Hatesphere
- Story by Kevin Stewart-Panko
Are these Danish thrashers just taking the piss?
For a dude who sings in a band called Hatesphere and bellows such acrimonious ditties as "The Fallen Shall Rise in a River of Blood" and "Heaven Is Ready to Fall"—on the band's latest, The Sickness Within—Jacob Bredahl sure likes to laugh.
"From day one we've always been about having fun and making good metal," he says, adding with a snicker, "The lyrics on the album are all about nightmares, killing people, the usual 'metal' stuff, but it's not like we sit around thinking about this stuff. The lyrics are always added at the last minute. It's like, 'Oh shit! We have to go into the studio in two days! I'd better write something.'"
Memory lapses like the above most likely occur because these Danish modern thrashers—picture a more hammering version of their neighbors across the Kattegat Bay in the Haunted and Arch Enemy—constantly try to balance rocking out and enjoying generous amounts of homegrown libation with post-secondary studies and raising kids.
"We'd all love to do this for a living, but it's difficult being a small band from Denmark. Selling albums is hard because the market is so saturated. We love being on the road; we've toured a lot in the past three years and we do alright. But once we get home, we're not earning any money and the kids of Anders [Gyldenøhr, drums] and Mikael [Elhert, bass] like to eat. The funny thing is that those two guys, when we're on the road, are the worst," Bredahl chuckles again. "Although, there was an incident when we played last weekend…"
Incident? Do tell.
"Ahhh," the frontman exclaims, his drawl steeped in regret. "I unfortunately got so drunk that I passed out and pissed my pants. People have enjoyed pointing out that I'm 28 years old and pissed myself."
The Aarhus-based quintet continue to take stabs at doing this for a living, including a monthlong tour of these United States in February alongside Unleashed, Belphegor and Krisiun. Though let it be said that if churning out grinders like "Bleed to Death" ever becomes a day at the office, Hatesphere Ltd. would be an awesome place to intern.
"The guy who runs the fan club of our local football team was putting together a CD with all kinds of different bands as a tribute to the team and asked me if we wanted to do a song. Peter [Hansen, guitar] and Anders are huge soccer fans—they're actually pretty fucking crazy about it—so we decided to do a song about the team. Anders wrote the lyrics and they're actually really funny. It gets pretty funny when we play it [download "Hvornår Er Det Søndag Igen?" from the band's website] in other cities; people get pissed. One time, this guy bought a shirt from us. After the show, he came back saying he wanted his money back. Idiot!"
