'Let's Approach This Like It's the First Album' - Volbeat's Michael Poulsen Celebrates 'God of Angels Trust'

On Friday (June 6), Volbeat will celebrate the release of their ninth full-length album, God of Angels Trust. Ahead of the release, Michael Poulsen joined Loudwire Nights to dive into the record.

Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.

"It kind of feels like starting all over again," Poulsen told Kat Mykals, host of the weekend edition of Loudwire Nights.

"Pretty much like we were going full circle and catching our own tail and just looking at each other and thinking, 'So, what do we do now?'"

One of the things Poulsen and his bandmates decided to do was look to Volbeat's first album, 2005's The Strength / The Sound / The Songs, for inspiration.

"Let's just approach this like it's the first Volbeat album, [what] do we want it to sound like," he explained.

"We wanted to kind of recapture some of that innocence that we had on some of the first albums where we didn't know much about structure. What was a bridge? What was a pre-chorus? What was the middle section? What was this and that?"

Poulsen admitted that it's great to have the experience he does now as a songwriter, having written music for nearly 20 years for Volbeat. But there's also something special about reclaiming the rawness of the early days.

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"There's something really funny about the way we put songs together back in the day," he said.

"Those songs still work live and it was like, man, we didn't even [put] that much time [into] these songs back in the day and people still want to hear it. So, maybe we should kind of see if we can recapture that without even trying and just find it in our DNA."

What Else Did Volbeat's Michael Poulsen Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

• How he approached writing the first song for God of Angels Trust: "I pretty much just threw away the book of rules that we have been building up through our career and said, 'Okay, what do we do now?' The thing is, we always wait for the big chorus to kick in when we sit down and listen to music. What if it was something else, something different that we were waiting for and not the chorus? What could that be? So I wrote 'In the Barn of the Goat Giving Birth to Satan's Spawn in a Dying World of Doom.'"
• One of the weirdest interactions he had with a fan: "We were playing somewhere in Holland and we went out after the show. There was this guy coming up to me and he said, 'You have no idea how crazy it is and how proud I am for saying that I'm now married to your ex-wife.' I said, 'But I've never been married.' At that time, I hadn't been married."
• Why he doesn't think about age: "I found out very early in life that I wanted to be a musician and I wanted t tour. I wanted to write music. I wanted to perform. My dream came true and we're doing pretty good, so we're going to continue doing what we're doing with a smile on our face."

Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below

Michael Poulsen joined Loudwire Nights on Tuesday, June 3; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.