Varices: The New Generation of Swedish Extreme Metal

Formed in 2017 in Sweden, Varices belongs to the new generation carrying on the extensive legacy of Swedish metal. Adding influences from both modern extreme metal and the hard rock of the 70’s and 80’s to the acclaimed Gothenburg-sound, Varices take melodic death metal to new stratospheric heights.  Their debut full length The Undoing has just been released, and it’s destined to garner a band a fan base well above and beyond their Norrköping homebase.  Highwire Daze recently interviewed two members from the Varices brigade to find out a whole lot more about this super intensive band on the rise.  Read on…

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in the band.
Emil Modig: I’m Emil and I am the drummer of Varices since the beginning. Currently, I’m also handling most of the social media parts and also the booking of the live shows. That’s the brief background about me in Varices.

Calle Axelsson: Yeah, my name is Calle. I do vocals in Varices and I’ve done that since the start. Besides that, I am the alcoholic of the band. My profession is to drink beer and scream. Yeah, that’s pretty much what I do.

Well, then I have to ask you, what is your favorite beer of choice and why?
Calle: Well, the thing is, I know Emil is really a fine-drinking man. He prefers all these special types of beer. Me, myself, I like just a basic lager. So probably like Carlsberg, I would say, or Heineken.

Same question for you, Emil, and then we’ll get back to the regular questions.
Emil: Yeah. Being the non-alcoholic guy out of this, I prefer Fruity Double India Pale Ales. Those are my go-to, at least during summertime.

Let’s talk about The Undoing. Is there any overall story or concept behind that album title?
Emil: Yeah, I would say there is, because if you look at the songs and the lyrics in the order of the album, the whole album depicts the gods getting tired of their own creation, realizing it wasn’t as good as it was meant to be, and basically erasing all life on Earth to start over. We chose “The Undoing because, well, it sounds very cool, but also it kind of summarizes the storyline of the album.

Why don’t you guys select two songs from the album and what inspired the lyrics?
Calle: Oh, it’s hard. All the lyrics are very different from each other. Let’s see. I mean, the New Order is pretty much about Illuminati and everything that they stand for. With that said, I don’t personally believe in Illuminati, but I think the whole conspiracy is a cool idea. That’s pretty much what that song is built on. Aftermath is pretty much the same thing. Usually, when I write lyrics, I specifically don’t really know from the get-go what the song is going to be about. I just write and write.

Where are you guys based out, and what is the local music scene like there?\
Calle: We are from Norrköping. It’s not a small town in Sweden, but not big either. The music scene in Sweden is like, we have so many good metal bands from here, as you may know. But the scene as a whole is hard to play for metal in Sweden, or at least to start a metal band. People in Sweden are really spoiled with live shows. They don’t go to concert unless it’s like Metallica or Iron Maiden that comes here. It’s hard to get people to come to the actual shows in the beginning. But I feel like we’re on an upcoming level. I’ve seen more and more places around Sweden bars for example, that takes in smaller bands and let them have live shows. I think in a couple of years, the scene will be much bigger than it is right now. Especially when we first started in 2017, we pretty much had to create our own scene here just to play live. I would say it’s on an upcoming level. But hopefully, in a couple of years, we will be on the same page as maybe countries as Poland and Germany, and the States. Yeah, we’re on an upcoming level.

Have you guys been to Gothenburg? Is the metal scene there as legendary or as active as everyone thinks it is here in the States?
Emil: We haven’t played any shows ourselves in Gothenburg yet. Of course, we were aiming to do it. But I’d say the story about the metal scene in Gothenburg is the same as anywhere in Sweden. The venues have grown larger while the small ones have gone bankrupt, basically. There’s a lack of smaller venues in Gothenburg, but a lot of larger ones. Once again, the bigger bands usually play in Gothenburg and have great live shows, but it is a little bit harder for the smaller ones. I think there is one or two smaller venues left in Gothenburg that still book metal bands, so there’s a lot of competition about those slots. But, of course, I hope to get there in support of the album release.

What could one expect from a live Varices show?
Calle: I would say that every show we are playing, we don’t just want to have a show, we want to have a party as well. I would definitely say that it’s going to be sweaty, full of energy, and a lot of booze to put everything into a whole. But yeah, we always aim to have as much fun as we possibly can. Even if we just play 25 minutes or half an hour, when we go on stage, we’re doing it to the maximum. It doesn’t matter if there are 10 people in the crowd or a hundred, we always give it our fullest 100%. I would say, either you see us in a small town in Sweden or in Gothenburg or Stockholm, there’s always going to be the same show. Even though the venue might be smaller or bigger, it doesn’t really matter. Because we will give the persons that are there the same show with the same energy and everything. So, you could say four drunk guys on stage giving it their all, pretty much to summarize.

Emil: To sum it up, it’s a death metal band with a good old rock and roll approach.

You guys did a festival in 2022 with bands such as Europe, W.A.S.P., and Michael Schenker, it was a crazy lineup, and I’m sure you guys were the odd band out at that festival. What was that experience like, and did you get to meet any of these bigger bands?
Emil: Well, it was a crazy lineup, and it was a crazy experience for us, of course. It’s a festival where we’ve been ourselves as kids, watching these great bands from Alice Cooper to Testament playing. It’s very cool as an underground band, enter like a 17-meter stage. It’s a great adrenaline rush, of course. It was a good show as well. It was very, very professionally arranged, obviously. We bumped into, of course, some of the bigger guys as well. Maybe not as many as you would expect with that lineup, but the backstage area was located close to the dining hall, so many of the more established guys went to the dining hall to get some dinner before their shows. It was a very cool experience.

If Varices could open for any band, either now or from the past, who would it be and why? 
Calle: I think me and Emil have the same answer. I think I would dare to say Iron Maiden on behalf of both of us. But the thing with Varices is that we all love metal, but we have different types of metals. I think we all have different favorite type of bands. Yeah, I think I would say Iron Maiden. I don’t know about you, Emil.

Emil: Yeah, objectively speaking, Iron Maiden is the best band ever. Of course, I would agree it would be a mismatch in the genre maybe. But I would agree with Iron Maiden, they’re the best band, and it’s about the only band that all of the members in Varices can agree on that. They’re one of the better ones.

When you were younger, were you into bands like, In Flames or Dark Tranquility, Dark Funeral, or any of those bands?
Emil: I’ve been into it for quite a number of years. I love the Gothenburg sound, and I think we all like it in the band, but I’m probably the most nerdy one about it. In Flames, of course, Dark Tranquility as well. But I must say I prefer maybe more the older kind before the synths came into the picture, and, of course, At the Gates.  The ultimate balance between really hard heavy metal and a more melodic style.

What about you Calle? Were you into those that kind of music?
Calle: Well, not really because when I started listening to Heavy Metal, I started off with bands such as HammerFall, Twisted Sister, Kiss, and I pretty much went straight from that to discovering Slipknot. From Slipknot, I fell in love with metalcore and all these early metalcore bands – Asking Alexandria and bands like that. I discovered the Gothenburg sound pretty much around the same time as Varices started. I really never had any of that experience in my early career listening to either death metal or melodic death metal. That’s definitely something that I have discovered in the latest couple of years. I’ve always been a metalcore hardcore type of person before Varices, so that’s pretty much it. I think you can hear that as well in my type of vocals that I come from a hardcore background instead, maybe. I do a lot of high-pitched screaming and stuff like that, and I just don’t lock myself to only doing death metal vocals. I think that’s because of my background in metalcore and hardcore.

Would you guys like to go get over to the States to do some shows? Have you ever been to the States before?
Calle: I think I can speak for all the bands in Europe when I say this, that the biggest dream in our career is to go to the States and tour. I think every band from Europe is aiming for that, but it’s expensive, and you need to have visas and stuff like that. It’s rather difficult to go there to play. But, of course, it’s the biggest dream ever to do that. Hopefully, someday, when we have a label or something we can pay for it because we are broke as fuck.

The new album is out. What’s up next for you guys?
Emil: Probably drink some beer, get some sleep, and recharge our bank accounts.

Oh, no.
Calle: That’s real!

Emil: Of course, the plan is to book a lot of shows to promote the album. We’re looking forward a lot to that. Obviously, the fundamental plan is to try and promote it as much as possible and to reach a new audience or a bigger audience. Hopefully, we’ll also get to play some shows outside of Sweden, because that would be first for us.

Calle: Yeah, we’ll definitely say that a smaller type of tour is in plans for us because, after the release, the best thing to do is to go out and play. That’s what we’re aiming for as soon as we can afford it. We have some shows booked for a couple of months here in Sweden. We’re going to go ahead and play those, and we’ll see what happens after that.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

Varices on Instagram