FEATURE/REVIEW: DEAD LORD – ‘Surrender’

Sweden’s Dead Lord has finally materialized their fourth LP, Surrender. It’s been 3 years since Dead Lord’s last album. When news about the new album first broke, I made it an imperative to stay up on it. As soon as the album became available for consideration, I grabbed it, loaded it up, and got lost in the rock, completely stoked with what was playing. To my absolute delight, the opportunity to speak with band guitarist/singer/co-founder Hakim Krim presented itself. It’s a conversation I’d been wanting to have for a long time so of course I took it. He’s a pretty funny guy that doesn’t really seem to take himself too seriously all the time.

Since the release of their 2017 album In Ignorance We Trust, the band was forced to make some changes that left things up in the air for the band. Primarily the departure of original guitarist Olle Hedenström. Without going into too much detail, Hakim says that the split was essentially the result of a difference in priorities between Olle and the rest of the band. At that point Dead Lord had been a working, productive band for about seven years. He gives some indication that there might’ve been a bit of weighing the pros and cons concerning even carrying on with the band in the future, “At first, I was thinking, ‘Do we want to do another album?’,” he concedes. “Because if we do another album, it has to be better than the other albums. When you’re in that sort of state of mind where you’re kind of drained and you’ve been having issues where you’re not really even feeling super psyched and pumped about the idea of going back into the studio, it’s just kind of exhausting.”

Despite any misgivings about carrying on everyone came together over a few beers and talked things over. That’s where they began talking about recording a new album as a three piece. “That sort of got me into it,” he continues, laughing in jest. “And it’s way easier to argue with two other people instead of three when you’re writing songs.” He was also a little intrigued by the idea of playing bass on the new album. So that got them over the temporary hump on the path to Surrender.

All told, Surrender was done, up through mastering, in about three months once they got the creative process going again. With the band being a three piece at that point Hakim says that it was a little strange hearing the songs not in their finished form. Since there was either a bass and a guitar playing or two guitars playing together with no bass, they weren’t hearing the songs in rehearsals in their completed form before they recorded them. “It was sort of confusing, especially for my bandmates” he admits. “I think it was more for them because I has written the songs so I kind of knew what I was going for.”

Outside of writing, rehearsing, and recording as a trio, the band approached making Surrender in the same way that they’d always done. By now, as a band Dead Lord knows how to realize a great record so there’s no reason to futz about with a proven formula. In other words, if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it. I think Hakim agreed. “I just wanted to make a good rock album!” he says with a small laugh. “I wanted to make it sound a bit more real, make it sound better. That was my main concern. Apart from that, I just wanted the songs that I had in my mind to be out there. Maybe they’ll be of liking to someone.”

One thing that Hakim says that he did do differently rests in his lyrics. A lot of these new songs are coming from his own perspective about his own life experiences rather than just a variety of random topics. So obviously these ten new songs [on Surrender] are going to be more personal than they’ve been in the past. “Some of the lyrics are a bit more naked,” he makes clear. “They’re closer to me. It takes a certain kind of security and confidence to do that. I think I was way to anxious to do that on the first album.”

When you line the first three records up next to it, Surrender, we both agree, is probably Dead Lord’s best album to date. Pointing out a few personal highlights on the album, he mentioned that “Evil Always Wins”—the album’s second single—is among his favorite of the new tracks. It turns out that we really dig a lot of the same cuts. “Letter from Allen St.,” is a fantastic new track that Hakim says he wrote about a shitty drunken night in New York. He begins to explain, “When something is bad or something doesn’t work out, I try to write a song about it. Even if it’s just nonsense. Being drunk in a city that you don’t know, that’s fine!”

“I like ‘Messin’ Up’,” he continues on. “That’s also about me messing up! It’s the only slow song on the album. You should have one slow song on every album, something a little more mellow. That was the one for this album. I wrote it really fast. Adam had tasked me with coming up with a song for rehearsal the next day. So, I wrote it in about an hour or so and showed it to them the next day. But I showed it to them with the mentality of saying, ‘See? Here’s a song. I have songs!’ But yeah, it sounds different. But that’s good!”

One of the first songs written and rehearsed for this album was a track called “Authority.” It’s got a really heavy bass presence and creates a nice, tense ambiance. The song itself is like an indictment of the basic concept of authority as a means to control and the ignorance of following along without question. “You give authority to people by thinking what they are doing is actually real,” Hakim contends. “If enough people think that it really matters, then it does. It’s like, those are the rules that we’ve all agreed on. Like money, if everyone thinks and acts like it’s real, it then becomes worth something. But if they didn’t, then it wouldn’t have any value. It’s something that’s always bothered me, people who blindly follow authority.” He adds into his assertion that it’s way more fun to listen to the villain than it is to be preached to about righteousness. “Dark End of the Rainbow” has a similar gist, calling out mindless consumers spenders that seem to live for swallowing anything that’s sold to them: luxury cars, designer clothes, latest technology, etc. The lyrics are written from the perspective of a consumer who is actually aware of things going on.

Though we find ourselves in a time where we all must be aware of the things around us, the future will hold wonderful indulgences for those of us who strive to remain informed. When the fog has lifted and some semblance of prior normalcy is restored, the road dogs and traveling troubadours, including the mighty Dead Lord, will once again conspire to hit the road, singing for their supper. At the moment things are still up in the air so all plans are tentative at best. Promoters, venues, club owners, agents, the artists; it’s difficult for anyone to plan a year in advance. Now, with all of that in mind, Dead Lord is laying out a European trek with Lucifer in the fall of 2021. “It’s so hard to tell when anything will be back to normal again,” Hakim says. “But we’re definitely looking forward to getting back out there as soon as we can.” Until then, their new album, Surrender, is available now so you can go dig on that in the meantime. It really is an outstanding collection of ten brand new rock anthems and arguably their finest album yet.

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