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

Posted by on June 11, 2013

I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about this, but when you played the Decibel Magazine tour last year, the kick off date had to move to a different venue because of the “satanic views” of bands on the bill. Do you feel that American audiences or European audiences are more open to the type of views that you portray?

I think that maybe Americans have a tendency to relate a little bit more because religion is such a common part of people’s lives here. Whether or not they are religious people themselves, but they sure have a parent or an aunt that is. While in Europe, it’s not really like that anymore. People in their 20’s or 30’s are quite detached from any religion whatsoever. So in a sense, I feel that Americans are a bit more receptive to what we’re talking about. God, at least, I think people get a concept for, while Europeans are like “yeah, whatever.” I always prefer touring America before Europe.

 

Really? What other reasons, besides the religious aspect, do you prefer touring America?

People are a bit more fucked up there. There’s a little bit more fire. I think they long for liberation and freedom more than the kind of spoiled European kid. For me, it’s quite a definite difference between the two, and I like that. Especially when you come out to Texas, and even California, sure there are a lot of Mexicans, but there’s something spicy and violent in the crowd, always. I like that.

 

What would you say then is the biggest difficulty of touring in America, versus touring abroad?

The biggest difficulty is that there’s always this hit and miss thing at the venues with what they allow us to do or not. It seems like there’s no way of actually knowing beforehand whether we can do the whole show or not. It’s always decided on the day because that just seems to be how it works there. That’s kind of annoying. It’s very frustrating for our crew who always tries and plan ahead. That’s one of the harder things. And of course, there’s hardly anywhere to use the fire properly like we want to because of the Great White thing. On the last tour, half of our crew were wearing Great White shirts all the time. [laughs]


I hope you didn’t do that in Rhode Island where it actually happened. [laughs]

No, I can’t remember if we did it there. That’s one of the downsides, I would say, but on the other end, we have to take it day by day and see how it goes. I mean, I love stripped down shows as well. Like, we played in fucking cafés in New Orleans with nothing. Those nights can also become really special.

 

Well, speaking of touring, what’s the actual plan when it comes to touring in support of this album?

The only thing that we actually have confirmed is that we’re going to be in the U.S. from early October to early November. But whether or not it’s going to be a headline tour with a good support package or if it’s going to be us supporting a much bigger band remains to be seen. Unfortunately, I can’t really say much more than that. It’s going to be October anyway, and we look forward to it.

 

Is there any dream band that you’d love to open for? I know you’ve toured with Behemoth and that seemed like it would be a good package, but is there one band that you think would be an amazing opportunity for you to tour with? 

I wish it was 15 or 20 years ago sometimes [laughs]. I mean, we toured with Dissection; we toured with Celtic Frost, which were two of the best tours we’ve ever done. I don’t know. I still want to play with Venom. I still want to play with Slayer, I mean do a proper tour. There’s Mercyful Fate and King Diamond, that kind of stuff.

 

Well King Diamond could still happen!

We were actually negotiating with him, but it got postponed like a year, so I hope it works out this time. That would be great, if we could pull that off. I don’t know, like I said, we were sitting in the studio looking at this old Combat Records compilation, and were talking about which bands to tour with, and we just looked at the back of it and were like “Fuck, imagine if this would have been like…’86!” Every band was good. All of these bands, like Exciter and Voivod. And they’re still good, but they don’t really draw a crowd anymore. It’s different times.

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Categorised in: Interviews