Sexydeath – 18-04-2008

Interview with: Sexydeath
By: Sabine van Gameren & Nina Mende

In Gloria, Helsinki is Trashfest in high state of preparations when we arrive. A lot of people are waiting in front of the venue already when we get in for doing our interview with Sexydeath and mainly its founder Alex Frejrud.
As we settle in the backstage area of Gloria, some of the other artists rush out and some of them stay to watch the interview. Alex puts on his sunglasses and gets ready for our questions.

About spells

On the day of this interview (18-04-2008) the band releases an EP, with the complete album Unbruja rising up on the horizon. Of course, we wanted to know a lot about the album. Unbruja, what does it mean? It does not sound Swedish at all. Alex explains: “It comes from a Spanish word “Embrujar”which means spells. Each track is meant to purify some spells. Take one of the spells and it feels fucking good. I think I go through different emotions with the album. Basically, that is what Unbruja is. It says: I wanna wake up.”

Unbruja seems like a personal album, many fans have been waiting for it but how can we see Unbruja, what can we expect. Will it be an album you listen like it is a long story or are the songs all apart? When I asked Alex about it he immediately replies: “The songs are like the soundtrack to the apocalypse inside of me.”
The rest of the band keeps quiet in the background, it seems to be that this fully Alex’ thing. “It goes from actions to motions. It’s therapy first of all, but musically it is how I consider rock music to be. I am a musical tourist as well, I like to experiment with different genres, but this album is more driven into pop music with motherfucking metal.”Whoever thinks that Alex wants to force his messages to the world with Unbruja is wrong. “No it’s not an album like that. Its like a personal version of how I like pop music to be. We wanted to destroy what we love and tried to love what we hate.”

In 2004 Sexydeath released The Damiana Error. Now in 2008 we can expect Unbruja. There is gap between those two and people change in years. So of course there will be differences between those albums. Alex said: “First of all, I am not kidding myself anymore, because I am me, myself and I all the time.
I had the ability to explore more the vocal side of me.
Also, we wrote the album together. That is the biggest difference. I have not done everything myself this time. More people have been involved even though it was low budget. We recorded it ourselves and used very simple technology. We have going through a lot of changes and have had a lot of people helping out. It is more professional compared to the first one.”

About live appearances

Lately it has been quiet around Sexydeath when it comes to live appearances. With Unbruja coming up we wonder what the ambitions of the band are.
“We want to fuck the world before we die. But that is what more bands wanna do. So yeah I definitely want to play everywhere. Some people really want to see what we do. Or to murder or dance to it. This year is gonna be the year that we are going to make more physical appearance. We have been a virtual band so far. Our existence was mostly online. We are trying to be like a real band now and we going to reach as much as new fans as possible.”

It seems like Alex confirms now that the live line up is now steady and actually a part of Sexydeath now. When we asked about that to be sure we got it right Alex replies:
“Yes, we are an official live band now. We are the Sexydeath Entertainment. The creative side is maybe one thing. We have to make creativity become real. It is really hard to do it all by yourself so I need some fucked up soldiers to help me with that. We are like an army now.”

Sounds all very promising, but so far there seem to be no concrete plans yet. “No, we are now finishing mixing and we have not really come to that. There is something going on in America, but not in Europe so far. We are gonna do mostly in Latin America, I am also half Colombian so I have a lot of contacts over there.”

As Alex said, so far Sexydeath has been mostly an online band. Though, they do have quite a fanbase. But what is a typical fan of Sexydeath? On MySpace the genre is Gothic/Alternative on Trig there is nothing that’s states any genre.
“A lot of young people are attracted to Sexydeath. Intelligent people. Sexydeath talks to different genres and different subcultures. Some metal music, some depressive Goth music. If I have to put something on then it would be that they are all sinners that is why they keep on listening to it. That’s why they love it.”

This all is not too far away from what Alex had in mind while starting Sexydeath. “We are open minded for new things. It’s hard to pitch our music out there, there is so much music in the world. We don’t want to be like a new gothic band or a new industrial band. We are not inventing the world but communicate with younger generations. There is a lot of music from the past which is better than the music from today, but some people haven’t heard of it before. It is like linking to the past.”

About ambitions and future

For Sexydeath there seems to be a lot coming up. Alex speaks full confidence about the future. “I like to meet my limits and I am going to fulfill my dream, not only musically but artistically in many ways.”

Many people know that Alex is also working with Trig.com. “After the first album, I rolled into another project: the founding of Trig.com. It took me almost two years of my life, that is why I stepped away from music so much. But I learned something from it; I learned how to handle masses. Now I have done that, I think all what is gonna come is the music.”

So now Sexydeath will take a larger place in the busy life of Alex. Was Sexydeath always in his life or maybe he did other musical projects before? Alex smiles when I ask him about it and explains: “No, this is my shit since I have been 19 years old. I woke up one day and I look at myself in the mirror. I thought, damn… Everything you see on TV is based on sex and death. It’s like we are living in a Sexydeath generation. That is the best name you can find for a project. I took the name from that. I don’t only use it for music purposes, for me it is more like a media purpose. I think this is just a start, we are gonna come with more video work.”

When the subject comes to video’s, the ambitious part of Alex rises even more. “We gonna make one of a chemical rabbit. We already did a video in Barcelona in December but because of the album we decided to keep it. We decided we can not give too much away, so we are gonna keep it for a while. So Chemical Rabbit is gonna be the first single and hopefully we gonna do a video for every song. So in the end of this year we gonna have an entire video gallery for Unbruja.”

With so many video’s, you would expect an upcoming dvd release. “Definitely!” Alex replies. But Sexydeath anticipates to the future with a different concept. “We want people to subscribe when they buy the album and then we come every month or every three months with a new video or a new song. It’s a new way of thinking. We think that the album industry is kind of dead. We are doing it in this way, because we need to promote ourselves. But it is the death of the traditional CD as well. We hope to have some more EP’s out. At least two or three more before the year is over. We are making a special remix EP, so it is going to be a productive year. That’s for sure!”

Links:
Sexydeath MySpace
Sexydeath @trig.com
Sexydeath Official