Photo: Daniel Sommer
When it comes to old-school death metal done with Swedish finesse, Puteraeon is another reliable veteran act to unleash the fury. Taking on inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft on the lyrical front, their latest album Mountains of Madness received a ringing endorsement from Dan Swanö – who mixed and mastered this record. Expect riffs that rumble through the airspace, bass that makes bodies shiver, growls and screams of an earth-rattling variety beyond drumming that can be quite catchy and controlled one measure, then blasting to the outer universe realm in others. We reached out to guitarist/vocalist Jonas Lindblood to learn more about his musical background, the flow of the new record, how they choose to stick to the storyline more this go around, being a part of the Emanzipation Productions roster, how Death Breath reshaped his outlook on death metal in the 2000s, and what’s in store for future gigs.
Dead Rhetoric: What are some of your earliest memories surrounding music growing up through childhood? At what point did you start listening to heavier forms of music – and then gain the desire to pick up an instrument to perform in your own bands?
Jonas Lindblood: First memories, my first class in school back in 1984, one friend was a little bit older, and he gave me a tape with some Twisted Sister, Mötley Crüe, W.A.S.P. Later on, I discovered Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth. And then somewhere around 1990-91 I started listening to death metal, Carcass, Death, Entombed, Dismember. I started playing guitar back in 1988, that’s when I got my first guitar. It was very important for me – and I’ve been playing ever since.
Dead Rhetoric: Did you take any lessons or are you pretty much trained by ear?
Lindblood: We have something here, a school class where once a week and after school you could take lessons and practice. There was in school practice – I started playing guitar in 1988 but not the songs that I wanted to play. It was very easy things. Very basic, but it was the foundation. I tried to play the Metallica riffs from there. I always wanted to play heavy metal, and that was something I had to learn myself.
Dead Rhetoric: Mountains of Madness is the fifth full-length album for Puteraeon. What can you tell us about the songwriting and recording sessions in relation to this material – and where you see this record slotting in the discography of the group?
Lindblood: I think it sounds very cliché, but I think this is the best album that we’ve ever done. The recording and the songwriting have been almost back like it was in the early days. I started at home with my guitar, building off of riffs and go from there, expand and take away until we had something without vocals. I always write the music first, have a song and present it to the rest of the guys. This is my idea, but I like them to work on the details and try different arrangements, vocals. When we are done with the songs, then we start recording them with the drums. Our bassist was going through moving, he had problems doing the bass, so I think we did the vocals next, and the bass was the final step. Usually, we do the vocals and solos last, but we had to rearrange it.
Dead Rhetoric: Were there any songs that were more of a challenge in the recording or songwriting process that maybe evolved over the course of the idea to final recording?
Lindblood: I think the challenges were in the writing and rehearsing. Sometimes you have a song, and something is not quite there, something is missing. You can’t quite put your finger on it. Then we have to trash it, or we can’t complete it because something is wrong, even if we don’t know what’s wrong. This time, maybe after two or three songs were written, they took the longest time to write. We had a good flow from there, this is good, as sometimes you have to work really hard and nothing ever comes out.
Dead Rhetoric: The conceptual storyline tackles the H.P. Lovecraft novella At the Mountains of Madness – which details a disastrous trip to Antarctica as a sci-fi horror piece. What captivates you about this story – and were there any challenges in matching the right themes / lyrics to the appropriate musical passages song by song to make things cohesive?
Lindblood: Last time we did a concept album about The Call of Ktulu, so this time we wanted to do something similar but more bound to the story. We started writing the songs, and we didn’t know which Lovecraft story we were going to base the lyrics on. I decided that we should do this one – when I thought about it, I think it’s quite cool. The snow, the story, it reminds me of one of my favorite horror movies. I get that vibe, so we took the story and chopped it up into the first song, and go forth from there. It went much better than I expected from the beginning. The last time, all the songs were inspired by the Call of Ktulu, but it wasn’t like from start to finish. This time it was more like we did think about where we wanted to go from the start to the finish. You can read the lyrics from the start to the finish of the album, and you’ll have the complete story.
Dead Rhetoric: Which is easier for you – the guitar parts or the vocals in this band?
Lindblood: The hard thing is doing both together in a live situation. The songs have gotten more complicated. Through the 16-17 years together, sometimes things sound really good, I’ll have to do a hard guitar part and try to also think about the growls at the same time. With the vocals this time, I screamed my lungs out for the first time. I used a different vocal technique – I went into more of a just scream your lungs out style, it sounds more aggressive. I remember when doing the vocals, I would do two songs per night, and that would be enough, because I would have a complete headache (laughs). That was exhausting.
Dead Rhetoric: Dan Swanö provides a ringing endorsement for this record – stating this will go down as one of the best Swe-death releases ever. How does it feel to get such respect and admiration from a veteran of this movement, who has himself been a part of many landmark releases in this genre?
Lindblood: Completely sick. We asked him while we were texting back and forth if he liked what he was hearing. We asked him if he liked it if he could say something about the album and we could use it, if it’s good. We didn’t have to do anything with it because it’s a great quote. Big words, very big words. We are a small band, but we still have our feet on the ground. Of course, you get a bit warm in your heart when you hear those words.
Dead Rhetoric: How would you describe Puteraeon when it comes to your live performances and presentation compared to what people hear on the records? What have been some of the more memorable shows, tours, or festival appearances to date?
Lindblood: We have some very memorable shows – as we’ve been around for over 17 years. We’ve done five or six shows around here because we don’t have many promoters willing to take us on around here. Early in our career, we really worked on the songs and tried to see what worked best live. We want to be a good live band. We don’t want the audience to be put to sleep or relax – we are like, go, go go! The energy from the stage transfers to the audience. One time we played outdoors, and I remember the audience yelling for ‘one more’. I remember our other guitarist didn’t even think he could manage because he was so completely drained. When they see us completely drained from the stage, then (the audience) knows we gave it our all for the audience. I think that’s good.
Most memorable gig we did was quite early in our career. It was in Germany, we had never played that big of a show., we played in front of 2,000 people. It was our biggest show ever. We have played small venues of 100-200 people, packed and sweating, and I also love that.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you consider some of the biggest challenges currently facing Puteraeon this deep into the band’s career? How do you balance out the activities of the group while also holding down careers, families, and other responsibilities?
Lindblood: I think that is the most challenging thing that we will have. We have full-time jobs, we all have our families and our kids, and at the same time we also want to do our musical career as much as possible. But it has to be reasonable. We can’t go on a tour for weeks with no pay and our families have no money. That doesn’t work. Even if it would be fun for us to do a lot of gigs, it doesn’t work because we have all these other responsibilities. We treasure things as much as possible. We have to slave (away) at our daytime jobs just as much as everybody else.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you feel being a part of the Emanzipation Productions roster since 2020? What do you enjoy most about their staff and their approach that helps the band attain a strong footprint in the extreme metal scene – especially on a global scale?
Lindblood: I have known Michael since my old band Taetre was on Mighty Music back in the late 90s/early 2000’s. I like that he has his ear into the underground scene. There are a lot of cool bands that Emanzipation has released throughout the years. Recently Creeping Flesh, we know Turbocharged as well. We go way back; it was quite easy to sign with them. We did three albums on Cyclone Empire, and we were going to decide from there if we were going to release more albums ourselves, but we didn’t have the money to do this. Michael was interested in signing us, so it was quite easy. Cyclone Empire was quite good in the beginning, but I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden there was a problem with the money. Otherwise, there aren’t big differences, both labels have a lot of focus on the underground.
Dead Rhetoric: In another talk with No Clean Singing back in 2022, you mention that a lot of death metal that hit the streets in the early 2000’s to you was a bit boring. What factors do you believe caused this stagnation – and how do you feel about the current death metal marketplace with the veterans and newer artists as far as keeping the movement alive?
Lindblood: I remember what I thought about this was back in 2000, everything was starting to sound too perfect. That was not what I wanted from death metal. I wanted things a bit rawer, like taming the beast. It shouldn’t be perfect – it should be good, but it shouldn’t be perfect. Somewhere in between. I thought some bands were losing that wild element in the music, it was starting to become too clean. What happened for me is Death Breath when they released their album Stinking Up the Night in 2006, I was like this is back to the roots. That was the first new release I enjoyed. Maybe I needed some time to come back into this. I can listen to a lot of different music that I didn’t enjoy back in 2000. Maybe people change.
Dead Rhetoric: Are you surprised with the success of a lot of extreme metal in the current scene? It seems like the genre is more popular than ever…
Lindblood: I don’t think extreme metal can be consider as extreme anymore. I remember years ago things were extreme, there was no doubt about it. You could see all the kids in their black shirts, black jeans, band shirts – you could pick out who loved bands like Slayer, other people were like, ‘what is that sort of noise?’. Nowadays, you can be into all styles of music and people would not even know based on how you look, you could be into grindcore, and you can’t see it with the person. The internet has opened a lot of doors, back then it was more shrouded as you had to go into underground stores to buy demos, magazines. Now you can push a button on a computer, and you’ll have the material.
Dead Rhetoric: What would surprise us to learn about Jonas the person away from your musical activities? Where do you think you’ve seen the greatest changes when it comes to your life now that you are in your late 40’s?
Lindblood: Of course, I’m a much different person than I was twenty years back. I’m older and I’m wiser. I have a family now, and I didn’t have a family back then. I was angry back then, at everything. It was very draining. I managed to put this aside. Sometimes I still get angry, but at the same time I know when to push it away. You have been through more in life. I’m turning 48 years this year, when I was 28, I didn’t have what I have today. I’m a different person. I still have the same interests in music; I still listen to the same albums. Some things have changed, and some things have not.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s on the horizon for Puteraeon over the next year or so? Are there any other side projects or band activities amongst the other members (or yourself) that we can also prepare ourselves for?
Lindblood: No, I think we are waiting for the album release. We are planning to do another video for the album. We have two shows confirmed – one show in Gothenburg, and one show in Serbia. There are a couple more shows in Sweden during the autumn, we have them in the works. We may be supporting a bigger band for one of those shows. We don’t know if the next set of material we release will be an EP or if it will be another album. We haven’t decided, so we shall see.