SORCERER – Interview before RAGE AGAINST RACISM 2025

SORCERER – Interview vor RAGE AGAINST RACISM 2025

Ahead of the RAGE AGAINST RACISM festival in Duisburg we try to feature all the bands playing with an interview ahead the event to let people know, what’s going an and show the variety of bands on stage during that upcoming weekend. Today we are talking to guitarist Kristian Niemann from the swedish band SORCERER. Let’s go!

Hi Kristian – I´m Amir from the German music magazine www.metal-heads.de – we are based in the Ruhr area, that you know from playing there with SORCERER (for example in the Helvete in Oberhausen). 

First of all, I´m always very impressed, what strong and popular bands the organisators get to play in Duisburg. We are the official media partner of the RAGE AGAINST RACISM festival and want to introduce the bands appearing there ahead of the event, to let people know, what is going on and to attract them to visit the festival!

Playing in a metal area…

1.) So I´d like to begin with the question, what attracts you, to travel to this town in a metal region (talking about the industry around and the music style people around there like a lot)?

KN: We go wherever we are wanted of course, but its always an honor and a pleasure to play in Germany as it’s such holy ground for the metal we grew up on. ACCEPT, SCORPIONS, MSG, HELLOWEEN, KREATOR, DESTRUCTION and RUNNING WILD and then later on bands like RAMMSTEIN. I’m afraid I don’t know any specifics about the Duisburg area/metal scene apart from Helvete which we’ve played twice now. We’re gotten a wonderful reception from the fans both times we played there, so we are of course looking forward to this show a lot.

2.) Why do you feel, have they picked you to represent the spirit oft he festival under the subject of RAGE AGAINST RACISM?

KN: I think you have to ask the organizers why they picked us specifically, but I’d like to think that every metal band in the world would be honored to play this festival, because this disease called racism needs to be eradicated. We’ve got no time for that bullshit and neither should anyone else. Every individual is worth the same, no matter which country you’re from or whatever the color of your skin is. 

3.) Have you done a similar thing before or do you get involved in other charity activities?

KN: Yes, we’ve been contributing to this thing called Sweden Charity Run, which is an organization that gives money to various causes, mostly focused on kids. Kids with cancer for example. 

SORCERER – Interview vor RAGE AGAINST RACISM 2025

4.) Let´s talk about music! You have quite a long existence in the metal scene! Can you describe the development oft he band in the past years, where do you see yourself now and what are the goals fort he future?

What changed from 2010…

KN: I think we’ve developed a lot since our restart in 2010. „In the Shadow of the Inverted Cross“ (2015) was a nod to the old demo days of the band more or less. Johnny Hagel wrote the riffs and he wanted to keep it in that vein. „The Crowning of the Fire King“ (2017) was the first one we wrote that Peter and me also started contributing songs so it’s the blueprint for how we sound today. The „modern“ SORCERER sound, if you will. „Lamenting of the Innocent“ (2020) was a continuation of that. On this one Justin also came in with a couple of cool songs, so its truly a collaborative effort. This is probably the slowest and doomiest record we’ve done.
On „Reign of the Reaper“ (2023) we tried to push our sound and writing in new directions. It has influences from heavy metal, progressive metal, even some black metal passages. I can’t say much about the new one that, we are currently writing, but we’ll push ourselves to the limit, trying to come up with great songs and cool riffs as we always do. 

Goals for the future: just continue doing our thing really. We have great support from our label Metal Blade, they never meddle, they let us do what we do. It`s not like we’re a hugely successful band, we’re not! But we have our little niche on their roster and we’re very happy with that. 

5.) If I see it correctly, your last album release dates back to 2023. Is there anything new in the pipeline, that the fans can look forward to? And asking in general: how do you start to write new material and when/how to you decide, that the songs are „ready for recording“?

How does a smart phone help to record an album?

KN: We are currently writing the new album, yes. We’re always collecting ideas and riffs (thank god for smartphones!), so that when it comes time to write we have a big bag of stuff to start with. Then it’s just a matter of sitting down and piecing the ideas together and make a songdemo. This process can take a long time, because we all have different ideas that get thrown into the equation, and a lot of stuff gets changed/altered/replaced in the process. Once we have about 15 songs demoed, we sit down and do a democratic vote on which 8 songs should go on the record.  When that is done, we book a studio and start the recording process. It usually takes a year from the time we start tracking drums, to when the record is out in stores.

6.) How is the writing process going and what is your part in it (often the singer is involved regarding the lyrics and one or two of the musicians in a band deal with the composition of the musical side of the material?

KN: I’ve detailed the writing process in the previous answer, but on the last album it was basically me, Peter and Johnny that came up with the music. Our singer Anders and our co-producer Conny wrote most of the vocal melodies, and bassist Justin wrote all the lyrics I believe. This time around we have a new drummer in the band, Stefan Norgren from SEVENTH WONDER and he is a prolific writer as well, so we’re very curious to see how his ideas will fit into SORCERER. 

What are the musical influences?

7.) What musical influences would you name for your music and what sources do you draw the ideas from lyrically, when you guys write songs with SORCERER?

KN: BLACK SABBATH with Dio and Tony Martin, CANDLEMASS, King Diamond, ACCEPT, JUDAS PRIEST, IRON MAIDEN, early METALLICA. The music, we all grew up on. I try to incorporate newer, more modern influences as well, but that doesn’t always go over too well, haha. 

8.) There are some bands, that are really strong in the national scene and others are not very much accepted there, but are famous out of the home country. Where do you see your strongest fanbase?

KN: Oh I dunno. Definitely not Sweden. Maybe Germany and Greece? We always seem to do well there.  

9.) I´m looking forward to see you live on stage in Duisburg soon. Do you have a final message for our readers out there?

KN: We are totally psyched to play ROCK AGAINST RACISM in June! Please come up and say „hi“ and let’s have some tasty German beers together!  

10.) Thanx for your time and see you soon!

KN: Thank YOU!