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Vice Blog

DEATHRONER - SPONSORED BY THE APOCALYPSE

Deathroner play some of the most furious metal to come out of Canada since the golden age of the 80s. Their new album, Death to All, has been killing me since it was released a few weeks back, so I got in touch with vocalist and guitarist J.P. Antikrist to see what was on his mind and straighten out a few myths in the process (apart from the one about his name, because that one's better left unstraightened).

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Vice: First up, why the name "Deathroner"? Does it have anything to do with wanting to dethrone all the lame-ass bands we have to put up with nowadays?
J.P. Antikrist: Of course the moniker shows a motive, and the one you evoked fits us perfectly. We want to dethrone fucking Christianity with infernal powers, dethrone enemies and weak ones with total war, and when all is done and everything's destroyed and dead, death will claim its rightful throne.

Cool. Who are your main inspirations?
First of all, lots of Satanic, hateful and aggressive metal bands. Also, Hitler and WWII in general, Nietzsche and serial killers… Satanism, occultism, war, hate, death, and nihilism are great inspirations for us.

The LP is even more hate-filled, intense, and insane than the demo--especially the vocals--was this intentional?
Absolutely. We put shitloads of hate and aggression into the making of the demo, and we knew we had to top it for the album. So we did.

The album cover depicts the Earth being sucked into a huge black hole in space. What do you make of the current state of the world? Does it feel like it is coming to an end, both in terms of natural disasters (flooding, fires etc) and with mankind intent on killing itself (wars, religion, etc.)?
Well, if this fucked up world and pitiful mankind are not already "dead," they're pretty damn close… That's the meaning of the cover art. The worst is yet to come, and this is what Deathroner stands for.

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So do you think Death To All is a suitable soundtrack for the apocalypse?
Ha ha, hell yeah!!! Deathroner is sponsored by the apocalypse itself!!!

You're Canadian. Canada has had a very rich history of spitting out killer metal bands over the years with Slaughter, Razor, Blasphemy, etc. What new bands do you think emanate the same feeling as those, and what bands from the old days do you love yourselves?
New bands… We're not really getting updates about what's new in our country and the rest of the world as well. The only new band we know that is similar to Deathroner in terms of aggression and old-schoolness is Perversifier from France. Bands from the old days, that's what we're mainly listening to, even after all those years; Venom, Bathory, Slayer, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, Possessed, the great Canadian bands aforementioned, Deicide, Beherit…

A while ago I was talking to a friend about Deathroner and he said he liked you guys but felt that "politically" you are "a few snowflakes short of a snowball." But inside your new LP you state the band is apolitical. Was there some misappropriated idea in the past that you were a political band?
Fuck, yes. Some fucking group of humanists and worthless punks--namely the ARA (Anti-Racist Action)--started branding us a bunch of National Socialists, which had us banned from a couple of shows as a result. They were too dumb to understand that we were hailing and praising EVIL in all its forms, without political afterthought or understatement. If you're judging Deathroner from a humanist and moral point of view, you're really missing the whole fucking point, ha ha.

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How did you come to labeling your music as Evil Speed Metal?
Back in Canada in the mid-80s, almost every extreme metal band was released by a label in Montreal called Banzai Records. It was a cheap, shitty, semi-rip-off label, but all the greats from the mid-80s that we listened to were on it. They had a "warning sign" printed on the sleeves of some of the more extreme albums--like Bathory's self-titled release, for instance. This sign looked like a solar cross and the moniker "Speed Metal" was written around it. When we walked into a record store and saw that, we knew we'd be buying something raw, violent and fucking great! Banzai fell into oblivion, but we decided to revive this tradition by using their warning sign--we just added the "evil" to get a more precise description of our sound and add some character to the whole thing. So, this is the fucking Evil Speed Metal story… HAIL SATAN!!!

Will Deathroner continue to bring more of their unique, unholy brand of Evil Speed Metal to the underground in the future?
Absolutely! The second album is on its way. Everything's written and composed, we're working on it and when it's ready, we'll enter that fucking Hell Hole studio once again to record it… EVIL NEVER DIES!!! 666.

Sweet. Thanks dude.

DEATHRONER - "HELLBRINGER"
[audio:http://viceland-assets-cdn.vice.com/music/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/06-hellbringer.mp3]

Death To All is out now on cassette from Devil's Blood Production, or on CD from the band themselves via their MySpace.

†ROCKWELL†