Interview Interrogation: Leif Jensen (Dew-Scented)

---

For the full interview, click the audio link above. For a summation continue reading this passage.

For a band that has been going over 20 years, Dew-Scented were always going to deliver an interview that was full of interesting commentary.

Briefly the band over the two decades have been exercising their own form of Thrash Metal through 10 studio albums, their latest being "Intermination". Regarding the new offering, they have changed their sound in very fine details due to the "collapse of the line-up structure for the band around the year 2011", resulting in a re-structure in 2012 for the 'Icarus' album and the onward tasks of keeping the recording flowing whilst bringing in new members. It because of this shift that enabled Leif to express his optimism for the "Intermination" album as it allowed the new members to become more hands-on during the recording.

Since Leif is the sole remaining member from the original line-up, he personally feels that the biggest challenge for the band was to keep it going, discovering the energy and level of progression to maintain the quality of output "no matter what the shape of the band's line-up was over the years", all whilst ascertaining what the next logical steps were for the band as musicians in relation to album-writing. Moreover he went on to express the importance for 'the love of the music' and essentially this applies to all bands, but admits that time would have been wasted if ideas weren't shared nor was the music recording taken seriously since "it is a rough business and demands a lot of time and attention" in order to keep Dew-Scented running like clockwork.

Naturally this also extends into the band's live shows and for Dew-Scented this means touring under the title "Thrash Mercenaries" and ad-hoc concerts with the likes of Exodus and Cavalera Conspiracy, all of which serve as platforms to showcase and promote "Intermination" on. Leif remains positive that hopefully the band will make a UK stopover, their last visit being in "2013 with Death Angel, so it would be about time to come back". As far as touring bands goes, Leif has no reservations and instead suggests that the tour will go fine alongside bands who are "nice, respectable and knows how to have a good laugh... that is what matters the most". Maybe a festival? [Bloodstock calling]

Of course with touring, different audiences react differently and there is no general overview when it comes to the levels of craziness exhibited. Leif expands on this by referring to local German scenes whereby attitudes and genre-appreciation differs, and this realistically can be applied to any country (with exception to those who have less than around 15 active bands). But he admits that they have always had a great time visiting the UK, their first tour in 2001 with Vader covered England, Scotland, Wales and the Irish Republic. Crowd numbers do dwindle and vary according to the time and day of each show, as well as location and Leif acknowledges that a Sunday afternoon show in Dublin in comparison to a Friday evening show at The Underworld in London would have a wide range gap in terms of attendees.

Focusing back on the band's albums, each one begins with the letter 'I' and Leif explains that whilst it has become a trademark for the band, he admits that whilst it is good to confuse the people who listen to albums, he ashamedly gets confused himself when "announcing a song and I cannot really picture which record is taken from because the titles are so much similar"; perhaps being the victim of their own game? But as far as future plans go, they are working on setting up new dates and so the schedule is yet to be 100% complete.

Leif admits that live concert DVD's are in his words 'boring', 'over-rated' and would rather not make a live DVD, but live records are not too bad - but only for the classic bands. Vinyl's however Leif is rather jubilant about them, not only because it allows him to complete some collections but also it has brought a new generation of listeners to the physical format(s). He admits also that he is "not a fan of digital downloads, iTunes, Spotify, whatever you call it... this is perfect for those who have storage issues or time to appreciate music", but backtracks upon the question of does this benefit those metal fans living in nations where CD's are hard to come by through admitting that it is a great thing to see the music being spread worldwide and this is an upside and the only positive viewpoint of the digital age. 

Flitting back to the touring, Leif would love to take the band to South America but there is also talks of a China tour early next year... watch this space.

"Intermination" is out June 30th via Prosthetic Records and is out now via Metal Blade Records

http://www.facebook.com/dewscented