Interview with Raging Steel 2012
by Bradley Smith

Sorry but I have to start with the standard opening. Try not to fall asleep as you answer. Heh heh. Can you tell me some of the Background of Raging Steel? How did you guys get together and what are your goals with Raging Steel? How do you define your music? What sets Raging Steel apart from other contemporary thrash bands?

Hi!

Well … Raging Steel started in summer of 2008. It was actually Dans one man’s project. He recorded some of the songs alone that are on GAC album with some programed drums that sounded really shitty! But the songs were really fucking great. I was with him the whole time when he wrote those songs. I helped him to write some of the lyrics and gave him some opinions on the riffs. So this is how I basically I got the position as a drummer in the band.

At that time we were both I the same band called Electricution. That summer I wanted to quit the band because of some fights between me and the singer, but I didn’t want to go without Dan. So I told him that I wanted to quit and focus more on Raging Steel and he felt the same way. So we started to look for guitar and the bass player. We knew Dawe from before, we met him at some local gigs and drunk and smoked some pot together. At that time he was in a Death Metal band called Torn Apart which he was about to quit. So we asked him if he wanted to join Raging and he said yes. Our bass player, Emil was our old friend and we knew that he played some guitar and he always told us that we should start some metal band together. So this is how we got together.

Our goal is to create music the way we like it, just to be our self’s and not follow some trendy bullshit. Play live as much as possible and hope that people like what we do!

Our style is Death/Thrash Metal with the mix of bay area thrash and German thrash. And that’s what I think sets us apart from other contemporary bands.

Tell me about the Guilty as Charged album. I got it not too long ago and it has been thrashing my brains out of my skull. What was the recording process like? Did you learn anything during the recording sessions that you will take into the future with you? What is the lyrical concept that Raging Steel focuses on?

Hehe! Good to hear!

The recording process sucked ass haha! Everything went really fucking badly for us. We got this studio for one week called dimrakk which we paid 360 dollars for and studio engineer who I think didn’t really understand the music we were playing haha. Because from time to time he would start to play Metallica – Black Album and some Europe songs and tell us that this is how it should sound haha! Fucking bullshit.. We just looked at him and tried not to laugh. We actually gave him our first gig that we recorded so he could listen to it and maybe get some understanding about the music which we played. We even tried to play some bands that we were influenced by, like Possessed, Dark Angel, Sadus etc.. But I think he just wasn’t listening so fuck it.

Any way… It was my, Dan’s and Emil’s first time in the studio and I didn’t know jack shit about recording process, how it’s done and shit like that. I mean.. I recorded two demos with Electricution but everything was recorded with one or two microphones in our rehearsal room. I didn’t know how to tune the drums so our engineer had to call his friend so he could come down and tune the fucking drums. This made me feel really like fucking stupid dumbass shit. And it got to me really hard! So the whole drum recording session I was feeling really bad and I wanted just record the drums fast as possible and get the hell out of there. After the drums were done I remember we were all sitting down and listening to the drum track and I remember that I thought the drums didn’t sound as fast as I wanted them to be and the fills just sounded terrible. And I knew that it was too late to try to re-record the drums. So I thought well… Fuck it! Maybe the drums will sound better when the whole fucking thing is done. Which they didn’t! In my opinion. I knew I could have done much better job! But what is in the past is in the past. There is nothing much I could do about it. After that I took a day of and the next day when I came back to the studio I notice that Dan had hurt his left hand and he couldn’t record his guitar parts, so it’s basically Dawe who plays almost all of the guitars on the songs. After that I went home and i didn’t come back to the studio rest of the recording time.

The lyric concept is really simple on this album its basically goes like this:

Satan

Hell

Violence

And more Satan!

What we have learned or what I have learned from this album is that I have to make sure that I am happy with my part of the songs and don’t feel so fucking badly about something I don’t know. Just do my part and make sure I am happy with it! And of course! Find a good engineer that has some fucking understanding about what you do before you go and spend 360 bucks on a fucking studio and wind up with the shitty recording that you are not happy with.

But I must say even though I think that this record is shitty, I still think that those songs are powerful and really fucking badass! And must of all I think it’s really cool that some people who bought this record or download it and heard it and liked it. They heard what we tried to do on this album and understood the energy of the songs. So big bucket of win to you all! And thank you Brad!

As I understand it you have a New 4 song EP on the way. What’s the title of it and how will it be different that the debut album? Also, why did you put up your new demo Necromancer for download on the internet? How does this demo bridge the gap between the debut and the EP?

The 4 song 7” EP will be called beyond which will be released on Bifrost records and will be out asap. I hope. Basically all the songs are finished, we are just waiting for the cover art.

I don’t think the EP is much more different from our debut album actually. The thing with the EP is that its sounds musically the way we wanted our album to sound. And Dans vocals are little bit more darker and the songs are little bit more technical. But it’s still the same thing as it always been. Really raw and fast death/thrash! If you want to get a taste of our new EP you can go to our bandcamp (http://ragingsteelswe.bandcamp.com/) and listen to the new song called Wicked Fate. You can download it for free too.

We released Necromancer demo on the internet because we just didn’t have any more money to print the demo so we just put it up on the internet for free so people could download it and enjoy it. The thing with this demo is that we just wanted to record something that we could show people that we are still alive as band and that there are new songs on the way. There is a song from our upcoming EP called Beyond the Perdition and a song that will be on our next album called Awakened They Become. So please go to our bandcamp, download it and spread it everywhere you can!

Right now Sweden is undergoing a thrash explosion with bands like Entrench, Antichrist, Insane and yourselves. In a way it sort of reminds me of when the American Bay Are thrash scene exploded. Can you compare the two scenes and tell me how they are similar and how they are different? Why do you think Sweden is bursting with great thrash bands right now?

Well the scene here is actually much more smaller then it was about 4 years ago. The whole explosion happened in 2002 - 2003. We had really great bands in the underground at that time. Leprosy (later Caustic Strike) Schizophrenia, Divider, Corrupt, Waster, Oppression, Lethal, Guerilla, Elimination and Vexation to name a few. But somewhere in the late 2008 the whole scene just died out. Suddenly everyone was into Old school death metal and NWOBHM. Death Metal and Heavy Metal bands started to pop out from everywhere and Thrash Metal just got forgotten.

But some bands from that time remained. Such as Dr. Living Dead, Evolvator, Immaculate and Entrench and still doing their thing, which is cool.

And yes of course some younger bands have started to release stuff and playing live. Thanks to them the whole thrash scene is not in toilet… Yet! I really hope that the scene will be back to its normal state as it was before. Because Thrash Metal here in Sweden never got any fair chance! It just got overshadowed by the Swedish Death Metal, Heavy Metal and Black Metal. Don’t get me wrong I love those metal styles as well! But it’s just getting so fucking boring when it’s the same type of fucking music being released year after year in this country.

As you see Thrash Metal here in Sweden is really underground and thrash metal bands are really rare here nowadays. So I don’t think there is much to compare here actually.

As a relatively young band, how do you think your view is different from older, more established bands? Do you think you have a more energetic outlook and are somewhat freer to express yourself as you see fit? Why do you think that most old bands start to produce albums that are not good anymore? What are some good examples of bands that started out good and then their later albums sucked?

Well of course we have different views! But you have to remember that old bands were energetic once too when they started. Hungry and pissed off as we are right now. Nowadays most of the bands who survived the 80s and 90s are still struggling and playing shit loads of gigs so they can pay the rent and they have been doing this for over 30 years. So the views are different but at the same time not that much!

Today when you go to a show you can see some of the punk kids, hardcore, hip hop, goth and etc at the gig. They will be there moshing, banging their heads or just watch the gig with you. Without anybody giving them shit about it! There is much more acceptance in the scene today is what I’m trying to say.

Some of the old bands as I said have been doing this for over 30 years and when you have been doing the same thing for over 30 years you get pretty tired so you want to try something new with the music. Bring some fresh air into the band. But unfortunately the “new” sometimes just don’t work and we all end up with a bad record.

Some of the bands that released new shitty records are Testament, Metallica (Well haha! I think all of their albums suck except one! Kill ‘Em All), Megadeth, Exumer, Onslaught, Kreator and Sodom and the list goes on and on! Haha!

But there is one release that sucked ass!!! And I think I’m not the only one who felt that this band just took a fucking huge dump over the whole album! The band is Exodus and the album is Let There Be Blood…. Why Gary!?!? Oh why!?? Why did you have to re-record this ultimate thrash metal classic!! Horrible… Just horrible!

But there are some bands that made a comeback and released kick ass albums. First one is Whiplash - Unborn Again, At War – Infidel, Heathen – Evolution of Chaos and Sadus – Out for Blood to name a few.

Raging Steel is a member of the Swedish Thrash Assault forum. On the surface this forum/blog appears to be a new movement of underground Swedish music. Can you tell me more about the purpose of this forum? What are your thoughts on the old movements from Sweden such as the death metal and the black metal scenes? Are you guys living up to the legacy of the old bands or are you blazing your own path?

The forum/blog started in 2004 – 05, when the explosion of thrash metal happened here in Sweden and the only purpose I think it had for everyone who was a member is to get in touch with people that have the same taste in music. Nowadays it’s not that active as it used to be. But from time to time some of the bands post something new about their band or a show.

I actually don’t have that much of thoughts about the old death and black metal scene here in Sweden. Sure there were some great bands at that time and they created their own style and did their own thing. And that’s cool. Big bucket of win for them!

But we are not trying to liv up to the legacy of the old bands. We are just trying to do as they did. Create our own sound and just do our thing and hopefully people will like it!

That’s some interesting cover art you have for Guilty As Charged. What does it represent to you? I see Joel Sundin of Entrench did it. How did you get in touch with him and what made you choose him? Do you think cover art should be drawings and paintings? What do you think of all these digitally generated cover designs that are infesting the underground scene?

Haha yeah! It looks to me like Reign in Blood on ACID haha!

We knew Joel from before. We did some gigs with his band here in Umea and Dan was pretty good friend with him over the internet. So when the album was done we needed cover art for the album and we knew that Joel could draw so we just asked him if he could do something for us. We didn’t have any real concept of what we wanted cover art to look like so we just gave him free hand to do whatever he wanted. And he did really good job. I liked specially his drawings in the booklet!

I like more paintings and drawings but that’s my opinion. It’s up to the band to choose what type of cover art they want for their album. And just because the album has a digitally generated cover art those not mean the music is bad. I have a lot of old and new bands cd/vinyl’s at home that have pretty fucking amazing painted cover arts but the music is not that good.. Don’t judge the book by its cover!

In your credits list you state that “Fake fucking People go hang yourself. We’ll meet you in hell.” So what is a fake person to you? And what will you do when you meet them in hell?

Haha! I actually do not remember that we wrote that one. But If I have to guess, what we were trying to say is that everyone who is in to thrash just because it’s “the new cool thing” and move on to another thing quickly when it’s not that cool any more should go fuck themselves! Like most of the Swedish metal heads here in Sweden! Just in for the hype and not the music.

I guess it is obvious that Raging Steel is named after the Deathrow album. That’s a slightly obscure thrash band. What other obscure thrash bands from the old days do you think warrant peoples’ attention? I mean which bands do you think are unknown but kick out some deadly thrash albums? Which bands do you think should never have gotten popular and why?

Aggression from Canada! Their debut album The Full Treatment should be known by everyone who’s in to thrash! The whole album is filled with fast and raw guitars, the drums are just blasting through all the songs and the vocals are brutal as fuck!

Abattoir, amazing speed metal band from US. Their debut album Vicious Attack is just amazing. Good guitars, drums and bass. I think Steve Gaines vocals are making this album so good and brutal. If Steve didn’t sing on this album it would still be good but not that brutal and raw as it is right now.

Morbid Saint – Spectrum of Death! I don’t think I need to say more. The band and the album speak for itself. If you never heard about this band or never heard this album, then you should be ashamed of yourself! Stop reading this interview and go get this album and let it blow your fucking mind!

Shah from my homeland Russia! One hell of a band. Check out their first album Beware. I guarantee you! You will not be disappointed.

Another thrashing monster from Russia! Aspid! Just go and listen to their one and only album and be amazed by all the songs! Really fast and raw technical thrash.

Any other upcoming plans you have for Raging Steel? Any live shows? Are any of you attending any concerts soon? If so what bands and why?

Well, we are trying to keep our band going after Dan left us. Right now we are trying to rehearse all the songs as a trio and Dawe is trying to do his best on the vocals. So when our 7” EP will be released we will start to book some shows and work on the next album. We will probably post some info on our blog or facebook page.

Thanks for thrashing hard and I’ll leave any details of your DEADLY INTENTIONS to you! Leave us with some words regarding the evil of your minds! Heh heh.

And many thanks to you too sir! Keep on thrashing! And keep on support the DIY independent scene!

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