Mostly Yelling #1: Esben Willems (Monolord, Slower, etc.)

Hello and welcome to the first ever episode of the Mostly Yelling Podcast.

I'm your host, Greg Kennedy.

You might know me as the former editor of Metal Injection or as a contributor to Decibel and Loudwire and Gear Gods and a bunch of other places.

Or you might know me as the musician behind Disintegration Annex.

Whatever the case, I'm really glad you're here because I'm going to be talking to a lot of musicians and label people and PR people and even music fans about heavy metal and just the state of music right now and anything else that comes up.

I really want to get to know people's passions within the music world.

I think that's incredibly interesting and really important.

My first guest is Mr. Esben Willems, who is the drummer of Monolord and Slower and Morse Umbra and the musical brain behind Chaos Under the Sun.

He also owns Studio Berserk in Gothenburg, which I can attest has some of the best coffee I think I've ever had.

Not that you can just go up there and get coffee, but I'm telling you, I've had it and it's very good.

I met Esben about four years ago on my first ever trip to Gothenburg, Sweden.

I didn't know anyone at the city at the time, and Roger Anderson from Suicide Records had hit me up on Facebook saying, hey, you know, I don't really know you, you don't really know me, but let's go out, get a beer, talk metal, see what happens.

So I met Roger down at Bennion's, and one beer turned into quite a few beers, and, you know, people started cycling in and out of the bar, and one of the people that walked in was Esben.

And I recognized him pretty much instantly from when he walked into the bar.

I was like, oh my God, that's the drummer for Monolord.

I should go and introduce myself, say hi.

And here we are four years later.

I had brought this podcast up to Esben.

I had promised him that he would be the first guest on whenever I decided to do something.

And now I've decided to do something and he is the first guest.

So here we go.