"Witchery’s not a band that will sing about the Muhammad pictures in the newspapers or about the oil crisis..."

It’s no secret that the warlocks of Witchery have an admiration for old school metal that they wear proudly on their sleeves and chests. Their music reminds me of my old record collection, evil, now no more but is rekindled by the sounds of all past Witchery releases, 2006’s Don’t Fear the Reaper being no exception. It’s 8am CST Sunday morning. Before I am able to wipe my eyes, take a morning piss or have a cup o’ java, the phone rings. “This is Jensen from The Haunted (laughter from both ends of the phone) I mean Witchery !” “Our interview is for 9am!” I say startled. Long pause. “Time went up all over the world today. Yeah…” Yeah, I know it was a long night. After covering a gig until 2:30am that morning, I had no energy to argue with the trickery of the guitarist Jensen, Patrik Jensen, that is. He forgot our phoner earlier in the week and rescheduled for it to take place today. “I am so sorry about that! I’ll make it up to you!” He’s a man of his word. Read on… Also click here for the part I of the this interview with  Sharlee.

Erika: First and foremost, congrats on the new album, Don't Fear the Reaper…

Jensen: Thank you very much.

Erika: Speaking form a fan standpoint I been anxiously awaiting it. I have to commend you guys for still sticking with it and making this album happen. I understand that the album was recorded over two years ago…

Jensen: Yes, from August 2004.

Erika: And oddly enough it sound like it was done yesterday; it’s perfect!

Jensen: [Laughs]

Erika: It fits nicely in today’s death/thrash genre, what do you attribute to the album stronghold and/or successful staying power?

Jensen: I don’t know, it kind of made me think of what would have happened if we would have released it in 2004. I mean what if…the album was ahead of its time so people wouldn’t have liked it or maybe it would have created bigger waves, you know. [Switches gears] I don’t know if you’re familiar with how we write songs.

Jensen: I write 95% of the music and all the lyrics, I mean the band it’s not a side project, it’s a real band. I was in Witchery before I joined The Haunted. The same thing with Sharlee, he was in Witchery before he joined Arch Enemy and Spiritual Beggars. Same thing with Martin, of course our drummer, he was in Witchery before he started playing with Opeth. So first of all it’s not a project, it’s a real band it just so happens to have its members that are in other bands.

Jensen: Everybody in the band can contribute with material but I somehow seem to have a greater output level or something. Nothing really happens with Witchery if I’m not there to kind of kick things into gear. So when I have time off from The Haunted, which is when we need to do a Witchery album. I knew that I had time off from the recording of The Haunted’s rEVOLVEr’s album before it was released, and that was in 2004. I also knew that Necroplis and Music For Nations, they weren't around anymore so I knew if we need to make an album, I have to front up the money. We had one month to write the album, which is what we kind of usually have… [Chirping noise occurs] can you hang on for two seconds?

Jensen: [Proceeds to answer cell phone speaking Swedish] Hej!

Jensen: [Laughs] My brother, sorry! So, uh…yeah, one month to write and rehearse the album and two and a half weeks to record it. We started, this is what a normal day in the life of Witchery looks like: we start at 5:00 pm – it’s rehearsal, ‘cos we’re down in the basement of this office building and we can’t make any noise before 5 pm…

Jensen: [Laughs] Yes, a lot of noise, and a lot of feedback…I don’t know, they’d go nuts I guess. There’s also a dentist there, he’d probably miss with his drilling equipment or something…probably would drop it down the throat of some old lady. [Laughter ensues] Anyway, we start at 5 and we rehearse all the way up until maybe to 2-3 am, actually then everybody goes homes and gets some sleep. I’m back there at around noon to kind of solve the problems from the previous night and come up with some new stuff. The other guys come back at 5, I show ‘em what I’ve come up with and we try that until 2-3 am…and that’s everyday!

Jensen: I know, it’s a pretty brutal schedule!

Jensen: Well, we’re forced to do it that way! I’m always on tour with The Haunted so I need to take advantage of every day. In this past year, two years with The Haunted…we’ve never toured this much before.

Jensen: It is, especially when you have guys in the band, in Witchery, where they don’t have other bands so they’re sitting there like, “Come home, let’s make something happen!” Okay…the recording process.

Jensen: We write up until the very last morning until we need to go to the studio. I mean we’ve sat there at midnight, the day we were suppose to leave for the studio, we sat and said, “We need an instrumental track”, and we had some riffs lying around. We put it together and by 3 am we had another song and that’s “The Wait of Pyramid”. Then at 8, 10, 11, or whatever, we got everything in our cars and we drove down to the studio.

Witchery records live; that’s how we feel a band is supposed to be experienced. I’m not big fan of, let’s do the drum first. It kind of gets to…it’s so non-organic…

Jensen: [Laughs humbly] Well, I’m glad! We really take two, three days to get a good sound on every instrument and then the drummer goes 1, 2, 3, 4…and we record the album. By the fifth, sixth day may be, I think we usually have all the music down and that’s when Richard starts to work on his solos that’s the first time I get to look at any lyrics. Up until then, like I told you, it’s just riffs and music, so I go to another room, I sit down with a little tape recorder and I write the lyrics. When he's done with one song solo wise, I go in and I show the singer, “This is what I have in mind”. He does the vocals and then Richard does another solo, I go and write another lyric… Your initial question was how we kind of created the album or the kind of style we have for this album?

Jensen: It’s that we don’t know! [Laughs] It’s just that writing for Witchery is a very spontaneous thing. So if something is good, we will use it.

Jensen: Yes. It’s very direct! It’s from the gut, it’s a gut feeling that this is a good riff or a good song. Some music forms or kinds of music I’m sure they are better with people thinking through everything for two weeks or whatever. But I find Witchery the more direct a riff is, the more you go, “Okay, we need to use this because this sounds like Witchery!” and usually people say Witchery songs are very catchy or they stick to you.

Jensen: Yeah, so I guess that’s a good formulae, at least for Witchery. Was that a long answer for your first question?

Jensen: Am I doing good?

Jensen: No, because I’ve known Tony or Toxine for a long, long time. We were in another band together called Seance.

Jensen: So I’ve known him for about sixteen years now I think. He's a guitar player himself. We grew up listening to the same kind of albums. He doesn’t spend much time with us when we rehearse, because he has kids and everything. He comes down maybe the last week and he listens to the stuff so he kind of knows immediately what I'm looking for in vocals, deliverance and that goes for everyone in Witchery, actually. Me and Sharlee are total geeks when it comes to old vinyl, heavy metal, speed, thrash, whatever!

Jensen: We live that game that the Brave Word people, you know the magazine in Canada, Brave Words Bloody Knuckles?

Jensen: They made this heavy metal Trivial Pursuit game.

Jensen: You’d love that game!! You have to reach six hundred and sixty six points, of course. I think it’s called Heavy Mental Meltdown or something. It’s great!

Jensen: [Pauses] On a personal level or a professional level?

Jensen: I know that we get along very well. I mean we’re basically a bunch of friends that has a band. It’s not like we’re at our instruments and that's why we’re in a band together. We’re friends and we have a great time. If we didn’t have a great time around each other, would be never be able to rehearse from 5 pm to 2-3 in the morning for days on end, that would never work out. So, we have a good time, everybody knows what the Witchery concept is kind of about and we’re in the same kind of mindset. I know musically, as musicians, I know there’s nothing that I can’t ask of these guys that they can’t deliver! I mean if Martin is able to play drums for Opeth, I mean, hey!

Jensen: And Sharlee is an amazing bass player! And I think Toxine, for every album that we do, his voice just gets better. So yeah!

Jensen: Well it could be more like an executive producer. The album before this one, Symphony For The Devil, we recorded that at the same studio, at the Berno Studio. We also mixed it there; it turned out great and that was the plan for this album as well. We recorded it, sounded fine, we start to mix it, we just couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there and me and my time and Sharlee’s time with Witchery was up; we had to go back to our other bands. So we needed to find somebody that we could trust with just sending the tapes over to this person and he would be able to do something great with it without us having to be there supervising it. And that’s when we…well the natural choice was Tue Madsen [Antfarm Studios]; ‘cos that’s what we did with The Haunted actually. With The Haunted, there’s actually five members that were all the driving force behind our previous bands.

Jensen: So there’s kind of five producers in the sofa behind the guy, the engineer. For The Haunted, it was better to send it to Tue and he did it all by himself and he sounded great. So if I knew if I sent this to Tue, it would come back sounding great as well. And that’s how we by accident kinda, got a very modern production, which I like! I love it.

Jensen: No! He’s just an amazing person, very soft-spoken; a very calm guy. I mean he listens to the same kind of music as the rest of us in Witchery, so he knows kinda where we’re coming from but he is also the guy that can take us to the next level where we needed to make the guitar to sound like this. Okay, we probably would have never thought of but that’s why we use him; ‘cos he has good ears and good intuition!

Jensen: I grew up in a religious family but when I hit twelve or thirteen, I discovered Black Sabbath and Dio and all of that kind of stuff. That was kind of exciting! Do you know the band Mercyful Fate?

Jensen: When I got the album cover for Melissa, and Don’t Break the Oath, I was like [gasps] “Fuck…these guys are EVIL for real!” [Laughter ensues] Which they probably weren’t… So I was kind of intrigued by the imagery and the kind of lyrics that they sang about. I mean, I didn’t take them seriously but it was just kind of exciting. Like when you get into horror movies when you’re a teenager and everything.

Jensen: The music that we play has it’s roots in that sort of 80’s metal so the same thing with the lyrics. Witchery’s not a band that will sing about the Muhammad pictures in the newspapers or about the oil crisis or whatever. It’s more for entertainment. I’m proud about the lyrics ‘cos I mean I put a lot of effort into them but they are still just for entertainment.

Jensen: …and if people don’t think they’re cool, they can just listen to the vocals ‘cos it fits the music. But if they’re into the short horror stories, then they’re there for everyone to read.

Jensen: Yeah, I kinda try to put my mind back when I was fourteen and sat with my headphones on in a completely black room listening to “Sign of the Southern Cross” by Black Sabbath, listening to all of those bands that were sort of semi-evil or whatever they were and that was the feeling that I wanted to create.

Jensen: How do you mean?

Jensen: No, you mean kinda how Away [Michel Langevin] does it with Voivod?

Jensen: Away, you know the drummer for Voivod.

Jensen: He has all the album covers and titles already worked out all in advance.

Jensen: No, ‘cos as I said, it’s a very spontaneous thing, even when it came down to deciding the title for this album…it was… I asked a bunch of good friends if they had any good Witchery titles and I know that Witchery fans like the kind of titles that we have. It’s new but it reminds them of old albums, classic albums. “Don’t Fear The Reaper” is a classic Blue Öyster Cult song. Usually, we try to make it or use the classic titles and use it with a twist or something but with title, it was already a Witchery connection as the first song on the first album [Restless & Dead] it’s called “The Reaper”.

Jensen: And our mascot, Ben Wrangle, we’ve made him into the Grim Reaper and the Grim Reaper was the most active during the Black Plague or whatever, so that’s how we got the idea for the 13-1400 relief.

Jensen: Yeah, yeah, I’m very happy with the cover artwork actually. There was a [trying to find word in English] cautious decision behind using that sort of cover because I thought that some people may be kind of put off if we used the kind of covers we have in the past. Like thinking that we were a 100% tongue-in-cheek band and that we weren’t that serious about our music; I wanted to tone that down a bit but still have an album that old Witchery fans could relate to. So it still has our mascot on there and it’s a great looking album cover. You know how heavy metal bands have hidden symbols and all that, right?

Jensen: He’s holding…do you have the cover in front of you?

Jensen: He’s holding two giant scythes or sickles?

Jensen: And they form a “W”.

Jensen: So that’s the hidden thing for you!

Jensen: Yeah…well it’s no big deal but it is one of those hidden things that fans just sit there with their magnifying glass going, “Uh-huh!”

Jensen: [Long pause] I’d probably say “The Ritual” maybe the end of end of “Crossfixation” as well.

Jensen: With what, the title?

Jensen: It’s just a play with words like [makes indistinct murmurs] crucified but that word is so used. Somebody’s fixed to a cross, then there’s the fixation with the cross, I mean yeah…

Jensen: Oh, poor woman! [Laughs hysterically] Just kidding!

Jensen: He's a sweet guy, I love him; he’s one of my best friends.

Jensen: He said that I told him that he wasn’t used to hearing the bass that loud?

Jensen: [Pauses] Hmmm…

Jensen: Well no, I can see myself saying something like that! I think he has a terrific sound. You can really tell when Sharlee is playing on an album.

Jensen: I kinda like the kind of driving force his bass adds to the music. It would be much duller if it were just a normal bass. His bass is kind of like a freight train on…speed or something. [Laughter ensues] I don’t know what the first thing would be, probably say just the sound.

Jensen: [Pauses] Well Sharlee’s bass would be one of the things. I do not know how to describe our sound, actually. It’s just…I wouldn’t know what to say actually! Sorry. [Laughs]

Jensen: Hmmm… You mean how I would describe the band, basically?

Jensen: Well there are a lot…I actually think that it’s a lot of fun every time we put out an album it just seems like there’s a cult that enjoys our kind of music. Some may call it death thrash or speed metal, blackened thrash…I don’t know. Sometimes we’ve even been labeled as a retro band, which I think is not true because there are many retro bands out there but they single out one band that they kind of copy everything. They copy the band’s riffs and then they just change them a little to make them not a total rip-off. Then the greatness that made that first riff great is not there anymore. And they just copy everything down to the studs, the letters, and the t-shirts. That’s not what Witchery does, we draw heavily on the influences of these bands. Of course there’s a lot of the Don’t Break The Oath in Witchery and Bonded By Blood [Exodus], Destruction, and Overkill and so on. But we don’t copy the riffs, we take the idea that these bands and that these albums represent and make something new something that is our own. So I would say that Witchery has its roots in those albums but that we try to writes something that fits 2006.

Jensen: [Laughs] Oh no that’s fine.

Jensen: [Sighs] If it came down to what the guys in the band wanted to do, we’d be touring right now. Everybody else is on tour, I'm at home just because we are writing a new Haunted album as we are recording in May. Sharlee, he’s going out next weekend or something to the US?

Jensen: Then Martin’s already in the US with Opeth. So I don’t know, but we really want to do a tour, hitting all of the major markets in the US at least, maybe a two week tour. One week on the East Coast a few shows in the Midwest and then the West Coast but if that’s not possible... We still want to festivals and here in Europe we have a bunch of festivals playing to 2,000 people to over 100,000 people. In the US it’s a whole lot different story, you only have the Ozzfests or the Up From the Underground, or whatever it’s called. [Laughs] Sounds of the Underground.

Jensen: It’s kind of hard, “Oh hey, there’s a metal fest in Houston, we gotta go” and then “The next one’s in Seattle”! It doesn’t work that way in the US, which is kind of hard but we still want to play the US. The US is actually one of our strongest markets. The first tour we did was with Emperor back in ’99.

Jensen: [Excitement fills his intonation] Oh, you saw that?

Jensen: Twice.

Jensen: The Haunted.

Jensen: Where do you live?

Jensen: The first show we did with Emperor was in Chicago and it was at this huge old theater venue, really run down. When we loaded out at night, it was gunfights.

Jensen: Yeah, it was really bad; we had to jump in our vans and go. It was literally a hundred yards from us.

Jensen: It was really a bad place!

Jensen: Yes. [Laughter ensues]

Jensen: [Silence then sighs] That’s an interesting question.

Jensen: [Pauses] I would say…Opeth maybe because they could do something off the wall or maybe even Porcupine Tree that would be interesting to see what they could come up with.

Jensen: Yeah, just to keep it simple, I would say probably say “The Reaper”.

Jensen: Oh no, that’s fine.

Jensen: Ummm…last DVD was the Judas Priest Japan [Rising In the East] I’m a big Priest fan, or I was but it’s still Priest.

Jensen: The last album was Rammstein Rosen Rot.

Jensen: Oh, okay. I’m a big Rammstein fan.

Jensen: [Chuckles] Yeah.

Jensen: Yes, three times I think. I saw them in a small venue first time I saw them in…’96 in Gothenburg and that was before they blew up. They used the flamethrower over the heads of the people and it was SO hot. That was incredible; it was a great show.

Jensen: Danko Jones.

Jensen: Two weeks ago.

Jensen: Have you heard his music before?

Jensen: It’s a three-piece AC/DC party band. They’re really good musicians and I’ve been told if you go to a Danko Jones show, don’t bring your girlfriend.

Jensen: Yeah!

Jensen: Because he has that kind of charisma.

Jensen: The show before that was probably Foo Fighters.

Jensen: Not much.

Jensen: [Laughs] I’m always on tour and surrounded by noisy soundchecks so when I get home…so if I’m not writing music, I just listen to old stuff. Try to find that old inspiration that got me started playing guitar in the first place. I just hang out with friends.

Jensen: I can’t answer that.

Jensen: Because I’m not listening to anything at the moment.

Jensen: [Laughs]

Jensen: Yeah, but not on a daily basis but they’re my heroes. I bought it to see if Rob could still do it. He kinda couldn’t but that’s another thing.

Jensen: But bands that I listen to…probably Rammstein. But I’m really looking forward to the new Celtic Frost album. They were huge here… I don’t know, I'm a big Chris Isaak fan.

Jensen: He’s the only guy that’s allowed to weep through the microphone. [Laughter erupts]

Jensen: As in for shows, well I’ve never focused on that. My goal was to always write songs since I was the guy that always had to write the songs so I never had time to sit down and practice solos. I don’t play solos, but I write songs.

Jensen: Having more time for my family and friends. I’ve been on tour since October 2004.

Jensen: Yeah!

Jensen: I don’t know if I have any enemies. That might be a very…I don’t even know the word in English but it may be a very “Mr. Do-Right”? answer. What do you call it, but I do it. I’m usually pretty easy to get along. But  if I had to say something, it would probably be I’m a bad friend for not being around and staying in touch.

Jensen: I mean I like to stay in touch with my friends but it’s impossible.

Jensen: Hank Shermann of Mercyful Fate; he’s totally amazing.

Jensen: Of not only seeing of himself but through the guitar like some solo guitar players that’s just about the guitar and the solo. Then when it comes to the mixing in the studio their guitar has to be louder or whatever. I think even if you have your instrument, as a musician, you have to see it as a whole, the band as a whole. Not everybody can be an Yngwie Malmsteem.

Jensen: [Without hesitation] Exodus Bonded By Blood.

Jensen: Oh yeah! [Laughs] We just finished touring as Haunted with Exodus in Japan and Australia and they actually opened up for us. It was like, “I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy!” Gary Holt is such an amazing person, so down to earth. I really love that guy, everybody in the band actually.

Jensen: If you run into anyone in the band, tell them I said, “Hi”.

Jensen: Cool!

Jensen: Pretty much heavy metal.

Jensen: …I’m self taught on the guitar.

Jensen: I got my first guitar when I was seven, an electric guitar. I actually grew up in Canada and this company called my house and asked if I wanted to play an instrument.

Jensen: No, and the good parents I have asked if I wanted to take an instrument and in school they taught guitar and accordion. I was seven and I had a hard time choosing but I chose the guitar because I had seen Elvis Presley play the guitar. So thanks to Elvis! [Laughter]

Jensen: No, I am the eldest of three brothers.

Jensen: They think it’s cool. They all have children and different professions, like my little brother he works with the disabled, violent, and mentally challenged people. He's really good at that. My kid brother is some kind of super-boss at this industrial complex. [Said with sense of extreme pride] he has hundreds of people under him.

Jensen: All of us? I don’t know. I just think we’re all hard workers and we achieve our goals by just discipline and having good focus on what we want to do.

Jensen: [Pauses] Probably that I like Chris Isaak! [Laughs]

Jensen: But you know what, I had this question when we played this festival the other day with The Haunted here in Sweden. It was, “Are you the most in shape heavy metal musician in Sweden?” I was like, “What!” “Yeah, I heard that people talk that you work out a lot and go to the gym!” I mean I guess I do, I also take karate classes.

Jensen: Yeah, then he was like, “Well you probably are!” Imagine anyone in another band and stuff like that. I can’t even picture these guys going to a gym, so I guess so.

Jensen: Oh, I just do it for keeping in shape. I’m not at all skilled or anything like that…so nobody has to come to our shows and try to challenge me! [Laughs]

Jensen: Well, trying to tour. Just because we wrote the album so long ago, we’ve already completed 60% of the new album.

Jensen: Now people won’t have to wait as long as they did before!

Jensen: No, no. I mean the album was released just this week in the US, we don’t want to go ahead of things and talk about the next album. I mean we do have the material and we’ll need to get everybody in one place. We actually were at the end of January I think for the first time when everybody was together to take promo photos. I mean we said “goodbye” in the studio in 2004.

Jensen: It’s crazy!

Jensen: Yeah!

Jensen: Yeah, that we’re very happy they stuck with us, and we would be anywhere without them. We’re very happy that people are still interested and are keen on and hearing what we’re up to. There’s a lot of good stuff more coming out of this band…and that we are gonna tour and we hope to see everybody on tour.

Jensen: No, actually it was a very good interview.

Jensen: And if you see Sharlee on tour, tell him, “Hi” from me.

Jensen: You too!

We'd like to thank Jensen and the Witchery camp for the interview!

Related Links

q       Part I of this Interview with Witchery's Sharlee D'Angelo

q       New Interview with Peter Dolving (The Haunted)

q       Ozzfest 2005 Photos / Review

q       New Interview with Sharlee (Arch Enemy)

q       Previous Interview with Sharlee (Arch Enemy)

q       Metal for the Masses Photos / Review

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