Rising To The Masses: Slaughterhead

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Before the first riffs echo through the fields of Catton Park, we are diving head first into the pulse-pounding world of the New Blood Stage at Bloodstock 2024. So grab your backstage pass, tune your senses, and join us as we explore the stories, inspirations, and the relentless drive of the bands who are rising to the masses! Introducing Slaughterhead…

How would you describe your band to someone who’s never heard you?

We try to make a nice blend of all the stuff we in the band listen to. We primarily mix modern metal, thrash, hardcore and metalcore, though you’ll mostly hear the thrash and modern metal. Our main goal is to make catchy songs that still hit hard.

Tell us about your band’s origin story. How did you all come together?

Guitarists and the bassist met when their guitar teacher suggested they play together, but they couldn’t find a drummer to stick with them. Luckily there was a good music school nearby who knew a good drummer, Marius, who wanted to play with us. So far his energy and style is exactly what we needed.

What song would you recommend for someone’s first listen of your band?

Describe your songwriting process. How do you create your music?

It’s different from song to song. Most of the time one of us comes up with a rough sketch of a song with a few riffs, and the rest of the band help to make it perfect.

How do you handle creative disagreements within the band?

Try everyone’s idea, and stay objective and stick to democracy.

What are your musical influences?

We take influence from a lot of bands. We get the grooves from pantera and lamb of god, the melodies from trivium and metallica, while the aggression from Slipknot and Exodus. The bass playing is heavily inspired by Primus, being one of few metal bands who slap.

What’s the story behind your band name?

Bassist Stoffen and rhythm guitarist Henrik were discussing Pantera songs, and came across Slaughtered. If you pronounce Slaughtered with the Norwenglish accent, you get something similar to “Slaughterhead”.
We used it temporarily, but ended up sticking with it since nobody came up with anything better.

What’s your guilty pleasure music outside of metal?

I’d say 2000’s white girl music, but come on. We all love it.

Tell us about your most memorable live performance or tour experience.

The first time we played at a local venue called Hulen, in Bergen. It’s a pretty big deal culturally and historically. Also when we won M2tM in Sandnes which got us the entry ticket to play at Bloodstock.

What’s the most challenging aspect of being a metal band in today’s music industry?

We haven’t really got that far into the industry side of things, but the money is a huge problem. Even if you’re not trying to profit, just reaching zero is difficult. Also at least locally, the scene is pretty small, and there’s not a lot of venues to reach for.

Any advice for other aspiring metal musicians?

If you’re enjoying what you do, you’ll probably make it. It’s not guaranteed, and you’ve got to be ready to make sacrifices and commitments, and sometimes it will seem like you’re headed nowhere, but you’ve just got to grit your teeth and stay in it!

What’s next after Bloodstock for the band?

Definitely trying to get a good recording of the album. We’ve spent a long time perfecting the songs and now that we’ve finally found the right drummer we think it’s time to find a good studio.

How do you choose album artwork or visuals for your releases?

So far we’ve really just used what we had of photos, made a few changes by editing them, and agreed they were good enough. In the future we will definitely look into some artists drawing for us though.

What’s the best gig you’ve attended as a fan and why?

Trivium – Deadmen and Dragons tour in Copenhagen. We got to see not only Trivium, but also Obituary and Malevolence. After they played, we met Malevolence’s Konan Hall selling merch, and linked up with him. He’s cool enough to stay in contact to this day, and rumours even say he’s coming to our show at Bloodstock

How do you stay motivated during creative slumps?

Get inspiration from new stuff, but also motivation cant drop because of creativity. Everyone’s creativity goes up and down, but you can’t stop your grind because of it.

Slaughterhead are set to play The Hopical Storm New Blood Stage On Saturday 10th August 2024.