Could you tell us what the band has done in the period after the release of your first album ‘Failure To Perfection’?

Kasper: Yeah, it's already been 3 years since we released our debut album, 'Failure to Perfection', and we have been through a lot. We were disappointed with some things with our former label (Listenable), and how they didn't manage to get us up to the next leverl. For example, helping us out to do a deal with a serious booking agency, so we could get out in Europe or the world and play our music live; club jobs, venues and festivals. After we released our debut album, things didn't go anywher, and we were ready as hell to tour our asses off.. but someone kept holding us down, so we only played shows in Denmark and maybe 2 or 3 in Europe - and that's not nearly enough if you want to get your name out! Furthermore, we actually began to point questions at our own music, and tried different styles of metal out; wrote 4 songs here and 3 songs there, and yet another 4-5 songs again and again, (a lot of songs!!) and never felt that it was the right way to go. Then we said to ourselves, FUCK everyone, we are going back to what we started with and that was to play metal WE like to hear and WE like to play. Actually we were about to stop Submission at one time, but we still kept on playing because of our love for metal!

Your vocalist Steven Quist quit the band during pre-production, why did he leave?

Kasper: Steven chose to leave the band due to some personal issues and he didn't have the desire to play music anymore. Personally I think he was fed up with the whole record industry, regarding promises and how much you will be awarded for good music & stuff like that. I truly understand him and Steven is still a very good friend of Submission, as well as one of my best friends of all time!

Fortunately you found Lasse Sivertsen to take his place, where did you find him and what has he done before joining Submission?

Kasper: After Stevens departure from Submission we held some auditions, had some guys in the studio and we did something by mail. Lasse came through by mail and when we heard him the first time, we knew the right guy was in front of us - and what a guy. Lasse is fucking awesome and doing the job perfectly! Actually, the man has never had singing lessons;he is a guitarist with this huuge talent on the vocals! He told me this weird thing when we talked about his vocal background saying: "I've never had singing lessons, I just was at the Karaoke bar every weekend and sang Pantera, Queen and other complicated songs", I was just like, "what the fuck dude, are you serious?" and he said Yup. Jacob Hansen, the main producer was also in awe over this new vocally gifted guy - he just simply nailed it and many singers would have to be jealous about what he is capable of doing. Respect! What a new guy and I can't wait to hear our future records.

The songs on the new album are very well written and there are no bad songs to be found, who is responsible for the song-writing and has Lasse had some influence on the song-writing already?

Kasper: Well, Christoffer (guitar), Morten (drums) and I are doing all the songwriting, it usually works in this particular way. Christoffer is coming to the rehearsal room with some riffs, a chorus or something, and we take things form there. Building up, doing the natural thing and yet still trying a lot of things out. This genre isn't easy to play, so we feel that we got to do an extra job to get full potential out of every song. We don't want to be extreme just for the fun of it. We like good music, we like to play good music and show off some skills to the audience. Lasse wasn;t in the writing mode from the musical point of view. He joined the forces 3-4 weeks before we entered the studio to do the vocals. We worked our way through the whole record and I was truly stunned by him. He did everything that I told him to do, with the craziest voice control ever... and I have to say, Lasse has never recorded an album or even a demo before and suddenly he is in the vocal booth and recording a fucking album. Everything went very smooth and we got down all the tracks - it was a fun and meaningfull process!

Submission has lots of influences in their music, from modern metalcore to technical thrash, what are the main influences of the band?

Kasper: Did you say Metalcore...shit. What is metalcore??! Metalcore is a mistake as a genre - what we play is modern melodic death/thrash, and technical yes - I wanna call it 'musicians-metal' or something like that. Our influences are very varied, but I can mention some bands we all like listening to; Nevermore, Gojira, Strapping Young Lad, Textures, Meshuggah, Soilwork, Invocator, Dream Theater and so on. The big mix up of that is what Submission is about. We are not afraid of trying out different things or themes, its actually enlightening to push some walls, doing something that's not normal to do.

The song “Determent Infiltration” even sounds a little like Strapping, do you agree on that?

Kasper: Yeah hehe, funny you mentioned Strapping Young Lad.. we talked a lot about Strapping when we did the chorus to "Determent Infultration" with doing that crazy vibe, with a solid choir, floating tones fulling in, below the big harmonic guitars, with several kinds of grind to support it all. I think the outcome was very succesful and a type of thing you didn't hear that often in the modern melodic genre. Nice that we got our intentions through the speakers.

I didn’t mention bands such as Textures and Meshuggah as influences in my review, but I guess they are also of influence, aren’t they?

Kasper: Yes, as I mentioned we like those two bands, very technical and high skilled bands. Polyrhytmic sections, the ground on the bass drums are hit on every guitar strike and get "un-normal" rhytmns to sound "normal", that's music and we all have a lot of respect of those two bands!

Who is responsible for the tight and heavy production?

Kasper: From the producing point of view, I think that I have co-produced about 90% of the record, partly at Hansen Studio (drums, vocals, bass, mix and mastering) and at Konfus in Esbjerg (all guitars, effechts, solos and so on). As for the sound, we have always enjoyed working with Jacob Hansen; he is a good friend of ours and fun to be around. Whenever we have been working with him, we could do things in our way, especially with our guitar sound; it's very heavy and dark but still very definable . And yes, it's very tight because we are tight musicians, that simple hehe.But we have once again been in very good hands of Jacob, he is awesome!

Are there touring plans through Europe and can we expect the band on some Summer festivals?

Kasper: Well, we are hoping that we can get hooked up on a European tour but it's hard to say if there is any luck this time. I'm not believing in anything regarding to that, before I'm on the bus or playing the first show. And for the festivals, its very hard to do festivals if you haven't been around in the EU, playing clubs and venues getting your name up. That's the sad truth about it - so we are going to spend the Summer writing new material for our next album.

How are the reactions on the new album in the magazines and on the internet so far?

Kasper: 'Code of Conspiracy' has been received quite good. Many people think that Code has a sound that's going places. We haven't got that many reviews back yet, but all in it's positive. No grades below the middle, its about 4/6 and over. But there are some people that don't like Submission because of the clean vocals, saying: "that is not metal, blah blah blah". Well it's music, that's what it is. We are waiting for the big magazines to do some reviews and soundchecks. We have put a lot of hard work in this record, so it's natural that we are excited to see what people have to say about it.

Do we have to wait another three years before a new album will be released?

Kasper: NO!! I don't want to turn 30 before our 3rd album is hitting the streets hehe, we are going in writing mode within some weeks and we are excited to get started again. We know what directions we want to go and it's going to be good.

Are you popular in Denmark ? And how is that in other European countries?

Kasper: I think we have a name out in Denmark, but our time away from the scene in the past 2 years is resulting in that we have to start over again, gaining fans and getting our name out. We did a good Denmark tour as support to Mercenary and we have gained a lot of new fans, it was a good tour to be part of - playing in front of the right crowd.

You left the French label Listenable, can you tell something more about that and was it easy go get a new deal? Didn’t you sign with Mighty Music in first place?

Kasper: Listenable didn't do enough for us, we gave them a good album, good grades in the important magazines, won two Danish metal awards. We couldn't give them anything more, and I was disappointed about them. They could easily put us on tour, but didn't.. Yes we signed with Mighty Music, but some sudden disagreements from the business point of vies, forced us to do a split up. We are still friends though. We are signed to Blistering records for 3 albums, a worldwide deal which we are all pleased about.

Do you listen to albums of colleagues and if so, what are your five favourite albums at the moment?

Kasper: Soilwork - Sworn to a Great Divide; Raunchy - Wasteland Discoteque; Hatesphere - The Sickness Within; Katatonia - Viva Emptiness; Gojira - The Way of All Flesh.

Finally, is there anything you want to tell our readers or something that they definitely should know about Submission or the new album?

Kasper: If you want to hear some well written modern, melodic death/thrash with everything from good choruses to grind and fast parts, filled with great solos and musicianship. Check out Submission and our new album. You will not be disappointed. Thanks to all who support us. See you out there!!