Description
-GOLD VINYL
»Goodbye Repentance« is the best album Thin Lizzy haven’t written!
Dead Lord from the lovely city of Stockholm could become the next “big thing” of Scandinavian Metal – no shadow of a doubt about that! Although musically quite different, in spirit they are very much close to Ghost, In Solitude and Portrait. Dead Lord are playing it from the heart. Their sound is deeply rooted in the 1970s, with a heavy Thin Lizzy influence.
Some very distinctive vocals by Hakim Krim, fantastic dual guitar work, an overall rocky sound – those are the main trademarks of Dead Lord. Everything about Dead Lord’s outstanding first album »Goodbye Repentance« feels as if it comes straight from the heart. Hakim Krim confirms: “It comes straight from our hearts indeed. And I think a bit of the roughness of the way we recorded makes it even more alive. We did not use too many microphones, and recorded it live in the same room. We only had a week in the studio, so we didn’t have time, nor did we want to, edit stuff out, and do too many overdubs. And being away from Sweden may have led us to focus more on playing our rock right. We do not see ourselves as a retro band. We play rock and we do it the way we feel it should sound. If that then sounds like it did in 1978, then so be it. We still try to keep everything with the band as timeless as possible.”
“The album is entitled »Goodbye Repentance«,” explains Hakim in more detail. “Simple cover. We recorded with Ola Ersfjord. The guy who recorded our first 7″ single for High Roller Records. He’s a good friend of ours and a really good studio guy. He did the recording, engineering, mixing, and mastering. He even let us live at his place. He also co-produced the album with us. He works in a studio in Dublin, so he got us a great deal. We’ve known him long and he completely understands what Dead Lord is all about. He almost feels like a band member.”
The title song of the album has a weird (radio/spoken word) intro, quite a coincidence according to Hakim: “Actually, that was the bass DI-box picking up the local radio station. We recorded the track, got a great take, and went in to the control room to listen to it. And it sounded great, apart from this weird background noise. We finally found what was causing it, listened to the ‘noise’ alone, which actually was a Georgie Fame song along with some radio dude talking, and just decided to leave it on there.”
Whether you like or not, Hakim’s vocals sound pretty close to the one and only Phil Lynott – the lonesome cowboy. His intonation, timbre, tone, phrasing – it’s all there. Where does this come from? Naturally or from listening to too many Lizzy records over the years? “Frankly, that’s how I sound,” states Hakim. “The melodies, and phrasing etc. is there because it comes naturally to me, and it hits my ‘all right that sounds cool’-spectrum of the brain. Of course, there are a few hours of Lizzy listening in the back of my head, but all in all, I can hear a bit of Roky Erickson and Hellacopters in there as well. To me Roky Erickson’s phrasing is one of the most interesting when it comes to rock vocals. Whenever I listen to him, I can’t stop thinking about what’s going on in that head …”
Hakim’s lyrical inspiration comes from reality, really – Dead Lord are not your average sword & sorcery heavy metal band (like so many of their current Swedish counterparts). “I write about things that make me want to write songs,” is what he says. “Thing’s I’ve seen, thing’s I’ve read, people I’ve met. Things that are wrong, and things that are right. For some songs I try to make an effort for the lyrics not to be too straight forward. To give the listener their own take on what it could possibly be about.”
Live Dead Lord are not as active as they would like to be. There is a simple reason for that. Apart from Hakim, all other musicians are involved in further projects: Guitarist Olle Hedenstrom is in Sordid Flesh and Kongh, Tobias Lindkvist also plays bass for Enforcer and drummer Adam Lindmark’s first band bears the name of Morbus Chron. “Don’t know how they find the time for it,” is Hakim’s comment. “But like Yngwie said: ‘More is more’!”
Matthias Mader
