Dew Scented graced the cover of Modern Fix back in April of 2002. It was the German metal outfits first American magazine cover, even though the band had only made a few stateside appearances. The name (taken from an Edgar Allen Poe poem) was intriguing and the album was “Inwards” (the bands fourth full length) released on Nuclear Blast that had even the non-metal head staff thrashing about in approval and drove us to make the band a Modern Fix cover feature. Currently, the band is gearing up to support their sixth release, entitled “Issue VI”, which continues the trend for naming their albums with an “I”. It also continues the trend of Dew Scented producing some of the most extreme thrash, it borders on death metal. But there is so much control and precision of the surgically tight guitar riffage, the thrash roots hold strongest. The band rarely plays the US (let alone tour it), but tears the hell out of live sets all over Europe. But there are rumors of an extremely metal tour coming this fall…

Vocalist Leif Jensen took some time to catch us up on what’s been happening in the Dew Scented clan.

What has significantly changed in the two years since we’ve had you on the cover?
Definitely not our style. That’s something that’s consistent. We went through minor line-up changes and we have released two more albums, well the new one comes out in a couple of weeks. We’ve just kept busy touring and playing as much as possible. We just came back from Japan. We were there with High on Fire and Misery Signals. They were really cool and it was a more diverse line-up. The bands got along great and the audiences appreciated the three bands.

The last time we spoke, Dew Scented had only played a festival or two in the US, years later… you still aren’t touring here, but I heard rumors of a fall tour.
I wish we would have been able to do a proper tour, but we want to do things step by step. The label wants to back us up as much as they can, but being German, it’s not that easy to plan a proper North American tour without the proper visas and money, but we are coming over in November with Vader and Decapitated. The idea is to come back in early 2006 and follow-up with a little bit different type of bands. We played the New Jersey Metal and Hardcore festival in 2003 and that went really well for us. We just played Minneapolis a few weeks ago at a small indoor festival. It was more underground but it was definitely a cool weekend. It seems that the door is slowly opening now and the two last releases did really good. We just finished this new one. The label was impressed, booked us on a tour and hopefully will be following up with another one.

You just did a video from the new album correct?
“Turn to Ash”. It was the first time around for us and it came out really good. The German website has a link to it. (www.nuclearblast.de – surf around the dew scented page for a video link).

Seinfield was your favorite American TV show then, how about now?
Yeah, Seinfield folded up… I’m not getting any new episodes. I was seeing “Desperate Housewives” the other day, and I didn’t think that was so bad. I’m not following regularly, but some of the girls were so hot I couldn’t turn it off.
Zeke was your favorite tour shirt two years ago. What has replaced that?
People are giving me shit for always wearing a Bleeding Through t-shirt that I got a couple of months back from a friend. I’m wearing that a lot for a moment. I really like them and it was a present from a friend of mine. The last song on the new album is actually a Zeke song, “Evil Dead”. It was originally going to be for an import in Japan or something, but we liked how it turned out so we included it at the end.

“Issue VI” is the newest Dew Scented, continuing in the tradition of albums beginning with “I”, what is your take on this album that defines it from previous Dew Scented releases?
There is a little bit more of everything on there. “Impact” [their previous] was a very extreme speedy heavy record. On this new one, we concentrated a little more on diversity. We didn’t rule out melody or mid-paced groove things if they sounded good for the songs. We came back to adding more of a technical edge without destroying the catchiness of the song writing. So we expanded without changing styles.

Two plus years ago you were on the cover of Modern Fix, two albums and countless shows since then, what have you learned?
Persistence. If you have an idea, a vision, a goal… just follow it up. Do not look back and try to reframe things. There is a German saying that goes: “The way is the goal”. Like the process of getting somewhere is more important than the goal itself. Other than that… I haven’t learned very much.

www.dew-scented.de

2005 “Issue VI” (Nuclear Blast)
2003 “Impact” (Nuclear Blast)
2002 “Inwards” (Nuclear Blast)
1999 “Ill-Natured” (Grind Syndicate Media)
1998 “Innoscent” (Grind Syndicate Media)
1996 “Imortelle” (SPV)