From Europe’s Death Metal capital, Copenhagen, there continues to be a never-ending stream of bands that keeps impressing time and again. Okay, most bands do seem to support the same club of musicians all the time, but that should not spoil the fun. One of the latest acts from this infamous scene is Sequestrum, a band that clearly shows its fondness for that precious world in between Grindcore and Death Metal, the way it sounded around the late 80’s and early 90’s on many a great demo tape or 7″ EP. And since I wholeheartedly share that love for the genre’s primal sound and I too consider the same 7″ EPs to be important cultural heritage, it was only natural to ask David “Torturdød” Mikkelsen about his latest offspring…
Hi David, welcome to The Whispering Darkness. First of all, thanks for freeing up some time in your schedule, because it must be extremely full. Because, how is it possible that, besides playing in bands like Undergang and Phrenelith, running your label (Extremely Rotten Productions) and associated shop in Copenhagen and your artwork, you had found the time for yet another band?
Hi and thanks for the invitation into the pages of The Whispering Darkness! We’ll seeing as it has taken me a couple of months to finally have time to sit and reply to this, it’s always hard to schedule and dedicate time for anything and everything in my life, haha. Everything can be arranged, but is a compromise of something else that’ll be cut out. I’m sitting here replying to this on my first day off in a month.
SEQUESTRUM was originally intended to be a side project of Søren (guitar/vocals) and I as a thing we could do together when we had time, maybe rehearsing a few times a month loosely and write and record music when suitable. Once we got the line-up established, it however turned out to be a lot of fun and all members decided to dedicate as much time for the band as a steady unit on its own as we could, meaning we have pretty much a steady rehearsal every week and have now played a few shows and got two releases out already.
I’ve cut down on rehearsals with the other bands in general too, so now I’m down to 3 steady rehearsals a night per week and then something some extras added when we have shows coming up or so. That’s around spending about 10 hours a day at the Extremely Rotten store 5-6 days a week + the lose around it, so death metal keeps me busy alright, and I like that!
On a little more serious note, where we often see musicians who have lots of bands or who fire one album after another at an inhuman pace at mankind usually automatically fall through the lower limit of quality. Of course, there are some exceptions, but you can hardly imagine anyone still waiting for yet another Rogga Johansson album. Musical taste and preference aside, how do you ensure that you can still deliver sufficient quality with your musical work?
I think the people I work with and I all tend to think over quality over quantity and we’re never really in a hurry to release anything, unless we think it’s worthwhile. Especially in these years where there’s likely more bands, and suddenly record labels, than ever I don’t want there to be too many releases out there from bands I’m involved in, so people can’t get time enough to dig deep into each release and let it stand on its own, before there’s something new they need to absorb. SEQUESTRUM is a band where I currently don’t want to do an album with, but keeping it underground and mainly doing EP’s and split releases for the next while. So just smaller releases and perhaps once a year or so, so they’re all still relevant and shows that the band is alive, but also gives the listener time to fully digest and appreciate each release on its own before something new is released.
I get that for a touring band it makes sense to have a new album out fairly often, say almost every year, to stay relevant for a new tour, but I’ve never wanted to be involved in a band doing that. Lots of touring in the past with my other more established bands, sure, but never with new albums out every year.
Watching (and listening to) Sequestrum, we can see that you take a different musical path with this band than you did with Undergang, Wormridden or Phrenelith, which, with all due respect, are a bit closer in terms of musical content. With Sequestrum, there is obviously much more Grindcore at the base, is this a genre you have always loved and wanted to do something with?
I’ve never felt any of the bands I’ve been involved in have been so close in genre to each other to not justify the means and existence of the other, which of course can be interpreted differently by the individual, but to me each band has presented a friendship between people I wanted to explore musically and with a sound different to what the other band(s) I’m doing would present. UNDERGANG embraces a bit of everything I love in the various subgenres around death metal, WORMRIDDEN is more of a slower and decrepit side of death metal and PHRENELITH is a more blackened take on death metal – all of course just in my opinion. And all bands have various composers making each sound different too, even if they all share me as a member.
SEQUESTRUM is the same; it’s a band consisting of a group of friends exploring a different take on death metal we don’t play in our other bands. The idea of the band was originally formed by Søren and I when we flirted with the idea of playing music together. We had a sitting in my basement one night drinking and listening to old demo tapes and various death metal 7”s released by Seraphic Decay Records, Relapse Records, Nuclear Blast Records, Gore Records, Thrash Records, etc. to provoke and influence a take on something we could come up with that wasn’t just the average death metal band you here in the 2020’s. So our conclusion ended up being a of more rocking and grinding death metal, a bit in the vein of XYSMA, PUNGENT STENCH, DISGRACE, DESCEND, LUBRICANT and so on. Just tuned lower and then soaked in a wet sewer atmosphere with various soundscapes we’d come up with ourselves, much to our amusement and a bit inspired by the home made “movie” samples by IMPALED.
What struck me positively about Sequestrum is the somewhat muddled and rough production of the songs. Something that may not be a pleasing listen for everyone was actually something that excited me, it reminded me of the early recordings of bands like Hemdale, Exhumed, Regurgitate and Dead. Was the creation of this sound a preconceived plan or “just” the result of rehearsal room recordings?
That’s some very pleasing company to be put in and a company I’d love to be in with SEQUESTRUM, so that’s cool to read! We wanted the releases to sound raw and authentic to a basement dwelling death metal and generally with instruments tuned as low as we do and with vocals as crude as we all do it’d be hard to make it sound polished and fancy at all too, haha. We do not have any intentions of trying to record in a more established studio, but plan on recording our next releases with our bassist Andreas’s rehearsal room mobile studio set-up again, like we did for the “The Epitome of Putridity” session – and which today is my favourite of the sound of our releases so far – but then perhaps have it mixed and potentially mastered elsewhere for a bit of an extra boost, while still maintaining the grimy demo sound we think is suitable for our brand of deathgore.
On ‘Pickled Preservation’, there is suddenly a musical stowaway of sorts: some heavy almost Stoner/American Doom/Sludge riffs in ‘Preserved To Last’. Apart from the classic 2-second, those Stoner riffs were rather surprising, as if ‘Symphonies Of Sickness’ tastefully collided with ‘Swansong’… Was this just some musical experiment, or something we can expect more of from the band in the future?
I feel like the rock element was already presented, even if maybe more subtle, on “The Epitome of Putridity”, but it was definitely more present and standing out in bits on “Pickled Preservation”, to some people’s liking and others likely signing us off for checking out future releases, haha. It is definitely an element there will stick with the band and was a part of something we wanted involved in our songs in general, though some will still be more straight gory death and grind too. Søren, Andreas and I are all three composers for the band and I think we all have a bit of various rock influences to our writing, so we all bring different rocking elements into our ghastly sonic brew and it comes out in various shapes and flavours. More to come.
So far, you’ve released a demo tape and an EP and now, fresh off the press, a rehearsal tape. I usually make no secret of the fact that with the more extreme genres, I prefer a playing time of about 15 minutes, that way the energy and brutality comes out best. Is it by chance that you have now released three short-players or can we expect a full-length soon anyway?
No full length is planned, no. We prefer with this band to keep it underground and release demos, splits and EP’s for the foreseeable future. Until we get that call from Warner Bro’s and we become a full on rock band and sell out with a platinum album.
Sequestrum is a band that, besides yourself, consists of two musicians from Chaotian and drummer Frederik Laursen. The latter seems to be new to “the scene”, would you care to introduce him a little?
Frederik was a friend of Søren and Andreas, Andreas especially as I believe they went to school together when they were younger and have been friends for quite some time now. I met Frederik when he used to help sell merch for CHAOTIAN and local shows, often shows that I set up too, and I don’t think he’s ever played in a real extreme metal band before, but is more of a rock musician, with a love for extreme metal too. We struggled a bit trying to find a drummer for our new band project at first and we wanted to see if we could break the habit a bit of letting all Copenhagen death metal band’s be the same little incestuous circle of musicians, so even if we still ended up being 3 of the usual suspects, we at least got to introduce one new face with this band, haha.
To a relative outsider, it seems like the year 2010 was somewhat the unofficial kick-off for a whole new Death Metal movement in Denmark. That was the year of Undergang’s debut album and the (never again equaled) first edition of Killtown Deathfest in Copenhagen. As an insider and co-creator of this frenzy, how do you look at the past decade
I might be a bit biased to answer this question as I was a bit part of what you described there. We started UNDERGANG in 2008 and I was on a quest to put Denmark on the worldwide death metal map, after finding out people locally didn’t necessarily care much for what we were doing. So with the resurgence in conservative death metal growing in the late 2000’s and me being a part of a group of then friends deciding to try to start up a new music festival project together, I suggested we should do a celebration of the contemporary death metal scene, especially in northern Europe at the time, as a lot of other young new bands from Sweden, Finland and Norway were also going a bit back to the roots of the death metal genre, so we agreed it’d be fun to do a project of bringing all of that under one roof and one a big stage, where a lot of these bands wouldn’t necessarily have many offers to play international shows or festival at this time. So that’s how KTDF came to being originally, the name was suggested by me, after Anders from UNDERGANG came up with the Kill-Town reference to the origin of the band, when we tried to come up with a fun moniker for that while also all having spend some time in the local K-Town punk/HC scene, it felt like a fun nod to that. So I started branding the music of UNDERGANG as Kill-Town Death Metal and suggested the new festival project we were building on should be called the Kill-Town Death Fest and embrace exclusively underground death metal.
The first few years we did the festival out in Ungdomshuset, a volunteer run and state funded youth venue here in town and it wasn’t exactly well attended, maybe 3-400 people there, which is of course good for a new underground death metal festival, at the time especially, but it wasn’t as “popular” of a thing to do as it would become some years later.
I was a part of the core of organizing from 2010-2014 where I ran out of steam and interest in doing a festival and we put the festival to an end. UNDERGANG was still going and busier than ever at the time and our local scene also saw some short lived new death metal bands creating cool new music with MOLD, REVERIE and the early stages of SULPHUROUS, but all died again after a few years. Around the mid 2010’s it didn’t seem like underground death metal was as popular, if ever, at the time again and shows were less and the ones that were not as well attended as it were a few years before. People from MOLD and REVERIE eventually formed the new bands PHRENELITH and TAPHOS, so some of the people stuck around and made new bands too during that time, but it’s not much till later years that we have more good underground death metal bands here, which I personally have done my best to help support too where I can, also by booking them at my various Extremely Rotten Death Metal showcases here in Copenhagen and at my Unearthed Morbidity festival, where it has been a lot about bringing in exclusive bands and adding our great local bands to the billing too. Nowadays I think things are pretty good and fun and newer bands like CHAOTIAN, DEIQUISITOR, DEAD VOID, ASCENDENCY, SEPTAGE and DEAD VOID are all recommended local bands from this fiend!
Of course, speaking to a man with a nose for underground gems, it’s only natural to ask what you’ve had your ears on lately. Have any bands come along recently that you think should really be listened to? And from your own scene? For instance, I recently saw a concert flyer featuring Endless Glory that I had never heard of before…
I love when people I like make music I like, so I can help share the word and music they do! It makes me very excited when good people make good music! Locally there is a few more fun bands I could recommend besides the more traditional heavy death metal bands mentioned in the last answer. Bands like young guns ENDLESS GLORY you bring up too; they’re currently finishing a new debut EP for my Extremely Rotten Productions which I’m excited to share with everyone. They’re a bit more thrashing and blackened in their sound, but young and excited and I love that, so even if they’re not your typical ERP band, I wish to help to promote them a bit through my channels and recommendations. More of that we see the upcoming release this Autumn on ERP from BRODER with the sophomore album “Skarpretterfossilet” on LP/CD/MC – it’s very heavy and grimy blackened death metal, super crunchy and ugly and a step even further into depravity than their self released debut album from last year! A third one standing out is local power violence grinders DECORTICATE, with whom I’m also working on an LP/CD release of their debut album recording from earlier this year. Fast and angry and with a great production from local Ballade Studios! All of these three bands and release should hopefully be available this autumn!
I’m also working on something new from local UxDxSx and their gore violence – definitely another Copenhagen band that isn’t my usual death metal that I endorse and recommend!
I could probably go on, but let’s stick to this, haha!
Overall, counting all your musical pursuits, what can we expect from you in the remainder of this year?
Ugh, this turned into a bit more talk about my various doings and less about SEQUESTRUM all of the sudden. ( – Sorry! – ) But SEQUESTRUM are working on polishing newer songs for 3 planned split releases, so that’s enough going on there right now! We’re trying to set up a local Grill ‘n’ Grind show with various violent local underground bands of friends later this summer, but other than that we’ll focus on writing more music.
PHRENELITH will be in the studio this Autumn to record our third album as well, seems like what’s coming up there next as we have no shows booked right now.
UNDERGANG have just released our new split LP/CD with our friends in SPECTRAL VOICE through Extremely Rotten Productions (LP) and Dark Descent Records (CD) and on September first a 7 song EP titled “De syv stadier af fordærv” is released through Dark Descent Records (CD/MC) and Me Saco Un Ojo Records (LP) – that’s 10 “new” songs finally released by that band, which has been well on the way since being recorded between 2020-2021, haha.
Extremely Rotten Productions keeps me the busiest with the physical store, packing mail orders and preparing new SICK releases from both new bands and older releases I love. Lots doing on all the time – death metal all the time!
Thank you for wanting to spend some of your precious time answering these questions. I would like to leave the last words to you…
Thank YOU for the interview and for your patience with me getting back to you with this. Had to break this up in two sessions as I kept getting interrupted with other obligations. Thank you to the reader for caring to read this and kudos if you made it all the way through to this final statement!
Lots more extremely rotten death metal on the way, the new SEQUESTRUM songs are as gruesome and depraved as you’d want them to be! Can’t wait to get the ready to play live and recorded to share with you all!
Read zines and listen to death metal and support the bands, labels and zines that you like and enjoy!
Floating in a pool of my own secretions,
– DM
June/July 2023
