Hi Julien, that’s been a while. Good to have you back with yet another killer album. What took you so long?
Hey man! Yes, it’s been a while! Nice to talk to you again! Oh, it’s very simple, pandemic happened! And instead of starting touring with all the great tours we had planned and party for the release day of “Obscene Repressed” at Inferno Festival in Norway on the 10^th of April 2020, I was in my bed with 40° fever because I caught Covid working as a nurse in a crisis department… Ah ah! It was for sure not the best way to promote a new album and we only started touring a year after when things started to get better and that it was possible to travel again! We’ve done so many shows and festivals for this album and we finished last year with 2 European tours, one with Teethgrinder and the other one with Archspire, Psycroptic and Entheos! We started the writing process of “Ekbom” quite late and as we really wanted this album to be the best and darkest piece of our discography, we decided to take our time and take care of every detail!

Could you tell us a little more about how the line-up changes affected the song writing process over the last 4 years?
We decided with Fabien (guitars) that it was time to stop on July 2022 as touring with Benighted and have a full-time job is really exhausting and that he started to have health troubles because of this infernal rhythm. We stayed in contact of course and there is no bad blood at all between us, he is a great friend and he will come to one of the gigs of our upcoming tour this month! We also decided to continue with only one guitar as we know each other for years now and the alchemy between us works perfectly! Welcoming a new member is always a lot of work and energy and I do this for 26 years now so… ah ah! As a matter of fact, Manu is still writing everything alone in the band so it doesn’t affect the writing process at all. We always have the same method, Manu writes a demo where he records everything, including drums that he programs and he sends it to me. Then I prepare on my side a new structure for this track considering what could be the chorus, which part should be longer, adding breaks, arrangements… and once the track is ready, we send it to Kevin and Pierre who adapt their parts with their own style to make the most efficient possible!

Also, they sometimes say that when a drummer dies, at least five bands can wrap up. Weren’t you more scared, or honoured when your extraordinary drummer Kevin Paradis joined Ne Obliviscaris for their live tour?
We were very happy that he had such an opportunity and it just gave us a bit more work in terms of schedule and organisation but it’s ok.

About the new album, the title ‘Ekbom’ would mean “Bomb at the European Championship” in Dutch, but I assume it is referring to Swedish scientist Karl-Axel Ekbom, right? And not about his work about restless leg syndrome, but delusional parasitoris. What happens with such patients?
Ah ah! I didn’t know that! I just knew about the scientist who gave his name to the syndrome I’m using in our new album. It’s a pretty rare pathology which appears more with old women who develop hallucinations and conviction of having their skin infested with bugs.

It’s about as sickening as it gets, the mere thought about it. Have you, in your work as a psychiatric nurse, seen this up close and personal yourself?
I saw people dealing with insects’ hallucinations on and under their skin but their diagnosis was schizophrenia, which is not only a hallucinatory process like Ekbom Syndrome.

Would you say that delusional parasitoris is also the general theme on the record?
Yes, as it’s the main symptom of the character of the album. I don’t use it as the exact clinical definition of the Ekbom syndrome, as my character is suffering with schizophrenia and that insects are just the theme of her hallucinations. But as I knew the name “Ekbom” would be pretty enigmatic for a lot of people and sounded very catchy, I decided to use it as the title of the album. The story is precisely about a young girl, who spent most of her childhood taking care of her mom, dying with cancer. Because of that, she can’t develop her psychological structure in a proper way and develops the conviction that the enemy is always inside us and will destroy us from the inside at some point. When her mom dies, she finds herself alone and falls into schizophrenia and starts having hallucinations about insects crawling under her skin, so she tries to get them out by cutting herself. She also sees in every room a dark man with a demonic face who smiles as soon as she starts doing it.

Let me take a moment to process that before we move on… yes, I’m ready again. You used some very intriguing samples on the album, where did you get them?
Manu (guitarist Emmaluel Dalle, ALOM) created them with his computer. It’s the first time we use samples like this and it really increases the general creepy atmosphere of the album

Agreed, yes!
It’s also a very efficient way to slow down on some parts, before back with brutal “straight to your face” parts.

I won’t forget to like and subscribe, hahaha. Speaking of which, am I right in saying that the song ‘Fame Of the Grotesque’ is a small step away from your usual topics, or do you deal with the mind process of this as well in the song?
You are perfectly right! This song is about the way the girl of the story tries to make her pathology step away, by manipulating it and appreciate the symptoms instead of being afraid of them. It’s also a straight attack to all the poor souls out there who think that suffering with a psychiatric pathology can be kind of “cool” and try to show off, create a Youtube channel pretending to be sick and make money with it… The multiple personality disorders for example became such a fame, that some people are just frauds and it’s pretty sad and disrespectful to people who really have to deal with such a disease every day. But if it can make them feel better, I could tell them: “yes, you are sick, but not in the way you pretend”