Erik Danielsson Discusses Watain’s New Album And The Misconception Of Their Evil Persona During Album Listening Party

Posted by on June 11, 2013

On stage, and even with the music, there’s some really dark, evil visuals going on. What is the biggest challenge to maintaining such a perception?

Maybe the fact that a lot of people tend to look upon it more like a freak show instead of seeing it for the very real and severe thing that it is. That has always been sort of a struggle. I don’t blame people because the most common reaction for any man, when he’s facing something that he doesn’t really understand, or something that’s dangerous or fucked up…they often laugh a bit nervously. That’s how the human mind works, but at the same time, it gets to a point sometimes where that’s quite frustrating. When you’re like ‘Hey, you really have to pay attention. It’s not a joke!’ We want people to understand that. We want people to go wild at the concert because they know that this is a real, wild, fierce thing that they’re witnessing. I don’t want them to stand there with their iPhone cameras like “Haha, oh look! They have meat on stage!” That’s a bit troubling sometimes. But on the other hand, we know why we do what we do, and I think as long as we know that, it’s not really the greatest concern of mine.

 

Have you figured out any ways to get out of that misconception?

I don’t know. When people ask about it in interviews, I always take the opportunity to talk about it. After all, we’ve chosen to be public artists, and people are free to make up their minds and think what the fuck they want about what we do. I cannot decide for other people what to think. But when I get the chance, I like to underline that like ‘Hey, there’s something more to this than this whole freak show people think we’re about.’

 

Not to keep dwelling on the stage aspect of the band, but considering how elaborate of a production you display, with the rotten meat and all the fire, have you had any Spinal Tap moments that have occurred onstage?

I’m trying to think of any. There have been a lot of times when things have gotten severely out of hand. We’ve had fire alarms go off when flames were licking the roof, and the whole venue had to be emptied in five minutes. There is a lot of stuff like that. We have these huge fireballs on stage with gasoline inside. Once one of those tipped over, and there was a sea of flames for a few minutes. Shit like that. That’s as close to Spinal Tap as we’ve come.


So luckily no goats have come alive on stage yet.

Yeah, exactly! It’s become pretty predictable, and we’ve always had a rowdy crew. They’re a bunch of pirates. Pretty much anything can happen.


But that’s kind of what you kind of want to display onstage, that unpredictability.

Absolutely, exactly. That’s why we use fire on stage. It’s such an unpredictable and explosive element. It never looks the same. The fire always makes its own show.

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Categorised in: Interviews