Former MARDUK Frontman Discusses DEVIAN Project

The Legion 666 recently conducted an interview with former MARDUK and current DEVIAN frontman Legion. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Q: So what exactly happened with MARDUK and you guys? Did it just get old or were there more things to it?

Legion: Well, I guess none of us felt that there was much band unity left anymore, from being a really tight crew that had a great time together we seemed to pass each other on the downslope of a band, even though I love the last stuff we put out together. It's over and done with though, had a lot of great memories I'll treasure forever and a lot of bad ones that made the four of us, Fred, me B.War and Emil pack up and move on to things closer to heart.

Q: So then it was a mutual parting then? I hope it was'nt really, really bad, I hope you all can remain friends through it all.

Legion: I don't think anybody felt great after what happened. Fred is still a great friend, B.War I love to bits and pieces and Emil is family to me. I have no contact with Morgan; bumped into him at a parking house about a year ago and it was "Hey, Hey," and that was it pretty much.

Q: Is the material in this band [DEVIAN] some of the stuff that you have been holding on to from past MARDUK days, or is this all new and fresh?

Legion: To be perfectly honest there is one song on the album, "Remnant Song", that originally was written by Emil for "Plague Angel" but for some reason it was not used. We added that late on in the process because we wanted as much as possible to chose from, and we ended up recording 74 minutes of music and putting 45 of 'em on the disc, but rearranged and remodelled (the song is really heavy now) it grew on us so much that we chose to put it on the album. Other than that all the songs that are on there are written in May 2006 'til early this year. We stopped writing when we had 21, scratched a few off, pre-produced and took a few more off and then we had what we felt was gonna be the DEVIAN sound. We really wanted to do something different but we didn't have it all figured out for starters so we thought we'd just write and see when things felt right.

Q: So this band is obviously inspired by a more dirty rock and roll/thrash metal style that you mix in with the black metal, is this something that youve always wanted to do musically?

Legion: The problem with MARDUK eventually was that it felt so limiting, there were borders that we could not surpass and in a way it was like being very cornered, no matter how good we were at making just those kind of sounds. In DEVIAN we held the concept more open to any kind of influences as long as they would come together into something that sounds great. Putting the sonic blueprint together has been kind of a journey and it shows on the album, the newer songs are developing away from the MOTÖRHEAD/NWBHM that shows on some of the demotracks, other stuff has sneaked in instead...I guess the thing that holds us together is the mutual influence of SLAYER, other than that we listen to different stuff which makes us write different. But sure, to answear your question — it feels really great to blend sounds 'til the point where we feel it feels great and challenging and not feel so limited sticking to one kind of riffs and one kind of drumbeats.

Read the entire interview at this location.