¨

Alle bilder, fotograf: Drew Scott

Trioen imponerte stort med sitt debutalbum. Om du liker metal med trøkk, kraft og fart, blandet med tyngre grooves og med et snev av melodi, sjekk ut skiva – smakebiter ligger i anmeldelsen og her i intervjuet. Og hvorfor de heter Tortured Demon, og hva de opprinnelig skulle hete, finner du ut av her. Trommelsager Joe er på den andre siden av mitt virtuelle bord.

Les anmeldelse av skiva HER
.

Tortured Demon@Facebook

Welcome to Norway, welcome to Heavymetal.no 😉 How’s life? Growing up in this situation, man, looking forward to the scene starting up again.

«Hello, we are all doing well thank you! It’s a tough situation that we are in, but we have tried to do as much as we can to keep moving forward over the past year, and we are really happy with what we have achieved.»

And the trio format, why? Was it deliberate? Or due to lack of metalheads locally?

«A bit of both really – we enjoy being a trio as it is simpler to operate and there’s a lot less to go wrong, but always keep an eye out for a second guitarist. However, we are happy with our current configuration so we would only expand to a 4-piece if the perfect person came up.»

A rather aggressive delivery, where does the anger come from? What made you go for the harder aspect of metal?

«For us, it’s a way of venting our emotions in a positive way, and we are also all fans of more aggressive music. If the songs are fun for us to perform, then we will be able to convey them a lot better to an audience, and that what being in a band is all about for us!»

Tortured Demon, now that’s a fancy name :). Just a “what is the most metal name we can come up with”-moment? Or is it some deeper meaning behind it all?

«Honestly, we just wanted a name that was memorable, different and sounded cool haha! We named the band in early 2018 when we were 11, 12 and 13 years old, and we were originally going to be called Toxic Goat but we thought that it would be going a little too far, so we settled on Tortured Demon.»

I’ve been in the metal scene for over 40 years, seen a lot of bands come and go. What kind of ambitions do you have? Kind of hard to know of course, being so young, but right here, right now, TD is a stayer?

«We just want to make music, whether as our job or our hobby, and as long as we are still able to do it, we aim to keep going as far as we can. We really like working together, we are all on the same page both musically and as friends, and Tortured Demon is our passion!»

Kind of hard getting gigs I assume, and as TD started out a year ago, well. You have played some live gigs?

«We did a few in early 2020 that gave us some exposure onto the scene, and we are really grateful for the amazing groups like the 0161 Manchester Underground Metal Community and UKThrashers that have supported us from then, right up until the present. Recently, with our album being out we have been booking in many live dates for the future, and this has been helped greatly by us joining with a great booking agent Unearthed Music. Thanks to them, we have secured live dates and tours for June, July and beyond, and we look forward to announcing some of these soon!»

Inspirations mentioned are Sep, COB, Slipknot and As I Lay Dying. I do here some Sep in the vocal and riffs, and I feel TD is more oldschool than modern sounding., Of course, there are elements in the music flashing millennium metal , but there are more oldschool thrash. Thoughts? And man, The intensity on the ‘Invasion’ track!

«Thank you so much! We are fans of both old-school and new-school metal, so we like to blend these two styles into our music. We enjoy adding in melodic elements and hooks, but we always aim to keep the intensity and groove that we enjoy from bands like Sepultura and Slayer etc. It means a lot that you enjoy it, thank you!»

What was your experience in the studio? Did you have any former sessions, or was this your studio debut? And what were, if any, the references when entering the studio? Bands, albums…?

«Our experience in the studio was really good. Working with Ant Booth at Kesbri Studios is always amazing, as he really knows his stuff and genuinely cares about the music. We worked with him back in 2019 for our EP/Demo, and we learnt a lot from that experience that we brought forward into the sessions for In Desperation’s Grip. We work well with Ant and we think that we will most likely be working together again soon! In terms of references, we just said Old Trivium
as we wanted the production to be aggressive but still pleasant to listen to, and we think he did a great job.»

All metal!! I really appreciate you taking the time to hang out here at Heavymetal.no, and all the best in the future 😊. Any links, merch, hate messages, love, people helping out but not getting the deserved attention? A perfect place to add stuff like this is this:

«Thank you for the interview, we really appreciate it!

We would just like to give a shout-out to Ant Booth for recording, mixing and mastering the album, Kieran Scott for doing the artwork and also going above and beyond helping with promo, Yuhmi and Akira from Spiritual Beast Records for distributing and promoting our album in Japan, and also everyone from Unearthed (although in particular Harry) for being such sick guys and booking us a load of gigs!

There’s way more people who help us out, and I wish I could mention them all, but please know that we really appreciate everyone out there who has played us on radio shows, booked us, shared our posts, bought or streamed our album, or ordered a piece of merch: you are amazing.
Our merch and CDs are available from tortureddemon.bigcartel.com and we are on all of the usual social media channels (Facebook, Instagram etc).

Thanks so much!»