Teutonic blackened thrashers, Lead Injector, take their underground status to a new extreme as they call me from the basement of an industrial building somewhere in eastern Germany. The reception is shaky for the first couple questions of this interview, but as they switch over to an alternate hotspot, good times and good hangs are ensured for all. The beer is flowing and the smoke is floating as myself and this up and coming trio rap about everything from their songwriting process and local scene, to the truly brutal conditions behind their debut album, Witching Attack, and our shared love of the mighty Sodom. Without further ado, here is our in-depth, and at many times irreverent, interview with the mighty Lead Injector. You’ve been warned!
Greetings Lead Injector and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Jason: We’re doing fine today. Greetings!
Leo: Good seeing you today!
Good seeing you too! Before we go any further, how about you introduce yourselves and tell everyone what you play.
Justus: I’m Justus, AKA Cymbal Crusher. I beat the shit out of the drums.
Leo: My name’s Leo, AKA Chrome Cutter, and I’m the vocalist and bassist.
Jason: I’m Jason, AKA Undying Evil. I’m the guitar player.
I’d like to start with a bit of background on the band. Jason and Leo, from what I understand, you started the band. When did you two first meet and how soon from there did Lead Injector come together?
Leo: It was in 2022 when we met and founded the band. It was in August. I came bac from a festival and some friends were like, “Hey! We found this awesome guitarist. We need you to meet him at the park.” So we met up there and that was it.
Jason: He said, “Let’s form a band!”
Leo: That’s how we founded the band.
Now I’d read that initially, the instruments were vice versa. Jason, you handled bass and Leo, you played guitar. What led to the switchover?
Leo: It was really funny. Jason always came to me and was like, “Hey, give me the guitar!” He was playing some crazy riffs and licks on it. I was like, “I’m never gonna be able to play that! How about you just play it?” So we just switched and he did the guitar riffs, all the crazy and fast stuff. For vocals, obviously it’s easier to play bass alongside with it, so that’s what we did.
Jason: That’s pretty much it!
Justus, when did you enter the fold?
Justus: It was maybe mid 2023, I think, in summer. We had a meetup.
Leo: Day drinking in a public park, basically.
Justus: I was brought there by a friend. Then, I met Leo for the first time. I was blown away because I wasn’t really one who comes from the old school scene, and doesn’t know much about it at this point. Leo talked to me and said, “I got a band. We’re looking for someone who plays drums.” I said, “Yeah, I’ve played for about 10 years.” Then, we connected and that’s pretty much it.
Leo: We started rehearsing.
Is there a strong local metal scene in your part of Germany (Dresden)? What’s it like out there?
Jason: We have a small metal scene. There is a bigger punk and hardcore scene.
Leo: That’s how it used to be *laughs*.
Jason: The metal scene is really small in Dresden. There are other bands from outer towns…I don’t know how much. 3? 4?
Leo: Way more. Way, way more. Metal bands in Dresden, there are a lot we are friends with because we’ve played some shows together, so we got connected with them, and there are a lot of bands that we don’t have personal contact with, but they’re from here, they play shows here, and we go there. Since we started the band, we started getting a lot more contact with a lot of the other metalheads from other cities around Saxony and Thuringia, which started a big friend circle all around eastern Germany. There’s 60 people and we always meet up at the concerts around the area.
Having done a demo in 2024 entitled From the Crypts…of Hell, the band is now on the brink of releasing their debut album, Witching Attack. How soon after the demo did work begin on the album?
Leo: Work on the album is basically work on the demo. If you look at it closely, the 7 songs that are on the demo, there are 4 demo songs and 3 rehearsal songs, they are all also on the album, so all the work in the writing process for the demo was also work in the writing process for the album. After we finished the demo recording, we started doing more songs, writing more songs and lyrics. At some point, we were like, “OK, this is enough for an album.” We contacted High Roller Records and everything went on from there. It was about a year and a quarter after we recorded the demo that we recorded the album.
In what ways did you notice the songs evolve from the demo stage to the album stage?
Jason: We got a lot faster on the album. A lot more, what is it…
Leo: Precise.
Jason: Precise, yes.
Leo: It was refined playing. We had years of practice playing live shows, rehearsing together. Obviously, you get more clean, precise, faster, but in the essence of songwriting, from the 4 songs we recorded from the demo, they didn’t really change. “Evil Executioner”, “Witching Attack”, “M.C.C.I.”, and “Infinite Force”, the whole song structure stayed 100% the same, just faster and more precise. For the rehearsal songs, the rehearsals that you hear on the demo are the first time that we played them. We wrote the songs. We were like, “OK, it’s finished now. Let’s record them in the rehearsal room.” Then, obviously, some things change. There a little difference in “Nuclear Antichrist” and “Chains”, tiny nuances, but the whole songs stay the same. We just recorded them at higher speed and higher precision.
Was this the band’s first time in a proper recording studio, or had you done it before in past bands?
Leo: No, it was the first time.
What was that experience like and how did it impact the band?
Leo: *laughs*
Jason: It was fucking awesome, but on the third day, we went into a local bar and got drunk as fuck. The next day, we woke up and it was like, “Fuck man, we gotta do this fucking album man!” We thought, “Oh fuck!” Then, we just recorded it and…I don’t know man.
Leo: It was guitars. It was on him. We were in the middle. We didn’t care, but he did it really well! We had some technical problems. We had to rerecord all rhythm guitar from scratch, so we wasted a whole day with technical problems, which really sucked, which led to us having to do…the first recording session in the studio was 6 days. One week later, we did one more day, making it 7 in total.
Justus: The extra is that it was the hottest week in the year, of all time, plus 30 degrees. It was horrible *laughs*.
Leo: The studio wasn’t some fancy, high tech, modernized, clean studio. It was a really cool space that really fit our style. We really loved it. It was in the old cafeteria of a former pig farm! They remodeled the old cafeteria into a recording studio. Everything was super old and cool, dirty. Not dirty in the bad way, but dirty in the good way.
Jason: And they didn’t have a toilet! It was fucking disgusting! I thought I had to shit myself!
Leo: No toilet, no way to wash your hands when they’re all sticky from playing all day.
Jason: Jerking off the whole damn day and you can’t wash your hands? Ah, fuck man!
Leo: Guitarist problems, you know?
Well you gotta keep that strumming hand going somehow!
Jason: Yeah! The fastest hand in the east, man! *laughs*
Leo: Can’t let your wrist fall asleep!
No sir! That said, it all makes sense now: The drunkenness, the heat, the repurposed pig farm cafeteria. All of those circumstances play into the intensity of the music, which is what you want on a blackened thrash album. I want to FEEL like I got my ass kicked, and I do after listening to this album.
Jason: Thank you, man!
Leo: Everything we could’ve imagined, everything we could’ve dreamed of, it was perfect in these recording sessions, the studio, and obviously, the guy we did it with, Conne, he was the perfect man for us. He really assisted us in making all our dreams come true and getting the best out of us at all times, so it was perfect.
Could you give us a little background on the writing process? Does the band write songs together or do you come up with ideas on your own and then bring them to the table?
Jason: Mostly, I’ll have one idea, bring it to the rehearsal space, and then we just start playing.
Leo: Add things to it. Basically, it’s the latter. At home, we come up with ideas. We make it work in the rehearsal room. We don’t usually just jam out and think, “Wait, this sounds good.” Sometimes we do, but most of the time, it’s premeditated.
I really dig the variety on here. You’ve got your fast and filthy Nifelheim-esque ragers, but you’ve also got cuts like “Siege Upon Heaven”, “Infinite Force”, and “Nuclear Antichrist”, which lie a bit on the longer side by black-thrash standards, similar to At War with Satan era Venom. Is there any one member who brings this flavor to the band, or perhaps is there a secret love for those longer songs?
Jason: I would say both. A lot of songs that go a little bit longer than usual, 5 or 6 minutes? I don’t know. Rainbow with the Rising album. Some songs go 10, 12 minutes. It just goes, kicks ass, and is fucking awesome. We say, “Don’t write dull songs.”
Leo: *laughs* The length of the song really depends on what kind of lyrics we write for it. If it’s just short lyrics, the song’s gonna be very short, but if we have many ideas for a long list of lyrics, then we have to make the song longer. We don’t want to leave things out or cut things out. That feels wrong, so we just add it. We try to keep it as short as possible so the songs are as long as they need to be and as short we could make them to get the whole point across.
Jason: I think originally, “Siege Upon Heaven” was 9 minutes long.
Leo: *laughs* With an intro in front of it and everything, so it really dragged out. Also, “M.C.C.I.” was a whole lot longer than it is now. Some friends were like, “Guys, that’s too long. Please just shorten it.”
Jason: *jerking off motion* “That’s too long man!” *laughs*
Leo: So we cut out some parts that were like…you don’t need to play that riff 4 times. It’s enough if you play it twice. That’s how it works.
Speaking of lyrics, is there any one of you responsible for those?
Jason: *nodding Leo’s head* This guy! This motherfucker here!
Leo: All the lyrics, I have my fingers in play. Most of them, I came up with from scratch, but usually, it’s Jason. He comes up with the riffs, plays the riff, and is like, “This riff should be called “Sacrifice This Bitch”.” We’re like, “Well, OK! What can I do with the lyrics?” So I come up with the lyrics for that and there are also two songs, “M.C.C.I” and “Angel Destructor”, where Jason wrote a loose base for the lyrics. Then, I just added onto it and made it into a song.
Being from Germany, you come from a country with a rich history of blackened thrash metal. Between Sodom, Kreator, and Destruction, which band is your favorite and why?
Jason: Sodom! Sodom!
Leo: It’s gotta be Sodom in the end. We named ourselves after a song of theirs *laughs*. For me, personally, it used to be Kreator. They used to be my favorite band. They were the first band I ever listened to, but I do no approve of what they do nowadays at all, so they went down in the rankings. It’s gotta be Sodom before that. Sodom’s gotta be the biggest one, but also, Destruction. Never forget to mention Destruction. They really influenced us with Infernal Overkill.
Jason: And never forget Holy Moses with Satan’s Angel! That demo fucking rips ass!
Necronomicon?
Leo: That’s actually a funny story *laughs*. My parents have some friends and the friends knew the guitarist or bassist from Necronomicon. When I was really young and listening to Cannibal Corpse, they gave me the CD of Necronomicon’s Invictus. Back then, I didn’t really get the music, but later, I got into thrash and heavy metal. I really appreciate it much more.
That’s cool! Also, I second all of you on Sodom. I’m heavily biased, but that’s a band who, album for album, you can’t go wrong with. Leo, you said you don’t approve of Kreator’s albums of late. I for one don’t approve of anything past Coma of Souls.
Leo: *laughs* I really did like the stuff they did after that too. Obviously, they switched their style a lot, but I always thought that, even though they switched styles, a lot of the styles they did were made really well. The lyrics were good. The music was good. It was really well thought out. With the new stuff, the power metal stuff, it’s so generic and boring. What especially sets them apart from Sodom is just the way the band holds itself. You’re not going to go to a Kreator concert under 100 euros ever. Sodom, they played in Berlin with Tankard, Darkness…
Jason: Warrant! We went to a show, I think it was in 2023.
Leo: That was another one.
Jason: We got to Berlin. My first Sodom show with Warrant was fucking awesome.
Leo: There were a bunch of bands. I think it was 50 euros. You have a Sodom show, which is fucking amazing. You have a lot of great other bands, 5 bands on the lineup, and it’s only 50 bucks. On the other hand, you have Kreator doing a show themselves with some band that’s false metal and they want 100. Fuck off!
Here, it was the other way around. Sodom never played here, so when they finally toured here in 2024, it was $100. To be fair, it wasn’t JUST Sodom. It was Sodom, Dismember, and Nunslaughter.
Jason: Oh fuck yeah!
So you got a killer bill. Sodom basically did an old school set. It was incredible. Funny enough, after the show, I’m hanging in the bar next to theater with some friends, and there’s a door that leads to the backstage area of the theater. I look at the door, look at my buddy, and I go, “You know what? We should go back there and meet Sodom.” I would’ve done this blindly at 13 or 14, but here I am in my mid 20s saying this. He goes, “What if we get kicked out or arrested?” “So what? The show’s over.” We try to open the door and it’s locked. Then, we notice one of the bartenders opens it to get something, so we run in right behind her without noticing. It was like Wayne’s World. We’re walking around and we here, “Hey!” It’s Frank Blackfire. He goes, “The party’s in here!” We end up hanging out with them for an hour! Music aside, Sodom wins for that moment alone.
Leo: We heard similar stories from friends of ours. I think it was at the Party San Festival. They also snuck backstage. Some people were like, “You need to get out!” Meanwhile, the Sodom people were like, “No, let ’em stay! What does it matter?” They’re down to earth. They stuck with real metal, and that makes them the best.
In closing, what does the rest of 2026 have in store for Lead Injector?
Jason: Write more songs, obviously.
Justus: A shitload of shows *laughs*.
Jason: Maybe record another demo. Maybe? I don’t know.
Leo: Maybe we’ll do a demo or a split or an EP. We’re considering that. We have about 10 shows planned so far for the next year, especially in May in June, we’re gonna have a very busy schedule. We’re playing all summer. That’s really good. We’ve got so many requests at the moment to play everywhere. It’s cool!
The new Lead Injector album, Witching Attack, is out now on High Roller Records. For more information on Lead Injector, click here.
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