The latest effort from Swedish hard rockers Crazy Lixx is Thrill Of The Bite. We caught up with frontman Danny Rexon, who fills us in on the new record, touring, overlooked glam bands and other subjects.
Chad Bowar: How did your newest member, drummer Robin Nilsson, come to join the band?
Danny Rexon: He’s been a fan of the band for a long time and he’s a great drummer who’s been in a band called Cruel Intentions for quite a while and he’ll actually be doubling, so he’ll be in both bands from now on. He’s done a lot of live session work with bands around, so when he found out that the spot was free, he applied for it basically and we haven’t been looking for anyone since.
Was there anything unique about the songwriting process for Thrill Of The Bite compared to previous albums?
I would say it’s pretty similar to what we usually do, which is we usually record and write separately, sometimes collaborations, but usually it’s members are making their own demos and then we pitch them to the band and we listen to everything and decide what goes on the album. As the producer, I have the last say in that, so whenever there’s a song that we’re not agreeing on, I have the extra vote.
What will be your strongest memory of the recording of the album?
It was a lot of hard work, it took quite a while to do it. This was the first time that I actually mixed the whole album myself as well, so I think that maybe will be the one thing that I bring with me as a memory from this, since it is my first time actually doing the whole process from the very first pre-production to the mixing and everything for my own band, so that’s something special.
What was the biggest challenge in this creation?
So again, probably the mixing part, since I haven’t done that before. I’ve done it for other artists, but not for myself, but it’s always something special when you do it for your own band, I think.
What lyrical topics do you cover on this one?
There’s a light theme to most of our recent albums, usually inspired by movies and fiction, so on this one there is an urban vampire theme, which you can hear in a lot of the songs, so it’s a bit of a ’80s horror inspired album, I would say.
What inspired the album title?
It has to do with the loose theme that we have on this album, which is thrill of the bite, a play on words, because the saying is usually a thrill of the night, right? But we decided to change it to thrill of the bite, which hearkens back to that vampire theme of the album.
What led you to use clips from the movie Trick or Treat for the “Midnight Rebels” video?
We’ve been doing this for a while, where we put our music as what we like to call unofficial soundtracks to old movies, which has been very effective, so we’ve been doing it on YouTube for about two years. Whenever we don’t release an official video featuring ourselves, we try to pick an old movie that fits the vibe of the song and try to redo a story with our song on top of it. And it’s just not just for the new singles, but we’ve actually done this for a bunch of old tracks and been quite successful. We had over 20 million plays on our videos last year on YouTube, so for us it’s actually a bigger platform than Spotify or Apple Music, for example, much due to the videos. The reason for Trick or Treat, I think, it was just a fitting song with a lot of cool visuals that fit the song, I guess.
How important are videos in the promotion process these days?
For us it’s very important, it’s our biggest platform, so we try to make videos for every song. The ultimate goal is probably to have a video for each and every song that we’ve ever made, but we tend to do it for the singles that we release and the more famous of our songs, and of course songs that fit a certain movie that you can kind of think about and where the vibe fits something that you’ve seen and you can get good visuals for it. So I would say it’s very important, it’s a big, it’s a good way to find new fans online.
What are your upcoming show tour plans?
We’ve released some stuff already, we have a lot more in the pipeline, but we can’t disclose everything as of now. We have a traveling mini festival tour in the UK with four other Swedish bands, we’ve got a couple of festivals lined up for the summer, of course the release show the day after the album drops here in our hometown of Malmö. So yeah, a lot of stuff going on, but as I said, more is coming, but we can’t disclose that right now.
What’s the most unusual venue you’ve played?
That’s a hard one. We’ve played a bunch of strange stuff. We were in Moscow a couple of years ago, we actually came to the venue and there was a children’s party at the venue where we were supposed to play, so right after the kids party ended we put our stuff up and started soundcheck, that was quite strange. Another time we played on a biker fest in Transylvania in Romania, no vampires there that time, but there was a kind of a spooky atmosphere there I must say, that was also quite odd.
Where haven’t you played live that you’d still like to get to?
There’s a bunch of places in the U.S. We’ve only been in Chicago when it comes to the mainland U.S., and we played on the Monsters of Rock cruise a few times, but certainly the west coast of the U.S. would be nice to visit. We still haven’t made it to Australia which would be cool. Apart from that I think we’ve been to most of the countries that I want to visit. I wouldn’t mind going back to Japan because we’ve only been there once.
Who do you think are some underrated overlooked ’80s glam metal bands?
With the internet people can find a lot of the forgotten stuff that maybe wasn’t as easy before. I don’t have any really deep cuts, overall I think that a band like Ratt for example or a band like Giant are pretty underrated for for what they actually were, not that they’re not famous or anything but I think they should have been bigger than they were, so those are two that come to mind.
What are some of your non-musical interests and hobbies?
I play football or soccer as the Americans would say and I like movies. I’ve learned a lot about movie making through the music videos and I do have a bucket listing still when it comes to maybe producing something bigger in terms of movies, so I guess that’s a hobby as well.
Anything else you’d like to mention or promote?
Our album comes out on Valentine’s Day on February 14th, go check it out if you’re a fan of retro hair metal or sleaze metal or whatever you want to call it. There’s a bunch of great songs on there and if you haven’t checked out the the singles that we’ve put out yet, go do that and and visit the YouTube channel as well. Especially if you’re a fan of movies, there’s a ton of stuff there that we put up in terms of the unofficial soundtrack videos, so yeah check it out and hope you like it.
(interview published February 14, 2025)
Watch Crazy Lixx – “Midnight Rebels” Video
