Decapitated have written about half of the music for their upcoming album

The Brutally Delicious podcast asked Polish extreme metal veterans Decapitated’s guitarist Waclaw “Vogg” Kieltyka if he and his bandmates have any intentions to release new music at this year’s 70000 Tons Of Metal cruise.

Yeah, I’m working on it. I’m working on the new songs. I have already, let’s say 50%, I guess, of the new Decapitated record. And, yeah, after this tour I’m gonna continue, because sometimes I’ve been working new ideas on tour, but I don’t really like it, because it’s just not a place to focus on ideas. It’s a mess — people are running around, it’s, like, soundcheck and then you need to go out and look for food. It’s not really a place to focus.

He also explained a bit of his process.

I’m working at home. I have my room, so I can separate from the family, from kids. But still I can hear them. So it’s not maybe perfect place, but I learned during the years. I already made, I think, four albums at home, with the small kids, with the family life, all these things, which I needed to somehow learn how to take my head out of the [everyday life]. But after the tour I have a plan to just go to our rehearsal space and just work on the material there, to be completely out of everything, separated. And I believe it will work well for that.

And his inspiration.

Anything can inspire me. And just hunting, fishing for the riff. I just spend time with guitar, playing and listening what’s going on. And then suddenly, ‘Oh, maybe this is gonna be a good idea.’ And then work around this and add new ideas around. It’s a long process. It’s weird, because I’m performing. I’m a guitar player, so I’m an instrumental guy. Plus I’m composing the stuff. I’m performing on stage. It’s a few things you need to connect. And it’s not that easy, and you need to find the time for this, for this. Also, I need to practice a lot to keep in shape myself, and it’s not possible. If you play Decapitated, you can’t stop to practice. You can stop practice for one week, but then you need to practice even more to go on stage and perform this kind of stuff.

And the risk of copying himself.

I don’t really think about it. And actually every Decapitated record is different… I don’t have to [put much effort into making sure they’re not the same kind of ideas as what we’ve done in the past]. Somehow it becomes naturally that it’s different. I had a moment that I was in trouble because I thought it’s, like, this is something like a completely different band right now, and what would be the reaction for the fans? Like how they take it? Every record is different, but with ‘Blood Mantra’, for example, we started to do something really different, something groovy, something thrashy — I don’t know. And new record will be, I think, also bringing in new, fresh ideas, which will be surprising. And you know what? It always worked that way. You play traditional kind of classic death metal, and then with an album which is different — it’s modern, it’s completely alternative to that. And you can see some kind of voices that, ‘This is not the band anymore. I don’t like it. I’m quitting to be your fan.’ And then after five or eight or ten years, these people are, like, ‘Oh, this album is like your classic. It’s the best album.’ It’s like — I don’t know — when Metallica released the ‘Load’ album, or Sepultura released ‘Roots Bloody Roots’, I was, like, ‘That’s it. I’m done with this band.’ And then right now, it’s, like, ‘Holy shit. It’s a good jam.