Albums of Purgatory Interview Dew-Scented's Leif jensen

Albums of Purgatory: Firstly, whats the band up to?

Leif Jensen: Hi there! well, right now, we have a couple of weeks with no shows, so things are rather smooth at present. we just did some cool touring in France with No Return / Scarve, then we did some great shows with Destruction / Kreator / Sodom as well as some single dates here and there. Next up are some summer festivals and then we have a full European tour scheduled for September / October 2002 with Cannibal Corpse and Severe Torture. That will be the next time for us to hit UK ground, so that will surely be a nice tour all in all! In the meantime, we will be as well writing new material for our upcoming album, so we are definitely always keeping busy doing something...

AoP: How would you describe the Dew-Scented sound?

LJ: I think we fairly combine elements from Thrash and Death Metal. The best of both worlds, so to say! And we like technical stuff as well, mainly only as a nice addition to the songs, without taking away from the catchy punch of the riffs. Some melody can't hurt either but for the most part, we do care about heavy rhythms. Then again it's up to your individual point of perspective, to say what Dew-Scented is up to, so I rather have people come up with their own opinions about our music after all!?

AoP: How did the band begin in 92?

LJ: Basically we got together when some other local bands from our area broke up in 1990 - 1991 and some of those musicians were searching for a heavier new band to form. I joined the band on vocals back then when they had the first 4 tracks written in instrumental version and things slowly started moving after we had the first 7-8 tracks written and were ready to play shows. We did a demo tape and then quickly got signed in 1995 to SteamHammer Records for our debut album "Immortelle".The rest of things ever since pretty much happened in a chain-reaction, haha!

AoP: the band has suffered several line-up changes. Was it easy to carry on from that?

LJ: No easy but things had to go on somehow! I mean, we basically started out as local friends getting together to play some brutal music but as time passed by, more activity and goals came our way and of course not everybody was able to invest the necessary energy for the band anymore to keep it growing step by step. Actually, none of the line up changes so far happened because of "fights" or disagreements. It was rather just a logical situation of Dew-Scented having to move on, whereas some of the other guys didn't feel like having their jobs or families suffer under the big amount of time that a serious band demands. Even though there is only bassplayer Patrick and me left over from the very initial line up of the band, the core of the band has been steady ever since 1997 (with uwe on drums and flo on guitars - eventually with different persons on the second guitar duties...), so I guess we have been doing pretty fine ever since...

AoP: You have toured with some huge names (Six Feet Under, Deicide, Death), who has been the most enjoyable to work with?

LJ: Oh, we have been indeed very lucky as far as touring partners! I mean, we got to share stages with some bands that we really liked and that somehow also belonged to the reasons why we actually started out as muscians, being our fave bands and stuff. I mean, all touring, be it with acts like Edge Of Sanity, Overkill, Annihilator, Death, Morbid Angel, Vader, etc was good fun and always a good experience for us....

AoP: What are your favourite/proudest touring memories?

LJ: Too many to be honest, haha! We really like travelling and seeing new places with / through the band, so we were fortunate enough to go through a lot of cool moments in a period of +300 shows this far. definitely the tour in Japan with Defleshed and Night In Gales in April of last year was something pretty unique because we never thought that we would be able to make it over there (especially because we didn't have a japanese deal back then...) but all in all, most of the shows we have done so far were cool enough and justified the cause, haha!!! There is also always enough new goals and show ideas coming up these next days, so it actually never gets boring...

AoP: What are your favourite Dew-Scented tracks?

LJ: Hmm, my fave tracks seems to change from days to day. Out of the older stuff, I still like "The Sicker Things" a lot as well as "Everred" (both off "Innoscent") and most of the tracks on "Ill-Natured" (if it wasn't for the production that definitely lacks on power!). On "Inwards" I really like the opening track "Bitter Conflict", "Unconditional", "Life Ending Path" and "Blueprints Of Hate". Then again, if you ask me again next week, I bet I would be able to give you a fully different answer, haha!

AoP: What are your favourite all time songs?

LJ: I'm not really the guy that is too much focused on individual songs...I somehow always prefered to go for entire albums to be able to mention a certain band as a fave of mine because I saw no point on most of those releases that had a really killer stand-out song but then the rest of the record was pretty "boring" or rather average. Let me rather give you some short outtake of a list of timeless masterpiece-type of albums: At The Gates - "Slaughter Of The Soul", Death - "Human", Morbid Angel - "Altars Of Madness", Exodus - "Bonded By Blood", Forbidden - "Forbidden Evil", Edge Of Sanity - "The Spectral Sorrows", Terrorizer - "World Downfall", Invocator - "Weave The Apocalypse", Cynic - "Focus", My Dying Bride - "Turn Loose The Swans", pretty much all records by Tori Amos, Acid Bath - "Paegan Terrorism Tactics", early Testament, Agents Of Oblivion - "s/t", Destruction - "Infernal Overkill", Dream Theater - "When Dreams And Day Unite", Eucharist - "Mirrorworlds", Arch Enemy - "Black Earth", all by Slayer, Discharge "Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing", Amebix - "Monolith", all by DIO and Trouble, early Helstar and Hallows Eve...damn, I could go on forever, haha! Some of the newer stuf that I have ben really getting into are System Of A Down - "Toxicity", an american band called Finch, the new Burnt By The Sun album as well as the new Decapitated record...it really doesn't have to be purely Death Metal to be cool for me. It's gotta be something unique and full of long term quality, so....

AoP: What was the first record you bought?

LJ: I actually started out with heavy (demo) tape trading, so I wasn't really into buying albums too much. Plus, I was raised in South America (Colombia), so I didn't have much access to original releases there, unless by the bigger bands (Maiden, Slayer, Megadeth, etc.). The first LP's I owned must therefor have been older Iron Maiden (even though I didn't last their fan for very long and seeing that "Seventh Son..." is my Maiden fave record, I'm not to be considered a "good" fan , haha!).

AoP: What would be your dream band line-up?

LJ: I'm currently playing with great guys and we are having a blast of time together when we go out to play, so I'm doing quite fine. Then again, if I had a choice for like an all-star backing band, I guess I would combine Danne Erlandsson (Arch Enemy / Eucharist) on drums, Paul Masvidal (Cynic / Death) on guitars, Ben Meyer (Nasty Savage) on guitars too, Steve DiGiorgio (Sadus / Testament, etc) on bass...hmm, that sounds like fun....but then I would probably prefer someone like Russ of Forbidden to take over the vocalist duties and I would be there right infrontof the audience to watch that amazing line up doing something special on stage, haha!

AoP: What do you think of the position of metal and music in general today?

LJ: I think it's somehow in the same position as always! Not really in the total focus of the mainstream media but with up and downs of visibility, depending on how "accepted" heavy guitars are. I mean, I think there are so many separate sub-genres to Metal, that it's difficult to say something about the "one" scene in general. I don't really care so much anyways to be honest, because I see Metal to be a movemnet for a certain group of people only that carry on throughout the years with passion and devotion for their hobby / fave bands. I have been into this for quite some time already and it's fun to see that the same goes for a lot of other people as well!!! I couldn't care less about those who change style / preferences every couple of months / years...then they weren't meant to be in this after all!

AoP: Do you have any funny stories you can share with us about the band?

LJ: Not really....it's all just more funny in the moment of action itself...trying to re-capture all those funny details in a written way some time after it happened mostly only kills the good vibe it had, haha!

AoP: and finally, what do you see in the future for Dew-Scented?

LJ: I see a lot of cool challenging shows / tours coming up shortly and also some heavy songwriting process for the next album! But as always, we will have to wait and see what the future really brings. We live in uncertain and unpredictable times, so why even bother to look ahead too much?

AoP: Thanks for your time and good luck

LJ: Thanks a lot too for your interest and support! Stay heavy and keep thrash alive!!! For news and updated on Dew-Scented, please feel free to check out our website at: http://www.dew-scented.de