Interview with Whiplasher in Pratteln - English Version

(Deathstars)

18.04.2007 von Melanie Schupp

On a warm Springs day we got the chance to do a second interview with Deathstars. Tired but very smart Whiplasher gave us 30 minutes of his time...

In our last interview in December you told me that you´ll do a new album in Summer.

Whiplasher: We´ll start to record it in the beginning of Summer. So hopefully it´ll be released at the beginning of next year. We´re working on it now.

Can you tell us something about it?

Whiplasher: Aaaaahmmmm.

Will there be some new influences?

Whiplasher: We don´t need influences. I can´t really tell you anything. Weve still got about six songs now and we sound like Deathstars. But of course it has developed. We have some interesting elements we´ll turn up. But I don´t really have anything interesting say about it.

No guest singers or anything else?

Whiplasher: No.

You already told us that you gonna record the album in NY. Who will record it?

Whiplasher: Nightmare. We are looking for studios and stuff where we can work. We´ll see what happens. Maybe I´ll go there in the beginning of the Summer and we´ll write some songs and then I´ll go back to England or Sweden and then start recording.

Will you play some new songs on stage?

Whiplasher: No.

No? Oooh :(

Whiplasher: But in your bedroom if you like to.

Aaaah. I´m sleeping at my parents house at the moment I´m sorry.

Whiplasher: In your parents bedroom?

Hahaha. Everytime I´m visiting my parents I´m looking forward to sleeping in their bedroom ;)

Do you already have an idea for a cover or is that the job of the photographer / graphic artist / label?

Whiplasher: I have a basic idea but I haven´t thought too much about it. Visually yeah but it´s nothing really I mean we don´t sit down and go like okay that´s the plan how to do it on the next album.

It just happens.

Whiplasher: Yeah we are not as pretentious as people may think. It´s not that important for us but of course it should look good.

How did the gigs with the 69 eyes in Austria happen?

Whiplasher: Yeah it was really nice. Nice guys.

How did you get in contact with them?

Whiplasher: I don´t know, I think our manager and our booking agencys worked it out. We´ve never been in contact with the 69 eyes before. But we had a really good time.

Did you know the band before? Their music?

Whiplasher: Ahm yeah they played at a place in Stockholm when I was there. But I´ve never heard them on CD. So I didn´t know much about them.

How was it? Playing with the eyes?

Whiplasher: Yeah it was good. Very nice. We partied a lot the last day.

I can imagine. And hows touring with Mortiis so far?

Whiplasher: It´s good. I think Nightmare and him have?? known each other for a long time. About 15 years or something. So I guess these two have been talking about this. That it would be cool to tour together. And yeah I mean: Sandinavians we work well together. It´s like a hate-love-relationship between Sweden and Norway and it works out fine.

But you speak different languages. Do you?

Whiplasher: Yes but they are very similar. Just more like a dialect.

Can you find any changes in your audience after touring with Cradle of Filth?

Whiplasher: I don´t think so. I mean the crowd has been bigger now in the UK of course. It´s hard to say they are dressed in black and they wear loads of make up. So I can´t really tell.

But it´s definitely bigger.

Whiplasher: Yes it is. But we played there only three times with Cradle and I think 7 or 8 with our own tour before that. So we´ve done a lot of work there, but of course the Cradle tour helped us.

What would you say: Where is your biggest crowd nowadays?

Where would you say your biggest crowd is nowadays?

Whiplasher: In the UK. Think that´s definitely where the band is biggest.

What do you think is the reason?

Whiplasher: Well, they are smart and I think they have a history of dark rock music. From Sister and Fields and stuff like that we get to compared to. It´s a pretty depressing country maybe they need some glamour.

Depressing? But you lived there for some months?

Whiplasher: No I like living there. I like living in London. It´s industrial countries with the working class. But the great thing is that everything looks the same.

Will you play at some German festivals this Summer?

Whiplasher: I don´t think so. We have turned down loads of festivals because we have to do the album.

I had an idea: you could do a special pre-listening session on a festival.

Whiplasher: But I think we won´t be finish till then. Maybe some songs will be finish by October.

Or maybe an unplugged session.

Whiplasher: We thought about doing an unplugged session at the release party of Termination Bliss. Just playing piano, singing and acoustic guitars. But the whole release party was a thing with the record label. And it was just a party we did, no show.

How does it feel coming back home to Sweden after touring in many foreign countries?

In fact do you still call Sweden your home?

Whiplasher: Yes of course. I really want to go back to Sweden for the Summer. There´s nothing better. I´m gonna go there for the Summer and gonna hang out there. Or maybe New York we´ll see. Somewhere.
I´m sorry I´m so tired. I´ve had a thousand things to do today.

Like washing clothes. (I was amazed by the washing machine in the backstage area before)

Whiplasher: Yes washing clothes. No but I had a lot of things to do with the Swedish government. Taxes and such stuff. And I had to do an interview for Cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan?

Whiplasher: About girls and boys. Sex and stuff.

What did they ask?

Whiplasher: About typical girlish things. Yeah everything about girls.

What do you wear while sleeping shorts, nothing?

Whiplasher: No nothing like that. It was softer.

When was the first time you can remember you got in contact with music?

Whiplasher: I think it was when my neighbour had made a copy of the solo KISS albums. And he came up when we came from our Summer place in Norway. It was Sunday I think and he showed me those pictures. It was just copied and it was a very bad copy. And he had some music and he put it on. So it was something with KISS.

What was the first impressive experience with music? Maybe a concert or something like that

Whiplasher: I remember I tried to play drums on bowls from the kitchen. And I got the make up from the ketchup. I was like five or six years old. And then I slept with girls at that age because Simmons did that.

Oookay follow your idols

Whiplasher: Yeah but the penis didn´t work. But I can remember the first time I masturbated. It was to a Kylie Minogue song Do the locomotion. It was so bad. I was lying on the bedroom floor you know Do the locomotion with me And I remember when I came I had exactly the same feeling that I had with those girls when I was six or seven. Even though the penis wasn´t really super effective. Then I was maybe 12 or 13 when I first masturbated.

But I guess the locomotion is better than tears on my pillow

Whiplasher: What´s that?

It´s another song from Kylie Tears on my pillow lalalalaaa

Whiplasher: Oh yes. Everytime I hear the locomotion I have to run to the bathroom!

Laughter

So you could never visit a Kylie Minogue concert. You´d jump on stage!

Whiplasher: Maybe if I wore a big coat.

Who was your hero when you were a little child?

Whiplasher: Aaaahm hero what do you mean music or?

Anyone, anything. For me for example it was Pippi Langstrumpf.

Whiplasher: Alright. I think when I was really young of course artists like KISS were always cool. But my neighbour who also showed me those KISS pictures. I did everything that he did. He was about 4 or 5 years older than me. Just older guys than me that I hung out with.

Okay. Cause I was just wondering whether youre your nickname Whiplasher comes from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe? (Whiplash, an alligator-like creature whose tail is a formidable weapon.)

Whiplasher: He-Man. Yeah but that´s a new character in that way. I didn´t even know that there was one called Whiplash. My name comes from a KISS song I love it loud. That name I had since I started to play in a band in 1992 or something like that.

Yeah but He-Man! Im still trying to find Castle Greyskull.

You can get it on Ebay.

Whiplasher: Yeah I know. Sometimes I go on He-Man sites. Snake Mountain and everything.

He-Man

Now Whiplasher and me start to buzz the He-Man title song

I love it.

Whiplasher: Yeah it´s fantastic!

I have to get the DVD collection.

Whiplasher: Yes. With the old ones! And the one with Dolph Lundgren. Pretty bad movie but still a cult movie.

You know I had them all. Orko. First time I went outside Sweden I went to Hamburg and I got Orko.

Was it the one you can wind up?

Whiplasher: Yes and then he turned around. I wonder there was Sheela and Man At Arms.

What is this guy called there was Skeletor and another one enemy of Skeletor?

Whiplasher: Beastman. And Tri-Klops the one with three eyes he was the Lord of the reptiles.

So Tri-Klops was the Lord of Whiplash.

Whiplasher: Yeah probably. But I wonder what he looks like? Have you seen him?

No I just got the description from Wikipedia. Think he has a green tail.

Whiplasher: Actually now people wonder what I want as birthday present. I turn 30 soon. So maybe He-Man stuff! That would be perfect.

Castle Greyskull!

Whiplasher: Yes I don´t have Castle Greyskull and I don´t have Snake Mountain. I do have two Battlecats and so on but not the castles. Also a DVD. And I remember I was so stupid, because I used to draw a rope from the 2^nd floor at our place to the swimming pool. And I hung them so that they glided down the rope. then I shot them with rifles. So they are all broken. I still have them but arms are missing. I killed them. I killed the whole Masters of the Universe.

Damn you!

Whiplasher: Yeah damn me! No but that´s a good idea! It would be beautiful to have it. I still have the game as well. Have you played?

No. I don´t know anything about a game. Is it a computer game or a board game?

Whiplasher: It´s a board game with dice and counters.

Cool! What job were you dreaming of when you were a child?

Whiplasher: I wanted to drive a train. I also wanted to go to the moon. But when I got older I only wanted to write. So I did that. I wrote stories. And then I started to write lyrics and I met Emil. So it was basically the will to write, that´s how it started.

Is there a comparison with other bands you can´t stand?

Whiplasher: Of course I´ve got a problem with the Marilyn Manson thing. Because I don´t think that the music is similar. But that doesn´t mean that I say anything bad about Marilyn Manson, but I think that´s not a very smart interpretation.

Is there any song you´d like to do a cover version of?

Whiplasher: Aaaahm yeah well people ask us about that all the time. Fans ask us. But right now we´re not interested in doing coversongs. So the ones that I have in mind I won´t tell. Cause it´s just a glam of an idea.

But I remember when we started Nightmare and Bone were totally serious about us doing a cover version of Like A Virgin from Madonna. So I wonder how much Ecstasy they took that time! They were really into that! Maybe it´s a good idea if you do it really dark.

What do you do whenever you need some inspiration?

Whiplasher: You mean for writing?

Yeah or just for freeing your mind.

Whiplasher: That´s usually when you got some time for yourself. I have actually realized that later years because you´ve been so busy and everytime you stay for yourself a couple of days you got the opportunity to do things you haven´t done for a long long time. It´s not that often that you get that feeling. Yes it´s important to be alone sometimes. But also a bad thing is you shouldn´t have too much time on your own. Your brain get´s too complicated.

Do you have a special tip to avoid stage-fright?

Whiplasher: I don´t really have any stage-fright.

Never?

Whiplasher: No. Not really - I can get that nerve feeling a bit nervous in the beginning. Maybe the first time on tour or if you go to a festival or something. Because then you´re really happy like Yeah I can feel it. I feel excited! but I´m not afraid of it. Then you really really challenge yourself. I think everyone in this band loves to be on stage. The rest of the day is mostly bullshit. Today has been good. I got up early and I had a lot of things to do but 9 of 10 days it´s just waiting and waiting. That´s boring.

What was the first thing you did after signing the contract with the record label?

Whiplasher: I ran up the street. It was December in Sweden and I had no shoes on. I ran around the block. And I was only 15 or something like that.

When you think back is there anything you´d change in your past?

Whiplasher: Oh yes a lot of things. A lot of things that you regret. But you still grow from it as a person. Sometimes it´s important to do mistakes. Yeah but it´s about people you hurt, personal relationships and so on.

But nothing concerning to the music?

Whiplasher: (thinks a while) No. Because I´m not that pretentious. It´s so seriously what we do. I feel that my whole life is depending on it. It´s about here and now. If I look back I can understand what we thought and what we did. Maybe something looks stupid now but then it was just alright. I think that we all in the band just take it day by day. It´s not that career thing or we´re not focussing on something. But it´s more about being impassioned and to do what we want. So we will continue doing a lot of stupid things. I think that this band has the lowest IQ in the entire business. But we´ve got a very good EQ - emotional.

Could you imagine living a normal life again?

Whiplasher: Yeah hopefully one day. But what does normal life mean? It´s subjective.

No touring, not being in a band. Just living in a house, having a family, going to work every day

Whiplasher: I don´t know.

A dog maybe?

Whiplasher: Yeah I want a dog. But I think the problem is that all of us are looking for kicks all the time. So it´s pretty hard for us to settle down. Because we really need to feel something. That´s why we do this and take everything from the extremes. I think that could be a problem. Hopefully I look at myself moving back to a place in Strömstad one day. But right now I have a problem seeing that. I don´t plan that far ahead. We´ll see.

What would you miss most?

Whiplasher: The friendship that you have together as a band. And writing songs that´s fantastic. All of this cause it´s such a complex process and all those parts are very important. Yeah but actually I´d miss hanging out with the guys because they´re pretty much my best friends and a lot of weird stuff happens. That would be hard.

Could you describe each band member with one word? I don´t know if I already asked this question in the last interview.

Whiplasher: Emil is deadly serious. Skinny is totally unserious. Cat doesn´t even know what the word serious means. And Bone is very ironically serious. And I´m just (-> just write 3 dots he said)

Would you ever do a photoshoot for a Playgirl issue?

Whiplasher: Oh yeah we got that question from Universal I think. I think we´ll definitely do that. Think there are some fans for us from Sweden oh Shit (the venue just opened the doors and fans ran in. So we had to stop the interview and went backstage)

Okay that was the last question anyway. So you think that will happen?

Whiplasher: Yeah I hope so.

We hope so, too. Thanks a lot to Whiplasher for the great interview. We´d also like to thank Nuclear Blast who made this interview happen!