Last Sweden’s Vörgus once again proved that they still know how to thrash in Sweden. Without any sign of renewal and originality, but armed with leather, spikes, bullets and the necessary youthful enthusiasm, they knew how to convince me with ‘Hellfire Satanic Action’, which gave us the reason to have a conversation with singer/bassist Nenne Vörgus.
First of all; congratulations with your debut album ‘Hellfueled Satanic Action’! But let’s look at the band’s history first. Although the debut album is “just” recently released, the band’s history goes back to 1994! What can you tell us about the band’s career so far and why it took fifteen years to release your first official album? Well, we actually re-released ‘Vörgusized’ through a Mexican label, but as you say ‘Hellfueled Satanic Action’ is our first release. We just didn´t get any decent offers until then, so yhat´s why. And it´s not really true that we started out in ´94. Sure, we did our first rehearsals back then, but we weren´t really an active band until 2000.
Although the history goes back to early nineties, your music is pretty fucking old school and very underground I must say! But after hearing ‘Hellfueled Satanic Action’ it seems that you don’t even want to rise from the underground. In how far can you agree? I guess we´re doomed to remain underground, whether we like it or not. Our music is pretty far from mainstream and we will never compromise with our sound. We don´t really care if we´re underground or not, as long as we stay true to ourselves. I mean, if we wanted to gain success, we would start a “boyband”. But on the other hand, we´re probably too old for that anyway. We´ll just keep doing our thing as long as we enjoy it. And it seems like people appreciate our shit, and that´s just a bonus.
When you compare Vörgus anno 2009 to the nineties, what changes do you see in the band members’ attitude and ambitions?? As I said earlier, back in 1994 we just did a couple of rehearsals. And we played some kind of hardcore/grind with Swedish lyrics. Then we had a break until 2000 when we started to write lyrics in English. The music was still pretty fucked up, I must say. Most songs were around 30 to 60 seconds. After a couple of years we just got tired of fooling around, and we felt like it was time to start writing some “real” songs. We lost our original singer and I took over the vocal duties, and that was probably the best thing that could have happened. Because otherwise, we would probably not exist as a band today. The attitude is far more professional today, compared to 2000.
Your music contains audible influences of classic bands such as Venom, Possessed, Hellhammer / Celtic Frost. What other bands were influencing you back then? Has that changed during the years? Those bands still influence us. I mean, we love that shit. Motörhead has also meant a lot to us throughout the years. I guess you can say that the old stuff is our thing. There´s not a lot of new bands that really impress me. Sure, I appreciate some of the modern acts, but they´re still not as influential to us as the bands you mentioned. You just can´t beat ‘Welcome To Hell’ and ‘Morbid Tales’ you know.
I also must say that you remind me a lot of your fellow country maniacs Bewitched! Your opinion please… Oh, I´ve been told before but I´ve never reflected upon it. I only have the first Bewitched album, and it´s good but we´ve never seen them as an inspiration source. Come to think of it, I haven´t listened to that album in years.
As I mentioned in my review; Vörgus is not about originality or renewal, but just skull breaking old school thrash metal, played with intensity and spikes, bullets and leather are a part of it! Unfortunately there are always people who whine and bitch about the fact that music should always be renewing! What can you say to these people? Sure, I can understand that some people want new music to be innovative, but we simply don´t care. Vörgus is not about inventing a new sound, it´s more like a tribute to the good old days, you know. And the spikes and leather just go hand in hand with our sound, wouldn´t you agree?
Same goes for lyrics by the way and let’s be honest; you haven’t picked a metal cliché too many or too little, hehe. But I think it’s these clichés that always remind us what we love about this music! Of course Christians and other religious bastards have again been a popular target. The amazing thing is that this subject never gets boring and worse; it’s always relevant! Your opinion please… Haha yeah you can find a cliché or two in our lyrics, but that´s kinda the point. We find the old heavy metal texts extremely charming, so of course we´re trying to re-create that old feeling from the 80´s. And yeah, you never get tired of bashing those religious bastards hehe. Actually, I recently got the question if we´re a satanic band, which we are not. We´re Atheists if anything. For example the song ‘Slave’, the text is a direct criticism of religious fanatics and there´s actually a story behind it: I took my daughter to a theatre when she was about two years old, and after a few minutes I could feel that something was wrong. It turned out that the whole thing was arranged by some Swedish religious group called Livets ord (Word of life). Those fuckers were trying to brainwash the kids. Now, that´s some scary shit. I mean I don´t have a problem with religion, but when it comes to this, it´s just too fucked up, you know.
By the way! You guys seem to have a great sense of humour as well! I mean, a title like ‘Chilling/Killing’ says it all, haha! Is that taken from “Scary Movie”? Yeah, I just found out that the title was taken from there, I had no idea. Anyway, it´s just the title. If you ask me, it´s a quite shitty movie. I´m not much for parodies.
Something else; Sweden has always been a great soil for metal bands! From all genres! What is about Sweden that makes its people start a metal band? Hehe! Shit, I´ve got that question many times, and I just don´t know. Indeed there are a lot of great bands hailing from Sweden. I have no idea why that is. When I started to listen to death metal, for example, it was the Swedish bands like Entombed, Dismember that attracted me. And they´re still going strong. It´s just amazing!
Of course you know that old school thrash metal has been making a huge come back and every month we get great thrash releases from all over the world. Of course it’s also fruitful for a band like Vörgus, although you’ve been around for quite a while. But what do you think distinguishes Vörgus from the rest of the current thrash movement? Or is distinguishing not something you aim for anyway? I think that most of the bands are more or less linked to either the German scene or Bay Area thrash, and we´re somewhere in between with a lot of old school heavy metal influences. But still, we never aim to be distinguished from the scene. I know this will sound like a cliché, but we really just do what is natural for us. I mean, we love the old stuff, and I´m not just talking about the old thrash, but also NWOBHM, and maybe that´s why we sound like we do. To be honest, I don´t think there´s any band that sounds like Vörgus today.
Now that finally the debut album is out, what can we expect from Vörgus in the future? One thing is for sure, Vörgus will stay true to its sound. No compromise!
Currently you haven’t planned any gigs! Do you see a chance to play with the band somewhere next year across Europe? Perhaps with fellow Swedish maniacs Die Hard? Yeah, hopefully we´ll get some gigs in Europe with the help of our label. And playing with Die hard would be excellent! We played with them in Stockholm and that was just an amazing night. Great band!
All right then, I guess we can wrap it up for this time. But if there is anything left that you’d like to mention, please don’t hesitate… If there´s any promotor reading this interview, book us. We´re cheap hehe. Anyway, thanks for this interview and hopefully we´ll get a chance to talk again.
Thank you very much and all the best for you and Vörgus! Cheers. Cheers! Stay true to metal!
As I mentioned in my review; Vörgus is not about originality or renewal, but just skull breaking old school thrash metal, played with intensity and spikes, bullets and leather are a part of it! Unfortunately there are always people who whine and bitch about the fact that music should always be renewing! What can you say to these people?
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