Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Dew-Scented

4/26/07

With Incinerate, Germany's Dew-Scented has done what they've been doing since the early 1990s, releasing another pummeling record firmly sitting between the subgenres of thrash and death metal. Lead vocalist Leif Jensen dubs the style “extreme thrash,” and who could argue? The album is one metal-thrashing-mad song after another, set off by the first single/video, the vengeful “That's Why I Despise You.” If that wasn't enough, Incinerate also features guest performances by guitarist Jeff Waters of Annihilator and vocalist Mille Petrozza of Kreator. Jensen gave Live-Metal.net's Jeff Maki a call to chat about the new album, the band's longevity and ... umm ...Tori Amos?

I listened to the album, Incinerate, and reviewed it here on Live-Metal.net [READ REVIEW HERE]. I don't think you're necessarily trying to re-write the book on metal, but it's just a solid, fast and pummeling thrash record.

Leif: I don't think everyone has to be original—

Well, yes. With that being said, what can longtime fans of Dew-Scented expect with Incinerate?

Up to date, with all of our albums staying true to the same style, but progressing in detail and how we get across and more to the point with songwriting and material essence, Incinerate is a pure sounding record. It's probably our most aggressive album thus far. I think it has a very similar vibe to 2003's Impact. We had a great time writing the record and performing the songs, so hopefully people who are into extreme thrash will appreciate that.

I'm not too familiar with your past material. Do you guys have a death metal background? The record has a really strong death vibe.

Yes, I think we've always been between the two styles—the power of death metal, but at the same time we are a riff-oriented. We love the classic '80s thrash style. We've always been influenced by both the subgenres and have been sitting in the middle. You could probably call it extreme thrash. We do have blast beats and dark sound. If you hear Cannibal Corpse, I think we are far away from those guys, so I don't know if death metal really nails it.

There is not a general concept but a general vibe that has been fueling to write lyrics on the last two records. In a real sense of the world, every time you open your eyes, you see something going wrong, and you get inspired and deal with it by phrasing it and writing it down. There are some emotional and personal lines in there. I think that there's old perspective, disappointment, frustration—things in there. Therefore the title Incinerate, which is very strong and a channel to show those negative emotions.

Yes because it's personal. You know you're sitting there onstage releasing that anger, aggression and agony. If you're dealing with a magical unicorn that never really existed—I don't know, I would feel different. You know it's not real. We like to deal with things that actually do matter that we have something from and something into it.

To be honest, no, it was meant to be, but we kept it neutral and did not go over the line on that one. It's pretty much a nice way to end a love song. There are a lot of songs out there that are like, “We're writing a song because we have good feelings for you,” but this song is written for someone that we don't have any good feelings for.

I recently saw the video for the song on the web site [WATCH VIDEO HERE]. Why did you choose this song for the first video?

We thought that the song was short and sharp and has all the trademarks that make Dew-Scented what it is. We though it was a very aggressive fast-forward song. At the end of the day, you know we are not talking commercial music, and it felt like one of our softer songs to get us into music TV, and at the end of the day, that's what really matters.

You mentioned to try to get on TV and radio. How hard is it to be a successful metal band here in the U.S.?

I guess it depends. It's a matter of definition or how you perceive it. We've been lucky and been given our chances to tour and record and get promoted. When it comes to the U.S., we are sort of underground and I'm going to say up-and-coming, even though we have been around so many years and for seven releases so far. We've been over there for three or four bigger festivals or shows. We did one North American tour for Issue VI, our sixth album, and we are committed to come over once or twice on this new album, so we still have a lot of work ahead. To us, success is to be able to continue, to be heard and to have people actually enjoy the music and what we're doing. We are very happy with the success we have achieved and are achieving. If you call success being a leading band in the scene and conquering all North American markets and setting up places blah blah blah, then we are very far away from that.

I guess a lot of people don't realize the band has been around for so long. What is the secret to your staying power?

I wish I knew. We never really thought about it. That's really one of the things. I actually ran into our original bass player and original guitarist yesterday, being at home in the area that we used to come from and was like, “Man, you know it's been a long while.” And they have been out [of the band] for like eight or 10 years. And they were like, “Where do you see you guys going?” You know—I don't know—probably the next tour, the next record, the next challenge. We seem to not look back or look ahead too long. It's not like we've ever sat down and said, “What are we doing 10 years from here?” We always said ,“What's going to happen next season? What's going to happen summer?” Then all of a sudden, time flies and we're hangin' in there. I don't think there is a practical reason why we managed to have this long career. Probably that we never push it too hard or pretend to be something we are not. A lot of what we found out was from our album Inwards, which came out in 2002 and was our first record that was distributed and released all over the world. So I guess to a certain extent and to most people, we are a relatively new band that has been around for four or five years, though that's not true. We are in a lucky situation that we are still enjoying what we are doing, so I don't care about the reasons behind it. I just happen not to question it.

We found a new guy. He's called Andi [Andreas Jechow]. He started playing with us at some point in February, I believe. He performed live for the record release show for Incinerate, and he just did a tour for us on the drums with Napalm Death and Behemoth. And he was playing with us and everything went well. He is a real talented guy. He's our age in the 20s and has the right style, and he loves the music that we're playing, so I think it's going to be very cool to go into the future with him.

How did the collaborations come together with Jeff Waters (Annihilator), Gus G. (Firewind) and Kreator [Mille Petrozza] on the new album?

I guess a lot of it was spontaneous. We've never really had guests on our albums or invite guests. And we thought since this time we did the recording sessions different from the mixing sessions, we had a couple of weeks in between and felt it would be the right timing to reach out and invite some people that we know and people that we would be happy to have on the record. We're friends with Gus and friends with Jeff for many years. When we had this opportunity to sort out the lead guitars on “Perdition for All,” we had noticed that we had a second solo in the same song. Jeff did a good job and was very into it. I think he is very underrated and is a very original and unique guitar player. I think that he has a style you can easily recognize. And I think he definitely adds a little bit of a special vibe to it.

I really like the way your vocals trade off with [Mille] Petrozza'a of Kreator on “Retain the Scars.”

Cool! Cool. I'm very happy with that as well. You know Kreator were one of our early influences. And we've always wanted to build up a contrast of vocals at some point on the record. The funny thing is that we are considered to be the same style of music, like thrash, but the vocals are very, very different from each other. He's got one of these very trademark voices where you can actually recognize. I think he actually makes the last song on the record be a very special vibe, a very edgy song and he did a great performance and I'm very happy that he's part of our album. You know, it doesn't get better than that.

We, of course, already mentioned Kreator, but who are your influences vocally?

My three favorite singers in extreme metal are Tomas [Lindberg] from At the Gates, David Vincent of Morbid Angel and Chuck [Schuldiner] from Death. They are very distinct, very heavy but at the same time understandable. I also like Dan Swano from Edge of Sanity. I think he is a killer vocalist and Mike [Åkerfeldt] from Opeth. I think he's got a killer growling death metal voice. Those are probably my favorites when it comes to extreme metal vocal. I'm into melodic stuff as well—the singer of Acid Bath. I love Jeff Buckley. I love Tori Amos.

I actually like Tori Amos myself for some reason.

Yeah, yeah, she's someone special. I'm very much looking forward to the new album she's putting out in May. I've been a fan and collector since the very first album and always go out and see her live. She's a very special, very underrated and trendless artist, you know, of the old school, somebody with a gift, not somebody that was made, you know?

She just seems very honest.

Yeah, totally, very personal, and like I said, the old school of singer/songwriter artist is something that will still be there in 30 years time. Has anybody ever asked or cared about what style music she plays? I don't think anybody gives a shit. It's like Kate Bush. What is she doing? Nobody reads into the style. It's not bound to a genre or a certain trend. They're just standing on their own and will be there a long time from now.

I saw that you guys did a Bad Religion cover ["Fuck Armageddon ... This Is Hell]" for the bonus disc and also had covers in the past. How do you go about selecting songs to cover?

Well, we are big fans of punk and hardcore as well. It's a very original song, taken from the very first album. It's a rough song with a very cool lyric. Our guitarist actually proposed it, and I was cool with it, you know. Against the Grain was probably the last record I liked, but No Control and Suffer, I think, are great punk albums, and I listen to the band. We did just a very simple, one-to-one heavy version, not altering itself, and we've done that in the past. We've done cover versions of Turbonegro, covers of Zeek and Discharge just because we enjoy the more savage straightforward punk and hardcore, as well. It doesn't really play a big influence in our music when you actually hear it, but we are very much influenced by punk rock, as well. I've never considered that to be less brutal or less important than metal to myself or the band.

I actually just recently checked out the DVD American Hardcore. I don't know if you've seen it.

No, I actually haven't. How was it?

It was really good. There's not a lot of live footage, there's probably not that much around, but it's interview after interview with Minor Threat, Bad Brains, and it's just really interesting.

When I'm talking to you—actually, hold on. Check this out [I can faintly hear Leif playing a clip of a song with a female singing] It's a clip from the new Tori Amos.

[laughter]

You have a show coming up with Machine Head?

Right. That's going to be sometime in June. I think they're coming over for festivals in the summer and play a show in Dublin, Germany, and we're actually supporting them, which is cool. Machine Head has been a band we've always respected. Their new album [The Blackening] is fantastic. It's probably my metal album of the year up until now, so I'm very happy about that. We met Rob, and he's pretty cool that he's giving us a break to support them, too.

That fact that we're still around after so many years and still doing it is probably our biggest accomplishment.

We would like to encourage people who listen to extreme metal to check us out. Check out Incinerate. I believe a lot of people still haven't found out about our band. I am thankful for the fact that you're supporting the band and giving us a chance to expose the music. And hopefully that will give us new friends and fans next time we come over to the States. We will be very interested to hear back from people based on feedback from the record, so hopefully we'll be seeing a lot of you on the tour.