LUCIFER’s JOHANNA PLATOW ANDERSSON Discusses ‘LUCIFER V’
Marco recently sat down with LUCIFER’s Johanna Platow Andersson to discuss all things ‘Lucifer V’, touring, horror movies and graphic design. Check it out below.
DS: Hi Johanna, thank you again for meeting with me today. Lucifer V is your fifth studio album coming out on January 26th. I've had the opportunity to listen to it and I'm absolutely blown away by it. I personally think it's your best album yet. How have you personally felt the current response has been from the four released singles so far?
J: Thank you for having me and for saying that about our album. It's really cool because we always put the same effort into every album. Of course, we always take the time we need. We never put any fillers on there. Every song is picked carefully and we've just done the same thing on this album. Somehow that is the reaction that we get from almost any outlet that I'm speaking to right now. I don't know exactly what it is. The only difference, and maybe that is the thing, is that we didn't have the time to mix the album ourselves. It is self-recorded at our studio as we always do. We produce everything ourselves. But we didn't have the time to mix the album so we gave it to a really good friend of ours who has a studio as well. He did a fantastic job, his name is Robert Pehrsson. That's really the only difference, so thanks for saying that. I have to really say you're not supposed to favour any of your children, but for some reason this album really also strikes a chord with me where I think it maybe shows the most diversity of Lucifer. It is also closer to my heart for whatever reason that just happened somehow.
DS: Have you managed to play any of the new songs live yet and how have they been received?
We have only played the first single that came out way before we even properly recorded any of the other songs. It was ‘A Coffin Has No Silver Lining’. That's the only song we've been playing live so far. We are rehearsing all the new singles right now because we are embarking on a European tour in about two weeks. So our plan is to play all five singles. There will be one more single coming out with the album release. The one single that we've been playing has a very driven old school heavy metal, Judas Priest opening riff. People love that live. It's good to have a proper hard rock number in the set.
DS: Are you excited for your upcoming co-headline tour with Angel Witch? Especially with a sold out date already and the other shows selling fast too?
J: Yes, absolutely. I'm a big Angel Witch fan. In fact, they are probably my favourite New Wave of British Heavy Metal band. They are very iconic to me as a heavy metal fan, so I'm looking very forward to watching them every night.
DS: Having five albums worth of material now, does it become a lot harder for you to put a setlist together?
J: Yeah, absolutely. You know, when you have the first album, you have the problem of not having enough songs. You play through the whole album and maybe you put in a few covers. We've had that situation and then the audience wants more but you have nothing (laughs). Now it's the other way around. The problem was, the pandemic came and we released two albums during the pandemic, Lucifer III and IV. We couldn't really tour with these albums. When we go on tour now, it's basically in support of three albums, III, IV and V. We have to play all the singles but that fills up the setlist rather quickly, so there's not much of Lucifer I and II on this coming tour at least.
DS: What would be your dream tour lineup? This is including bands past or present.
J: I haven't toured with Danzig yet. I had to turn down a few tours because I was already committed to other tours and it really broke my heart because I'm a huge Danzig fan. The first three albums are like a big influence on Lucifer. I've been a fan for over 30 years and so I definitely want to get that under my belt. I love Pentagram. Bobby Liebling actually came out to two of our shows on our last American tour this November. He sang ‘Forever My Queen’ with me on stage. We have supported Pentagram before at a one-off show but we haven't toured together so I think an ideal tour would be for me Lucifer with Danzig, Pentagram and maybe Mercyful Fate.
DS: Were there any particular albums that you were personally listening to that really influenced the writing of Lucifer V?
J: There are so many. We are huge music fans, music nerds here at home and in the band and I think it’s kind of like Lucifer is a filter. We soak up all the different stuff that we love and it really is different genres as well. Most of it is old. I don't think there's anything contemporary in there. We kind of take that all in and spit it out and that vomit is Lucifer (laughs). I don't know how else to put it because it couldn't just be one, maybe the two great main influences and the foundation would probably always be Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult.
DS: Do you have a personal favourite song off Lucifer V?
J: Yes, ‘At the Mortuary’. It almost didn't make it to the album actually. It was a little bit of an odd demo which I really really loved. Nicke said to me, "I think it's too weird. It can't be on the album." I said, "It has to be on the album." I'm very much in love with the song and it has all the different ingredients that a Lucifer song needs. It has the doom, it has the gloomy bits, but it also has these hopeful, driven, beautiful rock parts that all kind of make up Lucifer. And he said, "Okay, but then we have to really sit down and rearrange the song." Which we then did, luckily, and we recorded it, and I said, "This has to be a single, obviously, in my eyes." So I totally pushed through with that and I'm so glad I did because it turned out to be actually my absolutely favourite Lucifer song of all of our songs.
DS: Heading into more of the horror and occult side of things. What are your favourite horror movies?
J: I think always my number one favourite movie is Rosemary's Baby because I'm a big fan of horror that is not so in your face. I like horror that's more in your head, the imagination, the stuff that you don't see. I think that is more terrifying than any gory, "I saw your leg off in slow motion..." (laughs). So that's why I really love all these old horror movies, like Hitchcock's Psycho. You don't actually see the woman in the shower being stabbed. They cut it so well and your mind adds those puzzle pieces. I think it is so genius. I'm really appalled by most modern horror films. Of course there is good modern horror when they try to do it the old school way. But in general, the mainstream genre of horror is very... I find dumbing down people. Because it's so... I miss the elegance of how it used to be done. How subtle something creeps into your soul and it really chills you and you take that feeling with you. The horror of when you were a child and you didn't want to have your foot out from underneath your blanket. You know what I mean. But I also really love when it becomes really stupid, like Romero. Like zombies that are so... It's almost funny. Or Italian horror like Argento, Fulci, things like that. That's really cool.
DS: Were any of the songs off Lucifer V inspired by any horror movies as such lyrically?
J: Actually no. I wouldn't think so. I think the songs itself, musically, sonically, it’s of course the influences are bands that we love. Lyrically, I have written all the lyrics on all the Lucifer albums except one song, which is "Maculate Heart". That's the first time somebody else wrote lyrics and that was Nicke and I decided not to because he wanted me to write my own lyrics and I said, "No, I really like yours. I want to sing those." So I broke the cycle of me having my paw on everything. But usually I'm very influenced just by stuff that happens to me. You know, like personal stories, love, death, loss, you know, things that happen to you and kind of just shrouding them into metaphors and disguise people with other figures, you know, ghosts or whatever. Just to make it not too literal and people can find themselves in it when they listen to it.
DS: As a graphic designer myself, I absolutely love the aesthetic of all your branding and promotional material. Do you have a consistent designer you work with or does someone in the band look after all of that side of things?
J: Yes, that's always my husband, Nicke and me, together. We are not professional graphic designers. I actually had to go back to school to learn how to use Photoshop properly, all the way up to print. I really wanted to learn that because the first Lucifer album, I was basically just sitting next to a graphic designer trying to, you know, stutter like, do like this, no, more like this. That really annoyed me. I felt like crippled, so I needed to learn this myself. But Nicke is better at it and we're both really like into old fonts, you know, and it goes really down to like all the kerning, you know, every detail is extremely important. And that's why I think it's such a shame that nowadays a lot of people just stream albums, you know, they will never see the inside of our new gatefold album, which kind of goes hand in hand with the cover. You kind of have to see the whole thing to make sense of it, you know. I think it's so important. We put so much love into every little detail, you know. Sometimes it gets really annoying, you know, when you play at a show, and like one of the shows on tour, you have provided all the local promoters with the tour poster file and the fonts so they can make their own for that specific date. And they just disregard that, use horrible colours, horrible fonts and put that on top of the stuff that we have come up with, you know, and that really hurts. You can imagine so we get really anal about it and then it's like no, no, we have to redo it. I can't post this on social media. This looks horrible. It's also a little bit of a curse, you know, because we are always kind of overworked because everything else and it's so hard to let go, you know.
DS: Finally, are there any plans to tour Australia in future?
J: Yes, please. I would love that. You know, we haven't been to Australia. That is absolutely on my bucket list and I hope a promoter will take on Lucifer to do that before I croak. Please. I mean, you know, since the pandemic, travel for bands has become so crazy expensive. The inflation has really taken its toll. The flights have become more expensive and bands always have special gear with them, which makes it... It's eating up all the fees. So basically touring can be like that for a band our size. It's possible to, even though you have a great fee, that in the end, when you split it between five people, there's really not much left after all the expenses that you have on a tour. So, yeah, Australia, of course, being so far away from us or us being so far away from Australia, it makes it a little bit more difficult. So let's hope that the album becomes at least, I don't want to get greedy, but popular enough in Australia that it will make it feasible for us, for a promoter to book us in Australia.
DS: Thank you so much, Johanna, for taking the time to chat with me. I hope you have a lovely day and all the very best to you and the rest of the band on the release of Lucifer V next week.
J: Thank you so much, Marco. It was a pleasure talking to you and you had really great questions. Have a great evening.
PRE-ORDER / PRE-SAVE LUCIFER V:
https://lucifer.bfan.link/lucifer-v
'Slow Dance in A Crypt' Official Music Video: https://youtu.be/9tR8nGUfvC0
'At The Mortuary (Halloween Edit)' Official Music Video: https://youtu.be/jkvQILyvro0
'A Coffin Has No Silver Lining (The Sistine Version)' Promo Music Video: https://youtu.be/-EZkgyp9D18
'Maculate Heart - Radio Edit': https://youtu.be/uOIA6RONj5k