Hello. How is everything going?
Hello! Things are flowing as they should and there are many things going on right now. A lot of tiring work to do, but in the end it's all worth it, no reason to complain really.

Feral was originally started as a joke band called Valmer & Hook, how did Valmer & Hook sound like? What was the joke?
The appropriate word to describe Valmer & Hook's sound would be shit, at least the “Black Death”-demo. But it was never intended to sound any other way. The joke was all about the general serious attitude in the Metal scene, we we're kind of a "parody band". This was kind of hard to get people to understand though. A lot of the people who heard our music that wasn't close friends of ours just saw us as a shitty band with bad lyrics, which we were, but I guess they didn't realize that it was intentional. Later on Valmer & Hook released the “Grim Winternight!”-demo which had more serious songs but still some really crappy lyrics and we had a hard time to get people to take us more seriously when we actually wanted them to. But I guess we set that up for ourselves when we started of as we did.

Why did you change name into Feral? Why did you change both musical and lyrical direction?
Well, when we started of we were only two in the band, me (Hook) and Viktor (Valmer). In the beginning Valmer & Hook wasn't really a band-name, people just started things like "Valmer and Hook has recorded some songs", and that finally became the name of the band. When we later had a full line-up we decided that a name change would be appropriate. I think we quite recently had written the song “Howling” and thought that Feral would be a fitting name for the band. I don't think we changed musical directions that much, just got better at writing songs. In the beginning we wanted Feral to evolve into a “Black Metal”-inspired band but everything we wrote simply came out as Death Metal! The lyrical direction didn't really change that much either, though we stopped trying to be funny mock stereotypical Metal lyrics.

Which bands have inspired Feral's music? How would you describe your music?
We hadn't actually heard that much Death Metal when we started to write music, most bands that people compare us to now and that I really love were totally unknown to me then. We listened a lot traditional metal bands like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and such, but also Venom, Bathory and some of the Norwegian black metal bands. Nowadays I'm personally inspired the most by the old Swedish Death Metal bands like Grave and Entombed and 70's rock/metal act like Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

You recently released a demo "Welcome to the Graveyard", what do you think about it? How would you describe it? How has the response been? Both from fans and ´zines?
“Welcome to the Graveyard” is the first of our demos really has turned out as we wanted it, and I think we all feel that we have finally found our way writing music. Since there was 2 years between “Welcome to the Graveyard” and the demo before that (“Graverobber”) we had more time in the rehearsal room and more experience of playing live, we got tighter as band, both musically and on a personal level. Every one put a lot of heart and more hard work than ever into the recording of “Welcome to the Graveyard” and we're all very satisfied with the results. I would describe the demo as what we have always tried to do but not quite known how to, but we are finally there and there is a lot more to come!
The response has been fucking awesome! It's seem like we really hit the spot with the recording and song-writing! We have never tried to impress anyone with our songs and we write what we feel like, never on any other persons demand. So when we get so much good response on something that we have made it feel great. Reviews have been good as well, we haven't got a single basing yet as far as I know.

Have any labels been in contact with you?
In fact, we have signed a record deal by now. This should have been revealed a long time ago, but have been a bit delayed. More info will be posted on our website as soon as possible.

I saw that you have made a video, tell us about it. Why did you decide to make a video of the song "Welcome to the Graveyard"?
The video was shot on an old cemetery outside of my and Valmers birth town, Norsjö. We chose that song since it has been very well received when playing it live and also a good song to make a video of since we have had the idea of shooting a video at the cemetery for a long time. I think Standard Film Team did a great job, as always!

You have toured with Master, Six Feet Under among others, how was that?
That was a truly awesome experience, especially the Master-tour that was much longer helped us evolve our live-performance severely, and I very much believe that seeing us live before these tours is not the same thing as witnessing the feral savagery live today. We also met a lot of great people, got more contacts and some really good friends. Travelling around like that, seeing new places and playing live for great crowds are something we definitely want to do again!

Who creates what in the band? Is it a collaborative process or do you create separately?
Valmer usually writes the music and I write the lyrics, sometimes the other way around as well, but every one gets to put their own touch on the songs. The things that we write before we enter the rehearsal room is just the skeleton of the finished song, and it isn't finished until the rest of the band has put their own twist on it. Lately the others have become more involved in the writing, changing some things here and there, which I think is a very good thing. I and Valmer don't have any control-needs like that and the more opinions the better, everyone in the band should be satisfied with the material we record and perform. Even though you obviously can't love every song, we all have our own favorites. I think Big Mac has come up with some song ideas as well, and we're looking forward to hearing what he has cooked up. I think we could use some new blood in the song writing to not become to predictable.

How important are the lyrics? Could you describe your lyrical content and why they are based on such topics?
Bad lyrics kills good music if you ask me. Not that our lyrics are groundbreaking or original, but at least I take a long time to get them right and the way I want them. If I'm not satisfied I won't record it. Our lyrics usually deal with the classic zombies, grave robbing and violence that is familiar within death metal and somewhat anti religious themes. Every one has the right to believe what they want, but you certainly won't find us praising god or any other deity in our songs since we don't believe in such things. And that's about as deep as our lyrics get. Death Metal regarding deep philosophic or political themes wouldn't really do it for me, stick to the things that work and sounds good, and try your best not to steal from other bands even if most things have been written already.

Is there any new material in the making? If so will it sound like the previous material? Or will you go in any new direction?
There is always new material on the way, many other bands say that they "enter writing mode" but that is something that has never worked for us. Writing on demand is impossible, inspiration comes when you least expect it, and never when you want it to. No new direction is taken intentionally, though I could say that I feel that we have moved a bit from the Death 'n' Roll sub-genre with the “Welcome to the Graveyard” demo and maybe taken a step to more straight forward Death Metal. Even if you still can hear some distinct elements of Death 'n' Roll, we can't deny that we fucking love groove but a blast beat here and there can't make anything worse, right? We will release some new material on our upcoming album and it is probably the most intense stuff we have ever written, but I can promise that you won't have any problem with recognising that it's Feral and nothing else.

Lately there have been popping up a lot of new bands playing old school Metal in various forms. What is your opinion on all of these young old school bands? Why do you think this retro wave started?
Well, we're one of them so saying that I'm against it would be insane. I think it's great that people are showing interest in new bands and the older ones again, maybe my opinion would have been different if I had been around when the scene spawned in the late 80's and early 90's. But we haven't really had any problems with gaining veteran fans from the early scene, we all like old school death metal and if an album is good it's good even if it was recorded several years after 1991. I think the wave started because people got sick of these full sentence band names and people writing egoistic music to show of their skills. Yes, it's really impressive that you can play 8 million notes per second, but I'd rather listen to a good song than a bunch of impressive riffs jammed together. And once you've heard one of these bands the second one you hear won't be as breath taking, and after a while it all gets boring. In the end, less is more. There is a difference between being interesting and showing off.

What are the future plans of Feral?
We are currently in the studio recording our upcoming album, the drums are done and we are soon half way though the guitars and we are always looking for gigs wherever and whenever possible. After that, world domination lies ahead, haha!

Thanks for the interview, end in any way you like.
Thank you! And thanks to all those who support Feral and real Death Metal in general! Festering regards from us in the band, let the graverobber dig!