‘New Religion’ is a massive arena rock album with big choruses,
pounding drums and powerful guitars. An album I’m proud to have my name
on – that’s the way Danny Rexon, the vocalist of Crazy Lixx, describes
“New Religion”. The musicians are from Malmoe, Sweden – not LA,
California, as the sound of the album may suggest…
Hello, Danny. First of all congratulations for the brand new stuff
of Crazy Lixx. It’s a bunch of solid, ass kicking rock tunes. How long
did the recording process take? Which song did you write as the first
one?
Danny: It took us roughly 1 year. The first demos I recorded are from
the summer of 2008 and out of some 10 demos we only kept two songs
basically. The first song I started writing that finally ended up on the
album was ‘The Witching Hour’ and the other one from those original 10
demos was ‘Blame it on Love’, well actually only the chorus of it. The
bridge on that demo version was instead later fitted into the song
‘She’s Mine’. That’s not at all uncommon, you take bits and pieces from
different demo recordings and finally you can end up with a couple of
new ideas.
How would you compare „New Religion” to your first album?
I think the new album is more what I want Crazy Lixx to sound like. The
quality of the vocals, the playing and most of all the song writing has
improved greatly since the first album. This time we wrote all the
songs during more or less one year as opposed to on Loud Minority where
some of the songs were from the first year when Crazy Lixx started.
Naturally I have become a way better song writer during those 6 or 7
years.
The listeners can find easily the influences of Kiss, Def Leppard,
Bon Jovi and Skid Row in your songs. Why did you choose just this
direction, this genre – not melodic death metal as many Swedish metal
bands?;)
– That’s just the kind of music I’ve always loved the most. We’re not
doing this to ride any sort of trend, if we were, maybe we would play
something more modern like many bands do.
„New Wave Of Swedish Sleaze” – is this the real movement or just
the name, that was created by journalists? Do you feel a part of any
movement?
In a way we do feel as a part of the movement. I’m not sure about who
was first with the term but we wrote that on a poster that we
distributed around Sweden Rock Festival in 2007. Prior to that I had
only heard the term Swedish Sleaze. But I figured since there’s the old
school sleaze bands from Sweden like Easy Action or Nasty Idols this new
wave needed something to distinguish ourselves from the old bands. I
thought about „The new wave of British Heavy Metal” and thought „The new
wave of Swedish Sleaze” sounded cool. As I said, I’m not sure about
this but I may be the one that came up with that term.
What expectations do you have with releasing „New Religion”?
– We try to take it one step at a time. You never know in this business.
Right now we’re waiting for the album to be released, doing a lot of
promotion stuff like interviews and right now the first single from the
album; ‘Rock and a Hard Place’ is going out to Swedish radio. Hopefully
we get to do a music video for it later this spring. Then touring starts
around April and we’ll try to do as many shows as we can during the
summer. After that we’ll just see where we stand. Obviously I hope this
new album can really do it for us, taking it to the next level and I do
believe it has the potential to do so.
This album will also be released in the US. Are you planning any tour there as welll?
There’s nothing planned yet but I sure hope so.
Let’s back to the past. What posters did you have in your room as a teenager?
I had a lot of poster flags with bands like Iron Maiden, Metallica and
Manowar. But I think the first one I ever put up was actually a poster
from the Cover of Heavy Metal Magazine, picturing a half-naked chick
with a big sword, hehe.
Who bought you the first instrument?
I got a base guitar when I was around 11 or 12. I think my dad bought
it for me. But even earlier than that I had a Japanese, electrical toy
guitar called Hot Lixx, that’s where I later got the name Crazy Lixx
from.
Do you remember the first record that You got? And the first gig you’ve ever been to?
My first CD was “A real LIVE one” by Iron Maiden but before that I
used to buy cassettes and the first one I can remember was Skid Row’s
“Slave to the Grind”. But I listened to that kind of music before that
too, it’s just that my older brother used to buy all the stuff, I just
listened to it.
The first concert I attended was Bad Religion, with Green Day as opening act. Today it would probably be the other way around.
If You had to point three best ever albums that were recorde, You would choose…
That’s too hard. I’ll just go with three albums that come into mind right now. (in no particular order)
1. Skid Row – Slave to the Grind
2. Guns n’ Roses – Use your Illusion II
3. Judas Priest – Painkiller
Hope You’ll come to Poland soon. Finally some words for Polish rock fans please…
If you book us, we will come…
Robert Dłucik
