The name of the band may be known for many of our readers, but for those, who don’t have a clue, don’t worry, this is the best chance to get to know the danish thrash metal stinging pitchforks. I’ve been asking Søren, the cultic band new singer, what is about Artillery, and you can be thankful to Imi (godfucked), my friend and colleague, for the hungarian translation, since nowadays i don’t have any time as the season started. But i wouldn’t like to steal away the lines, so let speak the questions and answers instead of me.

Hi Søren, this is Zoli from Hungary, I am very happy about this interview! Please lets start with introducing Artillery, how old are you guys and what instruments are you playing on?

Hey man, nice to meet you. Well, we are 5 guys in our late teens. Peter plays bass, Michael plays guitar, Morten plays guitar, Carsten on the drums and I sing and scream.

What one should know about the new album, besides that concept of graphics is the same as on One Foot in the Grave, The Other One in the Trash CD/DVD?

It kicks ass!

Why did you split up back then, and how do you look back to the past now? What do you think, will you be able to „fight” this battle against your own cultical albums (I think about Terror Squad, Fear of Tomorrow or my personal favourite, By Inheritance)?

I think it will yes. This is 2009 and the old albums are from the late eighties, so there is of course a difference in sound and a new singer as well. I think we have taken the old school thrash metal riff´s and taken them into the modern day. There would be no point in making an album that was completely old school and sounded like it was made in the eighties. So it has been a natural progression.
Artillery split up becourse of personalitty differencies among the members back then.

Anno in 1999 the album B.A.C.K. was a return as well and now after ten years you are back again. What happened in the background in the inactive years, why did you call to release a new album right now (I dont consider the live album as a return, only some life signal, as you play old songs on it)?

I think it was the same again, personallity differencies among the members and internal chaos. You know, sometimes it can be quite difficult to keep a band, of 5 individuals, going.
When I joined the band a little over a year ago Artillery was just starting up again. We had some gigs in Europe. It seemed like the interest was still there for the band so it was only natural for us to start writing new songs, and of course it was important for me to make an album of me singing and with my vocal ideas on it.

The DVD just mentioned above was released by the polish Metal Mind Records, how did you meet them, they are recruiting more and more cool bands, how are you satisfied about them?

Metal Mind is also arranging metal festivals in Europe. They hired us to play the Metal Mania Festival in 2008 with Megadeth, Dillinger Escape Plan, Overkill etc. and they seemed interested in making an album with us so it seemed natural to make a deal with them. They have been very cool to us from the beginning and they seem to be really interested in Artillery and doing stuff for us. So we are very satisfied.

When Death Comes is going to be released in a limited digipack as well, and it will contain two bonus songs, what should we know about these songs? It will also be released as a japanese edition with another bonus song…

We recorded 13 songs and there was only going to be 10 on the actual album. And it was actually a bit of a struggle to agree on what songs that was going to end up on the album and what songs should be bonus tracks. I think the 2 tracks on the digi pack are just as good as the ones on the album. In fact I voted for them to be on the album.
The 3 bonus tracks are called „Refusing to live – part 2” , „Warhead” and „Chaos ride”.

I need to tell you, our far-away friends do generally a great job on their island, colors of the covers and the booklet are more powerful and more live, the CD is more thick (the disc itself) and whether you believe it or not, it even sounds better. Have you seen the japanese edition?

Sounds cool! No I havent seen the Japenese edition.

Many old and great thrash bands return suddenly these days, unfortunately this retro is kind of trend actually, and they defile their name and often release poor crap, for eg. Assassin (The Club is horrible after their two masterpiece) or Accu§er who are playing some terrible thrashcore in the new songs…
What do you think about this trend, and as you are returning as well (and fortunately you hold to your roots!), what do you think about the HC and metalcore bands of our days, who are trendy and are often founded for only money and success?

Thrash, Metal core, Hard core I don´t really care what people call it. Any way you look at it, if a band has got something relevant to say and some relevant music to play they should be welcome and they should release albums and do gigs. No matter what, it´s always the audience who decide if they want to support the band or not. Personally I don´t catogorise music. If I like it, I like it. And then you can call it metal core, hard core, trhash core, gay core, shit core or whatever core!!!
I can assure you that Artillery are NOT doing this for the money, course there is not enough money in this for us to make a living. We do it becourse we like the stuff we do, and becourse it`s FUN.

I work as a teacher. My family supports what I´m doing. I have always wanted to make music so it´s part of who I am. You cannot take that away from me.

Are you offended if you are called „thrash father”? haha

Nooooooo! That´s cool. We don´t take ourselves that serious.

Would you name a few bands or albums which were big influences for you, could you highlight any alive or split up danish bands which are worth to pay the attention to?

Hmmmm… There´s are so many good bands. Sabbath, Kiss, Maiden, Priest, Motörhead, Slayer, Pantera, Metallica. Those bands are what I first got into as a child. Newer bands I like are Slipknot, In flames, Social Distortion, Soilworks…
Eeeeeh I´m not really into any danish bands at the moment… but DAD used to be good. That´s the only band I can think of.

You recently shot a music video for the song 10.000 Devils. You said its about inner deamons, would you talk about this some further more please, how personal is this songs to you?

All my lyrics are personal to me.
10.000 devils are about facing the good and evil aspects of your own personallity. It´s also about coming to terms with your dark side, which I believe all people have. I like to use religious images in my lyrics course I think religion is an important issue in our society and it fits perfectly in heavy metal : )

This question is more abstract, but I think end of the world and suffering are not very far from your lyrical subjects, and I am also interested in your opinion about this… So, how do you feel the crisis in the everydays? Do you believe that better days are coming, or you just hope so? What are the roots of situation are in your opinion, what might be the solution? Electing Obama feeds new hopes, world pieve might become reality? What do you think about the banks which squandered our money and now they slowly become bankrupt…

Your absolutely right! I tend to write about the darker sides of life.
I think there´s always an individual struggle bettween good and evil in every human being. It´s up to the individual to do what one feels it the right thing to do. I´m not preaching to anyone, I don´t have the right answers. I can only make an effort to do what is the right thing for me. Everyone can do that.
In general, I think that our world is headed in the wrong direction. There´s a major battle going on between the western world and some arabic countries which I can´t see ending in my time. The differencies are extreme. No one want´s to give in. It seems like war and violence are the answer to the problems, countries/people have with each other. No matter how many terrorrists you kill there will always come new ones and new ones… it´s a never ending battle. On the other hand we have to take a stand when people think it´s ok to chop someones head of because they have a different religious belief. Or think that it´s ok to stone a woman to death for whatever reason. We can´t have that and we must never tolerate that…
World peace will not be in my time I´m afraid.
I think electing Obama was a really good thing for America and the rest of the world, and a step in the right direction. But can he make a major difference? I don´t know.

Lets jump to a more comfortable subject: beer or wine? Haha

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!!! I´m a major beer fanatic.

Have you got a message to the readers of Fémforgacs? So last words are yours…

Hope to see you at our shows.