Lucifer: Chapter Four: The Devil’s New Hope
Johanna Sadonis, vocalist of Swedish rockers LUCIFER, is laughing over Distorted Sound’s use of the term ‘Goth Christmas’ to describe Halloween. She and husband Nicke Andersson, the band’s drummer and formerly of ENTOMBED, are in good spirits as they discuss the band’s upcoming fourth album which is called…Lucifer IV. This could be seen as unoriginal, but neither are fazed by it.
“When I joined the band there were two things that got to me apart from the music; firstly the band name and how cool it would be to be in a band called LUCIFER and then the album title idea with the numbers because, in bands before, we’ve always struggled to come up with a good album title and there’s no problem here; we’re gonna be like CHICAGO!” jokes Nicke. “We’ve certainly thought about it, and the door will always be open for that to happen,” explains Johanna, “but it’s very much a gut thing.”
Working on gut feeling is also what fuelled Lucifer IV; coming just eighteen months after their last record, both members confirm that writing it was the easiest thing to do when touring no longer became viable and they had two studios at their disposal. “We take album writing song by song,” explains Nicke. “And when we’ve piled them up we might look at it and think ‘okay, we have too many of this style’ or whatever, but otherwise it’s always on a song-by-song basis.”
“It’s very intuitive,” continues Johanna. “LUCIFER is not a concept band, so we can take it one song at a time and, when you have no touring and studios to work with, you just want to throw yourself into it, hit the ground running and just keep being creative.”
For the first time since the band’s inception, Johanna and Nicke – who are the chief songwriters – were joined by guitarists Martin Nordin and Linus Björklund in helping pen tracks, which certainly took the latter a bit by surprise. “It was never carved in stone that we were the songwriters of the band, but all of a sudden Linus came up with a few songs and two of them made the album, which was awesome.”
“There’s always been the joke about how many members LUCIFER has had,” says Johanna, the only constant member of the outfit, “but right now we have a fixed union of people who are all friends. The door was always open to them contributing, but maybe they just didn’t realise it until now.”
Harnessing the pomp of BLACK SABBATH with the blues of FLEETWOOD MAC and a dash of BLUE ÖYSTER CULT, Lucifer IV is a sumptuous mix of doom, hard rock and classic metal, from the crushing Wild Hearses to the driving Bring Me His Head and on to the raw power of the chilling Cold As a Tombstone. As a package, this is a wonderful, modern throwback to a time when the heaviest thing on an LP was Master of Reality and simply calling your band something like LUCIFER would have got you labelled as Satanic. Oh, wait…
“In the Bible-loving parts of the US, that name is still a problem!” Laughs Johanna. “It’s so weird in this day and age that, when you think everything’s been done and you can’t shock people anymore, some of the ultra Christian rock fans in the States are thrown off a little bit by the name, which I kind of love; I find it very flattering!”
Not about to be drawn into the conversation over whether they are actually Satanists – Nicke is very firm in saying that he doesn’t talk about his personal life – talk turns to the album’s artwork, a striking image of Johanna, tied to a cross and bathed in red that, in a nice segue from the previous conversation, shocked her own mother. “I’ve seen a lot of images of women on crosses and they’re always striking so I had to do my own,” explains the vocalist. “But also, there’s a prisoner meaning behind it for me because, as you can imagine, being a woman in music can be more challenging and I’ve had to fight a lot harder to prove myself and taken seriously. So I put myself on the stake with a defiant facial expression. It’s my picture of defiance and a personal ‘fuck you’ to the patriarchy.”
There’s no question that Johanna, much like the rest of LUCIFER, is brimming with confidence right now; arguably their best album to date is en route to being unleashed and touring starts next month. They might upset those who praise the Almighty in southern America but, for everyone else, a place of worship at their altar of rock is always available.
Lucifer IV is out now via Century Media Records.
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