The term supergroup can sometimes be thrown around for lack of a better name. Deciding to join forces last year saw the release of one of the best Death Metal albums yet, with both LG Petrov and Victor Brandt of Entombed AD fame along with guitarist Fredrik Folkare of Unleashed, Matte Madiro and Alex the band created a fantastic take on the classic Death Metal formula. Victor kindly enough sat down with us to talk about the debut record, what it’s like being a fan of Death Metal in the modern day and the unlikely hero of the album, melody.

Obviously the record is an amalgamation of various other bands that each respective member has been in. Do you feel that sometimes, I hesitate to use the word supergroup but supergroups can fall short of people’s expectations?

Yeah, definitely! We tried to steer away from that ourselves because we’re a bunch of fields actually. Since we play in different band and have done that for quite a long time for us it mainly meant that we know each other. We’ve met on the road and at gigs and we have a schedule to do something like this so it makes sense in a practical way for us. It wasn’t planned really, we play in other bands as well. 

It just happened! 

Yeah, you know, good friends playing music and if someone wants to do consider it a supergroup that’s awfully, what do you call it… 

Humbling? 

Humbling! Yes haha!

The melodic sections that I was talking about particularly solos and melodies was that more Fredrik’s contribution?

Yeah definitely, he is a superb guitar player and he has those sort of guitar hero, eighties style leads in a way haha! He’s done his homework, so we just told him to just go crazy as much as he would like and enjoy himself. It was really cool! I didn’t know that he had it in him, it was impressive for me anyway!

I think it’s a big point of difference, old school death metal is characterised by dive bomb solo’s so when I first heard it I thought wow! Where has this come from? 

Yeah I agree! A lot of extreme metal guitar players only focus on playing the riff part of the guitar and they don’t put the hours into the solo part, the lead sections. I’m doing maybe thirty percent of leads on the album and Fredrik is definitely no the rest. I really rate Fredrik and I did some solo ideas and emailed them to him some more slower stuff and he was like no.no. It doesn’t snd good enough you’ve got to practice this and that… I was like ok ok haha fuck! 

Pretty blunt.

Well it’s a good thing! We have a filter in the band, brutally honest 

I can imagine that you’ve got quite a high standard for what is acceptable and what is not? 

That and you kind of grow a bit more thicker skin when you’re doing this, and I think this is a good thing, there’s nothing personal and we are all aiming for the same goal it’s easier if you can communicate as friends. 

Firespawn’s debut album Shadow Realms is out now via Century Media.