No scenesters with the limitations here!

Denmark's death metal steamroller Inimical formed in 2005 and have released 3 demos/EPs to date ('Room No. 13' recorded in 2006, 'Lamb to the Slaughter' in 2007 and 'Fucked up beyond All Recognition' in 2008). Archaic Metallurgy contacted the band to find out the latest news from them.

AM: Hell-o! How are things in Copenhagen?

Inimical: Everything's fine and we are very excited about the new songs we're writing. We're also booking shows for this fall where we'll be playing some of the new stuff.

AM: Inimical was formed in late 2005. What is your aim(s)?

Inimical: To get signed, get on tour and play for more people. Our aim is basically to get our music out to a bigger audience and play with a lot of different bands. We just wanna have fun with what we're doing and get out there and meet people.

AM: You have three hard demos out. How do you see the band's development during these years?

Inimical: We've become more confident in what we're doing and we've changed the line-up several times. That's why the music has changed a lot since the first demo. We're finding our musical direction with our current line-up and we're certainly getting closer to what we wanna do music wise. We have a lot of different influences in the band so it takes time to incorporate those influences in our music. Playing death metal/grindcore has been our goal for a long time, so we're happy about the new material. Inimical has developed a lot since 'FUBAR'. The songs for the EP were written in 2007 before Tan and Martin joined the band.

In that perspective it makes a lot of sense that Inimical has moved in another direction since.

AM: There are metal and hardcore elements mixed in your stuff. How do you see it, are you more metal than core, then?! Can you tell more about the music that has influenced you?

Inimical: No, we don't consider ourselves whatever-core we're being labeled as. We just play the music we like and with members in our band, who have different influences, the music is a mix of everything from hardcore, metal, death metal, doom. We don't wanna be scenesters with the limitations of one genre only. There's a big difference in age in the band. Therefore we have influences from the early hardcore and death scene. Our debut album will not be metalcore in any way. It will be death metal/grindcore and we're content with that since being labeled as metalcore put us in a place we don't wanna be.

AM: So you are working on the next release already. Can you release some information about how the music is going to sound like? And about the release itself; will it be your debut full length album? Which brings us to another question: Have you got any feedback from any record labels about your demos? And how about a record deal?

Inimical: The new music is a lot more grindcore and death metal based with progressive elements. Yes, it will be our debut album. We haven't been in contact with that many record labels since we were not satisfied with 'FUBAR'. On the other hand 'FUBAR' was our first studio experience together as a band (even though we didn't write it with the current line-up) so even though it left a bitter taste in our mouths, it still brought us some maturity as a band.

We'll search for a record label as soon as we're done with the whole album. That way we'll be presenting ourselves in better way, with a much more focused style than we would if we'd sent 'FUBAR' to record labels. With the new material we're certain that we'll get signed.

AM: Great to hear your confidence about your new stuff.
Your lyrics are based on the real life mostly (although I haven't read 'em all). The real world is, sadly, an inexhaustible source of hard lyrics I presume. This week's news has been around school shootings, wars, recession... So, what do you actually cope with in your lyrics?

Inimical: We cope with social and political issues as well as personal experiences in our lyrics. All the lyrics are written by Tan and are basically about life in all its dark shapes and forms. Every song has its lyrics with its own story. The song 'Ugly' is about all the skeletons we keep in our closet. It's about human urges that are considered perversions. The chorus "I am the bitter taste, I am the words unsaid, I am your inner demon, I am your worst fucking nightmare" refers to the conscience as well as the dark sides of the human being.

'Hatred Breeds Hatred' is about 9/11 and the clash of civilizations; the West against the Muslim world in this case.

The lyrics to 'Emptied of Life' deals with the anger of being faced with a world dominated by religious propaganda. Many people wanna find happiness in life and want to 'find out who they are' instead of accepting who they are. Therefore, religion as well as TV is a way to shelter you in someone else's life instead of taking responsibility for your own acts. No matter what, religious people will say "it's the will of God."

When talking about religious people we refer to extremists mostly, but there's a thin line.

To sum it up, the lyrics are all about what we think is important to discuss and enlighten. We're not like Molotov Solution whose lyrics are very factual; our lyrics are more based on people and their behavior than on politics.

AM: Are you going to hit any stages at some summer festivals? How are Inimical live shows generally? How are your setlists, as you don't have that much of own material yet?

Inimical: No, we're not going to any summer festivals this year. We're focusing all our energy on creating the most powerful music we can. Next year we hope to get touring, backing the new album.

Our shows are very energetic and we like reaching out to people instead of playing for ourselves. We wanna entertain people and make them have a blast as we are when we're playing.

The setlists we play are about 30-45 minutes long and contain material from the latest two demo/EPs.
We're not into playing cover songs, even though we don't have that much material of our own to play. But all that will change with our album; which will contain 10-12 songs.

Recently we played our last show before entering the studio and it's getting tiring to play the old stuff over and over again. Old songs like 'Lambs to the Slaughter', 'Knife' and 'Ugly' will still be in our set, but we're really looking forward to play a lot of new songs live.

AM: How is the Danish metal music scene? Uncle King Diamond is still going on pretty strong. Do you have any good festivals and concert places for harder music in your country? Is Copenhagen the Danish capital for metal music too?

Inimical: The Danish metal scene is spread all over the country from Aarhus to Copenhagen. We have a couple of metal festival such as Royal Metal Fest, Roskilde festival and so on.

AM: This is the end of this interview. If you think something should have been brought up, so the word is free now!

Inimical: Stay metal!

Inimical (from left ot right): Martin Hjort Egelund (drums), Morten Sörensen (guitar), Tan Yalin Måhl-Hansen (vocals), Michael Sjöström (guitar) and Peter Wolf Frandsen (bass).

05/10/2009 11:01