Mostly famous for powerful live performances with Danish punks Iceage, Elias Bender Rønnenfelt talks with Gigwise about the creation of Telling It Like It Is with his newly transformed other band – Marching Church. The record is out today (28 October), and if not gatecrashing the mainstream, then at least staying away from it. 

We meet near a pub on a Saturday afternoon, just off the busy Soho. I tell Elias I've been to a yet another indie gig last night which only sold out because of a pretty model as a lead singer. He grins. Elias himself graced many photoshoots by his impeccably tailored appearance. He cuts a figure of a fashionable charmer: a strand of hair recklessly falling on his face, not entirely buttoned shirt, vintage rings.

When we enter the almost empty pub, we hear Foo Fighters from the speakers, which, according to the Elias, are shit. Relieved it's not at least the whole record, he says that Britney – which comes up next – is much cooler. Ronnenfelt gets some special kind of beer, revealing his picky taste. He chooses the words very advertently, thinking everything through. Even though you still can hear some slight Danish accent, he doesn't struggle with words – just wants to be entirely understood. The diversity and depth of his character have always been the centrepiece of each of his projects.

Since he was 16, Ronnenfelt has been very busy, releasing one record after another with three of his projects almost every year: he is now three albums in with Iceage, has an LP with industrial Vår and now three records with Marching Church. It’s a wonder how he manages to stay innovative and original, and where he finds new and new inspiration every time. Ronnenfelt confesses that that's the question he would love to know the answer to: “It’s never easy. It’s an ongoing task... Most of the times it’s a struggle. You have times when ideas come to you really easily, and you have “dry” episodes, where there is no activity and inspiration”. He wishes he could always be in a state when all the information that he processes is automatically translated into song ideas, but “it’s often when you really put in a bit of discipline and fight for the ideas, it comes out best”. Ronnenfelt adds: “I don’t think it’s easy to write songs, you have to invest a lot of time and energy”. 

I wonder what Marching Church allows him to do that Iceage doesn’t, and if he changes his attitude or persona going from one project to another. Ronnenfelt replies: “The way I look at it, there is a need for both Marching Church and Iceage to be there, in order to bring all these ideas I get to life”. He explains: “They are two different sets of musicians who have different ways of translating the blueprints that I come with”. It’s always pretty obvious to him whether a song would be better in the hands of Marching Church or Iceage.

Marching Church, appearing at first as a solo project, now has six people working on it. The line-up expanded to include members of Lower, Choir Of Young Believers, Hand Of Dust, Sexdrome and Puce Mary. Ronnenfelt recalls: “It’s always been an idea that lineups can be subject to change in Marching Church and it doesn’t have to be locked in in terms of members”. He adds: “I don’t think the Marching Church that we have now bears much relation to the Marching Church releasing stuff in, say, 2012. We couldn’t have been bothered to make up a new name, but I would say it’s now a completely different project. For the first record we only just grouped and clashed all these people together, as I stood back and watched what comes out of it”.

Indeed, a shift from the previous material is very noticeable. Marching Church has massively developed over these six years: the 2010 home-recorded chaotic At Night and 2015' and This World Is Not Enough seemed very raw. The singer explains the difference this time around: “The first record was pretty much establishing the elements, throw all these people, these instruments together, and see what the outcome might be. And for the second one we already established the building blocks and tried to do something more laid out and summed up.” 

Now they're more focused and cohesive. While it is still a unique and thrilling synthesis of different musicians, they seem to know when not to play and leave enough space for Ronnenfelt's powerful vocal parts which make up an integral part of the record's foundation. Moreover Telling It Like It Is boasts more complex production, involving an electric viola, trumpet, flute and sax. It’s curious how the touring members are going to transfer it to live performance. Ronnenfelt promises that songs will be performed onstage in their fully realized arrangements: “We will just recreate these songs with the lineup that we have, but our goal is not to do something that is an accurate portrayal of the record but reinterpret the songs”, he says, adding: “It’s important and it’s something that this group has potential of: even after the record is made, the songs still constantly grow and evolve”. As there are so many minds involved in playing these songs, they naturally emerge into a new form: “Songs should never be set in marble”, underlines the singer. Like with all Ronnenfelt's projects, you can't fully appreciate the uniqueness of their sound until you hear them live.

Part of the excitement of seeing them live is his singing that's overcome with emotion as it slips and breaks into a scream – that's the intensity of every vocal part. Lyrically he is moody, complicated, fighting with delusions, struggling to find purpose and unity with other people. Ronnenfelt's lyrics are filled with pain, remorse and longing. Sleep-deprived and under the influence, it seems his character can't choose if his goal is either self-destruction or self-protection from reality.

I ask if Elias is mostly inspired by other musicians or looks up to poetry or literature. “What goes into writing”, – says Ronnenfelt, – “is my whole education and understanding of culture. It’s not like I pick something and go “I want to do something that sounds like this or that”. You just engage with everything around you, and that’s what you use for writing subconsciously. When I sit down and write, I don’t pick my influences or even think about what they are”.

This record has a hint of Morphine – 80’s American alternative rock band – in which Sandman’s passionate vocals were wrapped into the similar mixture of sax and rhythm bass. But Marching Church is more often compared to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who released one of the biggest records this year – Skeleton Tree – very open and personal album – and so Ronnenfelt's music has always seemed to the listeners. But apparently, he is not that simple when it comes to getting open about his own feelings and thoughts. I’m surprised since the new record’s title is Telling It Like It Is. Ronnenfelt confesses that originally he didn’t care that much about the name, it was sort of a joke. He just put it on the record cover as a test and said: “This looks too annoying not to happen”. He explains that there is a sense of irony to that title: “It’s like when you hear Sam Cooke performing and he goes: “I’ll tell you how it is” and proceeds with some made up story, with only entertainment value. Like some fast pub drunken horseshit”. With the political context of the lyrics, I realise that it meant to expand the record’s concept of a delusional man: he has no idea how it actually is. No one does.

This approach to writing is particularly noticeable from one cut on Telling It Like It Is called 2016. “This year has struck me as a particularly awful one, and even though I’ve always mostly been engaged with these kind of internal things, it’s just has been difficult not to let the external to integrate into the songs,” says Ronnenfelt. “The world has always been shit, there has always been a constant flow of atrocities going on, but living in the Western world it’s somewhat more present these days, and it’s just difficult not to let it slip into the lyrics. That’s how dystopian lyrical motifs like “information‘s coming through every boy and girl” (‘Information’) and angry “fist fucked by destiny” (‘Heart of Life’) appeared. However, Ronnenfelt notes that there is no particular message in this record, he is just stating things he feels.

I wonder what he thinks about Bob Dylan getting a Nobel Prize, and if it now puts some kind of pressure on lyricists. Elias shrugs: “Leonard Cohen said a hilarious thing: it’s like pinning a medal to Everest. It doesn’t make sense”. He convincingly adds: “I don’t care about the Nobel Prize or any other award. Just not of my concern”.

His fraught relationship with modernity appears to translate to how he promotes the band, too. They take an antiquated approach: producing zines, self-directing videos and not relinquishing any artistic control. "It's hard to find someone to trust to do it, so we just do it ourselves," he says. But despite not aiming for massive commercial success or going through a lot of modern marketing hoops, they're picking up a lot of positive attention because good art shines brightly even with a minimal budget and push. They've just been announced in the first batch of acts to be playing Roskilde festival in their native Denmark. Last year they were a side note playing on the tiny Escho/Mayhem stage to about a hundred people. This year expect 10,000. Though Elias doesn’t seem to care where they are going or if the shows are sold out: “I don’t understand all that conversation about making it. It’s only a fixation for people who don’t have their values in the right place”. 

In the end, I ask him if the new Iceage is coming. Ronnenfelt smiles: “We are working on it, it’s hard to predict the future”.

Marching Church's most ambitious album Telling It Like It Is is out now. Check out the singles 'Heart of Life' and 'Lion’s Den' and buy tickets for the UK dates.