“We just knew from the start what we wanted” – interview with Lifesick

We chatted with Danish band Lifesick about their newest release “Loved by None, Hated by All”, their creativity process and dream collaboration. Want to dig a bit deeper? Keep on reading!

So guys, hello and good evening, and welcome to Chaoszine. How are you doing at the moment?

Nikolai Lund: I’m doing great. The sun is shining. We’re doing a lot at the moment. So everything is great.

Nicolai Lindegaard: All good here. Thanks.

Wonderful. So you stated that with Loved by None, Hated by All was like the fastest record that you’ve ever produced. Was there something about your creativity that accelerated the process?

Nicolai Lindegaard: The one thing about writing a lot of songs from home on a computer and having them in the rehearsal room was obviously a good way to make the songs faster. But also when we knew about the topic from Simon’s lyrical universe, it was angry and depressive. We just knew from the start what we wanted. We wanted aggressive stuff that you could match to and still have some metal-influenced stuff to it. After 10 years, we were just, yeah, I don’t know, better. We just knew what we wanted, maybe more. So somehow it just came along really easily. 

Nikolai Lund: Yeah, I think like Nicolai is saying, after 10, 11 years now, we know what we want when we write the songs. We know what the listener kind of wants. We have gotten kind of good at the process of writing the songs, we know how to structure a song. And we know that it’s all about getting to the end and getting to the breakdown at the end. So yeah, we know the formula. 

So with your lyrics and music also, you’re very open about drawing from dark moments during life. How would you decide which moments, which experiences, are ready to become songs and which others instead are too raw to write music about?

Nikolai Lund: I think that’s all Simon, when he writes the lyrics. The lyrics are very personal for him. And he writes a lot about experiences in his life and things he feels. I don’t know if he is deciding when things are ready to get written about. I think it’s pretty much like therapy for him. It’s the way he gets stuff out. So I think it’s kind of a fluent process for him.

Nicolai Lindegaard: Yeah. I think he mentioned for me that he sometimes writes down a few notes here and there from experience, maybe a cool sentence. And then actually, a long time after, he would maybe work on the song. But as Nikolai said, everything is from his world of things he’s been going through. It’s kind of tough reading sometimes for most. 

So I think that with Life Sick Songs, you sort of encourage people and fans to speak up about mental health. Have you had any meaningful connections with fans that who’ve shared their stories with you?

Nikolai Lund:  Yeah, we’ve had a few. Not to mention any names or put someone on the spot, but on the last tour, someone came up and shared something very personal to us and said that our songs and our lyrics kind of helped the person through some stuff. That felt very good and meant a lot to us, because even though it’s very personal, the lyrics, we just kind of write it, we write the music because it’s fun. And we started the band because we like this kind of music. So we never imagined that it could hit someone like it does for some people.

Nicolai Lindegaard: Simon has never been afraid to speak openly about that stuff. It’s just cool that people use it in a good way, this obviously bad stuff, but turns it out to be something good and meaningful. So that’s very nice, actually.

What kind of elements or structures from your earlier work did you want to abandon or maybe perfect into this album?

Nicolai Lindegaard: The easy one is actually it must be the breakdowns. Older stuff we abandoned probably was all the boring stuff, but that’s hard to say. Maybe skip parts that are too long. Like Nikolai said, our structures now are shorter and more into the bone. Just more violent and fast and just to the breakdown, because I think some of the older stuff was maybe we didn’t have experience with recording and stuff like that. And we haven’t been playing as much live. And when you play live, you always tend to play the songs way faster. So the first albums were just recorded very, very slow compared to how we play the songs now. Of course, when you try some parts live, you see, “OK, how does the audience react to this?” The more we play live, the better we know how the songs should be and that we didn’t know in the first older recordings because they’re just so slow and I don’t know, so monotone somehow. And I think that’s what we were trying to avoid very much somehow. We always try to do new things like the acoustic stuff. Our sound is probably also way more aggressive than bands nowadays. So I think we stick to some of the old school stuff as well. 

Nikolai Lund: I would love to avoid or abandon all the songs that are hard to play afterwards. We always end up writing some very complicated riffs and I would love to avoid that. But we always end up putting a lot of details in the riffs and making them somehow hard to play. And we will definitely do that again because that’s just what we do.

Nicolai Lindegaard: I think that’s my mistake always. I cannot handle myself with the details and stuff, but I have more focus on that and the new stuff, I would say. I wanted to be able to play them live, actually.

So you do recognise that it’s your mistake?

Nicolai Lindegaard: Yeah, I obviously do because I cannot even play my own songs live.

Nikolai Lund: I agree, it’s definitely his mistake. We always end up thinking that the riffs are sick. We can’t avoid putting in all those details because I think me and him are kind of riff nerds. 

Are there any other genres or sounds that you’re curious about exploring, maybe for something that will come in the future that could surprise the fans?

Nicolai Lindegaard: I want to do more acoustic stuff somehow, but in the last record we didn’t. But I think it could be fun too. I wouldn’t say clean singing; hen you hear some bands like Twitching Tongues and Age of Apocalypse, you get very inspired and thought, “OK, they have breakdowns and also clean singing”. I think in the studio we always experiment with different stuff, but it’s very impulsive every time. 

Nikolai Lund: On the last album, we tried out putting in some samples before and after the songs and also on some parts of the song, which amplified in a certain way, and we’ve never done that before. So that was just kind of an idea when we made that album. And on the EP we did before, we tried out doing a song that was a country song from start to end. There was no electric guitars or anything. It was just a country song. So we are not afraid to experiment. And it’s usually just if we get an idea, we are not afraid to try it out. So maybe something will happen on the next album. 

Can’t wait to hear what it is. Have you noticed that maybe certain songs that you play live affect or influence the audience differently in all the countries that you’ve visited?

Nicolai Lindegaard: When we play German or German clubs, it’s usually just breakdowns they want. They want just the beat-down stuff. It’s hard to tell, but maybe when we played more like we just came from we just played the Baltic countries for the first time and they were like, yeah, I don’t know, maybe it was because it was the first time there, but they were just taking everything and they were just going nuts to whatever we played. I think we could just play whatever and they were just going crazy. But yeah, there are definitely different audiences. And I think we always talk about how to build up a set the right way. For example, if you play a hardcore show, we want the hardcore songs. We could play maybe a smaller festival with mixed genres. It’s good to have some of the slow parts or metal parts there because we have that also. We can please different types of audiences. And I think we have done that a lot also when we played Copenhagen. I think we were mentioned as a metal band or a death metal band, and not even close to being a hardcore band. I think with Livesick have always liked that we could do both worlds. 

Nikolai Lund: The Germans definitely like breakdowns. That’s one thing that’s for sure. Breakdowns and two-step parts. But we are also a band that plays in both genres. We play both metal shows and hardcore shows. And you can definitely tell a difference that at hardcore shows, people seem to like the harder, faster songs because hardcore kids like to dance. And like Nicolai was saying, maybe at some of the metal shows, they kind of take in everything. But we like playing to both audiences. As long as people are listening, we’re down. 

Are there any bands or artists that you would love to collaborate with?

Nicolai Lindegaard: I mean, through the different albums, we’ve always been contacting different vocalists to ask if they wanted to feature. Sometimes we’ve been lucky, sometimes not. But vocalist features are obviously very common. I think it could be cool to collaborate with some other type of stuff, maybe other musicians even. I mean, we have done that actually before, but that was like with the new album. We have John Connor to make the samples, as Nikolai mentioned. That was some kind of collab, but not directly. I’ve always had an idea that it could be fun to make a part for King Diamond somehow, an epic ending with him singing. It could be fun. But we have also collaborated with Baest, but that was because we couldn’t play solo. So they recorded the solos for us. I cannot really come up with anyone right now.

Nikolai Lund: I mean, we’ve collaborated with Todd Jones from Nails on one song, where he did a vocal feature. But I would actually love to try to write a whole album with someone else. He is definitely one of those guys who I would love to write an album with. Just to get a different perspective and have a second opinion on stuff when you write and put together the songs. Maybe a guy like Taylor Young would be very cool, I think.

So I wanted to know your opinion and point of view about AI in music. If you think it’s more helpful, it’s more damaging; if you’re neutral about it.

Nikolai Lund: I remember I saw a comedy podcast that I see sometimes. They played a song that was actually kind of a good song. And then afterwards, they said that that song was written, and it was an AI song. I kind of felt kind of cheated afterwards, because I thought it was a good song. 

Nicolai Lindegaard: It’s definitely not cool at all. ChatGPT, you use that all the time nowadays, also, with graphic designs. We have not really been using it for that smaller stuff. I think we tend to do everything ourselves, just to make sure we have everything under control. I don’t think it’s something we’re going to be using. It’s not in our DNA.

Nikolai Lund: I mean, I’m using ChatGPT all the time in my personal life. I think it’s great to have a Google on steroids. But I also think that in music and lyrics and art, I kind of love that you can feel that it’s a person who has thought about things and taken some choices on in the process. You can never take that away. When I listen to an album, I love to think about people’s process. And if it’s just all AI, then there’s nothing to think about. 

Nicolai Lindegaard:  As Nikolai said, I also use it for writing stuff, translating, because English is not our main language. So it’s just sometimes good to have ChatGPT, I think. But yeah, not in the creative way, for sure. That’s not for us.

Nikolai Lund:  No, good art needs blood, sweat and tears. Yeah. For example, with ChatGPT, it matters what you type in, you get different results out, depending on what you’re feeding the AI. It’s kind of like that you’re controlling the AI, and know how to play it kind of as an, as like, much like an instrument. 

That’s very true. Guys, thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. Is there anything else that you’d like to add to our readers?

Nikolai Lund: Thanks for listening, thanks for coming to the shows. Thanks for putting your body at stake everytime we play, that’s insane. 

Nicolai Lindegaard: Yeah, thank you so much for supporting. Without all the people or fans we couldn’t have continued to do this. We really appreciate it. And also thank you for having us in this interview!