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Ever wanted to find out what inspired a particular song?
Was it based on personal experience or simply passive observation? What happened in the recording studio or on stage to make one song sound different from the rest? These are just some of the question bands and musicians attempt to answer in Line 'em Up. This is where your favourite bands comment on their albums, track by track. Enjoy!
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Here’s a chance for you to tell our readers about your latest release, ‘Phobia’. But could you please start off by introducing the readers to Torture Killer?
And now onto ‘Phobia’ - track-by-track! What inspired you, which topics are you dealing with, what do you want to express with the songs etc. | ||||||||||||
| Phobia A really catchy short song that really opens up the record. Back in 2011 I was approached by [Six Feet Under singer Chris] Barnes to maybe write some ideas down that they could potentially use with Six Feet Under. I started working on some drum beats and two songs started to form side-by-side, very close to each other. The one I finished first, I send to Barnes and that song is now “Zombie blood curse”, I wanted the other one to be even more to the point and decided to use it with TK. The lyrics are not about graphic violence but more about psychological horror, the actual feel of being afraid. One of my favourite songs on the album with a catchy drive. | ||||||||||||
| Await His Third Arrival I believe this one was the first song I wrote after “Sewers”, very similar in style and structure with the songs on that album, a faster one (by our standards anyway) about a deathcult that you see happening here and there. | ||||||||||||
| Written In Blood The most diverse song on the album, and a personal favourite with the title track. Some of the riffs date back to the times we recorded “Sewers” we tried to record an intro but it just wasn’t ready yet. It needed more work. Tens of versions existed of this song until the final weeks before we went to the studio, I thought the version was as good as it was going to get. It definitely had a mood, but I couldn’t name the song, to me this was an instrumental from start to finish but I needed a describing title for it. I sent the song to Barnes and asked if he could take a listen and come up with a fitting title, he liked it and came back with a full song with lyrics. He has a great ear for describing audio and after helping him out with some of his ideas, I felt it was ok to ask something back. It’s a rollercoaster of riffs, a very unusual track, but I love it. The semi-acoustic intro is something we haven’t done before, but the feel was there so it felt right to try it. Barnes also did some lines on it and his performance is explosive, really my favourite parts of the album. | ||||||||||||
| Faces of My Victims The last song written for the album. The album needed a quicker paced song since the other ones are more groovy, heavy type of riffs containing tracks… about a guy realizing about his mental problems and describing what he sees and hears during the night when he tries to go to sleep. | ||||||||||||
| March of Death My favourite band of all times has to be Obituary, and this one and the riffs that open the song are just pure homage to that. I really wanted to have some of that OBI feel and groove on this song and I think it turned out ok. Again the storyline loosely describes a normal guy heading to his boiling point, using the split personality of his psyche slowly climbing to its peak before its time to get violent. | ||||||||||||
| The Book of a Dying World This one was for a long time my favourite song, together with “Written in Blood”. It’s a rollercoaster of riffs that don’t come back to the beginning. The lyrics are inspired, and almost fearfully easy to come up with. It’s like almost I didn’t have to pretend to be someone else. This is the situation we are in, and normal people are reaching their limits of what they can take, what we have become, and who's the blame for this. Really old-school death metal influenced riffs and a doomy middle part. | ||||||||||||
| Epitaph My first Metallica record, and still probably my favourite is “..and Justice for All”. This one was an intro type of theme to the last song “voices”. I wanted to try some triple lead ideas that “ajfa” was full of and that I love to this day… almost a sad vibe to it. | ||||||||||||
| Voices “Voices” is something I was a bit hesitant to show the other guys, but I think the lyrics and the vocal patterns turned out really good… very moody song, the title wraps up some of the themes on the album. Some people blame their twisted alter-ego for the things they’ve done, actually saying they are something else…I see it as an opposite…the “normal guy” is nothing but a disguise, and the real core of your soul is what you actually are. | ||||||||||||
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Tell us a bit about the artwork – who made it etc. and how important do you feel it is to have a cool artwork? | ||||||||||||
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Thomas Nielsen, July 2013 |
