The previous time we spoke to each other was when former album ‘Lamenting Of The Innocent’ came out in 2020. You managed to create the album, but of course you could not perform live. Yet the writing process for the new album ‘Reign Of The Reaper’ only started in 2022. Can you tell something about that?
The album has been finished now for six months almost. So we started in 2022, late 2021 I think and we had the same process as we always use. We are not a band that goes down to the rehearsal room and jams. So we write on the computers and we send the information to each other, to put into our system and that is how we juggle around ideas for the songs.

So it has always been that way, it was not because of the pandemic at that time?
No, everyone is so experienced in this band that we don’t have to really rehearse to know that it works. We are used to that. All the four albums have been written in the same way and the same process, so we are used to it now.

Since you write the parts at home, was there a kind of musical direction you talked about before starting or is that not an issue?
No it is not an issue really. We always write a lot of music. For this album we had 14-15 ideas, which we pulled down into eight and why only eight? It is because we decided to go a little bit – what you say – old school and do a single vinyl this time. So we did not want to make a double vinyl this time, we have done that several times already and we wanted to have a format that was going back to old school. So this record is 47 minutes of music. The main characters behind the music are Peter Hallgren and Kristian Niemann, the guitar players. Also Johnny Hagel, also our former member, he is also in the background. He came up with some ideas and when the ideas take shape, they were sent to me and our co-producer Conny Welén and he and I work out the melodies for the songs and the last thing that really done on the songs are the lyrics, before we go in and do the actual recordings. That is our team. Justin, our bass player, he kind of reworks the bullshit lyrics that me and Conny write. Some stuff he saves and incorporates into these lyrics and some stuff he just rewrites. So it is a real team effort.

Yes, Justin always writes the final lyrics…
Indeed he finalized all the lyrics, it is a good collaboration for the lyrics we write when we get those melodies and the titles are almost always there first. When we write lyrics, we always have a title for the song. It makes it easier to get the feeling for the song.

Former time the main subject were the witch hunts, but this time it seems to be the death, isn’t it?
Basically the lyrics are always based on historical facts and then we just write fiction around it. We are all fans of horror movies and the struggle between good and evil and stuff like that, so the lyrics tend to evolve around that mostly. The last one was kind of a conceptual album about the burning of witches in the 15^th century. This one is not a concept album. Every song is different. We have for instance ‘Thy Kingdom Will Come’ is more like knights fighting over a castle and ‘Curse Of Medusa’ is about the Greek mythology. ‘Reign Of The Reaper’ is about soldiers dying in battlefields and this soul reaper comes out and takes their souls.

Well, it is all dark, let us say…
We are not very enlightening in the lyrics. We want to paint a picture, you know, with the music, and we got some effects. We got those church choirs and we have effects to bring the listener into the song so to speak. I think we try to keep the lyrics abstract also, so it is not about a guy who comes into this room, falls on a sword and dies. It is up to the listener to decide what the lyrics mean.

Still it is a very coherent album I think. It sounds very epic with your vocals, sometimes the choirs are bombastic…
It is a true Sorcerer album in that sense. We want to keep it big, bombastic and we want to keep it epic. The thing about this album maybe, is that it is more diverse. There’s some faster songs, there’s some slower songs, there’s some songs in between. We felt that we wanted to do eight really good songs that were different to each other, so it would be more interesting. When you do a longer album, it doesn’t matter if two songs are similar, but if you only have eight songs, we wanted each of the songs to be different from the other as much as possible, without taking away the sound we have.

You achieved that and this one has really fervent and fiery guitar solos…
We have really great guitar players and I think it is one of our trademarks. The twin lead guitars, they are super talented and in a different style. Kristian is more the technical one and Peter is more the old school. He is also fast, but they have a certain way of writing their solos which I think it gives Sorcerer a certain spice.

It is strange that you manage to do that while writing on your own…
Indeed and I think these days it is not that common having two lead guitar players. Mostly it is one who takes all the glory, now they have to share the spotlights. (chuckles)

Did you go through line-up changes? Is Richard Evensand still drumming?
He is playing drums on the album, but as we finished it – it has been six months since we finished the album – after that he felt that he wanted to do something else with his drumming and we respected that. We went looking for a replacement and we found that Stefan was available, he’s a good friend of ours and a really nice guy and an awesome drummer. When we asked him, he was actually a fan of Sorcerer, so it was perfect for us to have someone who really enjoys what we do. It is important of course, instead of just having a drummer doing his job. He lives here in Stockholm where we live, so everything is so much easier you know.

What struck me, in the middle of the album there is this kind of slowing down with the song ‘Eternal Sleep’ which is a very sensitive song I love…
We wanted to create a kind of dynamic in the album. Fast songs, then slacken down the tempo and then up again. We had eight good songs and of course we had to think: which ones are we going to put on the A side and which ones on the B side. After a little while we came up with this and I also really like ‘Eternal Sleep’. I think it is a song that has everything what Sorcerer is about: acoustic parts and the blistering guitar solos, up-tempo middle part there and yeah. I think it is a song by Peter Hallgren and he tends to write a little bit almost progressive in his style when he writes music, he loves different parts.

Did you manage to play any gigs after the pandemic? I remember in the past it was always a bit of a problem to go on tour for a longer time. Did it happen in the meantime?
Yeah, last year we played five post pandemic shows. We played at Hellfest, we played Bloodstock, we played Karmageddon in Norway… so we played quite a few shows. We will continue to play shows. We are headlining Hammer of Doom this year. We are very happy about that and then next year I think there is one more show in Sweden this year and then next year we go to Poland and Germany and a lot of different places, so it looks good. We just signed with a new booking agency called Rely and it seems to work really good. Of course it depends on how the album gets received also. At least it comes out in October, so we are in time for festivals in Spring or Summer.