INTERVIEW: Deiquisitor

In the depths of the Danish Death Metal underground lurks DEIQUISITOR. A band, who in my humble opinion have an unfaltering and maniacal discography of truly scorching extremity. Below is my discussion with TFJ (Guitar / Vocals)…

Greetings DEIQUISITOR, please introduce your band for our readers!

We are a Danish Trio playing brutal old-school death-metal. Deiquisitor has existed for about 10 years now. But we have been working together in several other bands in the past. We formed this band shortly after ending Blodfest, which was a kind of heathen black war-metal. We managed to release 9 Blodfest recordings. Then afterwards we wanted to return to our roots in death-metal and formed Deiquisitor. 

Firstly, one unfamiliar with the band need only look on your Bandcamp or Metal Archives profile to see in your decade of existing, your discography is huge. More impressive is the quality threshold. Why is it important to DEIQUISITOR to release so much music? And what inspires you to do so with such regularity?

Well, that’s because it is the creation of the music that drives us, being in our rehearsal room trying out new riffs and drum patterns. Playing live concerts is secondary to us. There is nothing that compares to the feeling you get the first time you play a newly written song in the rehearsal room without any errors. This is magical.

The main releases are four full length albums, can you give us a little information on what growth has occurred for the band across these pieces?

We don’t consider the full lengths as being main releases, the songs that we have released on EP’s only appear on these releases, they are not like demo track that are re-recorded an put on a full length. It is more like putting the songs together that have the same atmosphere or lyrical theme.

Getting up to date, your newest album “Apotheosis” is a bludgeoning masterpiece. What went into this morbid tome of excellence and are you happy with how it is holding up in the underground scene?

Thank you so much. We try to evolve musically on every release, I think a big difference between this one and the previous ones, is that we have recorded it ourselves in our own studio, no time pressure, and on our own gear. So, we actually sound like we do live on this recording (ED: I agree, this is a very close reflection of the live sound). This is one important thing for us, to be able to live up to the sound production when playing live. None of us like synthetic and polished productions. The response we have received is very good, of course a few critical reviews as well but that’s fine, in the end it’s just a matter of taste.

Being a Danish band, you have many magnificent contemporaries. Do you see them as allies with a common goal, or are they competition to crush? Furthermore, which domestic bands do you think are worth checking out for those overseas who may not know the scene so well?

They are definitely allies, many of the bands from Copenhagen are even our good friends. We are all very different musically, so there’s a place in the scene for all of us. If I should mention some bands worth checking out, I would say all of them, but it depends on what kind of metal you are into. If you are into grindcore check out Septage, they are excellent. If you are into disgusting gory death-metal Undergang or Sequestrum will fully satisfy you, Phrenelith, Taphos, Chaotian, Ascendancy, Endless Glory are also excellent bands.

Aside from the albums, you release a lot of EP’s, demos and splits. These old-school formats clearly still hold up with the real Death Metal bands. Why are they still important in 2023, and additionally why is physical media so key to the band? Personally I much prefer the real thing, but as a band what does it mean for you to have vinyl / tapes / CDs in circulation?

First thing, the sound quality is superior on vinyl, so much more detailed and dynamic. And holding a big LP cover in your hand, looking at the cover-art while listening to the music is incomparable to listening to listening to an MP3 file on your computer. The sound on a professionally copied cassette tape is also good, tape compression rules. I do download music myself too, or listen to bands on YouTube, when it’s bands I’m just curious about. I prefer to have the ones I really like on a physical media, with good sound. And to support the band of course.

Unlike many of the Danish bands who go for a more grotesque and often slower sound, DEIQUISITOR is pulverising, especially in the drums. Which bands are your key influences and where does this differ from the likes of UNDERGANG (ed: both bands rule and played a blinding show together in London a few years ago)?

That’s the great thing about the scene in Denmark, we all play very different styles of metal, so there’s like an audience for all of us. The reason is probably that we all have very different sources of inspiration. We are inspired by the bands we admired back in the early 90’s, bands like Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Deicide, Immolation, Nuclear Death etc. If you would ask our good friend David from Undergang the same question, he probably would mention bands like Autopsy or Incantation. 

Finally, your touring life. You guys seem to play a healthy amount of shows, not overdoing it but always appearing on stellar and truly wicked lineups. Do you feel it is a matter of quality over quantity? And what shows are you excited for this year?

We accept most of the shows that we are offered, but unfortunately all 3 of us have jobs we must to attend to, so it is a bit difficult for us travel for longer periods of time. We have 4 shows in Germany this summer, playing in Germany is always great. So, we really look forward to doing that. Hopefully we’ll get the opportunity to play in all of America some time and lots of other countries.

Thank you for letting me do this interview, and thanks to all who support us.