INTERVIEW: DEATHSTARS

If Samantha Fox, the Village People and Satan had a love child, chances are we would end up with Swedish death-glam pioneers, Deathstars. Combining their love of sleazy rock with incomparable theatrics, the band are set to stir the hearts and imaginations of Australian audiences when they return to our shores in May. We sat down with the maestro himself Whiplasher to talk about the tour, the promise of a new album and Fabio.

By Meghan Player

It’s been a while since Australian audiences last witnessed Deathstars in action – and it’s fair to say we’ve been sorely missing the glitter, sleazy, goth-romp – are you looking forward to heading back to our fair shores once again?
Of corpse we are. These dates in Australia are kind of special to us also because they’re the last real club shows that we do before the new album is recorded and released; the last thing before we move into next phase. It feels like we want to play the songs that we think sum up Deathstars the best until this point, and as usually do it with our sensual Scandinavian depraved style. We are pleased to do this on your continent, and in ordinary clubs. We’re looking forward to it.

Debauchery and horror are pretty much a given with a live Deathstars set – is there anything you’re looking forward to unleashing on Australian audiences that they perhaps haven’t seen or experienced before?
I think we always try to deliver our type of rock music with our own style of darkness, sweat, denim, glitter and leather. We are in many ways a pretty straight forward rock band that are very fond of distortion, cigarettes, girls and the devil. That’s pretty much it. If you’re into that kind of stuff you should step into our church of Deathglam.

2011 was the last time we trembled under your wrath – with the aptly titled compilation, ‘The Greatest Hits On Earth’ – is there a new album in the works?
Actually the Aussie-dates are a kind of one-off thing for us during this period – since all focus is on writing the new album, and recording at that point. Therefore it also feels extra special, because it’s kind of cool thing to do – visit down under. Since it also gets us to meet the clubs where the deathstarstrucked ones hang out, and gets us out from the isolation that recording an album most often is.

How do you think the band has changed over the years?
In many ways we definitely have, and in many ways not at all. Music wise – the first album is like an ancient demo to us. We have the same kind of attitude as we always had, and we still have the same passion about our idea of what this band should be.  Deathstars is a very personal matter, and to some point even private – but when we take it to the stages we are the like cheapest prostitutes on the street.

The way that you dress and present yourselves is certainly a visual extension of your music – is this a factor that is as important to the band as the music itself? Did the visuals and theatrics come before or after the music?
People tend to think that we have such a huge idea behind the visual part of the band, but that’s not the fact. What we do is kind of just to illustrate the vibe and lyrics on the album with attributes. That is something we have a look at after the songs are recorded, to nail the symbiosis between the elements.

Personally, my favourite thing about the band is the eclectic mix of sound and visuals that for some reason you don’t think are supposed to work together, but you somehow manage to pull it off. Where do your greatest inspirations for sounds, themes and visuals come from?
We grew up worshipping KISS. We started to play black metal when we were 13 years, so since then, we’ve been a part of those scenes. We like the kinds of bands that just don’t play in sneakers, jeans and a t-shirt – we like those too of course – but doing our own stuff we’ve been more into thinking a band should be a bit larger than life-kind of attitude. The visual part for us is partly a mixture of Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, glamrock and our roots in extreme underground black metal. We are definitely not a goth band. We are a heavy rock band. We have really nothing to do with goth.

Do you think that your influences and inspirations have changed over the years?

No, not really. We have always written about our own lives and that’s the inspiration now as well.

You were once quoted as saying that Deathstars is like “group sex between Samantha Fox, the Village People and Satan” – do you still feel that you are the love child of this foray?
Yes, that sounds reasonable.

Finally, how would you convince our readers to catch you on your upcoming tour – if they weren’t already convinced to come along..
It’s going to be an audio intercourse, with the appearance of being a mixture between AIDS, the old 80’s model Fabio and Lucifer.

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Many thanks to Whiplasher for taking the time to chat to us. You can check out the upcoming Australian tour dates at:

http://www.deathstars.net