INTERVIEW: WITCHERY's Patrik Jansen on Upcoming Australian Tour, New Music & Upcoming THE HAUNTED Album

Ahead of the upcoming Triple Bill Kill tour in Australia, featuring At The Gates, The Haunted and Witchery, Metal Wani’s Jake Patton had the opportunity to catch up with The Haunted and Witchery guitarist Patrik Jensen to get the low down on the tour. They chat about the tour of Australia, how the Australian metal community is perceived across the other side of the globe, the harsh reality of life on the road and the best ways as an artist to manage it, performing dual duties on the same night with two different bands, and the progress on new Witchery and The Haunted material.

The Australian tour is the first topic for discussion, and being Jensen’s first time back down here in four years following his last tour with The Haunted, Jensen sounds suitably excited to get back down to the land down understating “I love to play Australia, wish we could do that more often. It’s too bad that it’s so far away!”.

Witchery is making their Australian debut, an event that Jensen acknowledges was often requested by Australian fans, but one which might not have happened due to the amount of time it had taken for the band to finally get down here. Emphasizing that “We won’t have every one of the band with us, but we have some great people stepping in”, Jensen seems very spirited about the band’s upcoming debut and assures fans that they are going to be great shows.

Performing in a geographical region such as Australia is quite difficult for many touring bands, due to the relatively large distance between cities, with tours down under typically occurring over 1800km in a three day period. This tour, in particular, sees Jensen performing double duties with The Haunted and Witchery each night, something that could cause some artists to struggle. When asked whether Jensen was worried about his performance during these shows, Jensen discussed a previous period where he performed 60 shows over a period of 30 days, so reassures fans that he will be fine.

Being a land that is toured very sparsely by Scandinavian metal bands, Jensen is asked about Sweden’s perception of the Australian metal community. Jensen likens the two countries as very similar due to their shared interests. “Everyone in Sweden likes Australia, they are seen almost as Europeans” before discussing some of the perceptions that Swedish acts have about Australia, before closing with “I love the people, I love the nature of the country and everything, I wish we could do longer tours down there”.

The discussion then shifts its focus to Witchery, and the band’s proposed outlook for the future, given their lineup changes and the lapse of time since their last album. Jensen speaks openly about how the band has faced difficulties in writing, recording and touring in the past due to the varied schedules of each band member’s other endeavors, but acknowledges that since the departure of former drummer Martin Axenrot that it has been much easier trying to organize these situations for the band.

Finishing the discussion by talking about his plans for the remainder of the year, Jensen outlines that following on from his current tours that writing and recording the new Witchery album and also writing for the new The Haunted album as the first priorities on his list.