Lucifer returns with their highly anticipated fifth studio album, Lucifer V , which will be released by Nuclear Blast on January 26th. The band has been gaining success with their music influenced by 70s hard rock, doom, and occult rock.
The group is preparing for their next release, and in an exclusive interview with Wikimetal , vocalist and band leader Johanna Sadonis spoke about Lucifer V , as well as its inspirations, meanings, and more.
The new album promises to be the best of the band's career, and the singer talks about the growing improvement in their albums: "I just think it takes time for us to grow as a band and learn each other's language, each other's musical language. And I think with time you get better, you know? In working together as musicians and also individually, you become more experienced."
“Death, love, loss, and grief” were the things that inspired the composition of Lucifer V. Featuring nine songs, Sadonis explained the meaning of “A Coffin Has No Silver Lining”: “The song is about someone I love very much, who has a drug problem, and I’m very afraid of losing that person, and that’s why I wrote the song for her.”
She described “At The Mortuary” as her favorite track because it “has all the different elements of Lucifer”: “it starts with something very heavy and dark doom and then it’s very dark, but at the same time it becomes very inspiring as well. So it’s all the feelings you feel in life, the sadness, the joy and the hope, but also the sadness. It’s all there.”
“Slow Dance In a Crypt” has a conceptual music video that is the second part of the story that begins in “At The Mortuary”: “I thought I wanted to express what it's like when you lose someone you love very much and you kind of want them to come back. Of course, you know they'll never come back. But in this song I dream about that.”
“Riding Reaper” is also a major highlight of this new album. The song was written with guitarist Linus Björklund , and the vocalist explains that she read “many lyrics about death, and in this one I was imagining death as the classic Reaper riding a horse through the night, reaping souls. Therefore, it’s a classic image of death.”
Aside from the music, something that really stands out about Lucifer V is the album cover, which features Johanna Sadonis inside a coffin. She explained that initially they didn't know what to do, but then she thought of putting all the band members lined up in coffins. When drummer Nicke Andersson suggested that only the vocalist be on the cover, "I said, 'Oh God, no, not me again. I was already on the last cover.' What will the others in the band say? We're like a band. It should be everyone."
However, the photo with all the band members will be on the gatefold version of the vinyl.
The choice of set design for the cover made perfect sense with the band's concept: "I think it was about time to take the coffin photo because, I mean, Lucifer has so many songs about death, it was so symbolic, very well symbolically fitting."
When discussing Lucifer's musical evolution, she believes that "all the ingredients are pretty much the same" and emphasizes that this new album showcases "all the facets" of the band, "perhaps a little more visible."
In 2022, the group came to Brazil for the first time, and Sadonis plans to bring the band back to the country: “We’re talking about it now. I hope it will be in 2024. We will definitely be back.”
Regarding expectations for the release of Lucifer V, she hopes "that people will feel what I feel when I listen to music as a music fan." She says: "I mean, I'm a musician, but at the same time I'm also like everyone else, a listener and a fan of bands. And when I listen to music, what I like is that music can become your home, you know? You can find comfort in it, or it can help you, or it can give you energy, or like, all these different feelings. And I hope we can do the same with Lucifer when people listen to us."
