The Malice is the moniker of the Swedish death machine you have to remember from now on and forever. They've just released their mind-blowing debut record "Legions of the Dawn", which I can only recommend to the dedicated fans of the genre. I've asked main man Hubbe to reveal to us all the details regarding their masterpiece and plans for the near future. He has firmly spoken, so the malice is already upon you...
Hi Hubbe! How are you doing these days? The Malice was formed as a two-piece band in 2015, but recently its line-up was completed with other members. So please introduce us the current lineup and tell us a bit about the beginnings too.
- Hey! Well, I'm so fine you can be these days due to this pandemic times we are living in, lol. Yes, we started off as a project in 2015, but after we released our debut album we got a lot of response from fans, and Ibrahim Stråhlman (the drummer) contacted us if we needed a drummer, and we said hell yes, of course we need a drummer!
We tried him out and he made an audition with our track "Paimon" and it turned out really good! And after that he introduced his friend Adam Ramis for us as a guitar player since our tracks are based on 2 guitars. We also made an audition on the track "Paimon" for him too, and also met Adam personally.
We played together and the sync was total in our play with tone and phrasing, and that is quite tricky to find someone who has the same style of playing! And later on I asked my friend from my hometown Claes Holm if he wanted to play the bass guitar, and I already knew his skills so it was an easy choice. We met up together with all the members, but not Claudio since he lives in Germany, because the rest of us live here in Sweden. The magic was total and we were all quite overwhelmed that things turned out so good. We have unleashed a beast from the depths of hell here, it was our first thought to this constellation.
"Legions of the Dawn" is your long-anticipated debut album, which to be honest turned out simply killer. How's the response to it so far from both the fans and the media?
- Very good response in total I must say, from both fans and media. We are very humbled and grateful for that response, since I put so much effort writing and arranging the songs.
It was released in a cooperation of two underground labels, both from Russia, namely Satanath Records and More Hate Productions. How did you hook up with them? Will the upcoming full-length album be released by them as well?
- It was actually more labels that contacted us, when we released the album first as a demo on Bandcamp, but the one that turned out to be the best for us in a release was from Aleksey and Satanath Records. We haven't really talked about it, about our new release, but I think these talks will come at hand when we have more songs ready.
I know you are in writing mode now. Nevertheless, please tell us a bit about the musical and lyrical directions of the new songs. Do you plan any drastic changes compared to the song-structures of "Legions of the Dawn" or continue to cling to them?
- Musically the tracks will be in the classic bay area death metal with a mix of Scandinavian death and black metal. We are all big fans of Morbid Angel, especially the albums "Gateways to Annihilation" and "Formulas Fatal to the Flesh", so we are trying to give more groove to the songs in that typical direction and also have the dark touch in our lyrics, both fictional and philosophical.
From the beginnings you were solely responsible for creating and arranging all the songs. How it looks now with a full lineup? How many times a week you rehearse and where the headquarter of The Malice is located?
- I will arrange the songs as I have done since The Malice begun, but the other musicians will do their thing to it, the foundation will be written by me, the arrangements and the final touch will be a collaboration of everyone in the band.
You are from Jönköping. How's the life over there? What do you like (or dislike) the most about it? How its underground scene looks like? What bands would you recommend to us from those areas?
- I was born and raised here, but lived most of the time in different places around Sweden, like Stockholm for instance. It's like any other town here in Sweden, you have your shops you go to and your bars and metal scene places. We have a club here in our town called Klubb Dissonans that are only based on death, black and thrash metal, so it's really nice to have a place like this, but since the pandemic there are no more shows, but hopefully it will go away one day and the scene will flourish again! Well, there were quite some bands here that were active in the 90s, early 2000, and then I would recommend bands like Nominon that are quite legendary to the Swedish death metal scene, that are still active to this day and that's quite cool! But most bands that played from this town aren't active anymore, but we had bands like Legion that made great black metal back in the days and Xymonthra that played technical death metal. Great band!
Can't neglect the fact that your music is mainly influenced by the US brutal death metal hordes. Why is it so? Would you please mention ten of your all-time favorite records here?
- Because it sounds so fucking awesome and I like the heaviness and the groove to it! The punch in your face death metal and the depths and technicality within the style!
I will mention 5 of them if that's ok: Death – Symbolic, Brutal Truth – Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses, Origin – Echoes of Decimation, Morbid Angel – Gateways to Annihilation, Dying Fetus – Reign Supreme.
Prior to "Legions of the Dawn" there were released 2 EPs, namely "Malevolent Creature of Kings" (2016) and "Lamashtu" (2018), a single called "Enlil" (2016) and "The Unholy Communion" (2019) demo. The latter one in fact includes the debut album's repertory just with other mastering and artwork. Why did you change the album title? By the way, is there a plan to re-release all these past materials on some kind of compilation CD?
- Because the title was already taken, so it was changed to "Legions of the Dawn" instead.
We haven't any plans about that for now, but maybe in the future, who knows.
Once upon a time you've been a member of Crimson Moonlight, Oblivion, Pantokrator and Sanctifica. How do you remember those times? Which of the aforementioned bands you liked the most to play with and why?
- It was more than 20 years ago, and I played in Crimson Moonlight and Sanctifica. I was a stand in bass player in Oblivion and helped Pantokrator as a producer on one of their records.
I had another view in life back then, so it was a natural step later on to not continue since I didn't share the same goals, beliefs and philosophy, but we are still great friends to this day, even if I decided to walk another path more based on esotericism and pagan humanism.
We had a great time back then, and it's always fun to play great death and black metal.
At the end, please send your greetings to The Malice legions. The space is yours...
- Thank you so much for supporting our work, and hopefully you guys will see us live on a stage in the near future. Cheers, Hubbe.
