The Heavy Hand of Danish Metal.

Jacob Bredahl is a well known and renowned personality on the Danish Metal scene. Former lead vocalist in Hatesphere, now producer for a number of new and upcoming Danish and foreign metal bands, he gives his opinion on the Spot festival’s initiative to create a forum for Metal and Trash scene!

What is your personal opinion about Spot?
The concept in itself is a great idea; it’s a festival that would like to focus on the broad spectre of genres within the music business, so in that way I think it’s a good thing.

You’re here because, you’ve produced As We Fight and mixed Exmortem, which are both bands represented here today?
Actually I also mixed Supercharger that played earlier today. I started producing Danish bands by chance. I produced two German bands End of Days and Zero mentality. The Danish bands simply picked up on it, and I’ve started producing and mixing more and more bands.

Jacob fooling around with the hard hitting boys of As we fight! Photo: Uggi Kaldan

Do you think your status as a well-known face, as any influence on the bands choosing you to produce them?
Certainly, and some of them probably chose me because they think, they can sell more records, but that’s not the case. My reputation in the Metal business is definitely a factor, but a lot of it is also networking and meeting people face to face at the different festivals here and abroad. You meet people and they think ‘Hey he’s a nice guy, and I like his work’ and then one thing takes another, so you start working together with a lot of different artist.

You have a lot of experience from Hatesphere touring abroad, and have had good success in Germany. Do the bands here today have the same potential, and what about the Danish music scene?
Some of them have of course, but I wouldn’t say all. The metal scene in Denmark is growing, and there is more focus on it, but the bands, which also are very aware of the fact that they have to be of a certain quality, if they want to make it, do most of the work.
So I am sad to mention the fact, that even here today there hasn’t been done enough to promote the music and get foreign promoters and labels to come specific to hear today’s bands. It’s mainly up to the bands themselves, which takes a lot of energy.

Do you feel like a part of the festival?
Yes and no, I remember when Hatesphere played here in 2007, we felt very misplaced, and as though we where chosen because, there was a lot of attention on us in the press. We where already a signed and successful band, so maybe we shouldn’t have played here, and given the space to somebody else who could have made better use of it. You could call it a popular move from the Spot festival.

Maybe this is a bit in the same direction. First of all I don’t think it has been the best choice, to have all the bands on the same stage, it would be more advisable and better for the bands to spread them out into the different stages, it tends to be the same people coming to the concerts, a metal club. Dividing them out might give non-metal listeners the possibility of experiencing the music.

Metal music is like all other kinds of music, its just music! In the beginning when the festival started, we where all trying to get in, but they just didn’t accept us. Today because of the growing movement, media focus and maybe the change of audience/generation, we are welcome.

So what is the profile of the Spot festival, it’s diversity as far as I know. Spot has diversity, but there is still a long way to go yet. I certainly wonder why Garage, Rockabilly and Psycho Billy aren’t represented in any way, in spite of the growing scene and success of new bands.

So it’s great to be here, but let’s see what the future brings.