Necrophobic Say ‘Death To All’ Is a ‘Damn Strong Release’

Alongside Marduk, Dissection, Nifelheim and Naglfar, Sweden's Necrophobic are part of the old-school Swedish black/death metal vanguard, and have been carrying the torch for evil heavy metal for decades. Leather, spikes, and fire, Satan, razor-edged melodies, and icy cold spite are the hallmarks of the style, alongside the total "don't give a f---" attitude that many old-school metallers flaunt. Unlike some of their peers, who have faded into shadows of their former venemous selves or in the case of Dissection, burned out altogether, Necrophobic have kept the black flame burning and have continued to create blackened hymns to blasphemy for a whole new generation of extreme metal maniacs. Noisecreep caught up with drummer Joakim to get the scoop on their brand-new album, whose title 'Death to All' leaves the listener with absolutely no illusions about what sort of aural pummeling they're in for.

Necrophobic are one of the true old-school black/death bands left in Sweden; you've been around since the beginning, and never stopped tearing our faces off. What has kept the band going after so many years?

The passion and total dedication to metal music and creating metal music. We are still hungry and we feel that we still develop and still find this as the best thing in life. It is as simple as that..

How would you describe Necrophobic to someone that had never heard your music before?

Necrophobic is a black death metal band that lives and breathes metal 24/7. The music is very easy listened with much melodies and catchiness and can be compared to Dissection. Our stage show is a little more than just a regular band that stands in jeans and t-shirt. Our show is inspired from our old heroes like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and W.A.S.P. as in clothes, attributes and stuff like that.

Regain Records recently released your new record, 'Death to All.' What can you tell me about the new record? How does it differ from your earlier releases, and can you trace your progression as a band from your early days up to this newest chapter in Necrophobic's history?

The new album is very focused and to the core! It's a damn strong release and probably the best we've done. It has gotten great response from both media and fans and if both of them feel great towards our new stuff, it's really something.

The album is also special from another point of view. We bought ourselves our own studio for this album and recorded and produced everything ourselves. We only used a few persons from outside the band as professional co-workers on this task and we are very proud of the result. It was about time, because we have more or less been pretty much involved in the studio work on our previous releases, so now we got total control of everything.

The music itself has of course improved throughout the years, but we have always had the same vision on how our music shall be. It's very important to always have a dark, evil feeling surrounding it all, an atmosphere of something majestic and cold. We also find it very important to have melodies in our music rather than just insane riffing going on all the time. But on the new album, like I said from the beginning, contains of all of that, but in the best possible way. Better than before.