In June, the Swedish band The Vice proudly announced to have signed a worldwide deal with the up-and-coming Noble Demon label. The quality we’ve seen being pushed out by this label has been absolutely tremendous and thus seeing a “black ‘n’ roll” band joining the roster made us excited straight away. The first single was very intriguing for sure and their new full-length ‘White Teeth Rebellion’ was released in the beginning of August, met with quite some praise. About a week after release, we caught up with Rickard and Charlie on a hot summer day via Skype to have a chat about their new album and the lot…

They have been waiting to get the release out into the world for quite some time, so they’re quite happy that it’s finally there. Even though they couldn’t go on extensive touring right away to support the album like band usually do, they didn’t want to delay the release. At least people have something to listen to now and once touring starts again, it’ll be great to play in front of a crowd that already knows the new music well. Both The Vice and Noble Demon were pleasantly surprised by the first reactions, including the fact that in some chart they were scoring higher than the new Deep Purple that was released on the same day!

Considering the album title ‘White Teeth Rebellion’, they explained that they wanted to indicate that they are ready for business with that. Ready to rebel and to show their teeth. They felt that it represented the album and the new direction of the band in a pretty good way. And on top of that, it’s a unique and weird kind of title that catches the attention of people. The music on the new album is also more straightforward than before, no fancy tricks, just simple dark rock/metal music showing what they can do now as a 3-piece. Loving bands ranging from Oasis to Emperor, they’ve tried to combine the elements of bands like that into the sound that is The Vice now, both beautiful, catchy and a very dark dark side. They mentioned that it’s rather hard to find a good balance between those elements and not making it sound “too” black metal or “too” poppy. But they have the feeling that they managed it quite well with the new album.

More towards the end we brought up the quite distinct guitar Rickard is using in some of the music videos and asked a bit of background on the guitar. Rickard told us that it’s a Zemaitis guitar, a Japanese brand also used by for instance Andy McCoy and Keith Richards. They were both in the States at some point and found a store that had 3 or 4 Zemaitis guitars. He tried out the one he owns now and there wasn’t really much to say anymore once he started playing it. It had a really unique sound and look to it and since normally he works with a Les Paul, with a similarly shaped body Rickard was immediately sold. And he still absolutely loves the guitar.

Lastly, we discussed some bands that would be ideal for them to tour with once touring is allowed again. The first band they brought up is the Swedish black/death metal band Mortuus since their already friends, so that would be good. Though since they’re a bit in the middle of very different genres, it could be a bit tricky to find a perfect match, they thought Tribulation could be a cool fit. Let’s hope we can see these guys live for real soon, no matter with who!