UNDERGANG

Who are you and what do you do in your band?

- I go under the moniker D. Torturdød and I play guitar and do vocals in UNDERGANG. I'm also the one responsible for most of the artwork used for our releases and merchandise.

When/where was your band formed? 

- UNDERGANG was formed in June 2008 by the same three people who lurks within our lineup. We're located in Copenhagen, Denmark, where we try to present our own take on extremely heavy and rotten sewer death metal. We call it Kill-Town Death Metal.

Why did you choose to play Death Metal?

- Death Metal has been a big passion mine since my early teens and once I finally felt comfortable with my guitar playing I spoke with friends and we got the band going. Death Metal is the only way.

How do you compose your music? Does only one guy do everything or does everyone contribute?

- I've composed almost all of our riffs on my acoustic guitar at home and when I have enough riffs ready to present a more or less complete song to the others I bring it down to our rehearsal and our drummer (A. Dødshjælp) and I arrange the riffs into the final song and then have our bassist (K. Ondsind) get involved. Once it's properly rehearsed and I have ideas for the vocals I write lyrics based on the mood of the song and make them fit on top of the music down at the rehearsal. Occasionally we jam a bit at rehearsal and something comes out of it or at times our A. Dødshjælp picks up the guitar and comes up with ideas for riffs that annoys me and I then take over the guitar and turn it into UNDERGANG riffs, hehe. He is an even more skilled guitar player than me know, our styles are just different.

Tell us about your lyrics, writing, inspiration etc.

- Death Metal lyrics to me should be about death. So our lyrics deal with child murder, torture, the process of decomposing, necrophilia, suicide and other lovely subjects.

I've always loved horror movies and comics, so a lot of the inspiration comes from that at times. Or it could just be with the intention to gross one out when reading the lyrics, even though it's all in Danish so maybe not that many of our listeners really understand what they are about. They are all rather tongue in cheek too.

Is there an ideology behind your band?

- Not really, we're play Death Metal for the sake of playing and performing Death Metal.

How do you see the state of Death Metal music these days in your country and in general?

- When I got into Death Metal it wasn't really popular, but about the time we got UNDERGANG going, It seemed like there was bit more interest in death metal again. But by now it also seems like it's slowly fading away again. I used to do an underground death metal festival here in Copenhagen with some friends, called Kill-Town Death Fest for 5 years and arranged the funeral for it last year. We had pretty decent attendance from all over the world but a really low percentage of actual Danish visitors. Our shows in Denmark usually have quite low attendance too, but that of course might also be because we suck. But in general I see fewer and fewer people at Death Metal shows, unless it's something like MORBID ANGEL, who still seems to drag a pretty big crowd here in town. Internationally I don't really know. I think it's about the same but still with Copenhagen being a bit lamer. But who cares, the ones who really care for Death Metal will stick around and the wimps needs to be herded out once in a while occasionally too. What I personally do have always been driven by passion and not based on popularity.

What are your long term plans as a band? What do you want to achieve?

- Continue having as much fun with what we do as possible, record albums and do sick tours all over the world. I love playing in UNDERGANG, it's a big part of my life and I love all the possibilities the band gives us to travel to foreign countries, play with sick bands, meet cool new people and pen pals, work with cool cats in good studios and have our music released by great labels run by people I consider my friends. So pretty much what we do now just continued for years to come.

Name an other Death Metal band from your country that everyone should hear.

- EXHAUST (old) & DEIQUISITOR (new)

Free word

- Thanks for the interview and your interest in our band.

We'll have our third album called "Døden Læger Alle Sår" released July 10th 2015 by Me Saco Un Ojo records (LP) and Dark Descent records (CD) and promote it on a European tour with Australian STARGAZER from July 9th-27th. So keep an eye out for shows on that! More new songs are in the works and we'll keep rotting till we collapse.

Listen to Death Metal, support the bands you like and generally just don't be a dick.

Sneezing pus,

- D. Torturdød / UNDERGANG

April 2015