Death/black metal band Diabolical had a blast on September 27th, at Quantic Club, on the first day of Metal Gates Festival! Eager to discuss about their latest release, but also about the evolution of the underground metal, we approached Carl Stjärnlöv, who sat with us for a comprehensive interview.
DinIntunerec: Hello, thank you for getting on board with this interview. Welcome to Romania. You’ve played here a couple of times before.
Carl Stjärnlöv: Yes, three times, I think.
DinIntunerec: How was your experience on stage here until now? Also, tonight you’re sharing the stage with Unleashed, another iconic Swedish band. What does this show mean to you?
Carl Stjärnlöv: Okay, so actually, several questions in one. Our experience with Romania first—it has always been great, I have to say. We started playing in Romania because Paul, our bass player, before he joined the band, actually booked a tour for us in Romania. That’s quite a few years ago now, but we did a little club tour here. We went to a handful of places. It was about a week, and we played some really small clubs here. We’ve also played in Quantic. I think tonight will be the fourth time we play here. I think that Quantic is one of the best venues in Europe, honestly.
We’ve always had a really good, large crowd here. The response has always been great, and the venue is really good. I really enjoy playing here, so I’ve been looking forward to do it again. As for Unleashed, I’ve been on tour with them in another band like 15, 16 years ago. Anders, their drummer, I meet him sometimes in Stockholm, and I consider him a bit of a friend. He’s a really cool guy. They’re all cool guys. I respect them very much for how they contributed to Swedish death metal over the years. So yeah, tonight’s going to be great. I can’t wait for that.
DinIntunerec: Who’s in charge with creating the artwork for your albums? Did you work with different artists?
Carl Stjärnlöv: No, I created most of the artwork.
DinIntunerec: I’m a bit confused… I read something about some past collaborations with Costin Chioreanu. Did he contribute to some extend to the creation of the artwork in the past?
Carl Stjärnlöv: No, no, no. It was just me. I know Costin, but we’ve never worked with him. We’ve never worked with any other artist. I’ve done everything myself since I joined the band 20, 21 years ago. For the last 21 years, I’ve been doing the artwork.
DinIntunerec: I got it. Sorry for insisting on this topic, I just wanted to make it all crystal clear.
Carl Stjärnlöv: Yeah, no problem… It was also convenient like that because it’s easier to have someone in the band dealing with artwork. We can spend that budget on something else. I know how to do it, and I like doing it. I work with art and graphic design aside from music, so it’s been pretty much a no-brainer for me to do the artwork.
DinIntunerec: Your latest album came out also with a cover art created by yourself, but something seems different… It’s like you approached it from a different angle…
Carl Stjärnlöv: Yeah, we did a photo session for the album cover. It was like a skull, upside down, a black skull. The photo session we did with Jens Rydén—he’s the vocalist of Thyrfing, another Swedish band. He’s a really good photographer and a friend of ours, so we hired him to do the photos because he has great equipment. We did the photo session, and after that, I put everything together. So yeah, I did that artwork too.
DinIntunerec: How does the creative process work for Diabolical? Is it a collaborative process, or more of a one-man effort?
Carl Stjärnlöv: It’s very collaborative. Typically, one of us will make a pre-production recording at home, just to get the basics of the song down. We have most of the parts figured out, and then we go to Sverker’s studio, Wing Studios, in Stockholm, which has been our home base for 20 years now. Sverker, our vocalist, has been producing and recording our albums since back in 2000, starting with The Gallery of Bleeding Art. He’s been mixing everything since. So we do the pre-production, bring it to the studio, and then we develop the song together. It’s a very collaborative process, where everyone contributes.
DinIntunerec: What inspires you to write, and how does the writing process go from research to the writing itself?
Carl Stjärnlöv: For me, whenever I get a song idea, I’ll typically play it in my head for some time—sometimes years—before it becomes a song we record. For example, the song The Fire Within. I had the main riff in my head for maybe five years before we used it. The song Failure was even longer. Right now, I have a song playing in my head almost every day… A song that’s going to come out sometime. We’re going to record that, we’ve only done like a pre-production thing out so far. It’s still playing every day in my head, still figuring it out.
So, it takes some time, but it’s usually those ideas that I wake up in the middle of the night and they play in my head like: “OK, this needs to come out”, you know. So those ideas usually materialize into something. But in terms of inspiration, I don’t know.
I believe in the creative energies…
I think somebody said once that creative force is something that exists in the universe and sometimes the idea comes to you and then it’s something that comes from outside that you are just putting it forward. You’re just materializing that idea and it’s up to you to catch it and do something of it. Otherwise, the idea will be carried by the cosmic winds and land with someone else. So if you catch an idea, then you grab it and you have to do something with it. I think it’s like that. I could say that it’s a sum of everything that I’ve ever listened to… All the classical composers. But in general, I like to think it more as an esoteric force that possesses you sometimes and then you’re like: “OK, this is something that I need to catch and make something of it”.
DinIntunerec: Tell us a bit about the concepts behind your latest release, Eclipse.
Carl Stjärnlöv: Eclipse is loosely a concept album about the darker, more sinister aspects of humanity—our shortcomings and the suffering we cause. The songs reflect on that a lot. It asks why we bring so much destruction and suffering into the world, and whether we even want harmony. Or, if mankind is just a destructive force. It’s a self-reflection on humanity as a whole.
DinIntunerec: You’re kind of going your own way, experimenting a bit this time. How does this latest album differ from your earlier releases?
Carl Stjärnlöv: We’ve been around, since 1996. So that makes a lot more than 25 years now. Of course, it has changed a lot. Sverker is the only remaining original member. And back in the day of the first and second album, they were a bunch of teenagers just doing their thing, being inspired by technical death metal and whatever they were listening to at the time before I was in the band. They were just trying their way to do death metal in their style. Since then, over the years, as members have shifted and different influences from different people, we’ve developed slowly, but surely into what we are today. I think nowadays we have some kind of musical sort of… There are some melodies and some chords and some progressions…
There are some patterns that we keep repeating and there are some ingredients that we keep using. For the latest albums, we’ve been using a choir and also we incorporated clean vocals with me singing. So it’s constantly evolving, slowly, but surely. I think you can trace what we sound like today back to many years now. You can find the ingredients being there for some time. But it’s still evolving and we’re trying to slowly evolve all the time, I think.
DinIntunerec: Could you explain how all the elements in your music help you build atmosphere? And, actually, what does a good atmosphere mean to you?
Carl Stjärnlöv: It’s tricky because it’s… I mean, I always try to come back to our band name, actually. And we try to push that in different directions. It would be really easy for us to just go the old school death metal, black metal template and just do minor progressions and minor bar chords and death metal patterns. But we try to do something a bit different and try to push it different directions. I mean, the atmosphere… Yeah, we try to push it in different directions and try to see if it feels right for us, you know, and experiment with it.
I think sometimes we hit the mark. Sometimes, I personally feel like maybe we pushed it too far in a direction where we don’t want to go. I think that’s why you can hear some songs are very different from each other sometimes. The atmosphere might be… different.
DinIntunerec: Sverker was also the engineer for Eclipse. Was it more difficult for him to produce your own album than other bands’ albums?
Carl Stjärnlöv: We have a great privilege to have a full-time studio producer in our band and a studio. It’s a great luxury, really. So in that sense, it’s easier for us. What makes it more difficult is that we have sort of, not unlimited access, but we have a producer in the band and we have unlimited access to him and his skills. So, we might spend a little bit extra time. But, it wouldn’t be fair of me to say that it makes it more difficult to have a producer in the band. It makes it easier, actually.
DinIntunerec: In these terms, yes. But, I was more referring to the expectations. You know, when you’re working for your own product, you’re aiming to perfection. That’s why Sverker might have been under more pressure when working on his band’s album.
Carl Stjärnlöv: Yes, yes, yes. Of course. It’s like a never-ending process. You keep polishing until you maybe overdo things. So yeah, the difficulty is to know when we’re done. And sometimes, more often, we should put more constraints to ourselves and say, this needs to be done now.
DinIntunerec: Your latest albums have big gaps in between—five years between The Gallery of Bleeding Art and Neogenesis, and then six years between Neogenesis and Eclipse. Why so long?
Carl Stjärnlöv: Part of the answer is what I’ve just told you. We’re quite perfectionistic and we have a studio and we have Sverker.
But, we also set the bar really high. Another thing is that we don’t want to even fit with the usual two year album cycle. We do things our way and if we just fuck everything else, this is how we want to do things. We’re going to take the time it needs to take to create the art we want to create. It’s not that we’re unproductive, because if we’re not in the studio, most of the time we’re touring. But we also put a lot of effort into our music, so it takes time.
We don’t believe in just putting out music fast, as soon as possible, go on tour, release new album, go on tour again and just do another album. Because, there’s so much music out there, so many bands, so many albums. I mean, there’s like dozens of metal albums coming out every month.
So, why not try to push the envelope and do something extraordinary rather than to do just another album?
Well, if you want to do something that is a different, you push yourself and push the art a bit. Then, it needs to take more time, because good music, good songs, they don’t come around that easily. So, it takes time and we take the time.
DinIntunerec: Eclipse came out in 2019. So, if we were to look for a pattern, should we expect a new album next year?
Carl Stjärnlöv: Yes, we have quite a bit of material recorded. Right now, we have a bunch of songs, although we don’t have a complete album just yet. For instance, we have two new songs—actually three—that we’re going to play tonight. One of the songs we’ve been playing live for more than two years now, and it’s recorded. We’ve also done a music video for it, which I’m currently editing. We filmed the music video here, in Romania and in Stockholm.
So, there’s a lot happening, but things are in various stages of completion. Then, it’s also a matter of timing, release strategy, what the label wants to do, how they want to do things. They always want a bunch of months… Time to do their thing, to market it in the way we discussed with them. So I can’t give you any kind of release date, because we were just discussing release strategy and all those things right now. And that also needs to kind of fit with touring also. But it’s something we’re working on all the time right now. So, there will be new music, yes!
DinIntunerec: In the earlier stages, the band had a different name, Misanthropic Orchestra. What led to the name change?
Carl Stjärnlöv: Well, it’s quite obvious, isn’t it? Diabolical is a much better name. I think, I don’t know, it was back before my time in the band. It was Sverker‘s choice, I think, back in the 90s. I think he just realized that Diabolical was a better band name. I think that was fitting them better at the time.
DinIntunerec: What were the main obstacles that you had to overcome during almost three decades of existence?
Carl Stjärnlöv: I think it’s a constant struggle to be in the band, especially these days. Nothing comes easy. Nothing has ever come easy for us. We never had a free launch, so to speak. We never had someone from a big label come and give us a lot of opportunities or anything. We always had to work really hard for everything we’ve achieved. Most of it, we’ve done ourselves. Everything from writing, recording, producing the music, making the artwork, making the t-shirts, booking the tours ourselves for many, many years. I mean, anything from just writing the riffs to booking the flights, the tour bus and the shows.
So it’s been many, many years and a lot of hard work. There’s very, very little that has come easy for us. So, it’s a constant struggle, you know.
But somehow we’re still here, so I guess it’s worth it. Some days it doesn’t feel like it, like it’s worth it. Some days, although hard, I don’t think I’ve ever really, really considered quitting. Now, after me personally playing music for 25 plus years and the band also being 25 plus years, it’s more like a lifestyle. I don’t think it’s going to be possible to quit. It’s like… we’re too deep, too heavily invested in this. I think we’re going to keep going until the apocalypse and beyond. It’s going to be us and the cockroaches left after the apocalypse.
DinIntunerec: What is the main driving force behind Diabolical? What are the main principles that drive this project forward?
Carl Stjärnlöv: It’s the members of the band. We can practically talk about it in two ways. Practically, it’s the members of the band. It’s Sverker to begin with, the founding father of the band. I’m the second oldest member of the band. Me and Sverker have known each other now for 21 years. And we’ve found a very good way of working together. I think we both are kind of special, unique in our own ways. I think some people maybe think that we’re a bit odd sometimes. But somehow we work together very well. And that’s one of the factors. Then over the years, the members that have come and gone… They have contributed to the band also, fit into the structure and contributed with their skills, their art and their thing.
That’s what has kept the band going. Just like a relentless force that just keeps moving. I mean, philosophically, I always come back to the band name, Diabolical. We have to represent that in the world somehow and materialize what that means. It’s kind of a heavy subject. If you think about Diabolical, what does that actually mean? For me, it’s not just like some kind of superficial horror movie. “Satan this”, “Satan that” kind of thing. It’s more about all the destructive forces in the universe, in mankind, in each and every person.
What part of us, what part of every man’s heart carries a spark of darkness?
And how does that manifest itself in our physical existence and how can we represent that? It’s sometimes kind of heavy. I don’t take it lightly. I take it seriously. I think that’s also one of the reasons why we move slowly. Because I see it as something timeless, something bigger… Something cosmic almost, you know? It’s a heavy subject matter.
DinIntunerec: Was your music perceived differently at the beginning? I mean, what do you think about the new generation? Do they still understand the lyrics, understand the message that you’re trying to convey?
Carl Stjärnlöv: I hope so. I mean, we’ve been around for many years and I think a lot of people have heard us. A lot of people listen to us and to our albums, and they come to our shows. It seems to be speaking to some people, at least. So part of it, I definitely think people understand. Do they understand it the way we perceive it? I don’t think, I don’t know if we’ll ever know. Because people have their own perception of reality. It’s really, really difficult for even two people to have the same view of what reality looks like, let alone like a song or an album or music, and have the same opinion about what it is. But, I think, in some way they have their own understanding…
DinIntunerec: What is the best or the worst or the most intense memory… an unforgettable incident, an emotional or just funny situation that happened while you were on tour or during a live show?
Carl Stjärnlöv: Well, a particular tour comes to mind. That must have been, it was during the Neogenesis touring cycle. Back then we were doing a lot of minivan tours. We were going across Europe in a yellow minivan, an old Mercedes minivan. We called it the Yellow Danger. It was kind of dangerous.
We had 16 shows on that tour and that minivan broke down 16 times.
So, every day our tour manager, called the promoter for the next day saying “We’re gonna need a car mechanic tomorrow”, and he replied “Why?” To which she said “We don’t know yet! But we need one”. At some point, the van was broken completely. It was in Kraków, Poland. We left it there and we went to two shows with rental cars and then we came back to Kraków to take it back. We went to the repair shop and the van was still in pieces; everything was on the floor.
We were like “Oh, shit, we are having another show tonight and we have to get the car done in like two hours”. I remember trying to solve the issue, you know, turning on the key, turning off the key… The engine was still working, ha ha, but apart from that, nothing, nothing at all. Looking back, that tour was stressing… But we did it. We did every single show. Those were… our humble experiences, I think.
DinIntunerec: How do you see the underground metal scene nowadays? Apart from quantity, as it seems there are a lot of new bands emerging everywhere, do you think there is quality, too?
Carl Stjärnlöv: I would like to challenge the people nowadays because it is very rare to listen to a new band and say “Woooow, dude! This is something extra”. I would love to say that the scene is evolving, metal is evolving in a good way, in a healthy way. That it is fresh. That I am happy with it. But I am not. It is shit. So, work harder, do better.
DinIntunerec: What is the most important life lesson that you have learned so far?
Carl Stjärnlöv: I think it’s… that’s a really good question, you know? Sounds simple, but it’s not! Well, we had a lot of personal experiences with death. We had people close to us dying. Several experiences in the band… and… I mean, we play death metal so… it makes you a bit humble in the face of being alive. It is a really precious thing to experience life. It is fragile… Well, you can worship death, saying that it is cool and blah blah blah, but… on a more existential level, death is something quite profound, it is not something you should take so lightly. It puts your life into perspective a lot.
Whatever you do, your existence on this planet… leaves a mark.
I think it is important to try to have a good life and be very mindful about what you want to do with your life. Like, in our case, it is important to write and produce music. We try to make some kind of an imprint of our existence. It is important for everyone. So, be mindful about your existence.
DinIntunerec: Thank you for your time! Any final words for our readers?
Carl Stjärnlöv: Yeah! If you’re in a band: work harder, do better. If you’re a fan, enjoy the music, feel free to come to our shows, listen to our music. We appreciated it a lot. Hope to see you guys, at Quantic for example, now or for other shows!
