (…almost all) and we can´t be away too long from the grim reality of raising kids. But, the next tour we´ll do will definitely be a bit longer, at least I hope so. I´ve been in contact with Michel from ENTRAPMENT for quite a while, and we finally found a period of time that both bands were available so we decided to go for it. ENTRAPMENT is a fantastic band and we will definitely do more touring with them in the future.
3. The tour was called “Horrors From the Tomb“ which had no relation to any of your releases; what´s the occasion behind the slogan?
Erik: Michel came up with the name “Horrors from the tomb” and he also did the tour poster so... My suggestion for the tour was “Nine middle aged men travelling across Europe crammed in a van playing Death Metal”, it sounded much better, but it got voted out by the other members… pfft!
4. How did the tour go after all? Were you satisfied?
Erik: This was our first tour and also our very first live gigs with this line-up of UNDER THE CHURCH, we had only played live once before when we had the release party in Stockholm/ Sweden for the album “Rabid Armageddon” almost a year ago. So I think it went really well all things considered the tour could have gone way worse… haha!
5. Tour life is a microcosm of special sort; being tied together in a small space for a specific amount of time. Do you have any amusements to tell about things that happened during the tour?
Erik: Yes! Eating delicious German gas station bratwurst, band members go missing, lukewarm beer, yelling at airport personal, hiding merch money from other band members, getting seasick… the usual amusements really.
6. The band members of UNDER THE CHURCH are located both on Iceland and Sweden; since working on new material is not a matter of distance - thanks to modern technology and the internet in particular - , rehearsing for playing together on stage is a completely different thing. How did you manage to overcome that obstacle and how did it work out on stage?
Erik: Good question, it´s almost as if we do all the writing backwards, but it kinda works for us. Usually bands meet and write and rehearse the tunes, then they go into a studio and record them. For us we actually write the tunes first, then we record them and then we have to learn to play them together as a band….It sounds pathetic I know, but it´s the only way we can make it happen living all over the place. Actually it takes us less time I think to do it this way, it would probably take much much longer time to get things done otherwise.
7. Except for your singer Erik S., the other members were also part of the „glorious days“ and part of well-known acts MERCILESS and MORBID. How did you manage to win them as band members but also just live musicians at the same time?
Erik: I have collected so many explicit photos of them over the years that I finally could blackmail them to join the band. Sahlstrom is in and has been in bunch of really cool bands like SERPENT OBSCENE, MAZE OF TORMENT, DEATH BREATH, CRUCIFYRE, GENERAL SURGERY so he´s also been in the glory days I would say.
8. The band´s core contains of veterans of the Swedish Death Metal scene; you and Lars have been playing in NIRVANA 2002 which original activities date back to the end of the 1980s/early 1990s. What would you consider the most obvious differences in making music/ the scene nowadays and back then - beyond the technical improvements (internet, etc)?
Erik: I don´t know really, it´s different but still the same? it´s always been hard to get your music across to other people no matter what time one has lived in, it´s a struggle but that goes with the territory. There is of course a million bands now and everybody has access to all kinds of music all the time, which should make for more diversity and better music right? I´m only speaking for myself but I don´t think that´s the case at all; I sadly don´t hear that many new bands playing really good music. Believe me, I listen to as much new stuff as I can but very little of what I hear does anything for me. I´m not interested in “Retro” vs “New stuff” at all, that is a completely pointless mindset to me; I´m only interested if it´s any good. I´m a grumpy old fart I guess.
9. After lifting the band from out the graves in 2012, you came up with a slow but steady and classic release schedule: demo, EP, full-length, single. How satisfied are you with the development of the band and what are the next plans?
Erik: I´m very satisfied but we could have been more effective and have had another full length out by now, but we had to pull the brakes when Mik Annetts and the band parted ways. We had all the music ready and had only to record it when we changed vocalists, so that slowed things down a bit for us. But we´re ALMOST done with the new album actually, we´re starting to mix it now. At the moment we´re going over different sounds for the album, so if we don´t slouch we should have the record out before the summer. Mattias Frisk finished the album cover and artwork last year and basically all tracks were done last year as well so we have to get it going now, the plan is to do some gigs in Sweden and Iceland to coincide with the release, and hopefully do a little tour after that.
