(by Erik Thomas)
With their 7th album, The Lustrate Process, Swedish Super group The Project Hate MCMXCIX have once again delivered their take on epic, Christ-hating death metal tinged with angelic female vocals and industrial programming, beats and synths. On paper it sounds like an awkward mix, but guitarist Lord K Philipson and ex-Grave vocalist Jörgen Sandström (joined by Jonna Enckell, bassist Michael Håkansson, guitarist Anders Bertilsson and drummer Thomas Ohlsson) have the formula down to a Christ Raping T, and continue to make the sound as evil yet beautiful as ever. Vast tracks like “Descend Into The Pits Of Eternal Possession” and the menacing march of “Arise to His World of Infamy” continue a level of consistency and quality you’d expect from two seasoned death metal veterans like Lord K and Jörgen Sandström- and both were kind enough to answer a few question for me…
MM: So, another year, another album, another label. Vic Records seems like a good fit for your style and their roster, but geesh- why the label jumping for all your albums?
Jörgen: Well at first we did two albums per label but we had to change that obviously since they all sucked. I don’t know, well, in fact I do know why it doesn’t work out, because we are a tough band to sell. I mean, it is not regular death metal or in fact regular anything. We have long, long, long songs that are very varied and it is hard to understand our agenda at a first listen. That results in too many times that someone writes a review based on a half-assed listen and gives us shit ratings. We don’t tour or, in fact, don’t play live at all. We are a very tough band to sell and that is why the former labels didn’t work out. I think and hope that Vic Records have the right passion and understand us well enough to at least want to try and work to make the album sell. I mean, some of the record labels in the past didn’t do shit, didn’t even get it out in the stores, and then blame us for not being a touring band.
Lord K: I think it’s a fuckin’ shame that we deliver insanely fantastic albums to the labels in question and they obviously don’t have a fuckin’ clue as for how to sell the fuckin’ product. A first step would be to actually ship it to stores, one would think, but no… They believe the quality of the music will sell itself but the problem is that if no one can fuckin’ find the albums – well – no one can fuckin’ purchase it. Shouldn’t come as a huge surprise in my book. Vic Records has done far more work in a few months than all the past labels ever did combined, and that says quite a bit about our former record companies. It’s a fuckin’ shame that they sign us and when they have the product at hand they obviously don’t know how to distribute it properly and make it sell. We should be a much bigger band judging from the music alone. We are that fuckin’ awesome.
MM: I have to ask, what the fuck happened with Peter Stormare’s supposed label, Stormvox Records and the last album? You can’t get “In Hora Mortis Nostræ” anywhere!
Jörgen: Exactly. I think I just was one step ahead of you. I really like Peter Stormare as a person and we have had great contact over the years and I turned him into a The Project Hate fan. But it just didn’t work out business-wise. They had no clue how to sell metal. We knew it before we signed so we are not really surprised or pissed off or anything, it just didn’t work out. Shit like that happens. Contact us and you can buy it from us. Actually I believe we sold more copies of that album than the label did, hahaha.
Lord K: As Jorgen said, we had exactly no hopes for Stormvox to do much with the album, but at least we thought they would get it out to the stores, I mean – that should be in a label’s interest, no? It’s a small label with absolutely no knowledge about how to sell metal. We’re done with them and wish them nothing but the best, but they should concentrate on working with stuff that’s within their field since they obviously won’t understand tips and advice from people who know what metal and that scene is about.
MM: Six albums in and you are still delivering high quality material that deviates little from the original formula. What allows you and the band to keep writing such a consistent rate of high quality material that never really deviates and do it in a relatively short time?
Lord K: I definitely think we spend an insane amount of hours on the albums. I mean, an album every two years isn’t all too fuckin’ productive, is it? Then again, if you think about what we create – maybe it is kind of impressive that we get albums out pretty much every second year? Of course we don’t stray away from our formula, why the fuck should we? We sound like this; it is what we were after since the beginning. We just work harder and harder on it, makes it even more dominating with each and every release and perfect what we are doing album after album. I strongly believe that when you buy an album by a specific band you should be able to tell it is that band. It’s not like you’ll hear Cannibal Corpse go all free jazz any time soon, huh? We know what we are doing and there’s not a single band in the world even close to creating what we are creating. And I like that. We piss on the majority of lame ass excuses for bands.
MM: Do you ever think there will come a time where you look at a The Project Hate song and think to your self “hang on, we’ve done this before” and feel the formula is getting a bit redundant?
Lord K: If anything, I have thought “Yep, this sounds exactly as fantastic as TPH is supposed to sound.” If you have a problem with it, feel free to turn the albums off and go fuck yourself. We have a distinct approach to our music and it’s not like we are straying away from it. Have a problem with that? Tough, it’s not a problem for me or us.
MM: As with the last two albums, there’s a ton of guest musicians on “The Lustrate Process,” particularly vocalists. You’ve got Martin van Drunen (Asphyx, Hail of Bullets), LG Petrov (Entombed), Christian Älvestam (ex- Scar Symmetry) and Johan Hegg (Amon Amarth). It’s like who’s who of revered death metal vocalists (and not even including regular vocalist Jörgen Sandström (ex-Grave) – how did those collaborations come about?
Jörgen: We are The Project Hate, that’s why. Everybody wants to work with us. Seriously, that is not true. The truth is that we know these guys from before and since they are all friends they were glad to help out. I know Johan did his part way before I did my vocals. Amon Amarth recorded their latest album in Lord K´s hometown so Lord K was there and got drunk and things happened from there I guess. We caught LG drunk on the ferry between Stockholm and Helsinki. We were doing a gig at the ferry which was booked by the biggest metal magazine in Sweden, Close-Up magazine. So we played there with Torture Division, other bands that played were Opeth, Misery Index, Hardcore Superstar and some others. Entombed was on the ferry just to party and Lord K asked LG to scream some varied shit into K´s cell phone, and we used that material on the record. Great idea that came out awesome. Also that decision was made while being under the influence. I don’t know much about Christian except that at least I am not Christian. And Martin has been a major influence on me and Lord K for many, many, many years with his amazing vocals and amazing bands in Pestilence and Asphyx. When Lord K told me that Martin would do vocals on the same album as me it send shivers down my spine and I got a terrific boner!
MM: Are there any other musicians you would like to work with on future releases?
Lord K: Vanessa Carlton, Sarah Dawn Finer, Yngwie J Malmsteen and the ones that have been working with us in the past. But Vanessa tops the list. Having her on an album would be the epitome of fuckin’ completion.
Jörgen: Of course, but if I mention them it will never happen, haha. Ok, Malcolm Young and Yngwie Malmsteen are two persons that I would love to include on an album but I am 100% sure they would never even consider it so it is safe to mention them.
MM: Both of you are and have been involved in a couple of other death metal bands notably God Among Insects and more recently Torture Division. How do you separate the material for the projects? how do you determine what ideas and riffs go where? Is Project Hate the ‘main’ or priority band?
Lord K: It’s quite easy; when I create for TPH I create for TPH. I don’t go into composing with the mindset of creating for TPH but end up creating for Torture Division instead. I know what to create for and whatever band I decided should have the time at the moment, gets it. Simple as that. Doing music for TD is very easy, it’s just basic, grooving death metal, you know. TPH is a completely different beat and it’s nothing that you can create in an evening or an hour. There’s so much work put into TPH, you’d think I was fuckin’ insane if you only knew half of it. I can guarantee that very few bands, if any, puts in so much time into composing for a band. But that’s the beauty of TPH, all the small details incorporated. All the hard work and thoughts put into what eventually becomes a full song. It’s a massive work to be done but that’s exactly how I want it to work. I want to push myself to the limit when it comes to TPH, I want to make each and every album a step closer to complete perfection. At the time of “The Lustrate Process” being completed, I came closer to that perfection sphere than ever. That album is phenomenal in each and every aspect. It’s my life’s work, until we record the next one.
MM: I understand God Among Insects is no more, that’s crying shame. Is Torture Division, a continuation of that old-school sound? It is, after all, you and Tobias Gustafsson who was in God Among Insects…
Lord K: Absolutely not. Torture Division is everything GAI wasn’t. To have this band together with Jörgen and Tobias is a dream come true. Both of those guys are my closest friends and we are very close to each other. Working with TD is so easy it’s insane. I create songs, Jorgen creates songs, and we send them between each other and work on arrangements and then, perhaps, get together and rehearse everything in case we got a gig coming up. We talk and e-mail all the time and everyone is really in-the-know with what’s happening with the band at all times (except for when we play pranks on each other and leave some information out for one of us, just to make it a great surprise when the time is right). We are the world’s best death metal band, that’s the bottom line. Don’t forget that we also refuse to record albums in the favor of giving away all of our recordings for free at the website. That doesn’t just make us the best death metal band it the world, but also the fuckin’ coolest.
MM: Along with your bands, you also run a website (www.globaldomination.se) How do you find the time in the day for all this? Do you have a full-time job? A family?
Lord K: Sure, I have both a family and a job. I work full-time as a chef at the University of Örebro. Classy shit, right? I also have my fiancée and three cats to pay attention to in-between creating music and running a website. I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. I want to be busy all the fuckin’ time and when I do have some free time for anything else I go all black metal and enter the woods for some camping for a day or two. I have absolutely nothing to complain about at any time and life is fuckin’ sweet and all that shit.
MM: In running a metal website that reviews albums, have you found it helpful in critiquing other albums in comparison to The Project Hate and your other projects, or has it just made you aware of how much shit music there is out there?
Lord K: I get reminded on a daily basis as for how fuckin’ incredibly talented I am when it comes to creating music. Holy shit, we get sent so much utter crap for Global Domination. Then again, how fun would it be if everyone were as talented as we are? It’s easier to stand out now so I thank them for sucking the enormous cock. There should be some rules to prevent shit bands from recording music. I fuckin’ HATE shit bands with all my heart. Then again, don’t we all?
MM: In general, you are very involved in the Internet community. Has this been helpful in developing ideas for your music?
Lord K: Absolutely not. I find inspiration inside me and by listening to a lot of music, no matter how fuckin’ cheesy that may sound.
MM: Dan Swanö is once again involved with one of your releases. This time he has mastered and mixed “The Lustrate Process” How was it to finally get such a legendary figure in Swedish death metal involved in The Project Hate?
Jörgen: Dan and K are very good friends so it comes naturally I guess. Just as it did with working with Miezsko Talarczyk (R.I.P.). Dan lives in the same town as K and it is very convenient for them to work together. Also Dan is a fucking monster when it comes to mixing death metal. One of the best around, if not the best.
MM: Most of your music, even The Project Hate at a bare bones level, is rooted on old-school death metal. What is it about the genre that makes you perpetuate that sound?
Lord K: I think the core of death metal is the most pure form of aggression and perfection in a complete symbiosis. There’s something about the essence of it all that just speaks to me. I guess you could say that me and death metal are kind of meant for each other. Then again, let’s not start a discussion about all the death metal bands that are complete shit and should be eradicated from the face of the earth.
MM: Will The Project Hate ever come to the US for a tour?
Jörgen: The day that Jesus resurrects and goes on a US tour, we will. Before that the chances of catching us live are pretty slim.
www.theprojecthate.net
www.vicrecords.com
