HYPOCRISY - Peter Tägtgren
Pictured: Peter Tägtgren, Reidar Horghagen + Mikael Hedlund - HYPOCRISY
Worship Music
Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media
Speaking to SENSE at home in the woods in Sweden as the rains fell, multi-instrumentalist Peter Tägtgren is a man with a work ethic. Perhaps best known for his work in death metal stalwarts HYPOCRISY, he explored industrial with his project PAIN, and even toured the world as part of LINDEMANN, a collaboration with RAMMSTEIN vocalist Till. Almost lost in the deafening maelstrom of 2020 was Peter’s announcement that, after two albums, he will never be working with Till again, so when the name came up – during this interview to promote the new HYPOCRISY album Worship – I thought it best to tread carefully …
Pictured: Till Lindemann + Peter Tägtgren - LINDEMANN
Photo by: Jens Koch @jenskochphoto
You’ve said that you wrote an album’s worth of material with Sebastian, your son. How much of that is going to see the light of day?
I don’t know, to be honest. Dead World comes from there. Sebastian wrote that song. I put the lyrics on. Brotherhood of the Serpent is another song that I took from there. So there are still a lot of skeletons left of songs, and full-length songs without vocals or lyrics on there. I don’t know if it’s going to see the light of day, or if it’s going to stay there.
Did Sebastian write the riffs for Dead World? That shit goes hard.
I know! That’s why I like it. When I heard it, I was like, “Damn, the world needs to hear this shit! It’s fucking cool.” I like the whole rhythm in it. I like the energy in it. Just the way the song was built up. Also the lyrics are pretty cool, I think.
That must be such a cool dynamic. What’s it like making music with your son?
It’s amazing. The first time me and Sebastian played live, he jumped in … There was a band that was doing a release party, and they asked if I could come up and play a few songs at this release party. So I did two HYPOCRISY songs and three PAIN songs, or the opposite, and Sebastian was playing drums and taking care of the back tracks with the computer sitting beside him. He’s not afraid, that kid. I think he was fourteen at the time. It was pretty amazing, you know? I waited the longest time to bring him out on tour, because I wanted him to not see this … If you go on tour, you never want to go back to normal life! [Laughs] So he was seventeen when he joined me with the Coming Home tour with PAIN, and he also did drums on the LINDEMANN tour as well.
Am I allowed to bring up LINDEMANN, or is that a sore subject?
You can do that. I’m not going to say anything with what happened. It was good when it was good, and when it wasn’t, it wasn’t. That’s why we’re not playing together, you know?
I realise that the relationship may have run its course, but if I was to ask what’s something that you really admired – or maybe still admire – about Till Lindemann? What’s something positive you can say to maybe cap off that relationship?
He’s a brilliant man, you know? He’s very smart. He’s really good on the visual stuff. He’s a pure artist, you know? He’s good at understanding what is good and what is bad, you know? Writing music with him is a piece of cake. I just have to look at him and I get inspired and start writing music. We had really good chemistry, as long as we stayed in the studio.
Isn’t that just such a nice vibe? It probably won’t get as many clicks [as talking shit]!
Yeah. No, I will never sit in an interview and throw shit at other people and stuff – you know, cheap shots. It doesn’t make sense. I just really say, “It was good when it was good, and when it was not, it was bad.” That’s all, you know? No big deal. It’s the same with all kinds of relationships. I’ve been married three times, I’ve been divorced three times. [Laughs]
Pictured: Reidar Horghagen, Mikael Hedlund + Peter Tägtgren - HYPOCRISY
Photo courtesy of Nuclear Blast
Going back to Sebastian … what was his musical upbringing? What kind of things was he into? What did you expose him to?
When he was a kid, he grew up on Star Wars and RAMMSTEIN’s Live aus Berlin DVD. He really loved that. When Sebastian was three years old, two of the guys from RAMMSTEIN came to my place and hung out for a weekend, and they saw this kid going crazy, playing this. He had his plastic guitar and plastic amp, and he walked into the kitchen, and I put on the DVD, because I knew he was going to do it, and he did it. The guys were just sitting at the dinner table, going, “What the fuck is wrong with your son?” He was imitating everything from that DVD. It was kind of fun. He’s always been around music and musicians. He’s Swedish, but everyone I had around was English, so he had to start speaking English when he was very young. He grew up in this hippie environment, family kind of thing.
That’s always interested me. One of my favourite bands on the planet is MESHUGGAH, and I look at bands like that and I wonder, “Why on earth are you singing English?” I’m wondering what the relationship in Sweden with the English language is?
I think it’s much easier to express myself in English than in Swedish. Even when I speak, when I shout, when I’m pissed, whatever – it’s easier to do it in English. I guess I’m brainwashed from living in America for three years or something. I don’t know. To write Swedish lyrics, and sing them … nah. It’s not a cool thing for me. It doesn’t have that attitude. German has a certain attitude in the pronounciations and things like that. English, the same thing. Russian … But Swedish … it just doesn’t have any attitude! Maybe for ABBA or something, but not for a death metal band. [Laughs]
Sweden has this incredible pedigree when it comes to heavy music. Why do you think that is?
Maybe the six months of darkness? I don’t know. I guess there is not too much else to do but write music. I don’t know why it’s so typical of Scandinavia. You’ve got Norway – there’s a lot of good bands – and Finland as well, and Denmark as well. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the four seasons, or if it’s something in the water. I have no clue.
Pardon my ignorance; does Sweden get six months of darkness and six months of sunlight? Or am I completely wrong?
It gets darker and darker every day now, as with everywhere else. When it is at its darkest, where I live, at 3pm the sun goes down, at the end of December somewhere.
That blows my mind.
I know! So you don’t get much D vitamins, or any energy because of the weather.
The subject matter for Chemical Whore doesn’t pull any punches whatsoever. How much of this came from your own personal experience?
I have some friends who have been hooked on pills. It’s like a blind spot of addiction that you don’t really talk about now. You talk about people smoking grass or doing cocaine or heroin and things like that, but you never talk about people who are really hooked on medications, like benzo pills and shit like that. They say it’s the same as heroin addiction. It’s really hard, when you get into it, to get out. I wrote these lyrics in 2018, close to 2019, and it was just what I had on my mind. Everything I write is just from my perspective, how I see things. It’s my story, my fantasy, or it’s my reality or whatever you want to call it, and that’s really how I build my lyrics on this album.
Worship is out November 26th on Nuclear Blast
Pictured: Peter Tägtgren, Reidar Horghagen + Mikael Hedlund - HYPOCRISY
Photo courtesy of Nuclear Blast
