All About The Girls

"We like to smoke cigarettes and drink vodka and sleep with girls… Everything is about the girls in the end.”

According to Deathstars' vocalist Whiplasher, the Scandinavian metal scene has its priorities all screwed up. He reckons that the bands in the region are too focused on competing with all the other bands from the region, they've lost sight of, in the end, what really matters about rock'n'roll.

“In Sweden, everybody wants to be the coolest. It's really pathetic, and it gets to the point where it's boring. I really don't like that part of the music industry. Everyone here is trying to be 'true'. If you play black metal you have to be satanists, or if you play rock'n'roll you have to wear just denim, and we try not to be loyal to any genre. It should be influences coming in from all different stuff.”

The vocalist from Sweden's premier glam/goth/industrial/theatrical black metal outfit thinks that Deathstars managed to avoid that stifling need for authenticity by approaching their music with a certain degree of playfulness. “We have one foot in the graveyards of Scandinavia, and the other foot on the Sunset Strip of LA,” the singer jokes.

“There's so many bands in Sweden, everyone you know is in a band and most of them are pretty successful. So when people go to a show here, it's like they're the music police. Everyone is sceptical, cynical, blah blah blah. And then some place like Australia is different for us then because it's more free, it's not like there's bands everywhere and there's not that very elitist attitude.”

Discussing the band's upcoming jaunt down under, Whiplasher reckons that their Australian fanbase, comparatively small compared to that in Europe, affords the band more of that freedom they love; freedom to be themselves and do whatever they want to do.

“We're a very, very small band in Australia. So that makes it more interesting for me I guess… Also I'm just pretty amazed that people in Australia have a clue about us, being that we're Scandinavian and writing about darkness and cold cities when you guys are barbequeing and surfing and having a good time in the sun.”

“And then this Australian tour is kind of extra cool. It kind of feels like closure; we're going to play all the old songs and then we're going to go into the studio and do another album. We'll do all the well-known songs and then it will be time to move on. So, it's a cool and weird thing at the same time, because Night Electric Night was kind of like the second chapter to Termination Bliss, the two were very closely connected, but this album is going to be a totally different thing.”

So, like, yeah? What is happening with that new album? It's been four years. Whiplasher laughs and labels himself and his bandmates “lazy assholes” before elaborating on what's held them up thusfar.

“It's been forever since we've released an album. And we say, 'ok, we start recording at this or that time', and then we end up on a four month tour with Rammstein and then everyone is pretty fed up with it when we get back so we take time and the album gets delayed again. Now, finally, we're writing the last 30% of the album now so hopefully it will be out before the end of the year.”

The conversation veers towards the band's massive run across Europe with Germany's Rammstein. The shows were amazing, of course, and Rammstein killed it, of course. So how does one go about getting their band on a tour with German's undisputed kings of industrial?

“We had just come back from Columbia and we heard that Rammstein were going on tour, so I just texted Till and said 'why don't we go with you?' and he replied, 'yeah, of course'.”

Deathstars will be playing the following dates:

Wednesday 1 May - The Zoo, Brisbane QLD
Friday 3 May - Manning Bar, Sydney NSW
Saturday 4 May - Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC