Gloomy Sunday Interview

I hooked up with Denis of Gloomy Sunday via email to conduct this interview and although at the time of writing I knew very little of the band, except they blast out some blisteringly heavy and downright filthy Sludge/Doom, so if that intro is enough to wet your appetite then read on and don’t forget to visit their Myspace page where you can download their mp3’s!!

Hi Denis, hope all’s well, firstly we might as well start at the beginning, can you give us a quick run down of your members, how you got together and any previous bands you’ve been involved with?

Gloomy Sunday were formed in 2002 by myself and Pär. I (Denis) have played with Blood Sucking Freaks, Doom, Half Dead, Murdered Cop. Pär plays bass and has previously played with Ensuing Hell. Jari is the singer and has also sang with Rudimentär and 13itch. Stefan plays the drums and also plays with Stone Serpent.

How would you describe the music of Gloomy Sunday?

I would describe the music as Dirty Doom Blues Heavy Crust. It has 1/2 lbs of Doom 2 tbl spoons of Stoner, a sprinkling of Blues cooked for 45mins to form a nice brown Crust.

And what influences you musically, lyrically and in life in general?

The influence comes from a number of different musical genres such as Crust Punk, Psychedelic Prog Rock, early Death and Doom metal and the lyrical influences are suicidal thoughts, bad trips, mental problems, depression and poverty, also the nihilistic literature of serial killers, old time London gangsters, Nietzsche, Lim Goad, Anton Lavey, Boyed Rice, Adam Paffery, Ian Braidy etc.

Gloomy Sunday

Your one of the many bands to have a page with the ever growing Myspace community, what are your opinions on the wacky world that is Myspace, have you found this a help to get the word out about Gloomy Sunday & would you recommend other bands follow suit?

I think Myspace is great, it helps bands get to hear each others shit and it has certainly helped us throw our name around a bit more and I would recommend it to any band. I just wish people would stop putting o)) after there name its becoming fashionable and cheesy.

At the time of writing I’d only heard the 3 tracks you have available on your Myspace page, firstly do you have anything else available and are these tracks a good representation of Gloomy Sunday?

We have recorded demos before but didn’t think they were a good representation of Gloomy Sunday so we never made them public. First impressions last so I think its better to wait till you make a recording that you would like to listen too yourself before anyone starts spreading the word that your shit.

Gloomy Sunday

Your currently recording your forthcoming album, can you give us any news on how this is coming on, how many tracks it’s likely to include, who will be releasing it and when it’s likely to see the light of day?

The recording is coming along slowly coz the guy who owns the studio is quite busy. In the end it will contain something like seven songs, three of which you can hear on Myspace but re-mastered and rearranged to mix with the freshly recorded trax. we do not have anyone to release it yet, although there are a few prospects, so at the time of writing who will release it or when I cannot say.

Your based in Sweden (Gothenburg to be more precise), which, over the years has been a heaven for all things musically extreme, so can you tell us what the scene is like today, do you get many chances to play live and what kind of support/feedback have you received?

Gothenburg has always been a great music city, more so than Stockholm, but then again Sweden itself has always been a great music country. The Crust scene is still OK, but nothing like the past. The metal scene is massive but I’m not to keen on modern metal. There are a lot of dickhead skinheads, and Goths galore, there is also a lot of these Psychobilly punk rock n roll types, then there is the musical 1%ers like us!

You were also one of the many bands who played the Sozzfest back in July at the infamous 1 in 12 Club, sadly I couldn’t be there myself but from all accounts you went down a storm but can you tell us how you felt this emotional gig went and how the crowd received your music?

The Sozzfest was an emotional event but it wasn’t so sad, everyone including myself seemed to be in good spirits, Wayne’s funeral was the time for being sad, The Sozzfest was a fucking great party, the way Wayne would have wanted it to be. Yes we went down really well seeing that only 10% of the audience had heard us before and it was great to play in front of such a deserving audience hahaha.

Gloomy Sunday

And is there any chance you’ll return to the UK to play a few more dates?

At the moment I’m busy organising a tour for Lazarus Blackstar and ourselves for the middle of February which is not so easy in this country if you are bands that no one has heard of, so I’m hoping that they will help us get a few gigs in England next year sometime, a bomb that I haven’t dropped on them yet.

Once your album has been recorded and hopefully released, what else have Gloomy Sunday got planned for the future?

I hope we can get enough attention to play in other countries, it gets a bit boring to play in Sweden all the time to the same uninterested looking faces. I mean there is no or very little interest in sludge or doom music in this country and what there is is limited to the somewhat polished sounds of classical sounding doom stoner bands like Candlemass, Spiritual Beggars etc, so we would like to see more of Europe, Germany has always had a love for the more extreme types of music and always has a seemingly endless flow of beer… maybe the states one day… time will tell.

OK Denis, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions and please use this space for any final words?

Thanx again for the questions… support the heavy underground, fuck the music bizz

Check out the latest goings on with Gloomy Sunday at: www.myspace.com/gloomysundaydoom

Interviewed by: Lee Edwards