Metal that you can taste! From Sweden with love, Teaser Sweet are an up and coming hard and heavy act that’s bound to captivate headbangers young and old with their dynamic old school sound. They’ve just released their fourth album, Night Stalker, and truthfully, it doesn’t matter whether it’s day or night; any time is a good time to crank this album! Fusing the ferocity of classic Swedish steel, the adventurism of ’70s hard rock, and even the occasional pop rock melody (I’m convinced not even the Swedish death metallers can escape the grasp of ABBA!), Teaser Sweet offers something for everyone. We sat down with brother and sister duo, Therese (vocals) and Marcus (guitars) Damberg to talk about the album, their influences, and what the future holds for Teaser Sweet.
Greetings Marcus and Therese, and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Marcus Damberg: Great!
Therese Damberg: We’re doing just fine. Thank you!
Thank you for taking the time to do this interview. I know you’ve got a busy week ahead, as the new album comes out this Friday, and it absolutely rocked my socks off.
TD: Thank you so much!
MD: *laughs* Thank you!
For many of our readers, and American audiences at large, this upcoming album, Night Stalker, will be the first time they heard Teaser Sweet. How would you describe the band’s sound to somebody who’s never heard you before?
MD: It’s really hard because when you talk to your friends, and they say, “You sound like W.A.S.P. That sounds like Europe. That sounds like Judas Priest.”, it’s hard to say really. The influences are all the classic hard rock and heavy metal from the late ’70s to mid ’80s, I would say. It’s all classic rock, not any modern style metal with symphonies and stuff *laughs*.
Therese, anything you’d add to that?
TD: No, I agree with my brother. ’80s rock, classic ’80s rock. We try to make energetic melodic hard rock with a retro touch.
Did you grow up in a musical household? Who were your favorite bands in your formative years, and was there any one in particular who inspired you to pursue music?
MD: I would say probably KISS was the band that’s been a big part of my life, but you can name all the big bands from the ’80s like Ratt and Mötley Crüe and Judas Priest, Accept, Europe, of course. My father played some guitar when I was very young, and my mom played guitar. We don’t have the same mom, Therese and me. She grew up in another house *laughs*.
TD: It was my brother who introduced me to this kind of music. The first bands that I started listening to were those that he had at his top list, but I’m very wide in my music. I do not only listen to hard rock or heavy metal. I listen to just pop and old music, blues and country, but heavy metal has a special place in my heart, of course. Just as Marcus said, his father and my father played the guitar when we were young. My mother sings and plays the guitar as well. We started to sing early, when we were young. Then, I think it was on my 13th birthday, Marcus gave me a record that he had sampled some of his favorite songs at the moment. On that record, I don’t remember it all, but it was everything from Ozzy Osbourne to W.A.S.P. That was the start of my journey into heavy metal and rock music.
Marcus, I’m a huge KISS guy myself. Was there any one KISS album or song in particular that drew you in?
MD: When I first started to listen to KISS, it was Lick it Up and Animalize. Those albums came out in the early ’80s there, but today, I would probably say Lick it Up and maybe the first KISS album. If you see their setlist, all the songs from the first album, they play almost all the songs from that album, even today *laughs*. Well, not today.
Not today, but definitely come November when they do their next “We’re back!” show!
MD: *laughs* Yeah, didn’t see that coming!
From there, what events took place that led to the formation of Teaser Sweet in 2013?
TD: My brother, Marcus, he had a band. I don’t know the story 100%, but you didn’t have anyone to play with, right?
MD: The band we had split up, so me and the drummer, we asked Therese, and yeah. You take it.
TD: *laughs* He asked me if I wanted to sing, so yeah, I thought, “OK, let’s try it.” My boyfriend at the time, Christoffer Cardell, who was the bass player in Teaser Sweet before, he played the guitar, so we asked him, “You could play the guitar. Would you like to try and play some bass?” So he did that and yeah, that was it! We started to play some songs. We didn’t have our own ones at first, so we played some KISS covers, some Runaways, Europe, and then, in about a week, we were like, “OK, let’s do some of our own music.” We started writing some music and it went pretty fast.
How soon after the band’s formation did ideas start coming together for those first songs?
MD: I think we wrote two or three songs in the first week almost, or second week, maybe, as a band.
Therese, had you ever been in a band before that?
TD: No, I hadn’t. Teaser Sweet is my first and only *laughs*!
They say a name says a lot about a band. In the case of Teaser Sweet, it might just be the best moniker I’ve heard in years. Whose idea was it, and where did the name come from?
MD: I guess we had a few options, but my thought was that we should have something teasey and sweet *laughs*. That’s how it became.
Night Stalker will be Teaser Sweet’s first album in five years, as well as the band’s first on High Roller Records. What has the band been up to in that space of time?
TD: A lot has happened in our lives. Marcus became a dad and I became a mom. A lot of children! Then, the pandemic arrived just when we were about to release our album called Monster. We took a pause in the creating of the music and we were doing some things live on YouTube that we uploaded, some small things and a video here and there. Then, we have been making songs. Some of the songs on the album that we’re releasing now, they are pretty old, right Marcus?! We’ve been working on them for a long time.
MD: Yeah, yeah. Some of the songs we’ve worked on for maybe five years or something, or maybe we worked on them and then we put them aside and then, “Ah, let’s skip that song and do another one.” Then, we picked them up again. “Wow, this one ain’t so bad.” We got them ready for the album.
TD: But of course, we have been playing some shows too, ever since 2013. We’re not only making music. We’re also playing it live.
Who handled what aspects of the songwriting for this album?
TD: We are doing pretty much everything, but the process is often that Marcus or (bassist) Hampus (Steenberg) comes up with a riff. If it’s a good one, I hear melodies straight ahead and am like, “Yeah, this is a good feeling. This is a good groove.” Then, we’re taking it from that. I’m writing a lot of the lyrics and melodies, but Marcus is pretty good at that too, right?
MD: *laughs* Yeah!
TD: I do mostly the songwriting, but Marcus has been shaping up and doing some pretty good songs too in the writing.
MD: Well, you have an idea and sometimes it’s hard to present the idea of what you’re thinking. I write a few lines and then I make some riffs, so I got the beginning of the song so they can get the feeling of what it would be, so it’s easier to continue working on the song.
TD: Sometimes, it is like you’re presenting the frame and we’re doing the painting. We do that together. Everyone in the band is very involved in the songwriting and how the songs are built.
This is the band’s fourth album. When you look back at 2015’s Hit and Run to now, in what ways have you noticed the band evolving? Furthermore, what are some of the biggest personal lessons you’ve learned along the way?
TD: In the beginning, it was just like we were so happy to be playing together. We didn’t have our own material, so we were just eager to create something that we thought would sound good. We played a lot of KISS and Runaways, so it was like a clear and chic sound, and sometimes a little bit rough and, I don’t know, classic rock. Now, we are more confident in how we want to sound. We want to sound like Teaser Sweet, but that’s so hard to. Like Marcus said in the beginning, how do we sound? It’s so hard to explain that yourself.
Marcus, anything you’d add to that?
MD: I think she got it all there. The difference in the beginning and now is I think we were more, like she said, happy to have been able to make songs. Now, we take it another step and we work a little bit harder in the progress of making the music.
TD: We’re not really set on how we want to sound, but we also know what we’re comfortable with. We want to think it’s fun to play the songs. On this album that we’re releasing now, I think every song has its own thing. I think that’s the most interesting part of this album is that it’s a mix so you don’t feel like all the songs sound the same, but you can always tell that it’s Teaser Sweet. I really like that.
As a listener, and a new fan myself, there’s obviously the heavy stuff, but there’s also the melodic and hard rocking stuff, even a ballad thrown in. It’s a very well nuanced effort. Looking at the album now as a finished product, which songs stand out to you the most and why?
TD: Just because they are so different, you can have so many different favorites. The song called “Blue Sky”, that’s a soft one, the one that you might call “the ballad”. That’s a love story. You feel the emotion in every part of the song. But then, you’re up for something else another day and want to listen to “Eat You Alive”. When you talked right now, I started to think about myself going to shows and even though it might be a band that I’ve been longing to see, sometimes you can get bored because it sounds the same. I don’t know if we have said it out loud, Marcus, but this album is an album that we can play live and people will not get bored because every song has this different feeling. Have you ever felt like that, Joe? Even though it is a band that you’re like, “Oh, I can’t wait to see them this Friday.” Then you’re standing there five songs in and, “Oof, it sounds just the same. Maybe I’ll go and grab something to drink.” *laughs*
Speaking from personal experience, and it pains me to say as I’ve been a fan since junior high and have probably seen them a dozen times, but this is exactly what happened the last time I saw Obituary. I’ve seen them play their share of solid shows, never really a bad one. But for some reason, this one just didn’t cut it for me. Perhaps I’m biased because my friends’ band (Molder) opened and absolutely killed it, but even still, they came out with a set of almost entirely newer songs, and everything just started sounding the same. So yes, I can relate! Expanding upon this, and I apologize for rambling, when you look back at metal albums of the ’70s and early ’80s, it’s as if every song HAD to sound different. Even when you reach Mercyful Fate, “Melissa” doesn’t sound like “Satan’s Fall” which doesn’t sound like “Evil”, but it’s all Mercyful Fate. That’s what I appreciated listening to this record. There is a different vibe to each song, and as far as the live setting goes, I wish I were in Sweden!
TD: *laughs* Thank you!
Speaking of playing live, I know you’ve been quite active playing shows in your homeland of Sweden. What are some of the best shows you’ve played thus far and why?
MD: We played on a metal fest a couple of times here in our hometown (Huskvarna). It’s a two day festival. I think that is the top of all the shows we’ve played. Lots of bands, good bands, old school heavy metal/hard rock, and also some death metal, big audience. I think that’s the top.
TD: I agree *laughs*.
In closing, what does the rest of 2025 have in store for Teaser Sweet?
TD: We don’t know *laughs*.
MD: We hope for a lot of shows. That’s what we hope for. It’s hard. We’ve come a long way into 2025 now, and to get booked onto summer festivals, it’s pretty hard.
TD: It’s hard here in Sweden.
MD: Yeah, it’s real hard here.
TD: There are so many.
MD: Maybe this Fall we’ll get to play more live. We have two shows booked right now, so we’re hoping for more.
I appreciate the blunt honesty of that answer, because who knows what tomorrow holds?
TD: Who knows? We have talked to so many awesome people, just like you, Joe. We really appreciate talking with you. We’ve received so many good reviews from those who have listened to the whole album, and we really appreciate that, but to be honest, we don’t know. We got two shows booked and we haven’t released anything since our last album, so those who haven’t listened to this one, Night Stalker, they don’t know what to expect. I feel like this album, we’re really on fire, but those who haven’t heard it don’t know yet *laughs*. We wanted to play on festivals here in Sweden, but we only have our old material to send. We got something new for people with the Night Stalker album. We’re really hoping for some more shows to come.
The new Teaser Sweet album, Night Stalker, is available now on High Roller Records. For more information on Teaser Sweet, click here.
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