www.facebook.com/devourermetal
From: Sweden
Sounds like: Blackened Extreme Metal
All questions answered by John Falk.
1. How did you get started with music and how did you develop your sound? Who thought of the name "Devourer" and is there any meaning behind it?
Our band name symbolises a massive dark force that engulfs everything in its path. Fredrik's lyrics connect to this sometimes. For example, the song TON 618 on our latest album is an esoteric occult vision of the origins of a black hole, representing the utter destruction of the cosmos and one's sacrifice to the path it depicts.
The development of our sound is an unconstricted natural progression that continues even now. Our new album Raptus is slightly different from our old albums. It has fewer blast beats and more heavy death metal influenced parts, and the atmosphere is bleaker overall. The material we're writing now has a new vibe to it, but you'll hear it's still Devourer. As long as we like it ourselves, we'll keep it, but a lot of material ends up in the trashcan.
2. What do you want people to take away from your music?
I want people to enjoy listening to our albums as much as we do when creating them. There are many different moods and atmospheres in our songs, they can be furious, sinister, heavy or bleak, and I think most fans of blackened extreme metal can find things they like in our music. Our music is mainly second wave Swedish black metal, but we call it blackened extreme metal. It has influences of death metal, groove metal and doom as well. We often experiment with different effects and samples too.
3. Who are three bands you’d like to tour with?
It doesn't matter which bands it is, as long as they're good people and dedicated musicians. It would preferably be bands with a sound similar to ours though, so they'd attract fans that might like us too. I can't really say exactly what bands that would be, when we get asked to name bands that are similar to us it's hard to come up with that because we're not based on any specific genre or band, we do our own thing. We usually name Dark Funeral so I'll say we'd like to tour with them, maybe Mgla and Behemoth too.
4. How has Covid affected what you do as a band?
Covid didn't affect us much because we weren't playing live even before the pandemic. We were planning to start playing live just around the time Covid began causing trouble, so it delayed our progress as a band in that way. I think it'll get better soon, so our first live show is probably not that far away now.
5. What’s your take on the current state of Black Metal?
It seems to be flourishing. I don't keep up with new bands, I mainly write music, not listen to it, and if I listen to music, it's often my old favourites. In the last few years, it's become a lot easier to record and produce music. It takes just a laptop and a sound card. The downside is that there's so much music coming out, quality varies a lot, and the amount of it makes it hard to pick out the good stuff.
6. What’s your take on the royalties that streaming services pay out to artists?
I can't say because we've never gotten any royalties from any streaming services. Maybe that tells you what my take is on the question.
7. What’s next for Devourer?
We continue writing songs and promoting ourselves as well as we can. Maybe we'll release something other than a full album next. We usually release a video single or something like that in between albums, and if Covid is about to end, we might start playing live.
