INTERVIEW: MT from The Spirit

Just how many fantastic death metal bands can Sweden produce? Not content with spawning bands with an identifiable sound and enduring influence (think Dissection, In Flames and Entombed), the country now offers a band with one of the best blackened death metal debuts ever.

That’s not to overstate the case, The Spirit released Sounds from the Vortex as an indie in 2017 before signing with Nuclear Blast soon after. This is an album that deserved two official releases…. Not many can say that. The artwork of both copies is on point, the later release evoking the cover to the all-time great Altars of Madness (’89) by Morbid Angel.

“I always say our music, it’s an energy and (an) emotion transformed into dark music… there’s a lot of Scandinavian, like death metal in our music.”

Many non-schooled or passive observers to death metal think the vocal cadence is just noise. What many critics fail to recognise is the many techniques deployed by singers like MT. Given MT wanted to focus on playing the guitar, his efforts amount to an Olympic event if one studies his expert application of both vocal and guitar across Sounds from the Vortex.

“Tt’s a very challenging, especially at the moment. Our last show was our sixth gig ever. It’s quite challenging to handle the guitars and vocals (so) it’s nice to hear that you mentioned the vocals, that you’ll like it because I didn’t want to sing. I don’t like it. I’m a guitar player. I just want to put my focus on the guitar, but I didn’t want to have any more people in the band, I wanted to keep the group as small as possible”

There is a buzz around The Spirit that was evident prior to the signing to Nuclear Blast. Obtaining opportunities to appear on the German Summer Breeze and Party.San festivals occurred prior to the negotiations with the esteemed European label. The bigger labels considerable reach into established metal markets will certainly help the bands chief protagonist, MT, in his quest to continue to produce razor sharp blackened death infused heavy metal as only the Swedes know how to produce.

“The cool thing is both festivals, they booked us before we had to deal with Nuclear Blast. Both festivals give the underground bands the stage and try to support them. That’s what we really appreciate it. Now with the record deal, the attention we get, we can reach much more people. We will play more and more shows we have now in autumn, in upcoming tour, the big tour across Europe with Hypocrisy and a Kataklysm.

We will tour over a month. It will be a big thing for us and we will reach definitely many, many people which never heard of us before on this tour. There are more and more requests for shows, tours, festivals coming every week.”

Check out Sounds from the Vortex released by Nuclear Blast.

Purchase the album via iTunes here.