Deathstars
Glamourizing Darkness

09.08.2014

Andreas Bergh, aka Whiplasher Bernadotte, singer and lyrics writer of Sweden’s Deathstars, is known for his unpredictable and contradictory nature. When you interview him, it’s difficult to see how serious he is in what he says. Sometimes you get a feeling that if you ask him the same question five minutes later, you will get a totally different answer. At the same time, there are moments when he becomes surprisingly honest and ready to share his world view that is quite unique and radical. That is why this interview, timed to the release of the band’s new album, “The Perfect Cult”, turned out a bit ambiguous. I had a feeling that I was talking to Andreas part of the time and to a tongue-in-cheep Whiplasher the other part of the time. But as these are two sides of the same personality, there can be no other way around.

Are you getting great response to your new album so far?

Yeah, I think so. I’m not the guy who looks it up and searches for the response like that, but I think it’s been good, from what I hear. I kind of isolate myself from the whole music business as much as I can. If I can.

Why do you isolate yourself? Don’t you like to see what’s happening around your music, read some comments, get some opinions?

Nah, I don’t know. I’ve never been into that. I never read any or hardly read any interviews with the band or I never look at any performances of the band. I never look anything up, you know. What happens here, happens now, and then it’s over. For me it’s not interesting to analyze everything, analyze everyone’s opinion and so on.

Then what do you think of popularity and being famous in general? Is it important for you?

I don’t know, I don’t consider myself being that famous. But for me it’s something I’m trying to avoid as much as I possibly can. For me it’s so super-unimportant that it’s ridiculous. But I think other people enjoy that more than I do. So that’s how it is.

But what about your fans then? Do you find it irritating if they try to talk to you in the street or get closer to you in some ways?

No! I love them! I usually want to intercourse with them immediately.

Oh wow!

(laughs) Of course I love it. I really enjoy that part because they enjoy our music and that’s something we work on in the band, you know, writing songs. If they appreciate that, I totally enjoy it, absolutely.

Okay, but if you’re not doing it for fame and being a part of this music industry, then what for?

Well, I never really wanted to be in a band like that. For me it always was writing. And then as a kid I met up with Emil “Nightmare” (Deathstars’ guitarist and composer – ed.). I’d been in punk bands, stuff like that. But it was when I really started to enjoy writing, and he was more a musician. Then we teamed up kind of and we’ve been best friends since. And you know, that’s something that I gain a lot from. I mean the music and writing songs and the whole thing about how you start with nothing and then bring it to the stage and then you write an album. Of course the whole process has a kind of grip of it. But everything else, when it comes to the music business, is just bullshit. When it comes to all the details which are not directly connected to the band, it’s not very important, I think. It’s like… In Stockholm everyone plays in a band, every person plays in a band in Sweden, so I go to Italy just to get away from it all. I like to be where I’m totally isolated from that, so nobody is in a rock band, on tour, which is amazing. (laughs) I really enjoy that.

Do you live in Italy?

Yes.

Oh really? And why Italy?

Because I’ve always been very-very fond of Italy, and Florence is the city full of culture and art history. It’s a fantastic place to be. It’s not a business city like Stockholm or New York. It’s another pace, it’s another drive. It’s perfect for me. I mean it. It’s very-very beautiful.

What do you do when you’re not making your music?

Well, in Italy I just enjoyed myself. When the album was done I moved immediately to Italy and I was just getting to know the city and meeting up with new friends. There’s so much to see there. I just hung out and read about history of art and so on. And it’s been fantastic, but right now I’m back in Sweden because it’s too hot in Florence. I’m in the countryside of Sweden, almost in Norway. Hopefully isolated also. This is very nice.

It feels like you really-really like isolation…

Yeah. Right now I’m totally into that.

But you’re still doing some interviews.

Yeah, I do. I do tons of interviews. Cause that’s my job. (laughs) No, but I like it also, because it’s the only thing that keeps me connected with the music right now. Doing interviews makes me think about the music and what it’s all about. I enjoy having this kind of… how to say… inverted oxygen masks in my everyday life called interviews. It’s nice to just take a couple of steps back and to get perspective of things every once in a while. I really need to get away from Sweden or Stockholm. I’m just charging my batteries to put the pedal to the medal when it comes to touring which starts in Russia in September, I think.

You’re such a surprising man sometimes… Who would have thought that you like living in the country.

Yeah, you should see me in a dark room.

Oh no, I’m not eveen asking why! Let’s get back to the music industry. Your previous album was released in 2009. Why did it take you so long to come up with some new music?

When in comes to writing music, we’ve always been perfectionists and it’s always been like 3 or 4 years – I think it was 4 years between “Termination Bliss” and “Night Electric Night” – so that’s one element of it taking such a long time. And also the touring was so spread out. We did our last tour in Australia very close to when we started to record. We’d been out with Rammstein for a few months. And every time we’re out touring it takes at least one or two months for us to get back in the mood of writing because we’re so fed up with the whole music thing. Then we have everyone in the band doing some other stuff because no one feels motivated. So it’s all those things combined that makes us be kind of slow when it comes to doing albums. I wish we were a little faster… But we were also thinking about recording this album in Los Angeles like 3 years ago with some producers and stuff and everything fancy. But then we just sat down, had a talk and decided not to stress the album. Even if it would have made it better for the record company and maybe from a kind of career point of view, but it’s never been that interesting for us. So we decided to just let it take the time it needed, you know. That’s why it took 5 years. That was a long answer, just like the 5 years you’d been waiting.

It feels like Nightmare isn’t satisfied with your previous album “Night Electric Night”. I read some interviews where he said he felt under pressure while recording it and so on. Do you agree? Can you say that this new record is meant to somehow correct some mistakes you made before?

Nightmare has much more regret about “Night Electric Night” than I do, but I think it’s just because he’s the producer and there’s something about the production, maybe a couple of tracks that he didn’t feel that he worked on as much as he wanted. We had to give it out in time because of touring waiting and so on, so on. I know what he’s talking about and I kind of agree with him, but not to that extent, so to speak. We both love “Night Electric Night”, the album, but it could have been better, we think. Production-wise and when it comes to the songs, the quality of the songs, we did better on “The Perfect Cult”. At the time when “Night Electric Night” was released, we felt almost immediately that it was a bit stressed. We don’t feel that with the new album.

You said that with the compilation “The Greatest Hits on Earth” (2011) you were closing down the first chapter of your band’s story. How do you describe that chapter and why did you need to finish it?

Well, it felt like the first album (“Synthetic Generation”, 2001) was a kind of demo, an experiment for us. Then “Termination Bliss” really defined the Deathstars sound, I guess. “Night Electric Night” was like another chapter of “Termination Bliss”. That together with the line-up changes – because Cat (guitar) didn’t want to continue with the band, he didn’t feel like touring, he didn’t want to play live and do anything anymore… well, he wanted to, but he kind of didn’t at the same time… so he decided to put an end to the whole thing which was of course a loss for us, not having Cat in the band anymore. And then also Bone fucked up his elbow, so he couldn’t play drums. So this all together made it feel like, okay, these first 10 years kind of… it stops here and we start fresh with Vice on drums and kind of mentally recharge the band. So I think that compilation was just the first era up, for Deathstars.

Then how do you see your next chapter?

Well, it’s been a long time and we’re very-very eager to go on tour. It feels kind of when we went on tour before “Termination Bliss”,everyone feels a bit more passionated. So I can’t wait, I’m climbing the walls just to go on tour. So it’s gonna be… I never know how it’s gonna be. (laughs) To be honest. Maybe that’s the thing with the band, because I kind of need it to be a circus, it should just be chaos and we see what happens.

Talking about your line-up changes, why don’t you try to get another guitar player?

Because we don’t want to get someone new in the band just because of being five in the band. We can manage by four. We will keep it like that from now and then see what happens in the future. Right now we’ll continue as a four-piece.

Then was it difficult to accept your new drummer?

No, Oscar has been a kind of familiar face in the band. He’s been around for 7 years. So he’s like an old member. And musically he’s always been there when Bone couldn’t play the drums because of his elbow. Then Vice flew into whatever a tour and fitted in and then Bone went home. He’s not like a new member of the band. And for us it’s not really a line-up change, it’s just Cat who is not with us anymore.

As far as I understand the “perfect cult” you’re singing about on the album is believing in nothing really, right?

Yes, worshipping nothing. It’s not about fear and fright, even though the music is very big-sounding and so on. It’s not about fears because, you know, it’s not a more interesting conflict to write about than writing about power or something. It’s really about not having any belief in what you’re doing and not wanting to believe in anything because then you don’t fall that hard when you don’t make it. It’s a very self-critical album in that aspect. Lyric-wise it’s the darkest album we’ve done absolutely. It’s pure hell, no? (laughs)

Why are you that pessimistic about the mankind?

Well… (sighs) I don’t necessarily walk around being negative all the time, but only when I write the songs. You write songs to understand stuff and that’s just the kind of stuff I try to understand when we write music, even though our songs are also about destruction, oral sex and orgy, but there’s also a lot about trying to figure out your environment. I kind of always used the darkest aspects, the darkest themes and glamorize them, kind of. Because that’s the only way to dig into it, you know, to understand it and grow from it. So I kind of glamorize darkness. And Emil Nightmare is kind of the same, it suits the kind of music we do, it’s all about conflicts. As I said it’s not necessarily something that I walk around and think about every minute every day.

And what are the things that you think about every minute every day?

I don’t know. I’m in a kind of state called lobotomy. I usually decide on taking a break from myself and go out partying in the woods by myself. So I usually don’t think about anything that much. That’s how I take care of myself.

You said you like writing in general. If not being in a band, could you imagine yourself being a writer?

When I was growing up I started writing for newspapers in Sweden, for evening papers, when I was like 16 or 17. When I was 20 or something I was writing stories from the Middle East for the biggest news channel in Sweden, so I was very into writing and reporting. I was even in the war in Kosovo when I was 21, writing. I even participated in a book that was published in Sweden. So that was what I wanted to do before I ended up in this little happy family called Deathstars.

Well, but that’s all about journalism and what I’m asking about is creative writing, some fictional stories…

Yeah, I also did that, of course. So we’ll see, maybe in future. But I always think it sounds so pretentious when people are talking about themselves writing stories in that way. So I usually avoid it.

You know, I believe being a writer means seeing stories everywhere. Like you see something happening and you immediately think of what kind of story you can make out of it. Does your mind work that way?

Yes, exactly, of course. I think that the worst writers are the people that say, “Oh, I would love to write a book if I just could come up with an idea to write about”. Then you’re probably not able to write a book, I would say. But you can always hear that with people.

Do you collect some stories that you can use in future?

Yes, of course, I do.

Let’s talk about critics. You don’t read any kind of responses, but I do. And you often get criticized for what your listeners perceive as some kind of simplicity and monotonous structure of your songs – at least your singles. What can you say to this?

We always want Deathstars to have that certain… You know, the songs should always be about the vibe. And we want to be a kind of… What was the word that you used?

Monotonous?

Monotonous, right. Yeah, it should be very dark. The people who say it’s simple are probably people who play metal. Because metal is the most simple music you can do. That’s what we grew up with. Doing music like Deathstars, instead of having like 25 riffs in every song, we wanted to cook it down to like 4 or 5 parts and really try to get dynamics in it. And that’s what’s hard. That’s what makes it interesting to write the music instead of just screaming and having all these riffs and playing fast. I love that kind of music also. But it’s very-very simple. I hope to do more albums like that, but Deathstars is not metal. It’s not even close to metal. I think people who say that just don’t understand it. There should be an enormous kind of formula for the albums, it’s kind of a state of mind and a vibe more than just like an album in that perspective. It’s very-very different from listening to some metal album, whatever, you know…

Then what do you consider Deathstars to be?

I don’t know. It should always be like a question mark, even for me. I don’t wanna know what it is. It should always be like some fucking thing I don’t understand. That’s what keeps it interesting. We mix everything. Most important with Deathstars is that the band is not loyal to any genre. Unlike metalheads, who are slaves to their genre. Metal is preaching freedom, but instead it’s like the biggest prison there is because they have to adjust to the form of metal. If you don’t play that, you’re a fucking poser. That’s ridiculous. It’s so stupid. We call ourselves death-glam just because people need to have a label on us. But for us it’s not important as long as we’re doing what we’re doing.

Well, Deathstars are also quite famous for your visual style. Are you going to keep it unchanged, or will we possibly see some other images in future?

What do you mean? The uniforms?

Yeah, that plus make-up and all the stuff…

We looked like that when we started playing black metal in the beginning of the 1990s. We looked like the same as we do today. So we’ll continue to look like that pretty much.

So nothing changes…

I don’t think we want to change that much. We’ve been fans of Kiss, they never changed like that. So we’ll just do the same.

And how long do you think you can go on doing the same thing then? Do you think you can do it for the rest of your life?

Ah? The band? Are you crazy? I would never like to do it for the rest of my life. I’m just doing it now. And I’m doing it for 110% right now and then it will die, and we will stop and it won’t be anymore. I think that’s how a band should be. We’re gonna do it. It’s better to burn out than to fade away.

And when do you think this moment can come?

I don’t know. I hope it’s not too far from now because my liver can’t stand it.

Do you think destroying your liver is a necessary part of being in a band?

No, I’m just kidding. You should have known by now that you shouldn’t take me seriously. I don’t even take myself seriously, so you shouldn’t either.

Then let’s talk seriously about your touring. You’re coming to Russia quite soon. What do you think of playing in our country? Is it special to you?

It’s the best thing I know in my entire life, that’s how fun I think it is. I really enjoy Russia. It kind of gets to me in many ways. I don’t even know how, but it kind of affects me. It inspired our previous album in different ways, on that album Russia was like the sixth member of the band. Of course it’s special to me.

I hope you get inspired when you come here again.

It depends on how much clothes you wear.

Maybe we should ask your fans to come without any of them.

Yes. We’d appreciate that.  

Deathstars on the Internet: http://www.deathstars.net

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Ksenia Artamonova
June 24, 2014
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