Boiling Rage Knocks You Out On ‘Deads,’ The Heavy New Release From LLNN

LLNN is furious. They’re a Danish hardcore band that incorporates some unique stylistic elements into their music, such as synth parts that hardly entail the music being turned down a notch. Synth parts and all, the band is intentionally and purposefully “in your face.”

That quality doesn’t just describe their music, though. Vocalist Christian Bonnesen explains that although on the band’s newest album, called Deads, he doesn’t spend a lot of time specifically discussing current events by name, he’s fed up with society’s direction.

He explains: “I was just sick and tired of people just posturing and banging on their drums — I’m done with it. A lot of Deads is about people in power not using that power in ideal ways, you could say, and the disappointment of that and the disillusionment that that might never change, because it’s like, back in the day, here in Denmark, we had a monarchy, and we were just at the whims of crazy kings and inbred kings and stuff like that and now it’s fucking corporations and shit and I’m just so tired of it. It means that you can never be truly free in some ways.”

The latest music from LLNN strikes the listener as really founded in legitimate anger; there’s no scent of something being manufactured or forced here.

In that light, the anger itself, Bonnesen explains, is the point of the record more than any attempt at changing someone’s opinion.

He says: “It’s not really my place to inform people what the fuck they should think about stuff. I just react to the things I see every day — but if someone takes something from it, I’m happy. I never really like when people soapbox their opinions, so I try to, in a weird way, keep it internal so it’s more headed inwards than outwards.”

Bonnesen’s anger does a lot to drive him artistically, he explains, saying of his music: “It’s a very selfish pursuit in some weird way — the band and I, we all have careers, so we do it because we can’t not do it. We have played like hardcore and heavy music and grind and shit like that for close to half of our lives. We’re set with our careers. We just need to play the music. We just need to have that outlet.”

Bonnesen is not just ranting aimlessly here. He and another member of the band, bassist Rasmus Furbo, work as teachers for handicapped children for the Danish government — that’s his career that he mentioned. In his daily work experience, he experiences the pitfalls of modern sociopolitical maneuverings, having to sometimes make do in his work without appropriate funds.

That’s an issue that’s had a light shone on it throughout 2018 in the United States, too, with numerous teacher walkouts unfolding that are united by a desire for more effective and appropriate pay.

In light of that and other issues, Bonnesen wishes that it wasn’t such a foreign concept for people, particularly those in power, to carefully consider their fellow inhabitants here on this earth.

He says: “I just wish that people would be a little bit less angry with each other. And that sounds really weird coming from such an angry guy on the record, but everyone just seems like — everything just seems on edge nowadays, I wish that people would chill a bit more.”

The band, as mentioned, has their own unique musical perspective to accompany their perspective on society. Bonnesen knows that associating implements like synths with heavy music often entails it softening, but he’s thrilled with how his own band’s incorporation of synth sounds has turned out.

He explains: “I was very skeptical when we started because it’s pretty easy to put synths on metal music and then sound like fucking Fear Factory or some shit. We were really apprehensive about that because we didn’t feel like doing that so it kind of took awhile for us to get on the path we’re on now. When we made Marks and all the synths were added and mastered and mixed and shit like that, I was like oh, this makes a shit lot of sense, you know? So back in the day on the first record [Loss] we just recorded the live tracks and we didn’t really compose with the synths in mind, but once we added the synths we started to see the capabilities of it and where it would take the songs and got other ideas.”

Although the members of the band have been playing music for awhile, it’s somewhat recently that they’ve started to see a reaction to their music that really impresses them. They’re so used to playing in smaller, less polished circumstances that a shift from that has taken them by surprise.

Talking about recent touring, Bonnesen says: “I love it. We were out for a month with a Canadian band called Bison and the reception was really unreal. People really liked [Deads] and came out to see us and knew the fucking lyrics and I was like the fuck is this? It’s a parallel universe.”

They haven’t been able to tour the United States yet, but Bonnesen would love the opportunity to do that at some point. As they progress towards possibly doing so in the future, they’ve got their new full length album Deads to tout — which you can listen to on Spotify below.