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INTERVIEW
From
Terrorizer Magazine #54
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Already
being hailed as the successors to the sadly incapacitated Dissection, Sweden´s
Dawn have
eclipsed
the competition with their second full-length "Slaughtersun".
Satspal
Kalsi talked to frontman Henke Forss about the album as well as his work
with Niden Div.187.
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Sweden´s
Dawn have made a timely return with the release of their
second
full-length album, "Slaughtersun (The Crown of the Triarchy)".
With
Emperor´s album more or less receiving all the accolades, "Slaughtersun"
follows up
with
an even more innovative Deathgrind/Black Metal mix that is as evocative
as anything
putting
out by the Norwegians with the added ingredient of maintaining their base
with Death Metal.
I
talked to main man Henke Forss about why Dawn has that underlying tone
of hatred in
the
best traditions of Death Metal, and his work with musical extremists Niden
Div.187.
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"
Well, since we´re not Satanists, none of us, it seems we have a bigger
interest in death.
Niden
came about because we had to express a different kind of hate through
another
medium, so we formed another band to express our feelings towards
war
and, like, general destruction. Emperor are doing their own thing and it
feels like we have two audiences.
We
have the pure Black Metal audience listening to Emperor and we
have
a mixed audience with Black Metal and Death Metal people listening to our
stuff."
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Niden
Div.187, which features Henke, plus members from Thy Primordial and
A
Canarous Quintet, is almost the alter ego to Dawn, where
fast
skull-pummelling Grind expresses an anger that Dawn never could.
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"Yeah,
you could say that because as you said, Dawn is atmospheric and tries to
put
a focus on live atmosphere and we put out our ideas through in that way.
Well,
we try to hide the violence and hatred a bit more, so it´s not that
direct as Niden."
.
Though
Emperors Satanism is probably as convincing as it gets within
Black
Metal, there´s still a feeling, on Henke´s part, that it´s
become a distraction
from
the realities of life. In the case of Niden and to a lesser extent Dawn,
the hatred is born out of a celebration of war.
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"You
could say that, but I don´t think war is an evil or bad thing.
War
can be good in many ways. Many wars have to be fought because... well,
I can´t
really
explain the way I feel about it. One of reasons for that is that the world
is
overpopulated
and there´s always going to be something to depopulise the world
like
natural
disasters, so war is also necessity for the destruction of mankind. I don´t
know if
it´s
as much for Dawn but the members of niden are strong misanthropic people.
We´re
not fascists, we´re not Nazis and we´re not racists. We basically
don´t like anybody.
Well,
for me personally, when I grow up I was always having to face defeat in
any
kind
of way. Like always at school and people in the town always people picking
on me.
Well,
not really picking on me but trying to put me down.
So
I have total mistrust for people in general."
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The
atmosphere enveloping "Slaughtersun" has a definite filmic quality that
makes it
less
traditionally constructed than most albums in this genre.
With
just seven songs, across sixty minutes, Dawn are plunging themselves into
challenging territory.
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"When
I listen to the new Dawn album, I don´t feel the
songs
are very long if you look at the counter.
The
songs are ten or twelve minutes but feel like five minutes.
We
don´t try to achieve making long songs, they turn out that way.
The
songs on the mini-CD, "Sorgh Pa Svarte Vingar Flogh", are pretty long as
well.
People
are kind of pissed that it´s just two songs and one cover.
But
we say it´s a pretty long mini album anyway
-
about twenty minutes."
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Niden
Div.187 are still due to put out an album, though they are no more, and
will
continue
the War theme of "Impergium". I mean, how much more extreme could they
get?
.
"We´re
going to be worse, believe me. It´s going to be faster, more intense,
more hatred.
I´ve
thought about the lyrics already, and if we have ten songs, then five of
them are going to be
on
the topic of homicide, and the other five are going to be on the topic
of genocide and war.
There´s
going to be two parts to the album."
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I
get the feeling that Henke is just a tortured and melancholic soul who
probably needs to get a life.
.
"Yeah,
you could say that. I´m a really antisocial person. I don´t
mix very good with
people
or feel very good in crowds or stuff like that. I can only speak for myself
and
Andreas
but we stay in all the time. We don´t mix with each other in the
band,
we
don´t go out together. Frederik (also in Cranium) likes to drink
beer and get
drunk
and stuff like that. Outside of the band I listen to a lot of music and
work out.
I
listen to a lot of non-Metal music like Tool, and I listen to a lot of
ambient stuff like
on
Cold Meat Industry. We don´t have a sense of humour when playing
our music, of course,
because
there´s nothing funny about it. Of course we each have a sense of
humour,
we
can laugh at people getting shot or something like that. I think that´s
funny."
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E-mail:
shadowsouls@hotmail.com
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