Cerebral Bore took a rather long and winding road to its major metal label destination in 2011. I recall attending Central Illinois Metal Fest one year when you guys were playing and recalling that you had no CDs to sell, though I think I bought some kind of compilation disc from the vocalist at the time. Anyway, can you get us up to speed with regard to the timeline of events – member changes, tours, demos, etc – from band formation to the eventual Earache reissue of Maniacal Miscreation?

We started out in 2006 and recorded a four-track demo, then in 2007 we released it through afriend’s label, Rundown records, which included two extra tracks that I recorded at home. Besides one other track that we recorded at a local jam room in 2009, these tracks remain the only demos of our pre-Earache Career.Our main focus was on touring, getting our name out, and developing our sound along the way, for the purpose of being ready to step up to the mark if a label like Earache did come calling. And since we recorded the original demo and played our first show in 2006, we have played all over the world. In 2007 we played our first shows in the US, in New York City, and returned to tour the US in 2008 for six weeks coast to coast. And again last summer for another three weeks.

As well as our trips to the US and tours around the UK, we have played pretty widespread, with shows and tours in countries including Israel, Russia, Mexico, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, France, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, and others. And we have another US tour taking place in February/March along side Hate Eternal and Goatwhore. Members-wise right now we have the same lineup as the debut album. We have come and gone with a couple of bassists and vocalists, but our lineup has been the same for the last 2 years.And yeah you’re right, we did play that show in Illinois with no CDs; that tour was full blown ghetto. But I remember having a lot of fun that weekend!

Are you confident that this lineup is now stable and in it for the long haul?

One of those questions that always has the potential to make you look like a dick at some point in the future [laughs], but I would say that we have a solid lineup. It is certainly the most stable we have had since we started, but that has always been down to people’s commitment levels, which mostly get exhausted due to the demand for cash to pay for things like flights and rehearsals. Living constantly broke isn’t easy and I can sympathize with anyone finding it hard, but I have lived through every one of the struggles that forced others to throw in the towel. I guess they weren’t willing to suffer for our art like I am.

I will say that you did well recruiting vocalist Som Pluijmers (and I’ll not even pretend I know how to pronounce that surname); her approach to the gutturals and squeals, as well as the patterning and inflectional nuances, is anything but one-dimensional.

Yeah I like the sound of her voice, and I like how she brings it to the live show. She has a wide range, and we want to explore that a lot more on the next album, with one or two elements maybe being left out. After all, Som only had around 10 days to learn the stuff before she recorded the vocals on the album in early 2010, so there was a lot of instruction coming from us as to what we wanted from here, so she didn’t have much chance to settle in properly like she has now. Infact as we do this interview, I can hear her in the next room writing patterns for a new song!

We of course cannot continue until you explain this wrongful arrest ordeal that occurred earlier this year. What happened?

We went into a drug store in New Work and the alarm went off due to the clerk leaving the place wide open.The cops thought we were two serial killer types due to a recent killing in a drug store, and dramatically arrested us in front of a street full of people at 7:00 a.m. on the last day of our U.S. tour in 2011. We spent the next two days in Jail and had to surrender our passports and stand trial a week later. After spending a week sleeping in parks and on the couches of good Samaritans, we stood trial and were cleared of all charges. Sucked big time, but it’s a story to tell I guess.

How about a few nuggets of information about your own background and musical influences? What led you in this most brutal of directions?

I always listened to death metal, but never thought to tackle it in my first few years playing the guitar. It just looked hard as fuck and I was struggling with Pantera covers. But then some friends of mine decided they were gonna start a death metal band, and asked me to play bass. Before long I really got the hang of it and never looked back. Kind of strange, cos I could have honestly ended up playing any type of music depending influences from close friends at that time. Just so happened that the closest ones were doing brutal shit!

What is this business of maniacal miscreation anyway?

My concept on that was based on the miscreation of powerful entities in our world, culminating in apocalyptic scenes depicted on our album cover. The cover is a photo of our home city of Glasgow completely destroyed, but represents our view amongst a complete global catastrophe.

Getting right to the point, the reason Maniacal Miscreation works so well as a top-to-bottom listening experience is because of your knack for effective arranging. Yes, it’s brutal death and, no, it’s not “melodic,” but each song stands on its own and is memorable in its own right. That’s much easier said than done in the world of technical and/or brutal death. Good goat man, how did you do it?!

No idea man, I just keep reworking stuff until I am as happy with it as possible. I’m very critical of Cerebral Bore’s creative output, and I rarely write something that I don’t change a thousand times before its ready to set in stone. This pisses off other members of Cerebral Bore from time to time, but I can’t say I’ve ever been wrong. But I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Anyone can throw in a breakdown, put a twist on a riff, or shift gears to a section of chugging groove, but when Cerebral Bore does it the impact made is enormous, in large part because it is so smartly incorporated and connected to the song as we whole.

Thanks for feeling the enormity, but again I have no idea. If it makes me head bang, it’s got a good chance of making it into a song. lacing the same idea throughout a song in cheeky places is something that definitely requires a good ear and a lot of trial and error, but nine times out of 10my instincts are right and the tiny tweeks often land the heaviest blows!

Two songs in particular define that compositional skill: (1) “Epileptic Strobe Entrapment,” and (2) “Entombed in Butchered Bodies,” which happens to contain the album’s most memorable groove accompanied with the line “Ee pee oppa pee pee.” I don’t even know where to go with that one [laughs].

Nowhere to go with that really. I am glad that you liked both of those tracks, especially “Entombed in Butchered Bodies,” as it has a good old school vibe to it in parts, which I want to do more of on the next album. The “Ee pee oppa pee pee” came simply from me suggesting to our then vocalist that we make the vocal pattern copy the exact rhythm of the riff. He said “like how?” to which I replied, “like..ee pee oppa pee pee.”

Would you agree that this is technically inclined death metal rooted in the fundamentals, as perfected by bands like Dying Fetus and Suffocation, yet delivered with a modern touch?

Yes I guess so. Neither are bands that I have grown up listening to a great deal, certainly have never bought a shirt, but I would say that we are a similar style of band.

When do you anticipate album number two for Earache to be completed and released?

I expect it to be mid 2012, but you never know. Maybe a little bit sooner or later, but we will say 2012 to be sure. We are working on it right now, as well as maintaining a grueling touring schedule, so its not as easy as it could be if we weren’t touring junkies!

So it’s all smooth sailing from here on for Cerebral Bore, right?

Eeeehhh…yep [laughs].

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We try to soak up as much time as we can with friends and family back home because we’re gone on tour so often. After the New Year we’ll actually stay home for a couple months to start writing new songs. Our 10th anniversary tour, called “Decade of Destruction” will only be in the US, so the Australians won’t see us again until we get a new record together.

You mentioned the recent Decas release is meant to be a gift to As I Lay Dying fans for their support over the years. How so?

We didn’t really plan on having a record out this year, but we were really excited about celebrating our history. It was impossible for us to celebrate that mark in time around the globe without something to release, so we put together everything we can think of. Instead of just a single or “thrown together” live tracks for an EP, we ended up pulling together some pretty unique material, in my opinion.

As Decas is supposed to commemorate As I Lay Dying’s 10th year anniversary, why didn’t you decide to record more than three new original songs and release a full-length instead of recording covers and doing remixes of old tracks instead?

That all came down to the timing of everything. Since The Powerless Rise came out just over a year ago, we hadn’t started writing any new material yet. The cover songs were a good way to fill in as some quality newly recorded music from us. I’m not really a fan of B-sides or live tracks.

You also got the Adam Dutkiewicz of Killswitch Engage fame to help produce this compilation album. Why bring him to the production table if this album is supposed to be a very personal affair for As I Lay Dying?

We gave Adam credit for the first track because much of that came from ideas worked on during The Powerless Rise. As a whole, Adam didn’t really work on Decas, but we would never want to leave out credit where credit is due.

Does the three new original tracks, “Paralyzed”, “From Shapeless To Breakable” and “Moving Forward” hint at how the next full-length studio album is going to sound like?

It’s hard to say what the next full-length will be like because we sort of categorized the three songs for Decas when writing them. We wanted to capture the diversity of our sound over time all in three songs. The first track is what people might expect from us, the second is our heavier side, and the third, “Moving Forward”, is far off on our melodic side.

If not, have you already thought up what you are going to write for the next album, and will it have any links to The Powerless Rise (in the sense of a sequel)?

We always try to progress in some way without sounding like a totally different band. That’s a tough challenge but also what keeps us excited about new music. Naturally, there will be some similarities to The Powerless Rise though.

Austrian Death Machine seems to be dead at the moment. Are you working on any new material for it?

I have a few new songs already and am planning on recording the next album when I get some time off of touring with AILD. [Ed: Due to time lag, the ADM Christmas record is already out on Metal Blade] That’s always the hardest part. When a new album is ready, I’m sure that new life will come to the project.

Your upcoming “Decade Of Destruction” tour kicks off next month! Will it be different from all past tours in any way since it is commemorating As I Lay Dying’s 10th anniversary?

We’d like to let the fans pick a couple songs from each album they want to hear. The production in a lot of the venues will be a little bigger than other tours we’ve done as well.

You definitely get this a lot, but who are your greatest sources of inspiration and influence for your music and lyrical writings?

I hate to sound vague, but my life experiences as a whole are my greatest inspiration. Sometimes the trials of life bring out either a feeling musically or a lyrical idea. Since it’s metal, I would have to say that the perfect moments of life are less inspirational, but even they make their way into our music subtly. I also really enjoy philosophical conversations and thought-provoking writing, so I sometimes write lyrics about concepts that challenge me.

What do you love to do in your free time when you are not busy with any of your music projects these days?

I’m planning a quality snowboarding trip this year, and I ride my motorcycle when I’m home. Besides that, music is my hobby and my job.

Thanks for your time Tim! Do you have any favourite (and meaningful) quote or phrase stuck in your head recently that you would like to share with others?

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the human desire for connection and how that influences our development. Even for people who disagree with each other’s religious beliefs, there seems to be something with human beings that gives them a desire for a greater comfort than what humanity offers.

That, though, is inspired by this quote: “That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.” – Sartre

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 I really hope it symbolizes a new stability in the band when it comes to member changes! We do seem stronger than ever and the future seems very bright for us, so I’m not too worried at the moment. The past member changes have been due to financial struggles within the band and personally as well. It’s very hard to earn a living playing music, and members were forced to leave unwillingly due to struggles with finances. I’ve been able to hold on myself because I have other means to make money; I do not rely on Threat Signal to pay me anything at all… Fortunately, with the new record things will change and we’ll be able to focus more on just making music together rather than working day jobs. That’s the dream isn’t it?!

You played a very big role in the writing and production of the previous album, Vigilance. Is the new self-titled record still done mostly by you, or do the new members of the band contribute significantly as well? 

I took a step back this time around and basically watched my band create the music for this record. I wrote and sang all of the vocals obviously; however the only other contribution to the music I made was song arrangement and keyboards. I really feel that the members of this band have something major to offer musically. They are just such amazing players, I honestly didn’t feel the need to step in and write anything, but just oversee the writing process and offer arrangement ideas.  I’m VERY happy with the way the writing turned out this time round. 

What subject matter does the lyrical themes of Under Reprisal and Vigilance deal with? Does the lyrical theme of Threat Signal continue a “story” of some sort from the earlier two albums, or is it just a standalone by itself? 

Our first two records jumped around a lot lyrically, I would write about anything I was thinking or feeling. It could have been personal, political or just the way I see life in general; the subject matter varied a fair bit while writing lyrics for those records. With the new album, I was more focused when writing the subject matter. Basically I’m concerned for the world and where we are headed [for]. There is a lot of greed, corruption, lies, war, famine, disease, murder, rape, suicide, homeless, etc… and it really makes me sick.  I think people need to wake up, look in the mirror, and realize what they are doing to themselves and the world around them. I want people to question life and ask questions about what’s going on in the world, and not just jump onto the band wagon because they are told to. A lot of us are getting tricked into thinking or believing certain things; wake up people. Don’t walk around occupying cities with a sign around your neck whining about how broke you are and how unfair everyone in the wealthy 1% of the world is, that’s really not the solution. Look at how we got there and blame the people who are really at fault. Dig deeper, get educated, and think more before spreading propaganda. This applies to many, many other situations as well! 

You managed to work with the almighty producer, Zeuss, on the new self-titled record! How did it feel to be in the presence of such an experienced and talented guy? Do you think Zeuss’s production and mixing lends a heavier touch to this new record (due to his largely metalcore and hardcore background) as compared to Christian Olde Wolbers’s (of ex-Fear Factory) work on Under Reprisal? 

Zeuss did an amazing job as a producer, engineer as well as mixing and mastering, this dude is not a one trick pony!  We learned a lot from him while tracking this record, and yes he was responsible for making this album sound as powerful as it does. We love working with different people and gaining different knowledge, creating different albums and different sounds. We really want each album to have its own vibe and sound, so we seek out different producers each time. Christian did a great job on our first record and I have no regrets!! However, this record needed a different flavour. 

Did the experimentation with 7-string guitars on the self-titled record give it a more technical and murky sound than the previous two albums?

Dropping the tuning down to A# and playing with 7’s changed our tone a lot. It seemed to give us a much darker vibe and made the music sound even heavier than ever before. The first two records were tracked with 6 strings in drop C tuning, so we decided our third record needed to be different. Changing the tuning really set this album apart from the others. It also pushed my vocals into a different range and made them sound a lot more aggressive. 

Around two years back, you mentioned that “… On Under Reprisal I was really pushing and forcing my voice trying to find myself. I’ve found my voice and range with this album [Vigilance] and I feel very comfortable”. No offense meant, but I honestly didn’t seem to hear the difference… Do you think you can describe this improvement in vocal quality in technical terms?

I was learning a lot while recording Under Reprisal and I felt very strained, and kind of lost trying to feel comfortable with my screaming and singing. I really couldn’t even sing the music correctly live until about a year after tracking that record. On Vigilance, I felt much more relaxed and confident with my voice. If you noticed, I scream and sing in a much higher range on the album Vigilance; that was the range I felt comfortable with at the time. I didn’t feel like I had to force myself to scream lower just because it’s metal music. Over the years of singing on stage my voice has grown and developed, I find singing much easier and natural now. On the new record, I focused on bringing back the lower screaming from Under Reprisal which I had neglected on Vigilance. At this time in my career I feel I can sing comfortably in any range, so heading back to the original vocal range with a lot more confidence was totally the answer this time round. 

So do you think there has been any further improvement in your vocal delivery on the new self-titled record? 

Yes, for sure. I’m always learning new things and gaining more confidence as a vocalist. I believe each record sounds a little different vocally as I am growing and changing. My range has expanded over the years and I don’t really feel the need to prove that anymore.  I tried to showcase more of my higher singing range on Vigilance while screaming in a normal comfortable range. With the new record, I basically wanted to sound as angry as possible… I really focused on screaming low and making my singing raspier and pissed off. Basically the heavy music told me to write heavy vocals. I find myself writing what the music tells me to write these days. 

Which hard rock and metal vocalists have been your main sources of influence and inspiration?

Phil Anselmo really influenced me to scream, highs and lows. He showed me that screaming could sound heavy and insane while keep melody at the same time. A lot of screamers lose that and begin to sound monotone. James Hetfield was another one who did that. Layne Staley influences me to sing catchy melodies and still have balls. He really pushed his vocals, they were very believable.

Threat Signal’s sound seems to constantly shift between melodic metalcore and melodic death metal (or at least, the international metal press thinks so). How would you describe the band’s sound?

It’s Threat Signal man… It’s metal. I never understood where this death reference came from, and I hate the term “core”. Just so many sub-genres attempt to define a metal band these days. Might as well call us “djent”!  We were playin’ that shit before they made a name for it. If I had to define it, I could see something like “melodic metal” or something along those lines. It’s tough to say because our style varies so much.

Let’s go back in time a little. Canada is not a country renowned for housing many metal acts, so when Threat Signal was signed onto a world-renowned extreme metal label like Nuclear Blast back in 2005, you must have been elated! Did it feel unreal back then? Looking back now, can you tell us about the joys and sorrows you experienced as a band signed onto a major metal label?

It was honestly insane for us!!! To get a deal from a record label we looked up to so highly, that was just the best thing that could have happened at the time! Everything felt so rushed to us though… It was I and my two guitarists who started the band. We would just get together after school and record songs on the computer. Since we didn’t have a drummer or bass player we just programmed those instruments. I ended up putting a demo song on the Internet called “Rational Eyes” under the name Threat Signal. We had not decided that would be our name yet or that we would put the song up… But me being myself, I had to throw it up as soon as possible to hear what people thought. The whole idea behind creating Threat Signal was to make music we liked to listen to, because a lot of the metal music that was coming out basically sucked. So getting the positive feedback we did was just amazing to me, the fact that we could create music people enjoyed so much just fueled my fire to write even more. We threw up a couple more songs online then Blast shot us a message; they pretty much offered us a deal right off the bat from hearing a handful of demos. Before I knew it we were off to LA to track a record and I was dropping out of school! I guess the joys would be having this amazing experience and living my dream, but the sorrows wound up to be my best friends leaving the band right after we tracked the record… The industry is a crazy place, and some people just can’t handle it, especially when things get so crazy so fast.

The other notable founding member of Threat Signal apart from you is your cousin, Rich Howard. I understand that he had left early in the band’s career to pursue other dreams, but he did help out with guitar duties on tour dates in 2007. Will he ever revisit the possibility of contributing to future Threat Signal releases?

I really hope we can come together again one day and record something. Maybe the original 3 members who started this band could come together and track an EP or something, that will be really fun.  But as of now, nothing is in the works… I do have that idea floating around in my head though!

Thank you for your time, Jon. Is there anything else you’d like to say to our readers and your fans out there?

Just a huge THANK YOU for the interview and spreading the word about Threat Signal. Also, many big thanks to all the fans who stuck by us over the years and to the new ones as well.  Spread the word about us, because we hope to continue doing this as long as we can! We’ll see you very soon.

Cheers!

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Oh man, well I’ve lived here in Missouri my whole life. I think I first got into metal when I heard the Mortal Kombat soundtrack when I was in 4th grade. It had songs from Type O Negative, Napalm Death and Fear Factory on it. When I heard the vocals on the Napalm Death track (“Twist the Knife (Slowly)”) I was just into metal from that point on.

So at what point did you decide you actually wanted to create this form of music?

Oh I think I was about 18 or 19. Old Ways was actually my first recording, even though it was just released a couple of years ago. I’m actually 26 now so you can see. There was a significant delay in actually getting these albums released from when they were actually recorded, that’s why I have so many releases.

That’s actually a great segue! Lets talk about that, you’ve got to be one of the most prolific musicians out there. 5 CDs this year alone and 13 total since 2006… that’s just crazy! What’s the cause of this production? Do you have a vast back catalog of written music or are you continually writing?

A little of both. I’ve got a large back log of material and obviously since I’ve been recording since I was 18 without releasing it the back log is pretty big. I also write a lot. I have a part time job, so I have a lot of time to write and I’d go crazy otherwise.

Of your 13 CDs, it’s split between the abrasive black metal and more ambient, electronic atmospheric stuff that’s completely different. What’s your logic for releasing them under the same moniker? Have you given any thought to releasing the atmospheric stuff under a different name?

I guess I look at it like Perez, a composer who would compose some orchestral work but he would also compose a solo piece.  It’s all the same personality coming through in the music. The only changes would only really be idiomatic or stylistic — it’s still the same mind creating it. It’s just different ways to express the same musical personality. Unless I had a really specific purpose for a project, I can’t see releasing anything under another name.

So what exactly does Jute Gyte mean?

Let me think about this for a second [pause] It really doesn’t mean anything. With electronic music and metal, there are all these bizarre , unusual titles and names, and I think if I had chosen something more black metal, I would have been more limited in my style. I kind of made it up. It leaves me very free to pursue any sound I want without being limited.

You also run and own the label Jute Gyte CDs are released on, Jeshimoth Entertainment, right?

Yes, me and a friend of mine run Jeshimoth… very ineptly I might add. It’s m0stly for Jute Gyte. There are a couple of other bizarre things that my friend does.

Tell me a little more about your influences. Obviously being a one man black metal act there’s going to be some Leviathan and Xasthur references, right?

I’ve heard a little of Leviathan and Xasthur. But the  black metal I listen to or mean the most to me are the first two Burzum albums, the first Havohej, Judas Iscariot, Inquisition… stuff like that. I don’t really know a whole lot about the USBM scene outside of Xasthur and Leviathan. I’ve seen some reference to Krallice in some reviews but I’ve never really listened to them.

I don’t really hear Krallice in your music, I think you are much harsher. But on each album, you seem to shift a little in style and sound. Old Ways was super harsh and abrasive, Verstiegenheit was a more organic, Ulver-sounding record and on the new one, Impermanance, you seem to inject a little groove and dare I say actual, simple riffs into the the mix of all the above. And that’s not even including all your atmospheric electronic stuff like Young Eagle.

Well, the thing with Old Ways, I think it’s an interesting sound, but I think it limits what you can write. You can lose clarity so quickly within all the layers of noise and distortion. I felt if I continued with that sound I’d be backed into a creative corner. With Young Eagle,  it sounds really buried. It’s not my intention to change sound for every album,  I’m  just trying to find the ideal expression of the kind of black metal I like. I don’t try to innovate or change or try to innovate for the sake of innovation. I just try to make music I like.

When can we expect another album? Later on tonight? Have you released an album while you were sitting here? 

[laughing] Oh probably not a black metal CD until next year, though I may try and release something electronic by the end of the year.

I assume you do everything in-house and DIY-style. including the recording. A basement I imagine?

Right, it’s all in-house. Though I don’t have a basement, it’s just a dedicated room/space with instruments, computer and mic set up

I’ve always been curious about the process of songwriting for a one man band. Especially when it comes down to these 11 minute type songs. Is it a riff, then everything built around that? Or a beat or lyrical theme and the riffs built around that?

A lot of it happens after recording. I’ll simply record several riffs. Then it all gets overdubbed and arranged in the studio with a structure lines and software. Coming from electronic music, I like being able to move things around and play with the music after it’s recorded. I never really have a set structure fully developed when I’m recording. It all gets put back together afterwards.

What about the lyrics? Do they come before or after the music? A lot like your music, they seem all over the place.

Lyrics are the hardest part of the process for me. They take forever to write. I’ll have some written before I record and some after. Its odd, I really don’t care a whole lot about the lyrics in other peoples’ music. I really don’t read them. But in my own music, I feel like I should put some effort into them and make them high quality. I try to write lyrics that don’t hide behind typical black metal tropes and standards. With Impermanence, I was really trying to deal with issues like mortality… death of loved ones. Just trying to come into terms with unpleasant things in life.

So it sounds like the music and lyrics are certainly a bit of a release for you?

Yup. They are a headache to write, but when I’m performing them, they are definitely a release.

So I image that makes for some awkward moment with roommates, neighbors and such?

[laughs] Ha! Actually, when I was recording vocals earlier this year, a postal worker came by and heard me recording and I guess thought I was being murdered or something, because the police showed up at my door. I had to show them the mic and instruments to convince them there was nothing going on.

So, I’m going to ask the questions I’ve been dying to ask since I got your first CD for review: Why the heck do you puts your CDs in those DVD cases instead on regular CD cases? Those things are a pain to store in normal CD racks and shelves. Are DVD cases cheaper or something? 

[laughs] Well, I would be very happy if I could dispense with cases and just release things digitally. I hate messing with proof copies and packaging. Honestly, I like having a little more room for the artwork as some of them wrap around the DVD case. And actually the DVD cases are more expensive, even though it’s marginal. It was definitely an aesthetic decision I made.

Do you have any ambitions of spreading your creative and musical wings into another genre, say a doom side project or something?

I have some more doomy stuff recorded, and little more noise/electronic stuff. It will still all be all under the Jute Gyte moniker if I do release it.

So, like everyone in the scene now, I assume you’ve heard the new Liturgy record as well as the now infamous manifest that Hunter Hunt Hendrix did. Any thoughts?

The music itself — I can take it or leave it. It doesn’t do much more me, what little I’ve heard of it. I actually don’t listen to much black metal.

Why is that? As black metal musician wouldn’t you want to expose yourself to the style more? Whether to compare yourself or at least stay on on current trends?

Well, I try to not just limit my self to black metal. I like Deathspell Omega, but I like lots of other music, especially bands like Grief. As far as black metal, I keep coming back to older Burzum. I like Forgotten Woods I guess. I actually like a lot of old school, simple death metal. I love Bolt Thrower, Asphyx, Jungle Rot… that kind of stuff. I even like some of the brutal pig squeal death metal like Cephalotripsy.

That’s surprising, considering the music you play. Can we expect a slam death metal record from Jute Gyte?

I can’t do the death metal vocals! On the new record I have a couple of songs with death metal vocals, but I’m just not very good at it. I wish I could growl like Karl Willets, I love that authoritative deep growl. I loved Barney Greenway’s vocals on Napalms Death‘s stuff Fear Emptiness Despair. Oh, and I like Martin Van Drunen a lot too.

How in the heck are you not signed to a label like Moribund? They seem to be a perfect fit. Are you not really trying to be on a label?

I guess I’m not really trying, in today’s day and age, it’s not really necessary to be on a label. Especially with music going in a much more digital direction. I’m happy with  where I’m at now.

 http://jutegyte.bandcamp.com/

Hey there! I’ve been listening to the latest Hate Eternal album a lot, as well as the new Nader Sadek (Steve Tucker, Flo Mounier, Blasphemer…) which I think are both fuckin’ excellent death metal records. Really makes you just wanna lock yourself in a rehearsal room for about 10 years ’til you sound as good, hehe. In the car on the way to gigs and such, we’ve been blasting a lot of Dissection, Down, Vader and various stoner rock bands.

Does the name “As You Drown” make a reference to a famous murder of some sort from some country (e.g.: Like “The Black Dahlia Murder”) or was it just a name you guys thought would be cool to have?

The idea originally came from a song by one of my favourite bands, Gothenburg sludge lords Abandon. Their vocalist Johan, who was a good friend of mine, tragically passed away a couple of years ago, so I see it as a kind of homage to him. In the context of our music, I think the name conjures up the image of watching from a hill as the world drowns in its own filth and misery, as described in our song “Driven by Hatred”.

Coming from a country famous for melodic death metal and groovy old school death metal (à la Entombed), it is pretty rare to find a death metal band such as yourselves who doesn’t play in the aforementioned styles. I am curious to know, what shaped you guys into As You Drown when y’all were surrounded by so many bands that didn’t play in your preferred style now?

 I think there’s definitely some influence on our sound from those kind of bands as well, as you say it’s part of what we grew up with. However, I think all of us listened to a lot of American and Polish death metal during our formative years as well, which is probably what has been most instrumental in shaping our sound.

How did it feel to be able to support the legendary Polish death metal titans Vader on a tour last year? Who do you all hope to be able to tour with next?

 Fuckin’ amazing! I’ve been a huge fan of Vader since I was 15 years old and stumbled upon the “Litany” album for the first time, so it was kind of a childhood dream come true for me. We had some really great gigs on that tour, and both the Vader guys and their crew were truly awesome and down to earth people, so it was a truly fantastic experience all around.

Do correct me if I am wrong, but your music actually sounds like Behemoth with deathcore influences. Was this a direction you guys were aiming for right from the start or did it just happen naturally? 

Behemoth is definitely a big influence on us, as well as other Polish greats like Decapitated and the aforementioned Vader. I don’t think we’ve been all that influenced by deathcore, since the band was started back in 2003, before ‘deathcore’ was even a thing. However, we probably share a lot of influences with that kind of bands – stuff like Cannibal Corpse, Meshuggah, Suffocation and so on.

Which brings me to a few other details I noticed: 2009’s Reflection had an artwork reminiscent of Whitechapel’s own dark and gritty, almost-as-if-photographed album covers, while 2011’s Rat King features a cartoonish and morbid piece of artwork reminiscent of many designs found on deathcore shirts. Oh, throw in the spiky band logo as well. Were these elements consciously incorporated into the overall visual appeal of the band as, perhaps, displaying deathcore influences?

 I actually think the artwork for the new album looks a lot more old school than the last one. The cover was made by Mark Riddick who’s made gruesome and horrific art for tons of death metal bands, both in the underground and for more high-profile bands like The Black Dahlia Murder. I think it looks a bit older, more refined and a helluva lot more evil than our first album. Additional artwork was made by Sven de Caluwé of the mighty Aborted, and he did a great job of conveying the dark and intense feeling of the album in his images as well.

Many members of the metal press have reported that Rat King has a lyrical theme that deals with “the medieval German folk phenomena of rat kings, which were associated with plagues that devastated the European continent.” Is it just an interesting topic for you all to sing about or is there a greater socio-political message behind it?

It’s not really a concept album with a coherent story running through it, or anything resembling that. Rat kings were supposedly these huge groups of rats that had become knotted together by their tails, and were said to warn of oncoming disease, death and destruction. The title is meant as a metaphor for the overarching theme of the lyrics, which deal with the concept of impending doom in a number of different shapes and forms. There’s definitely a socio-political element to many of these lyrics, I think the feeling of things falling apart and turning to shit is stronger in both Europe and the US than it has been for a long time. For instance, the words for the song “Rabid Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing” can be seen as the rage of the 99% [of the world], bellowing out their disgust against the unscrupulous elite that control almost all of our planet’s resources. “You Should Be Paranoid” is about the ways that the puppet masters are trying to control us through various forms of surveillance, caging us in what Michel Focault called the “trap of visibility”. There are also lyrics that deal with the ‘impending doom’-theme on a more personal level, through topics like drug abuse and the inevitability of death.

Have you all grown in any (musical or lyrical) way from Reflection to Rat King?

Most definitely. Musically, I think it sounds a lot darker and has more of that majestically epic feeling that bands like Morbid Angel, Behemoth, Nile, Hate Eternal and Immolation do so well. It’s also a bit more varied and dynamic both in rhythm and melody and the performances from every member are stronger and more nuanced as well. As for the lyrics, I’m about a hundred times more satisfied with them this time around than I was with the ones for ‘Reflection‘. I was kind of new in the band when I wrote the stuff for our debut and a lot of the lyrics are old ones that I just edited a bit. This time I got to write everything from scratch and theirs is more of a unifying theme that ties the lyrics of the album together. Also, they are just a lot darker, vicious and more brutally honest on this one.

What can we expect from the next record?

I think we are gonna go for an even darker, more twisted and evil sound on the next one, without losing any of our intensity and aggression. There may be a bit more of a black metal influence to it. The main thing we are discussing right now is making everything a lot more dynamic though, and trying to really find our own sound which is uniquely ours. In a way ‘Reflection‘ was kind of a test run, a collection of the best songs we had written thus far. ‘Rat King‘ feels like our first real album in a lot of ways, since it’s the first one that this line-up got to create from scratch, a statement of where we are today. Now that we have finished that one, it feels like the time has come to really seek out our own identity and forge a sound that is our very own.

Here’s the ubiquitous question! Who are your greatest sources of inspiration and influences?

Anyone that (in the words of Bill Hicks) plays from their fucking heart, really. I’d say the main influences on the music are American and Polish death metal bands though. Names like Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Hate Eternal, Decapitated, Behemoth, Vader and such come to mind. A lot of other types of metal seep in as well though – Meshuggah, Pantera, Gojira, At The Gates and Slayer are some examples. For me, vocal-wise, I’m inspired by anyone that sounds genuinely aggressive and has a unique voice. David Vincent, Brett Hoffman, George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fischer, Johan Carlzon, Scott Kelly, Piotr Wiwczarek, Frank Mullen and Tom Waits are some of my faves.

Any non-musical activities you guys spend a lot of time on as well?

Well, working shitty jobs mostly. You don’t exactly get rich from playing death metal. Other than that I guess it’s the usual: Reading, watching movies, playing video games, kissing goats, attending ritual sacrifices and so on.

Here’s a random question. Do you guys bring along Ikea meatballs together with its inseparable brown sauce on visits to countries which serve up food that doesn’t look very edible?

 Eh, nope. Sometimes we bring goat’s blood. Most countries we visit have pretty decent food though, and we’re not too picky. Thanks for the interview!

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http://www.last.fm/music/As+You+Drown

Michael Romeo: Oh yeah, it’s all good.

How did your last American and European tours go over?

With these tours, we wanted to do a lot of the Paradise Lost material and, you know, I mean, we tried to pull out a couple older songs that we had, and, you know, get a little mix.  We didn’t want to do too many new songs just because no one [had] heard the material, but I think we tried to, we rehearsed like four songs we tried to get into the set, and you know, we would play maybe two on a certain night and then maybe a different two.  We kind of mixed it up a little.  You know, on the new record, there’s some longer songs, and we do some more complex songs, but then there’s a lot of just, like, you know, straight and to-the-point kind of songs, you know?  A lot of shorter songs, it’s just like with a good riff and a good hook and, you know, that kind of thing.

So we pretty much gravitated to doing those, because we figured, you know, at first listen, they’re probably pretty easy to grasp.  We didn’t want to do anything too crazy, and when we started the tour in Europe, you know, we tried a couple, and it seemed that the songs “End of Innocence” and “Dehumanized” were the ones that always went over, you know, really good.  And I was probably the one guy who was like, you know, ‘Aww man, I hope this goes over, it’s gonna be so different just playing these songs cold when no one’s heard the album.’  And you know, I was a little concerned about it, but the first couple nights, man, you know, we’re playing and the reaction was really good.  The response was really good.  And then with YouTube and everything else, the next couple shows, you know, people are singing words and know the lyrics, and they know what part’s coming up, so yeah, that was great to see.  I think with the songs we picked, it worked out well.  And then once the record [was] out, the fans were more familiar with the material and we could bust out some of the different songs on the record. It was definitely cool trying to get some of these new songs in there and see how they went over.

I’m glad to hear that; I figured that would probably be the case.  So let’s discuss Iconoclast, which came out in June.  While all Symphony X albums are expertly composed in my opinion, you guys have gone above and beyond this time in creating probably I would say the best album of your career compositionally and musically.  All the classic Symphony X elements are still there, but this one’s a little more…

Modern.

Yes, exactly.  It’s a little more modern.  It’s not a continuation of Paradise Lost; it’s a progression from it, but it’s a little more direct than some of your earlier stuff.

You know, I totally agree.  I totally agree.  It’s like, yeah, everything that you said, that’s definitely, I think with the last couple records, me being a guitar player, I think a lot more of the stuff I grew up with is kind of coming out; you know, kind of getting back to my roots.  I mean, I grew up with Sabbath and Priest and Maiden, and you know, all the classic metal stuff, so I think around the time of The Odyssey now, it’s just kind of getting back to that stuff and letting that come out more in the music.  So I think, especially Paradise Lost too, it’s definitely way more guitar driven, and it’s a little heavier, a little more aggressive, and the new album, same thing.  It’s like you said, it has elements of everything, you know.  There is a lot of the heavier stuff, and you know, there’s some progressive elements and some symphonic elements, but with this one, it was really about the songs. You know, everybody knows we can play, yeah, we can do this, we can do that, but you know, this is now at the point where its’ like, you know, we’ll put the track up and we’ll demo it, we’ll listen back, and it’s like, you know, does this song kick ass?  Is it keeping our interest?  You know, I mean, is it doing something?  And that’s where we’re at now, I think, it’s just trying to have a good variety of songs, and each song, you know, really getting in there and tweaking it and keeping it interesting.  And also with this record, too, you know, every record we try to do something a little different or try to find some underlying theme or something, and usually it starts with the music.

With The Odyssey, I remember us talking about maybe getting back to more guitar-driven kind of riffs but still have that epic thing, you know, or these orchestral things, and so, like The Odyssey is very epic and that kind of thing.  And then Paradise Lost, just by working with the Milton poem, you know, getting that heaven and hell, that ‘universe is evil’ [theme], the music is a little darker, the riffs were a little more dark and any kind of orchestral elements were a little more ominous, you know, the male choirs and things.  So I mean, I think each album has its own kind of personality.  And with this one, we decided to with this more man versus machine thing, or a technology kind of idea, and it kind of started with the music.  A lot of the early material was similar to Paradise Lost or The Odyssey, you know, the big riffs and some big choruses.  But it kind of came about, I think I had maybe four songs pretty much written early on, and you know, it was kind of typical of maybe Paradise Lost kind of sound, and I was just hanging out in my studio one day and listening to a bunch of different stuff, just kind of cleaning up or whatever the hell I was doing, and I kind of noticed some cool things in some soundtrack music I kind of was listening to.  And I think it was from the movie 300 and The Matrix too.  And especially with the 300, man, some electric guitars in there, it’s pretty gritty, man, it’s pretty mean.  And there is a lot of this modern kind of synth textures and these very distorted percussion elements and stuff, and that kind of got the wheels turning.  I started to think, yeah, we could do may be more of a mechanical kind of an idea.  So the next day, I came up with some of these original song ideas and just tried experimenting with some different textures and different things, you know, some maybe grittier guitar layering or some kind of really mechanical synth playing underneath the music.  And then it started to come, everything started to flow from there.  I thought it was pretty cool.  It was like, yeah, it sounds us, but there’s definitely more of a fresh, cool element, you know?

And that’s pretty much how this whole album all came into play.  And then from there, it was  just like, okay, let’s go with this, let’s do it.

I was going to ask you how difficult it was to work that mechanized sound into the music, but obviously it just came naturally to you.

Yeah, and I mean, it’s subtle too.  You know, I don’t want to say industrial or throw out any kind of terms, because it’s not really that; it’s still us.  It’s still Symphony X, but we used maybe subtle little textures and the whole vibe of the record has that thing and it’s something we never really did before, so we were all pretty excited too.  We could have some fun with this, you know, we could really do something different.  And just, you know, the songs progressed as we were writing and recording; we were always adding things to the music and just trying to build this record.  It was definitely a lot of fun, definitely cool.  And I think, yeah, this is what I think of the record, without question: I think every song, you know, usually on past records there’s a song or two that’s like, ‘yeah, that’s not my favorite,’ but with this record, I mean, just by the fact that we do it at my studio so I’m there 24-7 for a year, listening to this stuff, I found myself not really getting sick of it.  Every song, it was like to me, wow, that’s solid.  These songs are freaking solid.  So yeah, we’re definitely happy with this one.

One thing that I noticed when I was listening to Iconoclast, and I’ve been a Symphony X fan for about 10 years now, it was pretty exciting to hear all these little nuances, little pieces from the past albums, which is always cool for the fans to hear.  You guys have done this in the past to some extent, but it’s incredible, especially with this album, to see how much history you’ve woven into the songs, yet every song is still original.

That’s totally a cool observation, because there is some parts that maybe are reminiscent of, maybe a section from “The Accolade” from the third record.  And in the past, we might have put that idea aside, or thought it’s a little bit too much like that, but this one, it was like, we can do it.  We can have some of these different elements from all the things we’ve done, but just by incorporating some of these different sounds and making it up to date, it still sounds new.  And I think the fans who kind of are familiar, they get it.  They’re like, ‘Oh wow, it’s kind of like this but it’s not.’  Yeah, that’s definitely something we noticed too.  I think that’s just kind of letting the music happen.  If it was a section that maybe sounded like something we’ve done earlier, not exactly a copy or anything like that, but maybe had a feel of certain things, it’s like, you know, whatever, it’s us.  Let this happen and we’ll just make it cool.  We’ll make this record.

So let me ask you this.  Was the album in any way inspired by “Church of the Machine” from Twilight in Olympus?

Not really, but that was an idea for maybe the record title.  That definitely came up.  As soon as we started talking, as soon as this whole machine kind of thing came up, yeah, I mean, we were like, ‘Oh yeah, Church of the Machine, maybe that we could be the record, or maybe we could do part two’ or something like that.  But we’re like, ahh, let’s just keep it all new.  Let’s just let it be its own thing.  But yes, it’s funny that you said that, because that was out there.  That was definitely discussed a little bit.

The first time I looked through the song lyrics and I saw “Bastards of the Machine,” I wondered if that was connected.  I had to ask.

Yeah, like I said, we looked at “Church of the Machine” and thought maybe we could do that or a part two or something, but just by the nature of the whole machine thing, it’s out there, but this album is its own thing.

That’s cool.  You have “The Accolade,” which was from The Divine Wings of Tragedy, and then on The Odyssey you had “The Accolade II,” and then on this one, you’ve got “When All is Lost,” which has got some of the same elements.  Is that meant to be part of a series or just its own entity?

I think “When All is Lost,” I mean, we had so much heavy material for this record that we thought just to balance it out a little bit, to kind of have a song that was along the lines of “The Accolade,” or something a little bit more piano against the guitar, maybe a little bit more proggy, but still trying to get a really big chorus and a very full kind of sound and incorporating a little bit of some of these things we’re talking about with the production.  But yeah, I think all the records kind of always have that one or two songs that are kind of like that, and I think it kind of breaks the album up.  It kind of gives the album a little more direction.  You try to break it up and have a  song like that.

Going back to the, I hesitate to use the word theme, but the theme of Iconoclast, what are your feelings about this digital age that we’re living in?  How does that affect Symphony X and your processes, yourself as a musician?

Well, when we kind of started talking about doing this whole machine thing, man versus machine, it all started with the music.  So I think really, most of the ideas start from there.  I think doing the writing, for me, it’s like once you kind of find that thing that you think you can work with, that gives you a little bit of inspiration, and you kind of have a goal and a direction.  That really is one of the most important parts.  And then the lyrics, of course, you do the best to work in the confines of that idea or theme, which is equal.  It’s more about what you can do with the music, and you know, just kind of getting inspired.  We weren’t really thinking too crazy about any kind of method or taking it too serious or anything, just more creative ideas, you know, what can we do lyrically?  Musically, yeah, once that was set and incorporating some of those textures and things, then that was a no-brainer, man.  It just came out.  And with the lyrics, it was like pretty much anything we can find that feels like technology or machine or man, there was just so much we could do that we thought would be cool.  The song “Iconoclast” is definitely maybe more of a sci-fi or futuristic man versus machine war or battle, you know, that kind of song.  “Children of a Faceless God” kind of looks at how we worship our devices, you know, how fast these kids can text now, and how everybody interacts socially through their machines, and just kind of making observations like that.  And I mean, we thought there was a lot of different avenues to take for that.  But for us, you were saying, you know, how does it affect us, I mean, for me, we couldn’t really do a record like this one without some of this technology.  I mean, all these orchestral sections and texturing, it’s all software, and all the recording stuff nowadays too, it’s all computer-based.  It’s definitely an important part of the music production process, so yeah, it’s like anything.  There’s good things and bad things, you know?  The internet and piracy, it’s like, yeah, it’s definitely a bad thing, but at the same time, you know, being able to be creative with almost no limitations is, for me, it’s great.  And some of the software out there now is just so friggin’ state of the art.  I’m always trying to keep my studio up to date with all the latest gadgets and software.  I always try to make the orchestra sound as realistic as possible and the choirs, and all these textures, it’s kind of cool and modern.  You know, there’s just so much to do.  There are so many different things, it’s definitely a lot of fun.  And that’s a positive with this whole technology thing.  Like I said, there’s always good and bad things about everything.

Yep, it’s a blessing and it’s a curse sometimes.

Yep.

I’m going to shift gears a little bit and ask you some non-important, non-album questions.  What are you listening to these days?

Oh, man, so much.  Usually when I’m just kind of at home hanging out, I’ll listen to random stuff.  I have so much, so many different kinds of music in my player, but it’s all this stuff I grew up with: the old Sabbath, and Priest and old Ozzy, Randy Rhoads, god, so much shit.  Pantera, a lot of classical music.  I listen to so many different things.  I like a lot of film music, you know.  Jeez, there’s just so much.  So I can’t even narrow it down, because I just have so much stuff and I love it all.  But usually I go back the stuff that man, that’s close to me.  The stuff that got me, like guitar playing, the old classic metal stuff.

Right on.  And here’s my last and completely silly question: how difficult is it to be in a band with two other guys who have the same first name?

[Laughs]  It actually is easy, because we have little waves of, you know, I’ve always just been Mike.  And then Pinnella has always been P, just P.  And LePond is just LePond, so it’s easy, you know?

[Laughs]  That works.

Everybody, they just know.  Everybody around us knows the deal so there’s never any confusion.  It’s like, ‘Hey, what’s up P?’  So we know they’re talking to Pinnella.  So that’s just the way that it is; it’s never an issue.

I always wondered that.  Like I said, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.  I got to see you guys once, back in 2003, you played in Omaha at this weird place called the Ranch Bowl.

Oh god, I don’t remember.

Well, it was a very, very odd place.  They had a bowling alley in the same venue.

Oh, wait, were we with Devin Townsend?

Yeah, with Devin Townsend.

I do remember that place.  Yeah, that was kind of unusual [laughs].

It was unusual, but I’m glad I got to see you guys and meet you all afterwards.  Hopefully I can meet up with you again sometime.

Oh definitely.  We’ll be back in the States.  We’ll be around.  Hopefully we’ll see you.

Right on.  Thanks again.

Thank you.

www.symphonyx.com
www.nuclearblast.de

* * *

It looks as though you’ve beaten the cancer that at one time was said to be incurable. Can you recap the last few years of your battle with it?

I was diagnosed three years ago almost to the day. I knew something was wrong in October of 2008 because I’m on Lipitor for high cholesterol and went in for my routine blood test since it can be bad for your liver. You’re supposed to get these tests every three months. Ironically, because I hate needles I hadn’t been in for one in like a year and my doctor said if I don’t go in for one he’s not going to fill my prescriptions any more [laughs]. So I went in and he said my cholesterol was fine and my liver was ok, but I had elevated proteins, so he sent me to a hematologist, I got a bone marrow biopsy and was told I had blood cancer and it was not curable and that most people live three to five years with it. It was a pretty rude awakening.

My god. This was right around the time that you were recording Snowfall on Judgment Day, wasn’t it?

I had finished writing Snowfall on Judgment Day, but had not finished recording it. Not to get him off his game, but I had to tell [Dream Theater’s] James LaBrie [who did guest vocals on one track] about it. Right around the beginning of November that year we had finished vocals, which was the last thing to be recorded and then we were ready to mix. But obviously, I was pretty occupied with other things [laughs]. I didn’t have a chance to fly over to Europe to do that as I normally would have liked to because I went into therapy in February of 2009 and was stuck in Arkansas for about eight months.

At some point you found the one doctor that didn’t buy into the incurable part.

Well, I had an open-minded guy who diagnosed me out here in Beverly Hills and I obviously don’t want to die and I’ll go wherever I have to go to get the best treatment. He said there are a number of different opinions of what to do, but here’s what I think you can do, and there are a number of different opinions on what to do that range from the Mayo Clinic that believes the same thing and City of Hope, which is the big cancer center out here, that sort of believes the same thing too, and there is another guy out here that believes you should do less than that. And then there is this crazy guy out in Arkansas and I don’t know what he’s doing, but he believes you should have more. So I went and talked to the top six specialists in the country, including this crazy guy in Arkansas. Most people say to use these drugs until they no longer work, and then use these stronger drugs until they no longer, and then you use these even stronger drugs until they no longer work, and when you run out of time you die. The guy in Arkansas says let’s take everything we know that works, including a bunch of stuff we don’t use any more because we think it’s barbaric, and use 10 times the amount and use it all at once. He based that on research on pediatric leukemia, which in many cases has been cured in 95 percent of the cases because of that approach, which is called total therapy, as opposed to sequential therapy. So he for the last 20 years has been doing this and has achieved such impressive success to the point now where two-thirds of diagnosed patients will be cured if they go through his regimen. That sounded a whole lot better than dying in three to five years. I figured if I went the other route that I’d be reliant on science to come up with new medicines anyway, so now the only difference is that if I relapse I will have used everything that works and I’ll still be reliant on science to come up with something else. That’s sort of where I am and two years into a three-year plan of maintenance, which has to do with being in remission and you stay on these pretty powerful drugs for the three years. So hopefully a year from now we’ll be done with everything and be cured. The odds at this point are about 90 percent in my favor.

I want to say you’ve beaten it and even if we can’t say that definitely, it seems you’re pretty damn close to it.

I still have to respect the disease so I don’t claim victory yet, but I think that it’s very likely I’m on the path to beating it, yes.

I’m really happy to hear that. I know that the liner note explanation you dedicate the album to Dr. Barlogie and state that the lyrics really aren’t about him or your personal experience with cancer per se, but rather about “feelings of confronting mortality, coming to terms with death” and taking the best from life even in the face of the struggle, etc. But some of these songs must have direct links to your experiences, based on some of the most powerful lines you’ve ever written.

Well, of course the lyrics are influenced by it, but I didn’t just want it to be a biographical statement about my particular diagnoses or my particular treatment because, for one thing, that’s self indulgent. Secondly, our lyrics work because we talk about things common to all of us as people: our relationships with ourselves and with each other and with the world around us and part of that is understanding our relationship with our mortality. Sooner or later, whether it’s because of a friend’s diagnosis or death or a family member’s death or your own diagnosis, everybody is going to have to come to terms with it. So these are just our meditations on that and it’s hard of course not to be influenced by the particulars of my situation, but other than a couple of references I think the themes are broad.

In other words, one can’t read that statement with too literal an interpretation. You hate to see anyone suffer through an experience like yours, but for the kind of band Redemption happens to be, there couldn’t be a better musical vehicle through which to convey those kinds of emotions. The conveyance of emotion through heavy, progressive music is in many ways what Redemption is all about.

Thank you first of all. And that’s true. I wish I had other subject material [laughs], but I sort of had a feeling that this would make good stuff for Redemption’s music and hopefully it does.

More than melodies or choruses, there are so many memorable lines in the lyrics, such as “You tried to kill me, but I’ve killed you” from “Stronger than Death,” which Ray Alder belts out with a lot of emotion.

The sad part of that is that I wanted Ronnie James Dio to be a guest vocalist to sing that one line. That was before he was even diagnosed with cancer. Mostly it was because I figured that I had already met most of my heroes and he was the only one left that I would want to do something with. And I became friends with Claudia Butler who is Geezer’s wife and who manages the band. I was introduced by a mutual friend who knew I had cancer and they had contacted me when they found out that Ronnie had been diagnosed and I had sort of counseled them a bit on what to expect. It of course ended up being a lot more serious than I even realized.

Many people in metal tend to be of a contrarian sort, often finding great motivation in doing something because they’re told it’s something that’s just not done or just plain being told it can’t be done. I found the lyrics in “Departure of the Pale Horse” to be inspiring. The song speaks loudly about facing down a challenge and defeating it, like this final sneer at death after the defeat. “Where’s your victory? Where’s your sting?”

That was the intent, yeah. It just sort of came to be me out of nowhere actually as I was going through singing a melody line and thought it would be a good thing to throw in there. It can be dark and brooding music, but we always have an undercurrent of positivity. Particularly with this record, if you listen to it from start to finish it takes you to a pretty bleak place [laughs]. So I wanted something that could pull a person out of it too.

What really hit me about this album at first, as soon as that first riff from “Path of the Whirlwind” launches, is the heaviness of the guitars, which is nothing new for Neil Kernon of course. There is nothing soft about that tone; this is a tough, guitar-forward album.

I had wanted a very heavy guitar tone for some time and I’ve worked – god love ‘em – with some producers that prefer something that is more like 70s hard rock. I mean I love the records we did with Tommy [Newton] and he is a friend and a great guy, but he has always sort of loved the stuff that is rooted in 70s hard rock, but I wanted 80s metal. I had spoken with Neil Kernon in the past about working on something. I thought he could get us the heavy tone that I’ve wanted because I’ve listened a lot to those Nevermore records and they’re very beefy. He delivered on that front. It’s a very guitar-forward mix.

Actually, that first riff in “Path of the Whirlwind” comes off like something you’d hear on a progressive death metal album. I was quite shocked.

Yeah, people have said that. That’s one of two things that happened with the album. I took my guitars with me to Arkansas because I thought I’d have nothing to do there for eight months, so I’m finally going to become proficient with my instrument [laughs]. But I was so exhausted that I don’t think I picked it up more than twice; one time was to write that one riff and the other time was to write the opening guitar melody for the song “Focus.”

There is a serious level of guitar soloing on with this album too.

Bernie [Versailles] tears it up on this record. That’s another thing about past records; not the loudest guitar solos in the world shall we say. So I wanted to make sure they were heard on this record and in order to make it worthwhile I wanted to make sure we really upped our game. Bernie in particular does a phenomenal job on this record.

But both of you are soloing.

Yes. I usually say without any disrespect intended to Dave that if it sounds like Mustaine it’s me and if it sounds like Marty Friedman it’s Bernie [laughs]. The stuff that really, really rips it up is usually Bernie.

The heaviness really comes through in a big way, yet a song like “Let it Rain” is one the most touching, emotive songs we’ve heard from Redemption.

It almost didn’t make the record actually because Neil thought some stuff needed to be changed and it involved a change in the melody line, so it was difficult to get Ray to come back to do that after he had finished all the rest of the record because he was swamped with other stuff. I thought it was so ballad-y compared to the rest of the record that it might be jarring and stick out. But judging by people’s reaction to it I’m glad we went the extra mile and finished it.

There is no question it’s different, but it doesn’t negative impact the flow.

The rest of the record is so aggressive and in your face that you sort of need that one to breathe.

[Bassist] Sean Andrews and [drummer] Chris Quirarte are doing so much in the way of coloration and accent. The playing is very intricate.

It’s busy music, but that’s one of the things that Neil brings to stuff like this. He gets a separation of instruments that very few producers get because of the amount of time he spends when he mixes. It’s very guitar-forward, but you get a bass pop that is much more prominent than on any of the other records and hear what is going on with the drums, especially the cymbal work, which as you know is very intricate.

You had a guest keyboardist on one song as well.

Gary Wehrkamp of Shadow Gallery is a friend of a friend and I’ve always liked Shadow Gallery. He was kind enough to get a hold of me when I was sick and offered help if there was anything he could ever do. So I asked him to play a little bit on this record.

I’m careful in saying this because I think Ray is a perfect fit for Redemption, but he has lost some range over the years.

Yes, but having said that he sings the highest note he’s every sung on a Redemption record. He’s not 22 years old anymore singing “Silent Cries” or “11^th Hour” [from Fates Warning], that’s for sure.

Yet looking back over the catalogue I can’t imagine anyone else singing this music and conveying the material the way that it needs to be conveyed.

Yeah I know. He’s the perfect fit.

“Noonday Devil” is one of the most aggressive songs you’ve ever done, if not the most aggressive.

It probably is. Not even just for us; I think it may be the most aggressive prog metal song I’ve heard that doesn’t have death vocals. We played that live when we were in Europe and it’s a fun one to play and the crowd reacts pretty well to it.

How were the European dates anyway?

We did two weeks in October just after the record was released. We headlined and Kingcrow from Italy supported us. The shows ranged from really well attended and awesome to not that well attended and awesome [laughs]. It’s sort of a function of the night of the week you play and the venues that you play, as well as the local promotion. We’re not as popular as Dream Theater, so we’re not going to draw 800 people every night. But we started spreading the word and demonstrated that we’re a live band and can pull this stuff off, and we had a great time.

Somehow Snowfall on Judgment Day passed me by and I never got to spend much time with the digital download when it came my way. There was no conscious reason for that happening; it just did.

We had a weird situation with that one. The label changed hands literally like the day before the album was released and I think promotion suffered a bit as a result. I wasn’t around to do much promotion because I was busy not dying [laughs]. But I think it’s a very strong record and it’s got two or three of the best songs we’ve ever done.

How do you characterize that album within the context of all five releases?

We’ve been following a progression really from The Fullness of Time on of making heavier and more aggressive music, while at the same time pushing stronger and stronger melody. I think with this new one we finally broke through with the guitar tone and I think it’s as heavy as we’re going to be able to push it because if we got any more aggressive we’d have to start going to death vocals. Snowfall on Judgment Day is not quite as heavy, although it’s got some very heavy stuff. After “Sapphire” [from The Fullness of Time] it’s got probably the best song I’ve ever written in “Black and White World.” It’s a great song. I don’t like to toot my own horn too much, but that’s a great song.

The Fullness of Time is one of my favorite prog metal albums – well, in any metal genre really – and it had such an enormous impact on me on so many levels. The Origins of Ruin was very good as well, but it was good for me to step away from my immersion in Redemption for a while because it allowed me to appreciate the band all over again with This Mortal Coil. I think it allowed me to look at this album a little more objectively as well. I mean “Sapphire” is a song that is as emotionally meaningful to me as anything I’ve ever heard. So musically maybe This Mortal Coil is a better work overall, but it is difficult to recreate the kind of magic that was present on The Fullness of Time. You just can’t plan an album like that. It just kind of happens.

You can’t plan it compositionally either. If I could I’d make every song like that. But sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle and you’ve got to be happy when you get it. “Sapphire” was like that and I think “Black and White World” was like that. I don’t get that sense from anything on the new record, although I think the new record is full of solid stuff. Maybe not at the lightning-in-a-bottle level, but I think “Dreams from the Pit” is a great song and I like “Departure of the Pale Horse” as well as far as epic stuff goes.

From front to back This Mortal Coil is a great album; no question about it. The ones that stand out as far hooks are concerned include “Let it Rain” certainly. “No Tickets to the Funeral” is one as well and comes with a cool lyrical play on words.

I actually came up with the concept of “No Tickets to the Funeral” before I got sick and it sort of held in place with some minor changes. It’s the notion that when a celebrity dies everybody piles on and talks about how tragic it is, but you’ve a 100,000 people dying a day that have led much harder lives than celebrities and your heart should bleed just as much for them as it does for Michael Jackson for god’s sake!

When it comes to bands for which I’ve got a lot of respect I tend to listen closely over the course career to see how they’ve changed structurally. Are they using the same patterns? Is the chorus always predictable? That kind of thing… You’re definitely not playing it too safe in that regard and you’ve done a nice job this time with the manner in which you incorporate vocal harmonies in several songs.

We’ve sort of been growing in that direction. There was a bit more of it on the last record too, but “Perfect” on this album has 11 vocal tracks; it’s got five-part harmony recorded twice in left and right channels and then there is a center vocal as well. So Ray worked overtime on that one.

Are you able to reproduce that live?

Hell no! [Laughs] Our keyboard player kind of bagged on us 10 days before we were supposed to go to Europe, so wound up playing to a backing track anyway and I kind of liked it. Once you got over the fear of having to play to a click and if you strayed from the click you’re screwed… It gives you more room on stage, one less mouth to feed, and you don’t have to worry about tempos being wrong. It would let us do something like “Perfect,” which even if all five of us sang perfectly – no pun intended – it would be very hard to pull off. We’re not a barber shop quartet up there.

This Mortal Coil also comes with a bonus disc of covers of songs that, as you write, one wouldn’t expect a prog metal better to cover. I’ve been playing the cover of Elton John’s “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” a lot lately. It’s just such a great song anyway and it lends itself so well to what Redemption does.

I completely agree. I had that idea to do it forever and then Dream Theater releases it in 1994 and I’m like “shit!” I had to wait a long time before I could come back to it. It was like ok it’s been 15 years and we’re not going to get compared to Dream Theater and generally speaking that hasn’t happened. I think our treatment is more of what fits us and is a little bit more aggressive than theirs. But I love that song. They did a great job on it and their arrangement is a little bit different, and it’s also live. So I think we had the opportunity to do something pretty fun with it.

How did the bonus disc idea arise?

I suggested it. First of all, we’ve always done covers. We did a Police cover that never got released, we did a Faith No More cover with The Fullness of Time, and we did the UFO and Tori Amos covers with The Origins of Ruin. We tried three or four of them for Snowfall on Judgment Day, but none of them sort of met hurdle. We tried a Genesis song and a song by this guy named Peter Murphy that was big in the 80s and none of them really worked out, so we didn’t do it. But downloading is so pernicious now and it’s impossible to sell anything. A lot of it is that people want free stuff, but some of it is the people that are really into a band and want the stuff the second it’s available instead of waiting six weeks for the release. So I knew it was going to leak and thought that we should do an advance copy without the bonus disc. That way we could make it something substantive with five or six or seven songs on there and it would encourage people that like us to wait until they can buy the full package.

Hell, I did exactly that even though I had the promotional tracks from the main disc.

Well thank you. I hope you found the bonus material to be worth it. The pictures from the photo shoot alone should have been worth it; I was dying laughing.

And Ray just wouldn’t participate in it, eh?

Nope [laughs]. Originally he was going to be sitting in a chair with his head in his hands holding up a sign that read “I’m too dignified to participate.” We were literally ready to do that and he just said “I can’t do this.” So he left and we decided to have a little fun at his expense anyway. I think we spent probably an hour getting the lighting set up, maybe 20 minutes doing the real photos, and then spent like an hour and a half doing the goofball ones [laughs].

Were all the song selections your idea?

Actually no. The Elton John one was and the Toto [“Hold the Line”] one was. Ray had always wanted to do the Journey song [“Edge of the Blade”] so we did it. At some point we were talking about other songs that might work and [Jefferson Starship’s] “Jane” came up and I said what if we do it with seven-strings instead of regular guitars and really make it brutally heavy. Then I realized that the cheesy bridge section is the exactly same chorus to “Over the Mountain,” so I put a little Ozzy in the middle of the song and then at the very end it’s the same song as “Fantasy” by Aldo Nova, so I put the little Aldo Nova guitar line in it. That was fun one to do. Then we had a couple of tracks from The Origins of Ruin sessions, like the Tori Amos song [“Precious Things”] that was released outside of the U.S. so we added that one and the UFO [“Love to Love”] song.

Who is singing on the Tori Amos song?

She’s a friend of mine from grade school that has gone on to do a lot of jazz and has an amazing voice. She’s also fiddled around with some rock projects and a bunch of different musical projects, so I thought she’d be good for this one. Plus I wasn’t going to make Ray sing about wearing a peach party dress [laughs].

What’s really amazing is that you’ve had the same lineup, aside from the Greg Hosharian [keyboards] stint, for the last four albums.

Yeah, and I think it’s important when bands hit their stride and actually have the opportunity to gel together as players that create something together, as opposed to just playing the parts. They’re good guys; they’re my friends. God knows they aren’t doing it for the money. We like the music and we like the people that we’re doing it with.

Five albums for Redemption, man; it’s hard to believe. Did you think it would end up this way?

Nah. If you told me I was going to be in a band with Ray Alder I would have thought you were nuts. Or that I was going to be touring the country with Dream Theater for six weeks. So it is certainly a lot bigger than I ever thought it would be.

What’s next for Redemption?

Well, we played in L.A. and did those European shows, but we’d like to get out a little more in the U.S. It’s going to be challenging a bit though because Ray is going to be working on some Fates Warning stuff. But I know we’re going to play ProgPower next and I’d like to do some dates around then, maybe around the east coast if we can. So we’ll see how it goes.

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It’s taken from the Death In June album of the same name. Kevin has used the theme of “pigs” in the past with Hope Conspiracy, as a reference to irreversible corruption and soullessness, and given the tone of the music we were writing, that particular name seemed fitting.

And while you’re it, what’s the story behind the four of you leaving your respective musical corners and coming together to form All Pigs Must Die? Was it a case of being able to express yourselves in ways that didn’t quite fit with what Bloodhorse, the Hope Conspiracy, and Converge could offer?

No, it didn’t have anything to do with feeling unable to express ourselves in our other bands or anything like that. We were all shitfaced at a holiday party and I’m not sure how it came up, but we decided the four of us should do a project together. There was no big plan, or reason other than “we’ve all played in bands with each other, but never this exact group of people, so let’s try that.” We figured we’d record an EP and leave it as a project. The idea of playing live was not even talked about. It was just a drunk idea at a party.

How did you approach the full-length compared to the debut EP, as far as the writing and recording was concerned?

There was no difference in writing for either record. Some of the material on the LP was written for the EP, but we were short on time in the studio so those songs were carried over. We sort of stumbled upon an effective writing process right off the bat, which is largely based on our geographical separation and limited time to play as a full band. We record demos at home, bring them to everyone else, demo it as a band and fine-tune it from there. We are all in the same room so infrequently that it eliminates any scenario where you’re standing around going “uhh what should go after that part?” It just helps keep the gears going.

Do you see the difference as a progression, assuming you even think in those terms?

I don’t think we plan on changing our writing process any time soon. But I definitely think we’re progressing as a band in terms of how we play off of each other and have a better sense of what the other guys are going to do with any ideas you bring them for songs.

Are there particular songs that you feel best define the All Pigs Must Die sound or perhaps ones you find most notable for whatever reason?

I’ve never thought about a specific song that absolutely defines our sound. I think “Hungry Wolf, Easy Prey” stands out to me because it was the first song we wrote for All Pigs Must Die, and I don’t think it sounds like a band trying to figure out what it is. “Third World Genocide,” “God Is War” and “Pulverization” are really fun to play and cover most of the bases we touch on musically.

As for the album title, God is War, it seems to be one that could work on multiple levels, none of which seem particularly flattering to what some would refer to as the man upstairs.

The title is an altered line from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. The meaning behind it is much less of a focus on religion than the artwork would lead one to believe; it’s more about human nature. The title is a reference to the apotheosis of violence by mankind, and how that violence fits under the umbrella of religion and becomes “just” to the masses.

That cover art is so fitting.

It’s not really a subtle cover.

Kurt Ballou seemed the perfect choice to record the album. What is it about his ability to make bands with a caustic, feral sound on stage actually come off that way in the studio?

I think he’s able to pull that off so effectively because he goes through that same process with his own band. He’s got a great ear and excellent taste and his recordings reflect that and have character to them. It seems like some records have the player taken out of them and it’s just surgical perfection everywhere. Kurt definitely pushes you to get the best take, but he’s not trying to get things to a robotic level. He knows us as players, he knows where we’re coming from and he knows what we’re looking for so he has been the obvious choice for us. We have a great working relationship with him that I don’t see ending any time soon.

How did the union of All Pigs Must Die and Southern Lord come about? Do you see the label as a good fit for you?

Greg got in touch with us I think after someone turned him onto the EP just to say he liked the band and thought it was cool we self-released a 12″. We kept in touch with him over the next few months while we were recording the full-length and things progressed from there. We’re very pleased with Southern Lord. It’s the first label I’ve personally dealt with that says “you can do whatever you want” and then actually lets us make the final call. They’re very supportive. It’s great.

You’ve mentioned Samhain as one of those bands that still rings your bell to this day and that was part of the overall inspiration for All Pigs Must Die. It’s one I don’t see often these days when bands talk of your influences.

There’s a simplicity to Samhain that I think struck a chord with all of us. Doing more with less. They’re one of the bands that we all look to for ideas on the most stripped down way to get from A to B. They were able to sound dark and ominous without being atonal and overly harsh.

What was it about Integrity that really did it for you?

One of the things that stands out to me about Integrity is that despite being so crushing and harsh, they still had hooks. Their songs got stuck in your head. If you dissect their songs it’s really simple stuff, yet it’s incredible effective. A lot of their material still holds up today.

What about Slayer, Discharge, and Bathory? These are all admitted influences.

Yeah, we steal liberally from all three of them. I think those three have influenced us each in separate ways, from song structures to playing style. Watching videos of Lombardo play and then watching Ben [Koller], there are so many similarities in how they play.

If there is one thing you want to come across to the listener when listening to All Pigs Must Die what is it and why?

Hopefully younger kids that hear us might come to the conclusion that you can be heavy using actual riffs and song structures, and that chugging an E chord at various rhythms synced up with the kick drum for an entire song actually sucks.

You’ve got one word that best describes All Pigs Must Die to someone that has never experienced the band. What word do you use?

I don’t know, I’m awful at describing music. “Aggressive” might be the most all-encompassing term if I had to choose one.

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I’m not really sure how much I can say about Stewart and his wife’s situation. So all I’ll say is that the complaints she suffers from are all long term, and she will never be 100 % well again. But I can also add that none of the ailments are terminal, so she still has many years left! Although Stewart’s wife can function more or less normally, she lives a pretty reclusive life, and she needs Stewart to be close by most of the time. So touring and recording are completely out of the question for Stewart.

Stewart isn’t so young anymore either and although he says he misses the band, I don’t think he really minds not being active in Svartsot anymore.  He still plays folk music with a group of friends, but it’s nothing they have any ambitions with, and this seems to suit Stewart much better. I can’t disqualify it completely, but I doubt very much Stewart will ever be back with us as a full member.

There’s been a considerable line-up shift from the first album to this third album. How hard is it to maintain the band’s sound with such a radical loss of original members?

Seeing as I wrote in total about 75-80 % of the material on Ravnenes Saga (both music and lyrics), and then wrote all music for Mulmets Viser and Maledictus Eris (with the exception of the melody in the intro track, “Staden…”), there has been a continuation of main composer. But at the same time, I also think that the band’s sound has changed radically. The line-up from Ravnenes… would certainly not have been able to record an album like Maledictus…, so there have been some major developments in the sound and style too. But now that the line-up has been more or less stable since 2009, and having used Mulmets… as a bridge from the older style of the first album towards the newer style, it was possible for us to record such a complex album.

As far as I am concerned, the line-up change was a pretty positive thing. We’ve had line-up rearrangements every now and again right since the start (although never on the same scale as in 2008), and it has always had a positive effect on the band. The new guys who joined in 2009 were almost exclusively fans, which helped a lot. They also wanted to push the band further, which I feel we have done to a greater extent than the old line-up could have done with the limitations we had.

Maledictus Eris is a concept album about the Black Death that decimated Europe in the 14th Century. What brought about, first, the idea of a concept album, and second, a concept album about the Plague?

We didn’t actually have any plans about doing a concept album when I started writing the material. Even the idea about doing an album about the Black Death was secondary. We just wanted to dissociate ourselves from the “Viking/pagan” tag that has been forced upon us by people who don’t really know what Svartsot is about. Although we have taken inspiration from the Viking age for some of our lyrics, we have taken more influence from later periods – even using folklore collected as late as the 18^th century. So originally we decided to write an album based in the extremely Christian medieval period so that it had absolutely nothing to do with Vikings.

It wasn’t until a small handful of tracks had been written and we started to think about writing lyrics that we started looking at exact themes. As the music was far more somber than the earlier albums, we needed a suitably serious theme. So we began research the Black Death, and found that there was so much subject matter in the theme that we could easily base the whole album around it. Originally it was just meant to be a collection of songs set in the period, but that changed later on, and the album became more of a proper concept album.

Obviously Svartsot means “black sickness’, so there’s obviously been an interest there from the beginning, right?

“Svartsot” is an old name for a jaundice related disease, whereby the malfunctioning liver can no longer filter the waste from the blood, and the skin ultimately turns black. A lot of people have presumed that Svartsot was another name for the plague, but it isn’t.

It only took a year for this album to come out after Mulmets Viser. How come the quick turnaround? Especially after the gap between the first and second album was three years and this effort is a concept album?

The 2½ year gap between Ravnenes… and Mulmets… was primarily due to the line-up changes in 2008/2009. We had already written a whole album’s worth of material before the four guys decided to quit the band. I then had to drop half of this material due to the old members’ participation in the writing process. But that was also fine by me, as I was not really interested in the direction the old line-up wanted the band to head in, and I also considered the material to be inferior. I resumed writing once the line-up was in place in February 2009, and we recorded Mulmets… already in October 2009. Seeing as half of the album was written in 7 months, it wasn’t the biggest problem to write an album in a year. I was also in a situation during 2010 where I could spend more time on writing. Added to that, James (Atkins the new bass player) took over writing of the lyrics, so I “only” needed to translate them (James is from Yorkshire in England, and hasn’t yet mastered the Danish language). The subject matter too was very inspiring for us, so it was actually comparatively easy to write the album – even though the material is much more serious than on the first two albums. My situation has now changed, and I no longer have the time that I had last year. So I’m counting on the next album taking longer to write.

How hard was it to write a concept album on a much darker subject matter, especially when considering your style of music is typically a more happy, bouncy and uplifting form of metal?

As mentioned earlier, the concept album side of it was first decided on in the later phases of writing, and for most of the time we spent writing, we just considered it to be a standard album. So that didn’t really have an effect on the writing process. Regarding the more serious side to the music, I guess I just wrote from a more personal perspective than I had previously. This was a trend that we started on with Mulmets…, resulting in that album being far more textured than Ravnenes…, which I consider to be a very one-dimensional album. I think this was due to the fact that there was more than one composer, and that the level of musicianship – especially on rhythm guitars and drums – was far lower than it is now. We didn’t concentrate so much on layering the music, and the whistles followed the guitars very closely. This was changed for Mulmets… which has more harmonies between the various lead instruments. Maledictus… has even more layering, harmonies and counterpoints, so it was in many respects a continuation of our development. I was also starting to get tired of the clichéd jauntiness that many folk metal bands decide to concentrate on. There is more to folk music than that, so why not include other aspects? The writing process ran pretty smoothly for the main part, and once I had started it was easy to continue. I did however go back and rework some of the songs, as I felt that they could have even more detail than they had in the original versions.

Has there ever been any interest in doing lyrics in English? Especially for this concept album?

I’ve kind of answered this question already – the lyrics were actually written in English to begin with! But as part of Svartsot’s basic concept is that the lyrics are in Danish, they were translated. We discussed whether to write the lyrics in English or Danish right back when we started the band. But seeing as the lyrics are primarily about Danish history and folklore, it would seem wrong to use English. I know that James would be overjoyed if we started to use English, but it would seem wrong for me. We have however included some Latin phrases in the lyrics this time, as they were fitting for some of the subject matter. This was the first time Svartsot has ever used another language to Danish, and it was limited.

Can you give me a quick rundown of the album’s storyline, especially my two favorite tracks “Farsoten kom”?  That sea shanty track really jumped out at me, and the somber “Kunsten at dø”. My Danish isn’t so good.

The intro “Staden…” (The Town…) sets the scene for the album. Two women can be heard talking about a ship arriving from England with cloth (the plague seems to have come to Denmark from either the UK or Norway, and the cloth trade seems to have been the major transmitter) whilst two men talk about the plague spreading in Norway. We enter a tavern, where the scene is set for the next song – “Gud giv det varer ved!” (May God Let This Continue!). This track is about the minor diseases people suffered from in the medieval age, and ends with a traveler entering the tavern. He is welcomed to join the crowd, and the track ends with a cough (one of the first symptoms of the plague).

“Dødedansen” (The Dance Of Death) is based on the dance macabre motif of the later medieval age, which was directly influenced by the Black Death. This track introduces the death side of the story. “Farsoten kom” (The Epidemic Came) discusses the various theories people had at the time about why the plague came and how it spread. “Holdt ned af en Tjørn” (Held Down By A Thorn Bush) is about a pious man who has contracted the disease, and he questions the church’s theory that god had sent the plague to punish mankind for its sins. He also describes the symptoms. “Den forgængelige Tro” (The Corruptible Faith) also questions the church’s theories that faith will cure people of the plague.

“Om jeg lever kveg” (If I Am Still Alive) describes the fraction of society that for some reason reacted to the Black Death by sinning as much as possible. Experts often liken this reaction to shell shock. “Kunsten at dø” (The Art Of Dying) is based on the book Ars Moriendi which describes how laymen can administer the last sacrament. Although written later, the book was based on a practice starting during the Black Death, as so many priests either died or ran away in hope of escaping the plague.

“Den nidske Gud” (The Treacherous God) is about a soldier returning home after fighting in North Germany in 1349 to find that his whole family has been killed by the plague. He asks which kind of god can kill so many innocent people. “Spigrene” (The Spikes) is about the practice of nailing people into their houses – the healthy along with the sick – and left to die in an attempt to prevent the plague from spreading. And finally, “…Og Landet ligger så øde hen” (…And The Land Is So Desolate) is about the aftermath once the disease had disappeared.

On Mulmets Viser and this new album, you used Lasse Lammert and a German studio to produce, after Jacob Hansen and a Danish studio for the debut. What was the logic in going from a big name producer and studio to a smaller, less known name? Did having label mates Alestorm record their new album there have anything to do with it?

To tell you the truth, we were never 100 % convinced that Jacob Hansen’s sound fit the band, and were already looking at recording with another producer for the follow-up album before the events at the end of 2008. All respect for Jacob; he has managed to create quite a name for himself. But you can always hear a Jacob Hansen production, no matter which band it is, as the sound – especially the drums – is always the same. And this sound never really suited our personal ideas of how Svartsot should sound. Besides that, with the rising popularity of Volbeat and with Jacob starting to record more mainstream bands at the time, Jacob had become too expensive for the budget we were given for Mulmets Viser. But even if we’d had a big enough budget, I’m sure we wouldn’t have chosen him again.

So I was looking around for producers and therefore asked Napalm Records if they could recommend anyone. They suggested that I should contact Lasse, as they had good experiences through his work with Alestorm (Lasse has worked with Alestorm since the Battleheart-days), and because Lasse is based in Lübeck, which is pretty close to the border to Denmark. After having mailed with Lasse a few times we really hit it off, and Lasse understood exactly where I was coming from and what Svartsot hoped to achieve. The recording process for Mulmets Viser ran really smoothly, and we were satisfied with the result, so when we were ready to book a studio for Maledictus Eris Lasse was the natural choice. And he has also done a very good job on this album, so I can’t imagine any reason for us changing him out for coming albums. Besides that we have also built up a good relationship to him, both workwise and personally, and that means a lot to us. We have a good team spirit in the studio, and that’s not something you can pay for.

Speaking of Alestorm, Napalm Records is really gathering the best, most respected folk metal bands on the planet; Alestorm, Heidevolk, Arkona, Korpiklaani, Crimfall, Falkenbach, Tyr as well as awesome newcomers like Jaldaboath and Skalmond. How is it being on such a perfect fit of a label?

For sure, Napalm Records are doing an extremely good job of finding the best up-and-coming folk metal acts, and have set careers off for some of the bigger names in the genre – some of whom (for example Korpiklaani) have gone on to larger labels. So in that respect it is the perfect label for any folk metal band to start their career on. The only major problem is that Napalm Records’ size doesn’t quite qualify it as one of the larger labels, and with the major slump in record sales due to illegal downloading this can often be felt in the budgets, which are mainly based on sales figures. Of course I can understand the attraction of downloading – who doesn’t want to get as much as possible for free or next to nothing (albeit in poorer quality and without the appeal of a physical product)? But the “fans” are ultimately biting their own arses, as downloading is killing the music business. Without sales, labels – especially medium sized and smaller labels –can’t give bands proper budgets. This results in bands either not being able to afford to record or having to be more lax on the production side; either way it means fewer quality albums.

Personally, if you guys, Alestorm, Jaldaboath and Heidevolk were to come on a tour of the US, I might poop myself a little. What would your perfect tour be?

That’s a difficult question to answer, as we have had the privilege of playing with so many awesome bands. I think in our current situation, a tour like Paganfest or Heidenfest would be best for us. We had a good time playing the two Paganfest guest slots we did at the start of last year, and both Finntroll and Eluveitie were very friendly towards us, so it would be cool to play with them again. It would also be cool to play with slightly less well-known bands such as Negură Bunget or Skyforger again. Or to get to meet and tour with bands we haven’t yet shared a stage with, but have respect for, such as Thyrfing or Ensiferum.

Do you prefer touring in Europe where Folk metal is much more accepted and embraced due to the history and culture, or do you like touring other countries?

Svartsot have so far only played in Europe, so I can’t really answer the question fully. But even within Europe there is a great diversity of cultures. One of the fun things about touring, or even just playing one-off shows abroad, is getting to meet new people and seeing how the scene and people in general are in different places. So for us it is cool no matter where it is.

What do you say to critics that your sound is pretty predictable and repetitive?

I actually find many of the “bad” reviews to be bordering on farcical as it is quite obvious that many of the critics who have written these reviews haven’t bothered to listen to the album properly. I have read several times that the album is repetitive, yet the same critic praises the track “Farsoten Kom” as a stand-out track. The whole basis of “Farsoten Kom” was an exercise in the traditional folk music-style of one main melody played more than 20 times in four and a half minutes, so this track was DELIBERATELY written to be repetitive! And isn’t that a bit hypocritical to complain of repetition, yet praise the song that was written to be as repetitive as possible? ALL of the other tracks have been limited to a maximum of three verses with an average track length of 4mins 30 sec – so how the hell can they be repetitive? None of the songs (with the exception of “Farsoten kom”) comprise of less than 4-5 riffs. But if the “critic” can’t be arsed to listen for longer than to the start of the second verse they are not going to get to the parts of the tracks that start to vary riffs, or where new riffs are added.

The predictability and the claims of “lack of innovation” hang pretty much together. But what do the reviewers expect from a folk metal band? I can’t think of a single folk metal band that has actually added anything new to the metal styles they rely on for the metal basis in their music. And folk music has been around for hundreds of years, so where’s the scope for innovation there? It’s all been done before, but since when has any folk metal fan expected a band to do something 100 % innovative? We could drop the metal side I guess, or even the folk side – now that would be innovative, but it wouldn’t be “folk metal” any longer!

The highest-rated reviews tend to be those, where the critic has actually listened to the album several times. One reviewer even wrote that he didn’t know how to review the album, and just had it on repeat for a day. Then he knew how to write the review – and it was a very positive one. I guess we were expecting bad reviews for an album like this. Most critics just don’t seem to understand the album, and can’t be bothered to listen to it more than once (if they even do that – most pretty obviously just skip after 30 seconds of each track). This album demands listening to several times before all of the layers start to reveal themselves to the listener. But that’s the kind of album I like. We’ve left the one-dimensional days of Ravnenes Saga behind us – much to the dismay of some critics – where everything handed on a plate on the first listen. This is understandable if the incompetent reviewers can’t fathom the material on “maledictus eris”. They also leave other tell-tale traits of their inabilities, such as copy-pasting the press material (and reconstructing the pasted parts in an incomprehensible order), spelling names wrong, and not checking who is still in the band or what instruments were used.

What can we expect from Svartsot over the next few years and albums?

That’s a difficult one to answer, as we don’t make any long-term plans. We hope to get out and tour Europe and beyond before too long, but we have to find a serious booking partner for outside of Denmark/Scandinavia first. And it probably won’t be too long before I start working properly on new material. The few melodies and riffs I’ve been playing with so far indicate that the next album will stylistically continue on from Maledictus Eris, and I have a few more ideas I want to experiment with. I certainly don’t plan on heading back to the tiresome one-dimensional qualities of Ravnenes Saga.

Thanks for your time.

I got married in 2010 and things have been great for me! My wife Vanessa and I have kept active with music and our love for the horror genre is stronger than ever. We bought a house down South and plan to start hitting horror conventions and trying to bring this hybrid kind of metal to more people who don’t really know about this kinda stuff!  It’s a new era for the label and also our lives.

How has the business changed in that time, if at all? Is Razorback Records still a, um, “lucrative” operation?

Razorback still does well, and we plan to start looking for new bands to work with and we are keeping up with our own bands as well (Scaremaker, Wooden Stake, etc.) as well as our friend’s bands such as Decrepitaph, Fondlecorpse, Blizaro, Revolting, etc. The label does as good as it can in this era where most people just download everything.

Have you seen an increase in vinyl sales that’s coincided with the worldwide resurgence?

Not really since we don’t release any vinyl. It’s too expensive. It’s like two grand just to get 300 records made. That kind of stuff is just catering to people who sell stuff on ebay to make tons of money off so-called “rare” records. I hate that kind of mentality. I’ll stick with CDs until the format is completely dead, which I don’t think it ever will be honestly. I like vinyl as an art form, but sadly it’s been ruined by everybody trying to make money from it now. Greed stinks and takes the fun out of music.

What about the distro aspect of your business? Has that changed in any respect?  Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be a good spirit of cooperation amongst underground, predominantly death metal, distros in the States, but also worldwide. Would you say this is the case?

The distro side is hard because everybody has a distro now. It’s hard to sell things, but we manage to do ok I think. I try to trade with overseas labels to carry harder to get stuff, but even that is a challenge sometimes. I think the underground still exists to a certain extent, but it’s also been ruined a lot by Myspace, Facebook, download torrent sites, etc. The underground is what we all make of it I guess.

Along those same lines, I find the workings of this network quite interesting and vastly important for overseas labels that want to get their titles into the States. Can you talk about these inner workings or are you sworn to secrecy?

I don’t think there really are any inner workings, honestly! We just release CDs and do trades with overseas labels and sell their stuff here while they sell our stuff over there. It’s a quite simple process I guess. It’s been going like this since the 80’s basically. It doesn’t seem to really get any easier, though, only harder. Postage makes it very expensive to break even these days.

Ms. Nocera is not only your wife; she is your business partner as well. What say you about these dual roles?

It works out great. We love the same kinda stuff and are very passionate horror fans and we try to keep that concept going the best we can. It’s been hard finding other horror style bands these days, that’s why we don’t really put out as much stuff as other labels do. We’re very picky about what we release. We’re into quality over quantity, and trying to satisfy our own tastes rather than just trying to release 200 CDs a month or something ridiculous like that.

Perhaps it is the influence that Vanessa has had in the broadening of your horizons or maybe you wanted to mix things up a bit, or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but the last few years has seen albums of a more doomy nature come out on Razorback, whether it is Hooded Menace, Wooden Stake, or Blizaro. I should add that I wouldn’t consider any of these albums to be ill-fitting within the larger Razorback context.  Can you shed some light on this relative degree of roster diversification?

Well, don’t forget, Razorback did the very first Coffins album in 2005. Lots of people seem to forget that since that band is so big now. Also the first Mausoleum album came out in 2003 and that was a very doomy kind of album. I’ve always been a fan of that kinda stuff so it was never really hard for me to release that style of metal. Vanessa has definitely helped bring in a strong gothic horror influence to the label, something that I’m really happy about since I’ve been a Hammer Horror films fan since I was a little kid! Hooded Menace was my concept and idea from the beginning and the guy [Lasse Pyykkö] in that band basically ran away with it and stole it once he got “fame” and bigger deals from other labels involving money. I could care less about that band now. It’s just a bunch of stolen ideas as that guy didn’t know shit about those kinds of movies before he met me. Wooden Stake does the gothic horror stuff much better and is more authentic because Vanessa and Wayne are actually fans of horror films and aren’t doing the band just because someone is paying them to play huge fests. Vanessa’s vocals bring a touch of class and originality to the doom/death thing also, which is something missing from that genre sometimes I think. In the end I think the doom stuff fits in perfectly with the horror metal that Razorback has always been about.

You mentioned to me at one point that you believe Vanessa’s (and Wayne Sarantopoulos’) Wooden Stake project Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades may be the best album you’ve ever released on Razorback Records. That’s a bold statement, especially for a label that has released some stellar albums over the years.

Yeah, I feel very strongly about that album. It’s not just doom; it’s also death metal, black metal, and even some NWOBHM as well which I’m a huge fan of. It’s just an all around interesting album to me, both musically and artistically. I’m very proud of it and feel like it nails the gothic horror doom metal stuff down perfectly. I can’t wait for the next album from them!

You’ve got a sub-label called Hexamorphosis Productions. Why was it necessary to establish a Razorback sub-label? When did this get up and running, what have you released, and what do you plan to release?

Vanessa started this label to get the first Wooden Stake demo release out, as well as the Scaremaker fan club MCD we did. It was fun helping out with those releases and I think we did a great job with the label. We don’t really have anything else planned with it right now because we’re so busy with Razorback and have a lot coming up in the next year! Hexamorphosis is not dead; it’s just not active right now.

What about Revolting? You released the first two albums, but the new one, In Grisly Rapture, was released on FDA-Rekotz.

We didn’t release that album because I was busy working on my own band Scaremaker during when that album was being worked on. Revolting is a band that I did with Rogga where he did all the music and I wrote the lyrics (and got my friends to write lyrics also) and got all the art and everything else for it. It’s a fun project band to work on. We’re going to be doing the 4^th album sometime next year.

What about Festered?

FESTERED is planning a second CD. They have a lot of new riffs written for it so it’s only a matter of time before they record again.

Scaremaker?

We’re working on the 2^nd Scaremaker album right now actually. All the drums are done and Vanessa is working on the riffs and we’re writing lyrics, etc. It’s gonna be faster, thrashier, and more crazed than the first album! We have a Scaremaker/Crypticus split CD coming out soon and it has five new songs from Scaremaker that we did in late 2010.

And in finally, if given the choice, how would you choose to end this interview?

Thanks for all the support you’ve given Razorback, Scott! Look out for new releases soon from Crypticus (third album), Mausoleum (second album), Church of Misery (Stevo from Impetigo’s doom metal band from the early 90′s before the Japanese band existed), Blizaro (second album), and tons more!

www.razorbackrecords.com

Abraam was the band of my youth and we were quite deep into psychedelia and mysticism back then. Abraxas was almost famous Czech rock band; this time I lived in accordance with the motto “sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.” Although my wild lifestyle went on also in Projektil, I already was much more focused on writing my music. The last recordings of Projektil became to be much harder. I can say it sounded like a pre-Drakar version. One fan said to me that our music reminded him of Bathory. Although our sound was of course different than Bathory, I felt that metal is the right way for me and I changed the name of the band, musicians, image, and all of that…

Also intriguing is that the band name Drakar relates to Sekya being born in the sign of the dragon, which (again according to the liner notes) “symbolized an adventurous journey beyond the horizons of the gray Communist reality that existed at the time.” What was it like being in a band during those times and did the communist government frown upon such activities?

Projektil was a band which had often had problems with the Communist authorities. I had to build it five times again because of this. It was a very depressive period. Fortunately, we were young and full of energy.

What led to Drakar splitting up?

Regarding Drakar´s break-up in the beginning of the 90s, people were less and less interested in metal and we started to play only small club gigs for a few fans. Simply, it was impossible to earn money for life through music. Later it started to be a bit better, but in these times that Drakar was almost forgotten. The first brief reunion of Drakar in the middle of 90s was not too well-done, even though there was created a few good songs.

What led to your 2008 comeback and ultimately I Hate Records’ release of Let Draka/Flight of the Dragon? Are you pleased with how it turned out?

The guys from I Hate liked our music and contacted me via one person here in Prague. I was very surprised, but of course pleasantly. There was no reason why [we shouldn’t] do it. Even though it took a bit more time than I expected, I am satisfied. It was a reason to build a band again at least.

Were there any problems in obtaining the “rights” to these songs or in assembling the reissue in general for whatever reason?

The former label ceased to exist a long time ago and rights to the music are mine; there was not any problems. More than rights there were complications with mastering. The Czech version is slightly different than the English one, but from the old recordings you cannot await miracles… But I like both; each has a different atmosphere.

So are you truly reunited in the sense that you might be playing some upcoming shows or releasing new material?

Firstly we wanted to support the CD re-release. I have to say, it was guite heavy to play songs from The Flight of the Dragon after all these years; it is not just easy music. But we slowly prepare a new material and some new songs already exist.

The music of Let Draka/Flight of the Dragon is truly unique and while there are certainly thrash elements (though more like something Voivoid might do), the arrangements are rather unconventional, yet not overcomplicated and melody is still present.   Talk about your musical influences in this regard and how others have described the music of Drakar.

I’ve always relied on the strongest musical motifs which I wrote. The music of Drakar is deliberately riddled with practices that are banned in classical music. There is important work with rhythms. None of the drummers wanted to play like that because they used to play different from it! But finally they understood. Although you may hear influences of bands that I liked, in the music of Drakar it is mainly my own sound and expression.

Even the vocals are rather unique, that kind of speak-sing, low register style, except for the more “traditional” style of singing on tracks like “Crazy Boy.” 

We could not find right singer, so I started to sing of necessity alone. A few people told me that I have an interesting timbre of voice, and so I tried to take advantage of it. The vocal should sound like when Big Brother speaks to you, a hundred times intensified. Simply, how I sing in “Kingdom of The Walls” – “Stay on your knees or I crash you with fear from ..!”

“Crazy Boy” stands out for the way that simple chorus worms its way into your brain! Why is it the only English title on the album?

Concerning “Crazy Boy,” it is an understandable international collection, so it was ok to use it even in the Czech version.

The guitar soloing on this album is fantastic and so full of energy and emotion. Some of it actually reminds me of the work of Toxik and Sadus. 

We jammed a lot together with second guitarist Martin. He is an excellent guitar player and he quickly understands difficult or unconventional parts. Our cooperation was great and besides technical playing we focused of course on a melody. Concerning the mentioned bands, if our riffs remind somebody Toxic or Sadus, hard to say, I am not deep into their music.

The reissue also comes with a second CD of the English version of the songs. Was this practice of releasing an English lyrics version really that common back then? Was it difficult to sing these songs in English when the ideas/patterns were originally conceived in the Czech language?

Lyric writer Vladimir Cort was also a translator of books from English, so we had full confidence in his professionalism. Czech and English lyrics are in some cases not identical but are very similar. Surprisingly, they are still current in some way in my opinion.
We recorded the English version because we wanted to play abroad. It was not so common to use your native language for singing abroad as today back then.

Did you notice if one version sold more than the other?

Hard to say. How I have mentioned, our former label doesn´t exist and we have never gotten some valid numbers of sales.

Are you surprised at all to see this music getting released in 2011? Did you ever think people would be interested in Drakar again?

Yes, I have to say, I am surprised. It never occurred to me that the dragon once again rose to fly, even though maybe I secretly hoped for it. Music is simply the most powerful art that exists. Nothing is better than when you are on stage and play great gig. Thank you for the inspiring questions and say hello to all our fans!

http://www.ihate.se/

Thanks for the praise man.  Much appreciated.  We worked our dicks off on this record and we’re proud as hell of it.  The more effort you put into something the more you’re gonna appreciate the final product.   So of course we think it’s our best album now, as we do all of our records.   I’d put Gods of Death on a par with Descent Into Hell as far as my absolute favorites.  Both have brain-shattering productions.  Followed real close by Hells Rebirth.   That one had a weirdo teeth-ripping energy going through it that I still can’t even explain.

One of the places where I really think you nailed it is in the balance between the doom/dirge and the up-tempo crushers. Is this something you thought about in writing and recording? It flows so seamlessly.

Actually the song placement flow was one of the tougher hurdles we encountered when nearing the end of this recording.  This may sound dumb but we really weren’t in “album mode” when writing each of these songs, as opposed to Hells Rebirth where we were dead focused on every song being a solid brick to fit the whole of that album.   Part of that I think was that two of the earlier songs we wrote during this time period were used specifically for the 7” splits we did with Machetazo and Coffins.  We wanted those tunes (“Black Earth” and The Wrath of Daimajin,” respectively) to be exclusive to those releases.  So I think unconsciously we ended up writing each subsequent song as a stand-alone piece.  It was kind of a haphazard process.  We’d have the music down, but then the lyrics wouldn’t be done until sometime later.  Much later in some cases.  A good example is “Contained and Controlled.” That was one of the first songs we wrote after Hells Rebirth and I didn’t come up with the lyrics until a few months prior to recording.  I wish I could say it was genius or even dumb luck that Gods of Death flows as well as it does.  Instead it was going through every single song-to-song combination possible to get them all to fit with each other.  Sometimes you gotta work to get awesome results.

Additionally, this is the best batch of songs you’ve written from the standpoint of listener memory retention. Each is distinct in its own right and the more you listen the more the music sinks its claws in deep.

Well I’d like to think our songwriting has gotten better over the years.  Our main standard is: “Is this something we would enjoy listening to as a fan?”  I think it shows.  We always stated we are “fans” first, “band guys” second.  We put a lot of thought and energy into what we do, despite what some people may think.  No one is gonna mistake us for Cryptopsy, but that’s probably a good thing.

It’s been six years since your last full-length, Hell’s Rebirth, was released, although you had those split releases in between. And the songs for the splits were written specifically for those releases? Give us a rundown of the stories behind and contents of the splits you recorded with Machetazo and Coffins, as well as the Chicago Metal Hell release.

As I stated above we didn’t want to recycle those songs we did for the splits.  Even though it probably would’ve been cool to re-record them, I always liked when bands do/did exclusive one-off songs for EPs/singles etc.   That’s the collector in me.   “Black Earth” was originally supposed to be a split with Scepter on Hells Headbangers, but then they broke up.   At that same time Scott [Carroll, guitarist] was in fan boy correspondence with Dopi of Machetazo and he asked if they wanted to fill in that slot.  They had some tunes ready to go and ours was already completed.  Hells Headbangers was still on board with doing it and the rest is history.  Kind of a crazy all-over-the road song for us, and the production was fuzzy and heavy as fucking hell. Actually we did our best to mimic this sound/production for the Gods of Death recording. For “Wrath of Daimajin” I was in contact with Uchino from Coffins and we mutually wanted to do a split.  We had a pal of ours put it out on his (now defunct) label Famine Records.  That was a no-brainer.  This song is dedicated to my lifelong obsession with Japanese monster movies. So kinda fitting with a Coffins split, eh?  Our cover of At War’s “Ordered to Kill” was done all the way back from our Divide and Conquer recording session.   John from Scepter had his new project Hellrealm and wanted to do a Chicago band only four-way split, hence the name.  That was his baby really.  He asked us to be a part of it and we still had that song hiding in our “vaults.”
So another no-brainer. I think we nailed that cover pretty well.  Lotta fucking singing though.  Shit.

So when was the material written for Gods of Death?

From the release of Hells Rebirth on.  We are always in the writing process.  Sometimes more prolific than others though.

The production you got on the album is phenomenal, so incredibly thick and murky; that low end is earth shaking. And you did it all yourself, including the mixing, except for the mastering (Patrick Bruss). What was the key to getting that sound? It is exactly the kind of production Cianide requires.

It would be really cool to say we just mike up, plug in and bash it out.  Not the case with us though I’m afraid.  Like Venom used to say: “It takes a lot of work to sound this bad” [laughs].  There’s nothing magical about it.  It’s all about knowing your own sound and what you want to sound like.  When you record yourself, it’s a luxury to take your time and not be “on the clock” when it comes to trial and error mic placement on the amps/instruments. Though I must say the actual recording aspect is far easier than the mix down, at least for us.  Scott gracefully (or wisely) bows out of the mixing process.  One too many chiefs in that powwow.  Andy and I work well together when we mix and have good ears for what we need to get.   He’ll catch shit that I don’t and vice versa.  Then we’ll give that “draft” of the mix to The Boss – Scott for yet another (mostly final) say-so. Then you have to compare it to the previously mixed song(s) and make sure everything sounds like the same recording. Takes at least a week to mix a single song.

It is stated in the booklet that the new album was recorded at Slaughtersound Studios in Chicago from October 2009 – May 2010, but I’m guessing it was done intermittently. Is that correct?

Our working title was “Darkness on the edge of 103^rd St.” [Laughs].  Oh yeah.  We’re assholes but not quite to that extent, but fuck it seemed to take for-fucking-ever to get this thing done.  With work schedules and personal issues we had no choice but to work on it when we were able to.  The final result is incredible, but I don’t think we’re gonna record like that again.

Of course that classic Frost/Hammer guitar tone is a staple of the band, but it sounds even more menacing this time around. What do you do to capture it, including the tuning, equipment, etc?

Shit.  If you can figure out where we tune you can tell us cuz we don’t have a clue.  We just go by what sounds right to our ears.  Some years it creeps up, some years it creeps down, but we are still in the same tarpit from the last couple of recordings.  We record with the same instruments we rehearse on.  Scott used both his Gibson LesPaul and SG for the guitars.  Andy his Yamaha kit and I use my Rickenbacker.   From our experience it’s all about mic placement on the amps and how well you play of course.  Everything was recorded separately.  Drums first, guitars second, bass third, then vocals.  Solos and incidental stuff is last.  We don’t have the capability or room to do a proper live recording, so this is the way that worked best for us. But it also contributed to how long it took us to complete.

Good call on tapping John Alexander for guest guitar solos on “Rising of the Beast” and “Dead and Rotting.” So well played and they really leap right out of the mix.

Fuck yeah man.  It’s not a secret that Post Mortem are one of the main reasons we exist as a band and play the type of music we do.  So you can blame him/them [laughs]. We’ve been Internet pals with John for a good four to five years now.  He’s a mega tech/gear guy when it comes to music.  So it was hardly an issue when we asked him to help us out.  Shit he sent us a bunch of different takes for each tune.  We asked for Slayer type leads for “Rising of the Beast” (two solos) and that’s exactly what he delivered.  The end of “Dead and Rotting” needed a more traditional Heavy Metal type solo and he aced the fuck out of that.  That solo is pretty much the showcase moment of the album if you ask me.   I think John is gonna be our secret weapon, ace-in the-hole guitar solo wizard from here on cuz he rules. Watch out!

You’ve got some vinyl releases of older albums in the works too I believe, as well as the vinyl version of Gods of Death. Tell us about the re-releases. It seems some of the older releases aren’t as easy to get as fans would like; at least that’s what I’ve gathered from a perusal of some on-line distros and places like Amazon.com.

Ted from The Crypt offered to release our first two records on double vinyl and his releases are fucking kick-ass.  Hey, sounds good to us. Gotta “strike while the iron is hot” as Manowar would say.  We just completed the layout and re-mastering of The Dying Truth vinyl reissue so that should be out soon.

However, Mike Riddick’s MetalHit.com distro made Hell’s Rebirth inexpensive ($4.99) and easy to get. Any idea how the album has done since it was made available in digital format? What do you think of making albums available through that avenue?

Don’t have a clue about that.  Displeased owns that recording.  It’s theirs to do what they want with it.  Same with Gods of Death.  If Hells Headbangers wants to sell it via smoke signals then that’s their choice.  It’s their record.

I was pleased to see Cianide on Hells Headbangers Records; a very reliable, stable label that prides itself on quality music, packaging, and customer service. How has your experience been with HHR thus far and were you considering releasing the album on any other labels before making the decision?

We worked with Hells Headbangers before on the Machetazo split so we already knew they were a no-nonsense, no bullshit label run by real metalheads.  They do cool vinyls as well which is a major selling point for our asses.  We had a few other cool offers but they gave us the best deal.  Perfect label for us right now.

Cianide is not a band that plays live very often, but you did make an appearance at this year’s Maryland Deathfest. Talk about that experience. Any other upcoming shows?

MDF was fucking tits.   Couldn’t believe the amount of people watching and getting into our set.   Felt like a “rock star” for the first time in our 20-plus year career.  The organizers and stage people were total professionals through and through.  Never experienced that either.  We’re used to getting treated like crap from shitty clubs, which is one of the reasons why we don’t like to play out that often.  So MDF was truly something else. This December we’re gonna do Rites of Darkness III in San Antonio.  I think fests are the way to go.

How soon before we can expect to see another Cianide full-length? Not six years I hope!

Seven years maybe?  [Laughs] I do think we’re gonna go to a real studio the next time around.  Bash it out in a few days like we used to do.  Then if we don’t like the production we can have something to bitch about.  Which is something we truly excel at!

Keep the DM faith and keep doing what you do, although it’s not like we need to be concerned about Cianide suddenly changing musical direction.

Yeah, no industrial/goth/funk/jazz parts for us. Our metal never bends! So we’ll leave that shit to the “pros.”  Thanks for the interview.

www.hellsheadbangers.com

http://www.myspace.com/cianidekills

http://www.myspace.com/cianidekills

Oh probably about ten years ago. Me and Joe were in Usurper in the old days…

Oh yeah, one of my favorites.

That’s cool. Joe was in Usurper in the beginning and then he left for eight or nine years, and then he came back. Well, when he came back me and him bonded right away. He’s a phenomenal drummer. Being a bass player in metal is frustrating because usually the bass player just copies what the guitar is playing; there was never a lot of room for a real rhythm section where the bass and drums work as a counterpoint to the rest of the band and all that kind of stuff, kind of like all those 70s bands used to do, which made it really cool. Then Usurper broke up. So I was playing in two other bands around 2009. Usurper broke up in 2007 and by 2009 I was playing in Kommandant and then I was playing live in Nachtmystium for a couple of years. For Kommandant I was on the Iron Hands of Scandinavia demo and Stormlegion. I was trying to write tunes for both bands and it just wasn’t really fitting; the tunes I gave to Kommandant just wasn’t really sounding like Kommandant and the stuff I gave to Nachtmystium didn’t really sound like Nachtmystium. I was just realizing that I had been in someone else’s bands for like 15 years. For Usurper it was really the rhythm guitar player’s [Rick Scythe] brainchild; he wrote some of the tunes, most of the lyrics, and it was his vision, so we were just happy to go along and we were such good friends for such a long time. But I had a bunch of songs I was jamming on and Joe was jamming in a proggy, technical type of metal band and I just called him up and said “Hey man, we just need to get together and fuck all this stuff.” So I quit Kommandant to make more time and Joe had quit his band. So we went to my basement and started working and had four tunes we started off with and that was it; it was about two years ago in July in 2009. Then we got Chris in that year to play guitar. We wanted to keep it a three-piece because all the best bands are three-pieces; it’s just some of the best rock ‘n roll. Even a band like The Who are a four piece with the vocalist, but it’s just one guitar, one bass, and one drummer. You can really do a lot with that. Everything nowadays is so overproduced and so over-thought-out and overdone. Any sense of rock ‘n roll is just lost. Like being in the studio for 30 days. Why? [laughs].

So how long did you take to record the album?

Three days. We recorded for three days and then we mixed it on the fourth day.

I wouldn’t have guessed it was Sanford Parker that recorded it because he’s always got these big sonic-sounding albums, though not overproduced or glossy by any means. But on the Bones album it seems like he kept it raw and true to the sound you wanted, which was very live.

It was recorded very live. We went to Electric Audio here in Chicago. The building is like two and a half stories tall, concrete block, and there is really an awesome reverb in the room, so we wanted that for the drums. We just set up in there and we didn’t have a lot of money for one thing, so we had to make the album quick. We discussed whether we should do a demo first and should we do this or that, and then we talked to Chris [Black] from Planet Metal. We didn’t have a lot of cash, but wanted to go to a good studio and use Sanford as producer and we didn’t want it to sound “produced.” We just wanted to have all the raw materials at our disposal and then just kick it out and have someone behind the board that could really capture all of it. We recorded the drums, guitar, and bass pretty much live. We didn’t double-track any guitars; we didn’t double-track any anything.

And that’s one of the aspects of the album that I really enjoy. When there is a guitar solo, you hear bass and drums holding down the rhythm and that’s it, which is something you just don’t hear a lot these days. It works really well. Of course, you’ve got to have good players so everyone is capable of holding up his end, and you’ve obviously got that part nailed. It’s refreshing to hear it.

Yeah, and to play it is certainly fun. You’ve got to be on your game; there’s no fuckin’ around. We even have the bass hard-left and the guitar hard-right, just like they had in the 70s. Manowar used to do that. It’s cool and it has such a really classic sound like how it used to be done. Nowadays things are so layered and overdone. It’s cool because it has this element of danger when you try to pull it off; like the train is coming so fast and it seems like it might careen off the tracks at any moment [laughs]. You’re right on the edge and that’s what makes rock ‘n roll what it is. And that’s what Bones is, just a bastard version of rock ‘n roll. A lot of the danger has been lost over the years.

The danger is definitely key; that’s what got me into it rock ‘n roll or metal in the first place.

Totally! You get that thing in the pit of your stomach and it’s like holy fuck!

I think I already know the answer and you probably get tired of getting asked this, but starting a band with three ex-Usurper members did it ever cross your mind to just go the rest of the way and try to get Usurper reformed?

No actually. I mean we talked about it a little bit. We talked about doing a Usurper reunion a couple years ago and were going to try to do a show, but Usurper is just over. I don’t know any other way to put it. And Rick has got his own band too anyway.

And you were in Usurper from the beginning, right?

I joined in December of ’94. They had already made a demo they put out, but I was on the first album [Diabolosis].

Usurper is still the only thrash/death band I know that’s covered Ted Nugent’s “Stormtroopin’” [other than Blood Cult busting out part of it within one of its own songs].

[Laughs] That cover I wish was a little bit better [laughs]. It’s a phenomenal riff; the Nuge is the man.

I know you had been playing some shows well before the album was released, including the Planet Metal showcase in Chicago.

Yeah, it was with Kommandant and Wastelander and Sauron. We just played a show last Saturday with Nunslaughter and Acid Witch who are from Detroit, and Absconder. That was a great show too.

As I listen to the album one of the things that comes to mind is that it has got a rock ‘n roll and dirty boogie to it, not unlike Motorhead.

[laughs] Ok

But it really does rock and in that regard and has a Motorhead vibe in a general sense. I mean “March of the Dead” right off the bat is like a deathier/thrashier version of Motorhead really, which is not saying this sounds like a Motorhead album by any means. And you have a central delivery that bludgeons like Master.

Yeah, I mean it’s not like we set out to have a Motorhead vibe or anything like that.

Well, it is really more in the way of that smoke-billowing locomotive pace.

Yeah, and the bass drone is dirty like Lemmy’s is and a lot of times we play up an octave on the riff, which is a classic Motorhead signature sound. Motorhead is just one of those bands that stick with you forever, so it’s warped into part of my DNA somehow. And as a three-piece band we are trying to fill up all that space and the way that Lemmy plays bass – and he’s the master – he plays a lot like a guitar to fill some of those voids, so that might be part of it. When you’re playing it you don’t really hear what you sound like so much; you are so involved in trying to accomplish the mission or whatever.

What are you hearing from others as far as what Bones sounds like? To me it’s like, “yep, this sounds like a Chicago metal band in the classic underground tradition.” Of course, you can’t get around some of the Usurper sounds either.

Yeah, I mean there isn’t anyone in the band that wasn’t in Usurper. We don’t want it to be Usurper II, but at the same time it’s inevitable. Joe plays drums the way he plays drums; Chris plays the way that we play and he played in Usurper for a long time. When you are in a band for 13 years it leaves a mark. It influences the way you listen to tunes and the way you hear things and play things. It’s in there and it will probably never go away. I think maybe it’ll phase out slowly as we find more of our own identity. The stuff we’re writing right now is a little bit different than what you heard on the album; it’s not a totally different vibe or anything, but it’s more in the rock ‘n roll spirit.

If you’re doing even more of that, then that’s great because another aspect of the album that is done extremely well is in those crescendos and you really know how to break it down and shift gears. The shifts from high speed to mid-tempo grab you. There are several songs like that, while “666” just has that classic dirty groove.

That’s the spot where we feel most comfortable, making a change like that. It’s a lot of fun. What’s a drag about being in a other metal bands besides Usurper is you’re just playing along and you have to phone it in sometimes; like where the song is one-tempo all the time or there aren’t many changes or variation, or it’s a subtle variation on the same riff. It’s cool to mess around with an odd time signature or do something else. And Joe is the secret weapon on drums. He just has a natural knack for changing it up. Like I’ll write a riff with a straight 4/4 beat in my head and show it to him and he’ll turn it around and screw it all up and it’s like “Oh wow, that’s a totally different way of looking at that!” It really helps our sound.

Even toward the end of “666” where you are just riding it out it’s so cool to hear.

It’s just fun to play. We didn’t really think about a lot of things before we did them [laughs]. Four of the tunes I had before we started jamming and we messed with them a little, but the rest we pretty much did together. We’d just have a riff and we’d jam out for a while, smoke some weed at practice, drink about case of beer, and by the time we’re done it sounds totally different and we know we’re going in the right direction and it’d be on to the next one.

At the end of the day this album just bleeds “Chicago.” It’s difficult to explain it to folks that haven’t been exposed to it, but there is a certain tone and somewhere along the line you hear a common theme, like something that reaches back to Hellhammer or whatever. That could be Cianide or Cardiac Arrest or some of the older bands; you just know it when you hear it and it’s the same with Bones. Does that make sense?

Oh it does! You’re reading off names and I’m thinking about how every summer there is also a barbeque or parties or whatever. Like at the Cianide house and the Cardiac Arrest guys are there and we’re all there, and there is a barbeque going on and in the background someone is playing Venom, and we’re getting drunk, a couple of dudes are getting high by the garage and that literally is Chicago; it’s kind of how we all operate. The guys are very similar. You go down to jam and get drunk and a couple years later you have an album. There is no super group quality or wanting to sell a bunch of records; there is no drive or ambition for popularity or success. It’s more a natural, organic thing; everybody just loves metal or music and we all just love playing.

http://www.myspace.com/bonesofchicago

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bones-Chicago/113666132032091

http://www.facebook.com/planetmetal

Jason used to run a website in the US called Deadtide.com that did metal reviews/interviews etc.  Back in 2002 I had just moved from New Zealand to London, UK and I sent some CDs of my band Monsterworks for review and he liked it.  Jason had been toying around with a new doom-type band idea incorporating a string quartet and asked me to write and record some vocals.  We knew nothing about each other at all, but both seemed to like My Dying Bride and early Anathema.  That was good enough for me.

Are you a musical and lyrical contributor both then?

I generally write all the lyrics, often based on the song titles/themes that Jason has already given a name based on the “vibe” he had during composing the song.  I like that way of working because it sends me in new directions. To date I have not contributed music, as I have Monsterworks as my primary outlet for that. I had a stab at a few guitar leads on the self-titled album, but I don’t think they got used [laughs].   It might be cool at some stage in the future to write a complete TLF song, but with Samu on board I expect the dynamic duo will be pretty prolific.  There simply is no need to stick my nose in too.

How was the first album received in critical terms? Was Candlelight happy with it?

Pretty good to excellent from memory.  Although maybe Jason hid any bad reviews from me!  If there was a criticism it was with regard to the overall production, which was apparently a bit flat.  I am guessing someone at Candlelight must have liked it or we would not have been asked to sign with them.  Incidentally on that point, the self-titled album was from 2007 and we signed in 2008 so it all happened quite quickly at the time, but it has taken until 2011 to finish the new album!

Though I’ve not heard the first album it seems you took an even more expansive approach to composition on Running out of Daylight, not the least of which includes the work of violinist/violist Chuck Bontrager and cellist Petar Kecenovici.

I believe Running out of Daylight was simply the logical next step in production and composition.  To me the songs are not much more complex than the older material, but they are consistently better.  Much catchier hooks and meatier riffs.  The original band concept, as I mentioned before, was “doomy with a string quartet” and Jason always wanted to use real string musicians in the band. Who wouldn’t?!  But it was not until this time round that we were able to.  As I understand it, Chuck and Petar were introduced/recommended by violinist Rachel Barton Pine who Jason plays with in Earthen Grave, his other main, Chicago-based band. While the string parts themselves were originally composed and demoed with MIDI triggered samples, nothing beats the sound of a real acoustic player to replace it all in the final mix.  They can add some of their personality too.

Even better is that the inclusion of strings is not done for mere accent and certainly don’t sound forced. It is part and parcel to the success of every track.

Agreed.  If the strings took it over entirely I don’t think it would work, although it might in a totally epic cinematic sense, should that be appropriate.  I see the strings as adding an extra dimension, but we are still a heavy metal band and the guitar crunch and ace drumming is the core of that, plus whatever screaming, yelling or growling I do.

Another sign of The Living Fields’ compositional acumen is in the fact that eight or nine minute tracks (of which there are several) can be so musically compelling, so distinct from one another, and so memorable from a melodic standpoint. That is no easy feat, especially for an album 71 minutes in length.

Not to blow my own trumpet (we will leave the horn section for the next album), but I think the lyrical stories play a big part in the flow, coupled with the fact that each track has a lot of different parts and moods.  I am sometimes amazed at how long the songs are and still work because my personal approach to songwriting is to be quite ADD (attention deficit disorder) and un-repetitive.  However, if there is a story woven into the whole thing it becomes a saga and the length doesn’t matter.  Indeed you want it to go on a bit longer and find out where it will end up.

Of course, the relatively shorter “Glacial Movements” seems to be the one getting the most attention as the most accessible.  Accessible it is, but I find the main melody of “Perseverance” to be even catchier and its pagan/folk-ish cadence sublime. Where do you stand with regard to these statements?

Those are probably, lyrically, my favorite songs on the album.  “Glacial Movements” more or less wrote itself because it is about geological time: a vast and interesting subject.  “Perseverance” is about conquering Mount Everest.  We always knew “Glacial Movements” was the anthemic centerpiece on the album whereas “Perseverance” came to life when everything was together in the final mix.  The last vocal run (ending with “well George, we knocked the bastard off!”) over the increasingly grandiose music is one of my favorite moments in any song I have been a part of, ever.

At the end of the day though Running out of Daylight is an album best appreciated as a 71-minute listening experience; picking and choosing individual tracks just doesn’t have the same impact.

Agreed.  I am and always will be all about the album.  I actually find it more or less impossible to listen to an isolated song from any album because I somehow consider it an insult to the artist.  Albums should never have “filler” and it is important that you get a buzz from each and every track.  TLF specializes in compact epic-ness within individual songs, but the song next to it is usually a different kind of epic, so you need all of it to get the full picture. There were in fact at least two tracks that had to be cut from the album length; it was bang on 80 minutes.  But that was getting ridiculous.

Perhaps most demonstrative of the care and attention that went into writing these songs is the fact that one can spend just under an hour listening and then make it through a 16-minute closing track with no hesitation! 

I think that is down to the different parts and moods within any given track.  An hour long brutal death metal album would not work because not many people could withstand that kind of relentless attack, but with TLF there is plenty of breathing space. The title track nearly got edited down to remove the cinematic component in the middle, which would have been a travesty because even at 16 minutes it sails by and it is like a mini-movie in my opinion.  This track probably took the most research from my perspective to get the lyrics and story straight (all hail Wikipedia) and that narrative fits the music well.  Galileo and his crisis of faith is a fitting subject for an epic heavy metal song (and we subsequently found out has been done before in concept album form!) and especially our brand of metal because it has a lot of moods in it, both melancholy and triumphant.

Your vocals on the album are effective and powerfully versatile. It is hard to believe that the same person doing the growls and those patented screams (ala Monsteworks) is the same one doing the “lighter” or “sung” material. How challenging was this album for you vocally? I don’t just mean physically either; I’m also referring to the challenge of changing styles to fit the complexity of the arrangement and ensuring the patterning fits.

I have always been influenced by and “sung along to” a lot of different metal styles and I like them all to varying degrees.  In that sense it is not that much of a “challenge.”  I mean, it’s not easy, but I guess you can either do it or you can’t.  And I can.  Yay me.  It is probably giving a bit too much away, but my usual process for getting through the huge amount of TLF material in a reasonable timescale is as follows: Determine song concept, write a lot of notes on the subject, sit singing softly into a microphone to try to fit the embryonic lyrics to the demo music, adjust words as needed, wait a few months or years for the drums to be recorded, then record proper vocals using the original soft demo as a guide.  Add salt to taste.

The writing process can take days, but the recording process only takes about four hours per song.  I layer up ideas and try things out while the recording is “live.”  This is the beauty and tragedy of doing everything on your own with a laptop and an outboard soundcard.  I am my own master, but I get no feedback on whether it sounds any good.

There are a lot of vocal layers in TLF songs (slightly less so in Monsterworks), but that is because I try a different vocal style out for a particular section with the intention that in mixing they will strip a lot of it back.  What happens in reality (and I have no problem with it) is that most of it stays because no one can decide what to cut.  It just seems to work all together.

I recorded my parts on the album over a few weeks whenever I could grab a few hours spare.  It gets easier and vocals get stronger the more you do.  Because I am not a touring musician I do not have the luxury of regular vocal practice, so when I stand in front of a microphone with a new song I have no idea what will come out.

On top of it all this was an album recorded by members living in three different countries. Can you shed some light on the process of recording this album?

Jason recorded demos with all instrumentation in Chicago, including pretty complete drum programming and posted them on our FTP site.  In London I downloaded these and started the lyric writing process.  Chad [Walls] recorded drums in Ottawa.  At some point Samu joined the band and they decided to re-record all the guitars to lock in tighter with the drums.  I took the finished (but still with midi strings) tracks and recorded vocals.  Mixing had already begun when the string players were found, so that was recorded in lightning time and dropped into the mix.

What say you about the comparisons to My Dying Bride and Novembers Doom?

Great.  I like both those bands a lot, although I never heard Novembers Doom until a few years after TLF started.  In reality I don’t think we sound much like either of them at all.  They both have strong and unique vocalists for sure, so I would rather not be compared to them.  Ironic that Novembers Doom is from Chicago, where half our band lives and My Dying Bride is from Yorkshire where my family is from.

Does your work in Monsterworks impact your work in The Living Fields or vice versa, realizing of course that Monsteworks is “your” band? Please discuss your approach or the head space necessary for each band.

There is no compromise or conflict between the bands at all because I easily have the time to do both in the present context. Monsterworks has members that actually live in the same city, which is handy for playing gigs, although we don’t do that very often. Whereas I have never met the guys from TLF.  The last time I spoke on the phone to Jason was at least five years ago! As mentioned before, often the themes for TLF come from Jason which, even though we are philosophically pretty similar anyway, sends me in lyrical directions I might not otherwise have gone.  That is a positive thing.

A couple of years ago Monsterworks was writing and recording metal space adventure concept albums, although if you dig deep there were still universal anti-religious themes running through them.  Working on TLF material partly influenced me to base the recent Monsterworks albums on more “real-world” fare, such as the problems of religion run through The God Album (Casket Records, 2011) and this carries over to even more philosophical territory in Album of Man (as yet unreleased).  Writing the lyrics of “Glacial Movements” inspired an entire album that Monsterworks recently completed called Monsterworks: Earth, which is about the history of Earth from birth to death.  You see a pattern here; I can get carried away with things.

So, if you want to talk about “headspace” the respective bands really are not that different now.  However, I think that was an inevitable consequence of just getting older and reading more.  It’s funny: there is another band which is kind of on hiatus that I have with most of the guys in Monsterworks called Dog.  That is Marcus’ (Monsterworks lead guitar) baby and when I try to get him to describe what kind of lyrics he wants me to write for it he says “this one is about having a good time and partying!”  I cannot write lyrics like Motley Crue so I just steer it in a direction we can both be happy with – sharks or boobs or something.

Does putting “progressive” in front of “doom metal” even get close to accurately describing the style of The Living Fields? I don’t believe it to be inaccurate, but stopping there in describing the music of Running out of Daylight just doesn’t do it justice. Understanding only comes with listening.

I am happy with “progressive doom” just because it sounds quite good.  It is very accurate?  No, but you may as well call it something.  I think my entire musical legacy amounts to being in bands that don’t fit into any definition other than METAL!  That is all I care about. It takes a really discerning listener and metal fan to like us, so those people are very special.  Every bad review I ever read was from someone who just couldn’t work out what we were trying to achieve or why.  Actually, there is no “why,” but a lot of effort goes into the composition; it is not random.  This is not pop music so there is no formula to it.  Just enjoy it and don’t worry about categories.

What are the odds of The Living Fields taking the stage at some point in the future?

Slim.  It would be great fun to meet the guys, but why spoil the mystique?  Our best chance would be a festival or something to make it worthwhile.  I reckon give us a few albums to see how it goes and see what the appetite is then.

Are we now to the point where the poor huddled masses will stand up and take notice of the brilliance of The Living Fields or will we have to wait for another album before everyone else catches up with you?

That would be nice.  I think we put together something special with this album for a number of reasons and I can enjoy it as a fan because in some ways it seems distant.  The good news is that, from what I understand, there should not be too long of a wait for the next one.  I am all for churning out the metal and not resting on your laurels.

Final thoughts?

A great song by Obituary?

Parting shots? Hope for a better tomorrow?

Thanks very much for the interview.  I do hope for a better tomorrow and somehow I managed to miss that out in all of the foregoing answers; TLF is a rare doom beast in that there is a positive spin to most of what we do.   And we are evidence that people really do make music just for the sheer hell and passion of it without caring what anyone else thinks. Cheers Scott!

http://www.thelivingfields.com/

http://www.myspace.com/thelivingfields

Well, they all say that don’t they? I’ve never once had a interviewer say, “Yup, I’ve heard the new album and it’s terrible”. That’s cool that you like it though.

Is this the same lineup as on the last album?

No it’s not. Our last drummer (Ian Wilson) ran away. I’m not sure where he went. He ran away said, “fuck you guys, you’re all dicks” and we never heard from him again. So we had to hire a new guy (Peter Alcorn) on very short notice. He drummed on the new album, as well as helped out writing some of the songs.

Would this new drummer be responsible for the increased level of blast beats and ‘heavier’ material on this album?

Yeah. Our last drummer, he could really do the old drumming thing very well, so it held us back. This time around we were able to me much more stupid with the drums ‘cos we had a bit more confidence that we could actually play the songs. But yeah, there’s a few more blast beats and stupid bollocks.

I’ve got to say I love the way the album opens with the blast beat and a song about Vikings battling Pirates due to a wormhole time travel thingy. That’s a great way to get the two stored warriors together

It goes back a little to the whole internet argument thing about who would win between so and so, but some of it is me being annoyed with the Pagan/Folk/Viking metal thing. These bands and fans that supposedly worship Odin and stuff.

How do you feel about Viking metal as a whole?

Some of it is OK like Tyr and Enslaved who are interesting, but otherwise it seems to be 3-minute songs about Odin’s beard and stuff.

But you, as a concept band about Pirates, what happens when you run out of songs about Pirates? I noticed on the song “Scrapping the Barrel” you actually address your critics about your lyrics.

Not too many have actually noticed that. It’s definitely a song about the naysayers and critics who say we can’t just sing about Pirates all the time. I mean what the fuck?! The first song is about time travel and Vikings, but we did it anyway. There’s a whole world of stupid shit we could do if we wanted, but we are happy writing about Pirates.

I noticed the last song “Death Throes of the Terror Squid” seems to be a return of the mighty beast from the song “Leviathan”.

I think that song as a bit of a “Leviathan Part 2”. In the first song these Pirates try to kill the sea monsters but it eats them, but this time they kill the shit out it.

So that’s the end of the beast, no “Leviathan part 3”?

Who knows, that’s what Hollywood is for! Maybe it will come back from some form of genetically created monster. Or they all wake up from a dream and they are all monsters?

So you are getting ready to hit US shores again in August. The last time I saw you was on the Pagan Knights tour back in 2009 I think, and you told me then that you really enjoyed touring the US. Are you looking forward to coming back?

Yeah, this is our third time in the US. That Pagan Knights Tour was fun! I’ve been really looking forward to it, more than anything all year. It’s just really nice to play in countries where the people speak English and you can party with the people as opposed to after the show where the fans can only speak five words and all they say is “I’m very much enjoying show tonight!” over and over. Its just nice to shoot the shit with people that speak English.

Who are you touring with this time?

We are touring with Kamelot. Have you heard of them? They are some sort of gothic power metal band or something. Then there is Blackguard and The Agonist. We aren’t sure how it’s going to go…

That’s seems like an odd bill! The Agonist are a female fronted metalcore act. The Pagan Knights Tour I saw you on was with Suidakra and Tyr, which was a pretty perfect bill for you, if you ask me.

Yeah that was a nice little tour. Those guys were fun.

So back to the album. Are you happy with how it came out, three albums in?

I’m very happy with it. It sounds better than we imagined. It was nice to improve some things and give it a nice folky edge. And there are things like the last track, which you already said has a bit of a black metal feel to it, we had Ken Sorceron from Abigail Williams do a little vocals there. And we didn’t hear those ’till after the album was done, as they were done out of the studio. That turned out awesome!

You couldn’t get Lord Byron from Bal-Sagoth to make an appearance, seeing as I know you are a huge fan?

I was actually talking to him about the possibility of him adding some huge pretentious spoken words or narration on the album, but it didn’t work out.

I still hear an even bigger Bal-Sagoth influence in your sound now. Especially in the orchestration and synths, which are pretty full on epic and over the top now. Not just Pirate-y twiddling.

Yeah, it would be nice to take the band more fully in that direction,  but it’s too much hard work! It’s nice to make one or two tracks with that sort of over the topness, but not a whole album.

Let me ask you about bands that rip off other bands’ styles. Right after your first album, a US band called Swashbuckle released an album of Pirate metal (I thought it was pretty terrible compared to you guys.) What are your thoughts on them?

We are actually pretty good friends with them. There’s actually a song on the new album, called “Swashbuckled” that’s a tongue n cheek song about all of them dying in horrible ways. It’s good fun. I just hope they don’t sue the fuck out of us over that song. The guitar player’s girlfriend is a lawyer, so were fucked. Luckily, they don’t quite know how the song goes yet.

You’ve been with Napalm for three albums now. Are you happy with them and plan to stay there?

They’ve played nice, so we aren’t going to be dicks as we are happy. As long as they release out albums and give us some money once in a while, we will stick with them.

Another Napalm-artist, Lord Jaldaboath of Jaldaboath appears on the album as I understand it provided the Pirate-y voice that announced the Vikings on “Back Through Time”. How did that occur?

We actually talked about doing a split-single with them a while ago, doing some stupid covers, but I dunno if it will happen or not. I’d still like to do it at some point. They are one of my favorite bands right now.

I hope so, that would be great. He is an odd character. I did an interview with him, via email, a while ago and he was in character for the whole interview!

Yeah! He’s a really funny strange guy. He’s one of the strangest  guys you’ll ever meet.

Speaking of covers, I noticed on the limited edition of Back Through Time, there is a cover “I am a Cider Drinker” by The Wurzels. As a former Brit, I appreciate that gem!  And there’s a cover “You are a Pirate” from the kids’ show Lazytown. What’s next? A Chas ‘n’ Dave song? What’s the one song you’d love to cover?

We’ll definitely have to up the ante and do something even more stupid! Maybe we’ll just become a cover band that does outrageously stupid cover songs. We are going to do a version of Spandau Ballet’s “Gold”, but make it about digging for gold.

Do you have a video planned for the new album?

Yeah, actually a couple of days ago we released a video for “Shipwrecked”. It’s awesome! It’s us on a green screen beach surrounded by babes and a midget. I’m sure it’s all over the internet by now.

When you go to the studio to record the album, is the whole thing written and ready to go? I’m picturing lots of drunken improvising and silliness in the studio.

Actually, it’s all written and done. We get in and get out. I’d love to be one of those bands that goes to a studio and jams for three years and possibly comes out with an album, but that sort of thing requires money which we don’t have.

Well, that’s all the time I’m allotted. I wish I could catch you on this current tour. Have fun, OK?

Oh I will, catch you next time. Cheers mate!

Alestorm Official Web Site

Napalm Records

I wouldn’t call it work really. Making g music is fun and doesn’t pay [laughs]. So I’d rather say I it is the opposite of work.

Congratulations on In Grisly Rapture. I believe it is not only the best of the three Revolting releases, but it is also one of your finest works. When did you start writing the music for this one and how long and/or involved was the entire process up through the final recording and completion of the album?

Thanks! I’m very pleased with it myself actually. I started work on these songs and about ten more – which will be for next album – maybe half a year ago or more. And I think they were pretty much finished after a month or two, as I don’t really work on it all day. I usually work quite fast, and then the stuff can hibernate for months or even sometimes years before I finish it up with doing vocals and sending it to mix.

On 2010’s The Terror Threshold you started incorporating more melody, particularly in regard to the guitar harmonies, but on In Grisly Rapture you took that approach much further, as every song is catchy, yet still down, dirty, and horror-filled death metal. Talk about this new level of melody and the balance you struck between aggression and memorable songwriting.

After I finished the first Revolting album I right away started writing more songs, and without really thinking about it I started to use melodies more and more. I think it was because I’d written so many non-melodic songs just before, so it felt right to do something more catchy. The more melodic songs on The Terror Threshold became my faves and that made me wanna do more songs in that style, so that’s why In Grisly Rapture sounds like it does. The next album, which is already written, is all in the same style too, so I think I really have gotten the Revolting sound solid now.

You’ve dedicated the album to several icons of horror cinema. Are there specific songs that pay tribute to Lucio Fulci, Mario Bava, Joseph Zito, Jeffrey Bloom, or Avery Crounse or was it a general inspiration from all of them?

All the songs on the new album deal with a specific movie actually, which you’ll understand when reading the lyrics. For instance the track Dr. Freudstein deals with House by the Cemetery by Fulci. Desmond is a huge horror fan and as he’s doing the lyrics it comes out like this, utterly great.

Did you give Desmond any input with regard to the themes and was the music presented to him prior to his writing the lyrics?

Desmond did the lyrics based on some of his own fave movies, and he hadn’t actually heard the music before. I’ve only had some ideas about what movies to do songs about in the future; that’s about what I’m good for [laughs]. Desmond knows this stuff so I just let him do his thing really, and it turns out killer.

Desmond is responsible for the artwork as well, which fits so well as part of the overall package. Tell us more about the art concepts and this Despicable character.

Desmond Root is actually a very talented artist whose done artworks and merch art for bands like Slayer and Warbringer, and he’s been in the metals scene as well as the horror scene for years and years. And besides being one of my fave artists he is also a great guy, and I’m very happy to have gotten to know him. The work he’s done for Revolting both lyrically and for the layout of the album is just amazing really. This album is one of those albums where people fuck themselves over by just downloading the music, as they really need the whole thing to fully get into it.

You are the sole writer of the music on In Grisly Rapture. Mutated Martin (drums) and Grotesque Tobias (bass) contribute fine performances, but you just couldn’t let then touch the arrangements, could you?

I guess I’m retarded that way. I know what I like, you know.

Your vocals are very well done, both intelligible and sinister as hell. How much work did you put into the vocals on this album or does it just come naturally at this point in your career?

The vocals for the entire album were done in a few hours as usual; I don’t know why I do them so fast really. I guess I’m very impatient and want to finish it up fast, so I can drink more beer or something [laughs]. I’ve never spent much time on vocals; usually a full album takes two hours to do.

The album is available in digital and vinyl formats as well, isn’t it? You’ve stopped at nothing, man!

Yes it is! And it’s all thanks to FDA Rekotz really, and I’m very fuckin’ happy about it!

As you’ve stated, In Grisly Rapture is being released by FDA Rekotz. The last two Revolting albums came out on Razorback Records. Was any thought given to releasing the new album on Razorback? Why did you end up going with F.D.A. Rekotz?

Billy at Razorback came up with the Revolting concept, so it’s thanks to him the band is here at all. This time we didn’t agree on a few things and decided that the new album wouldn’t be on Razorback, and then FDA Rekotz were very interested in doing it instead. Rico at FDA is a great guy, and I’m happy he liked the new album enough to release it.

You’ve got a new Ripspreader release out there now too on Vic Records, which I’ve unfortunately not yet heard. Enlighten us the finer points of The Van Murders.

The new Ribspreader is also something I’m very excited about. It’s gotten great reviews so far and it’s a concept album. I think we got a good mix this time of the debut album, which everyone seems to like the most, and our later more non-Swedish style. It is by far our most brutal album I think, and as it’s a concept album you need to really get into it, and enjoy the lyrics and artwork and that’s something very cool I think.

Any newer albums that have impressed you lately? What have you been spinning?

The new Demonical [Death Infernal] is great [I agree 100 percent – Scott], and so is the last Facebreaker album [Infected]. I’m trying to get into the new The Gates of Slumber [The Wretched] too, as I loved their earlier stuff. Besides that I must say that anyone not knowing them should check out The Lord Weird Slough Feg, any album really [Again, 100 percent agreement – Scott]. It’s a band I discovered just a few years ago, but it has become my fave band of all categories really.

What else have you got cooking at the moment and for the remainder of 2011?

The new Paganizer album has just been finished and will be out this fall. Also I’m working on new stuff for The Grotesquery and Demiurg, which I hope will be out sometime next year. And also, if anyone out there has a fuckin’ awesome clean singing voice drop me an e-mail, as I have some killer non-death metal riffs saved from tens of years ago that I need to use [laughs].

http://www.myspace.com/revoltingdeath

http://www.fda-rekotz.com/gx/

Yeah. It wasn’t a conscious choice to do so. We just wanted to let Into Nights Requiem Infernal, the previous album, be a bookend of sorts and head in a different direction. We did feel that, in the end, it resulted in a throwback to the days of old, but it still felt like something fresh and new to us as well. Sort of a launching point into newer territories that we want to explore on the next album.

I dig it- as I always liked the earlier stuff. Is having These Are They as a pure dm outlet anything to do with the softer approach on new Novembers Doom?

I don’t think so… at least on my side of things. I could see that being true for Paul, though. If These Are They didn’t exist, I could easily see Paul opting for a more ‘brutal’ sound in Novembers Doom.

These Are They was birthed from Paul wanting to reunite with original Novembers Doom guitarist, Steve Nicholson, to create a throwback to the projects of their youth: old-school, Chicago style Death Metal. Paul obviously felt that it was time to reconnect with that genre, and I’ve been more than happy to be an accomplice, since I’m always game for hitting things with sticks in the name of death, so if These Are They didn’t exist as an outlet for that, I’m willing to bet that the more full-on Death Metal sound would make its way into the Novembers Doom formula. And it’s not as if Paul has a stranglehold on the Novembers Doom writing process, either. Everyone in the band is a die-hard fan of Death Metal, I suppose with nudging, we’d all succumb to the infection. But I see the turn we took with Aphotic to be the right one. I don’t think that any fans could’ve seen that coming. To fall back and retreat into Death Metal would have been too easy, and expected.

The songwriting process for Aphotic really flowed. Whatever came out, came out. And then we defined it, and just let it be.

How did you get involved with both bands- what bands did you come from?

My involvement in Novembers Doom goes back to ’99. One of my best friends growing up worked with a girl named Mary Bielich, who was Novembers Doom ‘s bassist at the time. I guess she had been stressing about Novembers Doom needing a drummer and made no secret of it, nor should she have, because they had to get into the studio that next week to record Of Sculptured Ivy and Stone Flowers, and there had been some issues with their drummer at the time that resulted in them being left with only half of a rhythm section. My friend spoke up, connected Mary and I, and we agreed to give it a shot. From there, myself and the rest of the band at that time got together, got along, and went in for a few practices before it was time for me to join them in the studio to record Of Sculptured Ivy. So it was an intense situation!

I recorded that album to everyone’s satisfaction, and was asked to come on as a full-time member. I respectfully declined. At that time I was playing in a rock band that I could have sworn would take over the world. Whoops! We never did! Oh well… To each his own. I did, however, get another crack at Novembers Doom when I got a phone call from Paul a few years ago, and pretty much said what he said ten years prior. Off and on, Paul and I had been talking about playing together again someday, so things do have a way of coming full circle. I don’t think I would’ve done anything different in terms of the choices I made… This is the absolute best line-up that the band has ever seen. And it was the obvious next step to join These Are They. It was a pretty cut-and-dry situation: They had just recently signed a deal with The End Records, then lost their drummer, and couldn’t find anyone. I couldn’t take hearing Paul bitch about it anymore! So I pretty much said, “Hey, guess what… I’ll do it.” Honestly, I think Paul complained about it non-stop on purpose. Until it drove me crazy enough to offer up my services. I think he would’ve felt bad for asking me to join. At that time, which was early on in my rejoining Novembers Doom, I was juggling about 4 bands. I’m an addict.

As far as prior bands… Well, I always consider myself having come from Novembers Doom. But having been born and raised a drummer (dad played drums, grandpa played drums), I hit the club scene in Chicago when I was 13, playing in punk and hardcore bands. At that same time, Thrash Metal was something that I played with my friends from the neighborhood, but it never became serious enough to take out to the clubs. From there, Metal was always a mainstay, but life guided me toward other forms of music; funk, jazz, electro-stuff, hip-hop, power-pop, ‘shoegaze’, marching band… You name it and at some point I sat behind the kit for it. And gladly. Taking influence from all sectors is priceless. Metal has consumed my time over the last five or six years, but I refuse to do only that.

How hard is it being in (two) actual bands as well as being an internet reviewer writer? How do separate being a musician and a unbiased music critic?

Put it this way… My wife was never a big fan of Metal, and now she’s even less of one! Being in two bands can be hectic, but the thing with These Are They is that we try to keep it, first and foremost, FUN. That project isn’t about world domination, it’s about two guys that grew up together rekindling the spark that started the fire, and with that, about finding the right people to help hold that torch high, meaning that particular style had to be played like a sixth sense, so that we can do things like practice once every week, or even every other week, and always be in the pocket; have everything right on point, all of the time. It never interferes with Novembers Doom practices, touring, recording, etc., so it’s easy to be a part of These Are They and Novembers Doom, and not go postal. Of course, the fact that I fairly recently moved thousands of miles away doesn’t help the cause, but it does strengthen that internal bond. You can’t fuck with that kind of connection.

But to hone in on your question, about staying unbiased, it’s actually harder to be a ‘journalist’ when trying to just plain be a ‘musician’ at the same time. Novembers Doom and These Are They do not cloud my judgment or anything like that. It’s more a thing of avoiding playing the judge and jury while wearing the “pretentious musician’s” hat! No, not that difficult really… I’d like to think of myself as my own worst critic when it comes to my playing, so it would be impossible for me to ever be a pompous, asshole drummer. But growing up putting all forms of music under the microscope, just because that’s how I get my kicks, and then having to listen to something for what it is and NOT nitpick at it, dissect it too much… Sometimes that’s hard to do. But I never, ever hold court being that guy. I always leave the sharpest knives at the door.

As a member that came in as the band was take a harsher, more death metal approach and as the drummer in These Are They, what are your thoughts on the return to the softer direction and do you enjoy playing the style as well as track from the bands first 3-4 releases?

Ummm… This question could get me in trouble, man!. I absolutely do enjoy playing to the softer strengths of Novembers Doom, mostly because of my upbringing with the aforementioned styles; I value that well-roundedness in my playing. If anything, playing the These Are They stuff makes heading toward that more subdued side of Novembers Doom an even more fun journey. Smashing my drums into oblivion for These Are They actually gives oxygen to the ‘lighter’ side of Novembers Doom, just as Novembers Doom gives me pause and cranks me up for that other, more brutal form. It’s a wicked yin and yang effect.

As for material from Novembers Doom earlier releases? It’s solid and quality, but my heart goes out to the later albums. Even when I recorded for Of Sculptured Ivy, part of the reason that I made the decision to not take on the drummer’s throne permanently, was that I just wasn’t much a fan of that style back then. Anything that I did Metal-related had to be epileptic. I couldn’t appreciate, fully, the more ‘gothic’, morose, slow-bleed side of things. Now that I’m older and I’ve blown my wad countless times, I can actually go back and listen, and have a better understanding of it all. And I do regret passing up the opportunity to stick with ‘em, because the band has grown into a fucking beast, but at the end of the day I’m just glad that I’ve helped shape this machine. That makes me feel good.

Which band are you involved in the most song writing with? I get the impression that Novembers Doom is Paul’s baby, especially lyrically.

I’d say that it’s actually about equal, as far as my input into both These Are They and Novembers Doom. There’s usually a kind of formula that seems to work best where the guitarists bring their ideas into the practice room, and from there I can have my way with their preconceived structures. Things always start to morph when the amps go on and the drums create the backbone that isn’t there when these guys are at home shedding. Everybody has input equally as far as rhythmic ideas, but I digest those suggestions, chew them up, and spit them out a combination of what they had in their heads along with my initial response. From there, we always record these ‘first drafts’, take them home, study them, and work out the kinks until they fit our ideas of ‘perfection’.

Novembers Doom is without a doubt Paul’s baby, and he is very much the force lyrically. But musically, and with arrangements, Larry and Vito are the bright lights, with the creation process taking shape very much like how I explained in that first answer. However, this time around, things took a different course…

Aphotic was the first time in this band’s history where everyone in that room had ideas and input, equally. And we didn’t succumb to ‘hierarchies’, if you will. I know that sounds bad, but I guess what I mean is that we made a conscious decision to break an old, strong tradition, and we loved the end result. We even did things like (and it doesn’t sound like an earth-shattering concept or anything, but it was uncharted territory for us) Larry and I getting together as a dynamic duo of sorts, where I’d sit behind the kit and Larry would be standing in front of his amp and we’d take a few minutes to explain how we felt musically at that very moment, even if those feelings seemed to cause a kind of musical ‘friction’. Then we would try to personify that. That’s always fun. “Harvest Scythe” and “Shadow Play” were created this way. Just spur of the moment, gut-reactions that we hammered out until we felt that we had the best of both worlds.

Is it handy having an in with a label like the End records with Paul go so far back and being involved with label employee Tomer Pink for so long and even in a band with him (Subterranean Masquerade)- I’m guessing there’s not much bullshit when trying to get a deal done?

No, not much bullshit when trying to get a deal done. We know what to expect of The End and The End knows what to expect of us. Each and every person in this band has a pretty complicated lifestyle, be it work, newborn children, chronic illness, or a drummer that lives 1,345 miles away (whoops!). We do everything that we can do, around everything that we have to do, in order to get the job done. The End Records knows this, they respect this, and they help us where and when we need it.

What’s it like being on such an avant-garde once revered and now slightly unpredictable label? You are side by side the likes of Sigh and Winds but also the likes of Tub ring, the 69 eyes, The Answer and Gorgeous Frankenstein.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve been asked this. And to be honest, I actually enjoy that fact that I can say Novembers Doom and These Are They are label mates with bands far removed from what we do. From the perspective of one who enjoys, in my opinion, all things ‘just plain good’, being shoulder-to-shoulder with artists like Art Brut, 69 Eyes, and Juliette Lewis is exciting. We still have brethren there like Laethora, the aforementioned Winds, and Anathema, so there’s a good balance within that wide spectrum. How this polar-opposite roster sits with the general public, I’m not exactly sure, but as an artist signed to the label, it’s a breath of fresh air, and I think that it actually draws more attention to the ‘darker’ side of The End… Again, the yin and yang effect coming into play.

How did Anneke and Dan Swano get involved -obviously Anneke’s solo project  is on The End and Dan mixed and mastered, but when did it become apparent they would actually lend their voices?

Anneke and Paul have been good friends for years. Going back to our approaching the songwriting for Aphotic from a different angle, we did feel like injecting another ‘ballad’ into the mix, but we didn’t want to structure it like we’d done in the past. So we stripped our ideas down to the bare minimum, ironed them out completely until you are left with only voice and guitar. We toyed with the idea of adding in percussion, but then abandoned that pretty early on to achieve a more ‘organic’ feel. Once it was written, we discussed what other materials could be added, but those that would not weigh too heavily on the feel we’d achieved. We decided on the violin and a female voice. Not just any violinist. Not just any female voice. “What Could Have Been” had to be accompanied by world-renowned classical violinist, Rachel Barton Pine, and that secondary voice to accompany Paul’s would absolutely have to be Anneke, or it just wouldn’t work. Those of you familiar with what Anneke is capable of, know the distinct quality with which she goes on record. The end result, I feel, flirts with the ‘overflow’; takes the listener right up to the edge of that cliff without going for the push. I love that negative space where you can almost feel the drop-off, but it never comes. That always makes me want to listen to it more!

Dan has worked on several of our albums, and I guess it’s gotten to the point where he feels so comfortable with the material that he’s willing to take liberties… Thank God!!! Dan lending his backing growls to “Of Age and Origin – Part 1″ was not planned. He and Paul  were going back and forth about vocal ideas/effects for that particular section of the song, but not quite nailing it. So upon getting one of the mixes back, there suddenly appeared one Dan Swano on the mic! Quite a nice surprise. We were all giddy and kiddish about it, and last but not least, it sounded fantastic. THAT, was exactly the additive that we were searching for

Any parting words for the Teeth of the Divine Faithful?

Peter T ägtgren: I don’t know.  I mean, I definitely think this album compared to the last one is definitely much more heavier and darker, you know, and it’s more guitar driven than ever before, I think, you know?

Yep, I would agree.  You also said in an interview that you felt like it was more organic than Cynic Paradise.  How do you feel that way?

Yeah, for sure, because now David [Wallin] is playing drums on the whole album.  He puts in his finesse in there, and normally on Pain albums, there’s 50% program and 50% me playing drums, but on this one, he puts his touch on it, I think, and it gives it an extra flavor.  And plus, you know, the bass I’ve put on there, sometimes there’s 50% keyboard bass, but now it’s 100% real bass that I played.  The whole thing just makes it more alive I think, not so stiff, you know?

I agree.  I would say that it has more of a straightforward kind of vibe than Cynic Paradise.  You’ve still got the electronic and industrial elements, but it seems a little more stripped down, I guess you could say.

Yeah.  I think it feels like it’s not taking over the song, it’s more, you know, guitars are taking over the song instead of the keyboards, which was the opposite maybe on the last album, or the last six albums, you know?  [Laughs]  So I mean, definitely the industrial sound and the techno keyboards are there, but not in that same way.  It’s more like a flavor.

Right.  Now, was that something that you did intentionally, or was that just kind of how it came out when you were writing?

It kind of came out like that, and also I kind of wanted to tone down the keyboards and just use the distortion and the craziness and [not] build the song around the keyboards.  You know, this time, the whole song is built around the guitars and the vocals.  I spent shitloads of time on the vocals, because I think every song has a different kind of vocal style in there.  It’s not the same style all the way through the album.  There’s always parts here and there that are different, or the whole songs are like, different kind of vocal styles.  I just wanted to put a lot of thought into it, and a lot of finesse, or whatever you want to say, also on the vocals, not just going in a straight line, you know?

Right.  And that was one thing I was going to comment on, that the vocal styles, they’re so much different, there’s so much variety between the songs.  It’s almost hard to believe that’s all you.  That’s really cool.

Oh, cool.  Thanks.

What’s the meaning behind the album title?

Well, there’s no meaning.  I mean, there’s an illusion.  The song is about envy of others, and also being disappointed about life, how it turned out to be, stuff like that.  And you’re kind of banging your head against the wall, you know, kind of regretting things, a few steps that went the wrong way.  So it’s more of a crying out for a second chance, you know, to redo your mistakes—not to redo your mistakes, but you know what I mean—to undo your mistakes on the past, growing up, kind of.

And since I’m a woman, let me ask you about “Dirty Woman.”  What was your inspiration behind that song?

Basically us men, you know.  I mean, when the blood goes from the one head down to the other, the IQ really shrinks, and we become these cattle that women just whip around.  In a sense, we become mongrels around good-looking women.  So it’s actually about guys; I’m just singing about how stupid we are.

[Laughs] Okay, cool.  Now I’m going to head back in time a little bit since I’m a little more familiar with Hypocrisy’s background than Pain’s.  The debut album, Pain, came out in ’97.

Yes.

And around that same time, Hypocrisy’s sound was kind of shifting as well.  What was the cause for that?

A need of change in life and in patterns.  Sometimes when you get too comfortable with a certain pattern…you know, I think the Hypocrisy sound changed even before that, in, what was that, ’94, when The Fourth Dimension came out.  It changed there and then it changed a second time to Abducted, and I think it changed another time to Final Chapter as well, you know?  So it was constantly changing, and constantly progressing and really trying new things all the time.  But there were still things missing for me, I guess, in that period, you know, for me to try to sing clean and also to get more into recording with computers and recording with samplers and drum machines and all that shit.  For me, as a producer, it just came…I needed to do something else as well.  Back then I already recorded at least a hundred albums with the same formula, you know—guitar, bass and vocals.  I just needed to develop as a producer, but there was no bands around that I could really progress as a producer, so I had to create my own band.  And that’s really how Pain started.

Did Pain ever become an inspiration for Hypocrisy material, or to you, have they always been completely separate?

It’s hard to separate things since you’re the same person, you know, and do both things.  But nowadays, I really try to separate them.  Even though the new Pain album sounds a little, yeah, it’s got some Hypocrisy in there, that doesn’t mean that Hypocrisy is going to stay the same way as it did on the last album.  I don’t know.  I just can’t stand in one place and do the same thing twice.  That’s impossible for me.  I don’t care.  Even if it would make me rich, you know, to just do new songs with the same kind of formula, I would say fuck no, I can’t, because I would hate myself.  So I’m constantly trying to come up with new things all the time, and you win some and you lose some, I guess.  But that’s how I am, and I can’t really help it.

You know, I reviewed A Taste of Extreme Divinity when it came out in 2009, and that was one of the things that I mentioned in the review, that Hypocrisy’s sound has always been changing and evolving, and really everything you’ve done, it’s always evolving and growing, yet there’s always something that kind of pulls back to the beginning.  I mean, you always know it’s going to be Hypocrisy or it’s going to be Pain.

Yeah.  You try to go forward even though, you know, I guess you come back to old stuff, but at the moment when you do it, it was a long time ago since you did something from the past, kind of, and so you mix your back catalogue Herron:   in your head with new stuff, I think, and that’s how I think you can progress.  I mean, I don’t want to make Hypocrisy sound like Meshuggah the next album.  That would be totally weird, you know?  [Laughs]  Even if we could play that kind of music, I don’t think we could, or change it into something else, do a totally 180 thing, you know?  It’s always going to have a foot in what you’re doing, I think, [but you] still want to go forward.

Sure.  So keeping on the topic of Hypocrisy, what’s going on with Hypocrisy right now?  Are you guys working on a new album?

No, not right now.  We have no plans.  I don’t even know if Mikael [Hedlund] wrote anything.  I definitely have [some things] stored away in the computer, stuff like that, you know, but it’s not enough to start booking the studio and start putting the songs together.  That’s way too early.  I mean, I only have a few festivals this summer and a few productions, so there will be some time to sit and write, and I don’t know if it’s going to be Pain songs I’m writing or Hypocrisy songs I’m writing.  The day will tell, you know, when I’m sitting there, what it’s going to be.

I see.  Well, you’re obviously a workhorse when it comes to your projects, and it seems like you’ve always got something going on with a project, or you’re in the studio, so what are you currently working on right now, and what do you see coming up in the future?

Nothing [laughs].  It’s like Seinfeld; it’s a show about nothing.  No, but right now, it’s just been full power on promoting it, and I’ve been doing over a hundred interviews so far.  And I’m just really preparing for the shows with Pain right now, and that takes a while to get everything worked out, and also with the tour we’re going to do in Europe, we’re setting out this really cool stage set and stuff like that, and it takes a lot of time and planning and shit.  I’ve basically been really involved in that stuff right now.  But it’s going to cool down a little bit, and then I have a few things that I’m going to mix and one thing that I’m going to produce, and then in September, the tour starts.  It’s not going to end until mid-November, and hopefully after that, we can have a tour in America, you know.  But we’ve got to find a band that would fit for us, you know, because we can’t really go out on and headline, because we’re too small for that.  Then we’re going to have to play pizzerias and gas stations, you know?

[Laughs]  Okay.  So I have to ask this inevitable question: What kind of music are you listening to nowadays?

Shit, that’s a good question.  All kinds of stuff.  Anything from Shania Twain to, ooh…it’s really hard to say.  I don’t know.  I usually always go back to the ‘60s and ‘50s and stuff like that.  I don’t know.  Right now, what’s in my car?  I’ve got to think here.  Fuck, that’s really tricky.  AC/DC, I’m listening to right now. T he old shit.

The old shit.

With Bon Scott.

Right on.  I know you’re a busy man, so thank you for taking the time to talk to me.

Yeah, no problem at all.

www.nuclearblast.de

www.painworldwide.com

www.hypocrisy.tv

Kurt: That’s not an uncommon statement.

I finally checked out Transhuman and while I hadn’t listened to Believer in the past I had read a lot about the progressive thrash style, etc. The first thing I thought upon listening to Transhuman was “Well, this doesn’t sound like thrash.” But I did realize that the thrash element is not a primary factor these days. Is this really the first album on which the quintessence of the thrash part of the Believer sound just isn’t as apparent?

Kurt: Yeah, I’d say definitely more so than the four albums before it. The first one, Extraction from Mortality, was really kind of straight forward thrash. Sanity Obscure was more kind of a real technical type of thrash. Dimensions was where we got pretty weird. Half the album is kind of thrashy and the second half of the album is the symphonic type stuff; we had an opera singer, we had real violins, and did this whole thing. Then we took the hiatus and came back and Gabriel had some thrashier stuff, but I think we were starting to lean toward more of the proggy and avant-garde type of stuff. We really wanted to push the envelope. I think where people get stuck, to be honest, is the vocals. So if I just sit there and do my thrash vocal type of approach then people still think it’s thrash for some reason [laughs]. So when we really wanted to push ourselves that’s when we did more melody and different vocal arrangements and things like that. I’ve been a big fan of Mike Patton [Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, etc] for the longest time. We’ve been kind of pigeonholed into this thrash scene. You know what the thrash and death metal scenes are like; if you vary the vocals at all people get all pissed. We’re at the stage where we don’t really about that anymore; we write stuff that is really musical and feels right to us. So we were like “Screw it, we’re going to put a bunch of different vocals on this record.” I wanted to push myself vocally because we pushed ourselves musically. We were recording this stuff and thinking “oh my god, people are going to shit when they hear this. We figured that every review was going to be trashing us to the 10^th degree basically. And some of them do, but it’s surprising; some people really get it. We like getting a really good review on an album, but it’s not like “Oh, if we do another album just like this then we’re going to get bigger and sell more albums.” We just really don’t care about that stuff. Nobody buys it anyway, so we’re going to do exactly what we want so that when we sit back at the end of the day we know that we accomplished something totally different here. We pushed ourselves and didn’t give into the “Hey, let’s try to sell hundreds of thousands of albums” or whatever pressure.

Actually, it may be better that Transhuman was my first real experience with a Believer album since my views going in weren’t tainted so much by what had come previously. What I came away with is that there is a ton of great riffs on this album that are just a bit left of center, a little different, but at the core still solid and grab you. What is also impressive is the number of songs that have catchy choruses and not even in a “poppy” sense, but just purely memorable. And those two things in large part made me realize that this is simply a great album. Yes, it’s progressive, but it’s not overdone either.

Kurt: Oh thanks a lot. We really tried. What you said there is a huge compliment, but I think that’s exactly what we were going for. The hardcore Believer fans really know what to expect, which is the unexpected and I think they’re fine with the record. I think it’s the people that are kind of caught in the past, the real straight forward thrash type of stuff. We had some comments from people that said don’t judge this album based on their past; you have to go into it thinking that this is a brand new type of thing. What we’ve always done is kind of shatter people’s expectations. That’s not a great business model, but for us it’s the model we really went after. We didn’t want to over-prog it and go completely crazy. We wanted to leave space in the songs. So when I was writing the guitar parts I wasn’t – like I’ve done in the past sometimes – think that I had to fill a certain space. It was really hard to write that way. Joey [Daub], the drummer, had a very hard time. We were like “Dude, do something really straight forward here and let it breathe, and let it open up” and he had to really fight against trying to fill every space. We’re big fans of Rush. They’re such good players, they’re such good musicians, but they know when to bring it back and don’t over play; there are sections where you can do that and times you can do that, but not all the time. That’s what we really tried to shoot for.

With the drumming it’s interesting because with the often slight angularity of the riffing the rhythms can be deceiving in their complexity or lack thereof.

Jeff: One of the things about the way that Kurt and Joey write as far as the rhythm stuff goes is that Joey will also play odd metered drum beats over a regular 4/4 riff. Sometimes there are actually are cases where everyone is doing it on time, but there are also places that are more straight forward so we can have a normal vocal cadence over it, but Joey may be doing 5/4 or 7/4 or something on the drums. There is always something going on that’s mixing up the time signatures; it might not be the whole band, but it’s often at least one person.

So it really can be deceptive in a sense that it isn’t too far “out there” because the riff kind of anchors it, but it’s not all traditional beats either.

Kurt: Exactly, you hit the nail on the head there. We really worked at that. We did a couple of songs in our past where it was 7 or it was 9 and really pushed ourselves, and then we really started tweaking things. Like if I play in ¾ and Joey plays in 4/4 it comes around to be on time every so many measures. What that lets us do is kind of what Jeff was just describing. I could play something that was in 4/4 and Joey would just start screwing with the rhythm. I think we’ve gotten a little better at it, but we’ve also tried not to overdo it. I think that was the struggle on this album like “Hey, let’s both play 4/4” [laughs] and have this groove type of thing going and see how it feels. It sounds kind of strange to push yourself back out of the proggy way, so it was trying to push ourselves in the opposite direction of that proggy thing to see if we could do it.

That deceptiveness in the rhythm patterns has always been a staple of a band like Meshuggah where they’d kind fool you; there’d be a conventional beat, but the way they played around it made you think it was the drumming that was complicated.

Kurt: Exactly, yeah. They’ve really mastered that. It’s a cool thing, a unique thing. Once you start to master that kind of deceptive stuff with drums or guitars or whatever, you can pull of the proggy stuff, but then you can go into 4/4 and syncopate on specific down beats or whatever. It gives you a ton of flexibility on how you want the song to feel.

You mentioned that your philosophy toward making albums is not a good business model, but clearly Metal Blade thought enough of the band to release the last two albums. What’s the relationship with the label like?

Kurt: Metal Blade are really fans of music and fans of metal. When we started coming back and doing stuff again, Howard [Jones] from Killswitch Engage was a fan of the band and he kind of brought the introduction to Metal Blade. We were at the stage where we could record and do all this stuff ourselves. We actually licensed this to Metal Blade, so they don’t have to put out these huge budgets for recording and stuff like that. We’re basically a pretty cheap band for them. It’s a really good symbiotic relationship with them where they’re going to give us some exposure in the press and with marketing and stuff like that and we hand them fully finished products.

So they don’t to recover the same amount of costs compared to other bands.

Kurt: Yeah, so in that sense it’s a great business model for them and it’s a great outlet for us. I don’t really know if we could get a better type of situation for a band nowadays. It’s just really flexible and they’re a great bunch of people. We’re such a small potatoes band for them, yet they’re in constant contact with us and are excited about the stuff, they listen to it, and they promote it, and all of this cool, really amazing stuff. They’re into really working with us. We like to control things from our end and they’ve been totally behind us. I think that speaks for them as not just looking at it from a business angle, but really being fans of the music and friends with the musicians.

One of the things about Metal Blade is that they are one of the few big metal labels that have been able to always keep one foot forward with regard to what might be popular sales-wise on the heavier end, yet still release albums of relevant and solid music. But they keep the other foot in the realm of good metal, regardless of sales potential. That’s allowed Metal Blade to be hugely successful without abandoning the roots. That’s tough, man.

Kurt: It’s really tough. If you look at Roadrunner – and we were on Roadrunner – when they had Cynic, Obituary, Pestilence, and it was a great time. Then with new owners and a new business model and stuff they totally got away from that that. If you’re not selling hundreds of thousands of records, forget it, you’re done. There are some other labels out there that are good, but when you think of the size and scope of Metal Blade, the bands they’ve brought to the scene, and their discoveries… Even with [Brian] Slagel and Metallica in the beginning and all that stuff. It’s really impressive. I think you said it the best. They have the business and they go after bands that really sell, but they’re not like snubbing and turning their backs on bands that may not sell that well. They’re fans of the music and that’s cool, man.

As for the Roadrunner years, when did it all come apart? At what point was it over for Believer and why?

Kurt: We did this album Dimensions and it was this huge thing. Roadrunner basically gave us our budget and we acquired the digital technology of the time. We took months to record it and did like 48 tracks of violins and so much stuff going on. During the recording of the album I realized that I wanted to go back to school and finish my education and Joey and everyone was fine with that. Even Roadrunner was cool about it. There was no falling out within the band or falling out with Roadrunner or anything like that. It was just this personal decision that I wanted to pursue my education and that it was the right time, so that’s what I did.

Which was what?

Kurt: I went back to undergraduate school and went the whole way through; went to Johns Hopkins and got my PhD in Molecular Medicine, did a fellowship, started my own breast cancer research lab. That’s what I do for a living; I’m a scientist. I took a position that brought me back to the area here and Joey and I just started talking one day. He was in this band with Jeff called Fountain of Tears, they were recording this demo, and they asked me to come in the studio and help them produce it, which was really cool. Through all of that we just started talking about getting together and see what happens, and just have some fun. Then fun turns into getting to work and writing some tunes. One thing leads to another and then we were our workaholic selves and talked about putting something out. Then the world spread and that’s where Howard Jones heard about it. Howard was telling us how much of a huge fan he is. He knew more about the band than we did [laughs]. On Gabriel we had a bunch of people on there. Deron [Miller] from CKY did a guitar solo, Rocky [Gray] from Evanescence, and Joe Rica from Sacrifice. We weren’t trying to have a bunch of guest musicians, but people would hear we were recording and then come in and do something. It was cool.

Talk about the lyrical themes of Transhuman and your inspirations for it.

Jeff: We were really inspired by the whole idea of technology and its effect on how we look at ourselves as humans. When you really start to look into the research that’s happening right now, into things like prosthetics and different devices… There are actually devices now that interface with the brain to allow us to regulate epileptic seizures, then there are cochlear implants for hearing, and pacemakers for your heart; there is a lot of that stuff that is common today. Even laser eye surgery. But when you look at what’s coming down the pike and this is stuff that’s actually being developed right now, especially when you get into nanotechnology where we will have these machines inside our bodies that can be programmed from outside and attack diseases and build new blood vessels, our perception of what it means to be human is going to change. We’re actually getting to the point where some of these technologies are merging with us biologically.

Kurt: What are the biological limitations how technology will actually supersede and help us to break through those limitations?

Jeff: Exactly, and that’s where you get into things like the whole transhumanism movement. One of their major goals is to eliminate death or at least make it a death that someone could choose. There is a lot more of that kind of stuff. Then you get into very closely related fields, such as artificial intelligence. Like what does it mean to be conscious? If we create these machines that have the same kind of awareness and emotions that humans have, ethically would we need to give them the same rights that we have? There are all of these different questions that as a society that we are going to have to face. It sounds like a lot of Sci-Fi stuff right now, but when you look into it where we’ve been with science and technology and where we’re going with computers and everything the stuff is happening and it’s going to happen and there is nothing we can really do to stop it, assuming that we don’t annihilate each other in a nuclear war or something first. Kurt has his background in medicine and genetics, he’s a geneticist, and my undergraduate work was in philosophy and I’ve always been interested in it.

That’s a good pairing of backgrounds to lyrics of this type.

Jeff: Yeah, and right now is just a great time for that with all these different fields. There is like this convergence happening with science and philosophy and genetics. So we just thought that would it be a really good having a theme like that, even if it’s a loose theme, which really helps with the writing process and lyrics and everything. And also it really gave us a really good foundation for the artwork. It really worked for us.

To me it doesn’t seem like a far out notion, but clearly it is not a concern of the average person in this country. How long before it is impossible to ignore and becomes a part of the broader consciousness as an ethical concern?

Kurt: That’s a great question. People like [Futurist] Ray Kurzweil comes at it in a very scientific way. He talks about the law of accelerating concerns the way you look at the exponential acceleration of technology and where we come from. Think about it; we were just discussing this the other day. With the album Dimensions, the album before we took a hiatus basically, you didn’t really have a lot of Internet stuff going on. Just thinking about our recording technologies and stuff like that we use to use compared to what we are doing just 15 years later is unreal. It is unbelievable! You look at the past 40 years it’s unbelievable the amount of technology that has developed. We have cochlear implants and now they have these ocular implants. I’m in the medical research field and we’re sequencing human genomes now. Just 10 years ago it was really expensive and it wasn’t something we barely even thought about doing because we didn’t think we’d ever have the technology, and now it’s here. When you have this increase in technology the price for everything just diminishes and that’s why you have this huge acceleration. So Ray Kurzweil thinks that by the year 2045 we’re going to be actually seeing this technology transcend have a huge impact on us, being half human and half machine, to the point where we can even download our thoughts and store our thoughts, and back up our thoughts. You have the immortality thing where you could live forever based on how much machine you want or whatever, but even your thoughts and memories could basically be immortal because you can download them and back them up.

Jeff: We’re already beginning to see the ethical and social types of questions that we’re going to be facing. I’ll give you this one example. There is all this really great technology now to help people restore their hearing, like people who were either born deaf or had some kind of accident or whatever.

Uh yeah, I’m going to need that technology before too long.

Jeff: [Laughs]. We all are. So the question is if the technology exists to eliminate hearing problems and understanding that hearing is very important to our safety should we force people to use it? There are different communities that say we shouldn’t have to have our hearing restored if we don’t want to. Then society comes back and says we can eliminate a lot of really bad things from happening if we make you have this. If you take that one example and then you look at the types of problems caused in society by depression and if we get to the point where we understand enough to actually eliminate that stuff and people can choose what kind of mental states they’re in, then should we force people to be happy?

Kurt: This is a debate that’s been around for a long a time. Do we eradicate things like manic depressive disorder when some of the greatest classical musicians were manic depressive and wrote some of their best pieces in that state? Or some of these artists that were even clinically insane.

Or some artists that even have severe forms of ADHD that when you channel it creatively results in great works of art and awe inspiring performances.

Kurt: Exactly! From the genetics standpoint the whole argument is that we discovered a lot of genes that are mutated that lead to these syndromes. Well, if they’re not necessarily life or death syndromes do you go in to an eight-cell embryo or one-cell embryo and correct it? Now this person when they’re born would no longer be susceptible to let’s say bi-polar disorder or manic depression. It’s a huge ethical debate because you’ll be engineering people. Even with the transhuman type of philosophy, with technology you could be in your 50s and all of a sudden get a prosthetic or organs or you’ll be free of disease and all of this stuff. Like Jeff said, do you force people to do that? Is it a choice? If a ton of people make that choice, then what about the resources necessary since all these people will be alive now? This is going to happen whether we like it or not because we are a society based on technology. That’s what kind of scares me. People don’t want the change, but change is going to happen anyway, so then we’re kind of screwed.

Given the scientific-based discussion we’re having, it makes me think of Believer being classified as a Christian metal band.  Is it even relevant to described Believer that way and has it ever been? Or is it just that a bunch of musicians that happened to be Christian got together and recorded metal?

Kurt: I think it’s the latter. We were hated by the Christian market and taken out of stores. Christian groups would picket our shows.

Jeff: Back then because Believer was not doing it the same way that they expected they were boycotting and all that. Roadrunner kind of helped propagate some of that [Christian metal thing with us]. Back then it was bands like King Diamond and Slayer who were blatantly Satanic, and then we had these Believer guys that were singing about philosophy and religious views and Bible type of stories, but Metallica, like with “The Four Horsemen,” were totally into that too. It was kind of just a big marketing ting.

Kurt: We were really uncomfortable with the Christian metal thing.

It’s never been any kind of overt preaching about Christianity then.

Kurt: We were singing about different things and philosophies. On Dimensions we started to print references to some of the Sigmund Freud books we were reading and some of the philosophical polygenic type of books we were reading at the time, and some of the science-y kind of black hole things. Like with the transhumanism thing, we don’t set out to be preachy. It’s really about anything.

It’s an intellectual discussion.

Kurt: Exactly! That’s what we always wanted to have. We just wanted to get people to think. We’re not trying to spoon feed or push our opinions or beliefs on anybody; we just find it very interesting to think about this stuff and that’s what we’re trying to portray in our art.

I would think that Christianity in its most fundamentalist form would take great issue with the idea of technological interference in mortality.

Jeff: Oh yeah, they absolutely do. You said something that’s incredibly important that I think a lot of these people do not understand. And that is that this is an intellectual discussion. When you get into fundamentalism everything is viewed as ideas or ideologies competing with each other, and my ideology necessarily competes with yours if you don’t agree with me exactly.  What we’re saying is that we’re not even in the same realm with that or the same universe. We feel that there is far more to be learned by discussing things, and discussing things means open minds, that you are open to having your ideas change and you are open to contributing new insights to somebody that might not have thought of this before. The whole concept of this discussion or dialogue is that there is a mutual sharing and it’s not done in the context of oppositional approaches.

Kurt: And the agree-to-disagree thing is really the basis of it. I think I’m almost about to call myself an evolutionist, but I’ll call myself a mental evolutionist. It’s where I want to have an open mind. Being a scientist I’ve had probably the best training in the world in cancer genetics. Some of these guys that are some of the most brilliant guys that were my mentors, the one thing that I learned from them is don’t ever think you’re right all the time. Some of the brightest minds I’ve encountered have this very humble attitude of “Look, if I knew everything there was about cancer, then I would have cured it by now.” So because I don’t have it cured right now, I don’t actually know that much about cancer. It’s like that with so many other things. To us it’s that discussion and being able to evolve mentally. This discussion reminded me about the whole metal scene and why we’re kind of pseudo-outcasts. Like if you don’t play death metal, you suck. Or I hate you or I won’t listen to your record because your vocals aren’t low enough and you are using melody in the vocals. But half of these guys would say they love Iron Maiden. It’s like, wait a minute, why do you love Iron Maiden or old Ozzy Osbourne then?

Where does Believer go from here?

Kurt: We’re going to work on getting some shows together here and maybe do some mini-tours for Transhuman. We’re already starting to throw around some ideas. It’s a long process for us to do an album. We liked that we put an album out two years after Gabriel and we would like to try to keep up with that pace. We’re also thinking about maybe putting out an EP and putting out some experimental types of weirdness and having some fun with that.

http://www.believerband.net/

http://www.myspace.com/believerband

Actually, it came from an old Army friend of mine… It’s a wolf hybrid, half wolf and some kind of Husky type dog. I knew he had it because I saw it as a pup and so I asked him if he would be up for bringing it for a photo session. It went really well. He managed to bite the press officer from Roadrunner in Germany [laughs].

No kidding? So I guess he’s on the aggressive side.

Well, he’s like a one-person type dog. He’s got so much wolf in him that you can’t really treat him as a dog. He’s got very territorial instincts. But he’s not aggressive; it’s just that you have to let him do what he does.

Well, you didn’t look nervous standing there when the photo was taken.

Well, we like dogs, all of us, and I’ve been around wolves. You just have to be relaxed and they will feel relaxed themselves.

What was the reasoning behind Roadrunner releasing Hammer of the North as a digital-only product in North America?

Wow, I’m not sure I’m the right person to answer that. I think that the most important thing was that it’s a big undertaking to release albums physically, especially in such a big region like the U.S. It was important to get the music out and it was also important that the album didn’t just come out when we didn’t have a tour booked. It didn’t make any sense I guess to put the whole thing in motion. That’s basically the reason behind it and there is also a chance to release the physical version properly the next time around. We’ll put it out physically before too long.

Is it available on vinyl anywhere?

Yes, there is a very nice gatefold release on Coroner Records in Europe.

Obviously, I have the digital promo, but because I like having the CD versions of the albums I really enjoy, I ordered it through Amazon.com and it shipped from the UK. And the price, including shipping, was still only around $12. So it’s not like you can’t get the CD at an affordable price if you’re in the States.

Yeah, exactly. That’s the way things are starting to be. With the different territories it’s not such a big deal anymore because I can order stuff from Amazon in America and it doesn’t cost me much either. If someone wants to get it I’m pretty sure they can without having to sell their house or anything [laughs].

Let’s jump right in into the album and talk about these tracks.  “I, The Jury” opens the album.

Yeah, “I, The Jury” was I think the second song we wrote for the album. It was also one of the ones that we did a demo for. We had a really strong idea about how it was going to sound and I don’t think we changed anything from the demo version really. It was a really easy track to record and it was a really fun track to sing. I think it’s the only track on there where I actually had a bit of alcohol in me [laughs]. It was basically just one take and a lot of fun. We were pretty sure from the get-go that this was going to be the first track on the album.

It’s a good way to kick things off with some high energy. Then we’ve got “Hammer of the North,” which has more of an epic feel – though not in length – that is characteristic of several of the songs on the album.

“Hammer of the North” was actually the first track that we wrote for the album and it was also kind of a catalyst for the whole thing. The album is not a concept album in any shape or form, but all of our albums have had kind of a common thread running through each one, since the writing is usually rather condensed period-wise. So when that song was done I felt that this is what this album is going to be like. I’d say it was the most important track in making the whole album and also that majestic feel is something that we really strive for and it’s something that I really get off on. It’s been an important part of the band since we started.

Majestic is a better word for it, rather than epic.

It’s a little pretentious to say that yourself, but that’s what we aim for at least.

I understand that completely. Thus far “Black Sails” I find to be the catchiest track, but I can hear that changing the more I listen to the album. But lately that’s the one that always hooks me.

That’s cool. Well, it’s got a pretty strong chorus and I think it’s probably my best vocal performance, but it was a really difficult track to record because we kind of ran into trouble with the guy we recorded with, Nico [Elgstrand] from Entombed. He thought that my idea for the chorus sucked [laughs]. He kind of said “Enough of this, let’s have lunch and during lunchtime you have to write a new chorus over this music that we already recorded.” So I was sitting at the cafeteria, humming along with the chord changes and it just wrote itself. The music had already been recorded, but the vocals were pretty much totally different. I think Nico was right, but it was a bit of a blow [laughs] to start from scratch.

“Mountains be my Throne.”

It’s a really straight forward track. Basically the riff is kind of the song, but always melody is the most important thing. We needed a pretty catchy verse, something memorable apart from the riff, but the riff was really the starting point on that song.

Keeping with the northern theme you’ve got “Northern Star.”

“Northern Star” is probably the fastest song that we’ve ever attempted to record. It was actually a really easy song to record as well. I think it’s one of the catchier things that we’ve done and I just had a really good feeling about that track right from the get-go. I never discuss the lyrics in detail, but it kind goes very deeply into things that I have very strong feelings about.

And “The Lord of Lies.” I won’t even ask you what that’s about.

Well, it might not be what you think.

It usually isn’t, is it?

[Laughs] It’s actually connected to Scandinavian tradition. I guess it’s the closest thing we come to doom these days. I feel that so many people call us like a doom band, but I would say doom in the vein of Candlemass, yes, but also classic metal very much influenced by like Judas Priest or Black Sabbath. We’ve never been into that doom-doom type stuff. I can enjoy that, but that’s not our thing or something that we really listen to. So Candlemass, but that’s different.

Well yeah, even with Candlemass it’s not all slow songs; they have up-tempo, more traditional heavy metal rockers and things of that sort.

Yeah, and it’s still very much rooted in classic heavy metal.

The way I’ve always described the music of Grand Magus is that it’s based in classic metal or New Wave of British Heavy Metal with doom shades.

Yep, there is melancholy or whatever you want to call it somewhere in there, but if you’re going to have a strong melody then you can’t play that fast all the time; then it just becomes a blur I feel. It’s that kind of mid-tempo kind of Rainbow, Dio, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest thing. That’s always been the type of heavy metal that got me going, not necessarily the fastest songs.

What about “At Midnight They’ll get Wise?”

That was a completely new experience. We had this riff and I kind of thought it sucked; I wouldn’t have at all wanted to continue with the song, but it was a really good riff and we thought we should still do this song. Again, if you get that feedback you see something you thought was crap turn out to be one of the best songs on the album. We also did a video for that track. It’s a memorable heavy metal track and it’s got same kind of feel I got from listening to “British Steel” and stuff like that. [“You Don’t have be old to be Wise.” Anyone? – SA]

“Bond of Blood” is one of the songs that after a few listens it started grabbing me with its chorus as well.

Nico called it the Peruvian song [laughs]. He thought the chorus sounded like a protest, folk kind of South American thing [laughs]. Like what you have you been sticking in your pipe, mate? We have a pretty strong folk influence and it’s obviously Scandinavian folk music, but then again folk music in our country has quite a lot of similarities in the tone, language, or whatever you want to call it. So that chorus especially has a very strong Nordic feel to it. Then again, if you’re from Peru, then maybe you think it’s Peruvian [laughs], I don’t know.

“Savage Tales.”

That was the third demo track that we did. That makes it very easy to record because you’ve already done it basically. The main problem with that track was the vocals on the demo turned out really good, or at least we felt. I didn’t hesitate when we did the proper recording and Nico was like “Ah, you fucking suck, it’s so much worse than on the demo; come on, show me some feeling” and blah, blah, blah. Then I was like fucking desperate. I felt I was pouring my heart out here and then I had him isolate the vocal track from the demo to make sure that it was that good or was it just the whole vibe of that recording. And it turned out that it wasn’t that great [laughs]. Basically, all the takes that I did of the new version were better than the one on the original. You can get paranoid like that sometimes. In the end I felt that we did the song justice.

Well, on the European version you wrap it up with “Ravens Guide our Way.”

Obviously, there is a very strong Scandinavian theme to the lyrics. There is a way of telling a story in the Scandinavian tradition and I try to emulate that way, which I mostly do anyway because it’s like poetry when you write lyrics and the way that these tales are told has a pretty straight formula. You use certain words to enhance the feeling or whatever. And “Ravens Guide our Way” is probably the best example of that on the album and I think it turned out really well. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album. It was a very emotional experience to do the vocals on that one.

On the North American digital version you’ve got the bonus track, “Crown of Iron.”

Yeah, that’s probably the weirdest song on the whole album. I really like it and I actually prefer it to… I shouldn’t say which one, but maybe I prefer it to let’s say “Mountains be my Throne.” I would have preferred to have it on the album, but it was not an issue because we had so much trouble recording that song. It used to have a completely different chorus and it was the absolute last piece of vocals that was recorded in the session. We finished the new chorus on the last day or recording. So we’d been struggling with that song ever since we laid down the basic tracks. But it turned out to be a pretty fuckin’ good chorus [laughs]. It was such a nightmare to struggle with that song, so I guess we were kind of biased. But now when I listen to it I really like it. You have to have a bonus track on the Japanese version, so that’s where it originally came from; it’s on the Japanese release.

By the way, what’s interesting from a reviewer’s standpoint is that I always know going into a review is that Grand Magus is something to which you must listen more times than usual, as there is always this growth quality about your releases. So initially I was thinking that Iron Will might be a bit better overall, but the last few days I’m thinking that Hammer of the North may actually top it. So there is something about Grand Magus albums where you need to spend some time before making a final judgment.

That’s really nice to hear. To me that kind of says that there is some content in there and it’s not just a sound or a rhythm or whatever. It’s about the songs and it’s got to have something that makes it stick. In my life there always has been stuff that you like it at first of course, but you have to really listen to it to really appreciate it.

You must have done these track-by-track commentaries in the past, because you exceeded my expectations with what you’ve done here.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

http://www.grandmagus.com/

http://www.myspace.com/grandmagusrocks

Alright! So how’s the tour going so far? How do you like playing with As I Lay Dying and Winds Of Plague?

It’s a lot of fun, they’re great people to tour with

I’m very curious to know if you guys have been involved with As I Lay Dyings notorious “Sandwich Game”? Where if you don’t cover your food some how it’s open for being smashed?

Nope, no sandwich games, I just haven’t had many meals with them really.

How about you guys? Is there any goofy pastimes? Funny Stories?

Not Really, no.  Not too many, well I mean we all hangout and stuff like that but there’s not really a whole bunch of pranking, it’s all really pretty relaxed.  Lots of gear talk and I don’t know, it’s just pretty chill.  But there was this on time that I got left at a gas station in Broadville, Ontario once, i just got out of the van early in the morning to take a piss I left my phone, my passport, wallet and everything in the van.  It took them about two and a half hours to realize I was gone.  we barely made the show in Toronto.   So now we do head counts all the time before we leave anywhere.

I’ve noticed in a lot of pictures you play BTB basses, is that your brand of choice?

Yes, it is

Can you tell me a little bit about how the use of 8 strings came about?

Definitely, it started out with Forging a Future Self being written all in 7-strings and there was always a desire to want to play a little bit lower but you know, not wanting to sacrifice the upper register and so the extended range instruments just made sense.

Was there any lessons involved or was it mainly just messing around until something sounded good?

well, Trent’s classically trained, He’s gone to school for it and Justin’s been playing his whole life and they’ve both played 7-strings extensively. There was a lot of practice that went into it.  I know that they said that getting used to it was a bit challenging but they did on their own.

How about influences?

Everyone really has a lot of different tastes but as far as writing goes it’s really more just what sounds cool, but influences is a tough one.  There’s just so many of them.  Mine are all from like when i keep going back to was like the music i was listening to from between i was like 17 and 23.  so there’s like a lot of mid nineties late nineties like hardcore and hip-hip, i like classic rock too but there’s definitely newer bands that catch my attention every once in a while too. you want to hear new and fresh stuff as a musician or anyone that likes music.

So how would you describe the differences between your albums so far? was there any specific direction you were going for?

like i was saying before, i think the music that was written was more like “hey this riff sounds cool” and just going with it.  we’re not thinking about changing it or doing something different.  we just know what we like and the formula is similar for a lot of the stuff.  But we’re not really actively seeking out to sound a certain way.  its pretty organic and has a really natural growth to it.

Was there any certain reason why with the re-release of rareform you guys went back and redid the vocals and live drum tracks?

A lot of it we remixed we really wanted to give it a more accurate representation.  The previous singer from Rareform wasn’t in the band for very long at all and the majority of the vocal writing was done by Trent and I helped him out with a little bit with it.  But the original singer from Rareform didn’t really contribute a whole lot.  He performed them on the album but as far as contribution it was alot less for writing and  the rhythms and vocal placement had to be coached along.  With Anthony coming in we originally planned to just do a song or two and then we were going to release that into the social networking sites and stuff like that but we really wanted to give the accurate representation of the band. So we started doing it and got into it and ended up just re-releasing the whole thing.  So the original was an effort but this was the better representation of us.

So what are the future plans for you guys?

We are definitely planning on doing another album.  the writing process never ends when we are off tour so hopefully by the end of the year we’ll be closer to releasing something again.  There was alot of material that didn’t make it to In Dreams that we were still working on so we’ll see what we get from that.

Well, I don’t have any good explanation for that other than that we keep writing death metal the way we like it to be. We know our sound and are confident with it, while we still always try to find new little things to spice up our music with. Still we try – and want – to stay true to our style which Vomitory is known for. On Opus Mortis VIII there are more dynamics and diversity than before, and a few elements that are new for Vomitory. It’s nothing unique; it’s just that you haven’t heard it from us before. So by involving this in our sound, I think our music gets more interesting and entertaining to the listener. It’s also more fun for us to play, which really is quite relevant to us.

Any favorite songs on this album or perhaps one that you think will remain in the set list for years to come?

I have several favorite songs on this album. The easiest would be to say the opening track “Regorge in the Morgue,” but I think “The Dead Awaken” is more that kind of a song. It’s also a band favorite. But we will definitely play “Regorge in the Morgue” for some time now, as it’s such a total punch in the face and the obvious opener of our live shows for this album.

One element that has come to define the Vomitory sound over the last three albums is that ear piercing, white hot riff tone. It is one of the first things that come to mind when I think of Vomitory. How important is that sonic aspect of the music, including the contribution of producer Rikard Lofgren to it?

To us it has always been important to have a really good production on our albums. And it’s important to always try to top the previous recording you did, which is something I believe we have managed to do almost every time. Rikard Lofgren has obviously played a big role on every album we’ve done with him (the last three ones). Not with how the songs turn out – we’re in charge there – but with the production as a whole. We know what sound we want, but in the end it’s Lofgren who’s getting us there. We started working with him on Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize and it was definitely the right move for us to do at that point. We had been working with the same producer, Henrik Larsson, for four albums up ‘til then. We were really happy working with Larsson, but we felt it was time to change something. And since we don’t move too much outside our musical boundaries, we knew that working with a new producer in a new studio would bring the change that we were looking for.

Along the same lines that growling bass tone is absolutely murderous. The opening to “Regorge in the Morgue” makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

[Laughs] Yeah that bass tone is totally murderous! The bass got more upfront in our sound when we began working with Rikard Lofgren and we all love it that way. The bass is unfortunately often overlooked in death metal, but it really has its place sonically and it brings loads of extra brutality to the overall sound. Rikard got us a bass sound that makes other bands feel embarrassed! I’ve had the intro for “Regorge in the Morgue” for several years, but I couldn’t make it fit somewhere until now. And I definitely think it was worth the wait ‘cause I think “Regorge…” turned out absolutely killer. It’s the perfect album opener.

In fact, the first video is for “Regorge in the Morgue” and I believe it was just recently released to the masses. Care to shed some light on that one?

Yes, it got released just the other day and the reactions so far have been nothing but great. It is actually the first real video we’ve done. It only took us 22 years [laughs]. We hired the Swedish up-and-coming Some Kind Of Bear Media and some local make-up artists for this video. It is a performance video, but it has a small “story” twist to it too. We shot the video in an abandoned dairy plant, which was perfect with all the tiled walls and floors. It had this rough and cold atmosphere that fits the song, which I think really comes through in the video. We shot everything in one day and then the SKOB guys spent some weeks editing it. We are very happy with the result and it feels great to finally have done a proper video.

There is no question that Vomitory is a straight up, ferocious death metal act, but I continue to hear Slayer-esque thrashy elements here and there.

I think you’re totally right. It’s difficult to keep it a secret that we all in the band are big Slayer fans [laughs]. We grew up with those classic albums – Hell Awaits, Reign in Blood, South Of Heaven, etc – so it’s hard not to be influenced by Slayer when writing music. It’s nothing we do on purpose. It has just become a natural part of how we write music, just like with the constant Napalm Death and Bolt Thrower influences. I think those thrashy elements are a very nice spice to our music and bring diversity to our sound.

I still remember how much of an impact that Peter Östlund made on Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize and he continues to have that impact on the new album. How important was his addition to Vomitory’s sound? Does he contribute to the songwriting as well?

Getting Peter into the band definitely improved our sound, but most importantly he brought fresh blood and new inspiration to the band. And that clearly shows on Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize I think. Peter opened us up for new musical possibilities that we didn’t quite have before. Peter is a great lead guitarist and he has also contributed with the songwriting since he joined the band. Out of ten songs on an album, he usually writes two or three. He’s also a good lyricist.

Unfortunately, my promotional download does not include the bonus tracks. What can you tell me about those?

Our record label asked for bonus material for the limited edition of the album, and instead of recording some cover songs, we thought re-recording four old classics was a better idea. It made much more sense to both us and to our fans. The songs are “Nervegasclouds,” “Raped in their own Blood” (both from our debut album, Raped in Their Own Blood), “The Voyage,” and “Redemption” (both from our second album, Redemption). We chose those particular songs because at least three of them have been in our live set, back and forth, for many years. They still are. So it made sense to re-record those with the present line-up of the band and with a proper production. I think they turned out killer and so far we’ve gotten great response from the fans for including these songs.

The album art is very much in the Vomitory mold, yet it is also rather unique.

Yeah, the artwork is killer. It’s made by the Polish artist Lukasz Jaszak. It was Peter Östlund who came up with it in the beginning, and after brainstorming we ended up naming the album Opus Mortis VIII. It was also Peter’s idea to have a string quartet of these wounded (or already dead?) soldiers, playing in the middle of a battlefield where a full-blown war is going on behind them on the cover. They’re playing the Opus Mortis – the opus of death. Quite fucking epic. We provided the artist with the basic idea and then he worked out the details from that. The inside of the CD has some really cool artwork as well. I’m really happy with the artwork and I think it works so well with both the musical and the lyrical content of the album. War is a common topic in our lyrics, and has been since the start, so it was about fucking time to have album artwork with a war-theme [laughs]! Jaszak really managed to nail what we were looking for…and then some.

Why was Carnage Euphoria not released by Metal Blade in the U.S? I recall having to request a promotional copy for review from the German office.

Before the release of Carnage Euphoria we re-signed our deal with Metal Blade records, and at the time we wanted to look for another label to work with for the U.S. territory. But nothing good came out of that, unfortunately, so that’s why that album never got released in the U.S. But we’re hoping now to get it released there in a close future. For the new album, we upgraded our deal with Metal Blade to include the U.S. too and some more countries as well.

I was perusing your website and came across the “Carnage over Finland” Tour. I can’t believe you’d never played in Finland until then. How was the tour and what made the Fins decide to allow your “kind” in the country?

I can hardly believe it myself [laughs]. It’s embarrassing, to say the least, that we haven’t played in Finland earlier. It’s so close to us but still it took us 21-plus years. We’ve been on our way to Finland many times before, but either the timing was bad or we couldn’t get it funded right. But now we have done it and it was a very positive experience. The promoter did a great job in putting the mini-tour together. Also, the Finnish bands Torture Killer and Atretic Intestine were with us on this tour. All great guys. We hope to play there again in a not too distant future.

You had surgery last year and it sounds like you came out just fine. I could think of less problematic injuries for a drummer than a herniated disc. Did it happen while you were drumming and what was the rehabilitation like to get back to full strength? Have you adjusted your approach to drumming based on the injury and to minimize the chance of re-injury?

The surgery went fine and I have recovered well, but I am still not 100 percent recovered. I may never be either. But at least the pain isn’t affecting my everyday life, as it most certainly did when the pain was at its peak. And I don’t get any pain at all when I play drums anymore, and that’s one of the most important things to me. The hernia didn’t happen while I was drumming. The disc injury wasn’t drum related at all actually. But I’ve always had a weak back because of my work (bad working position), my height and a somewhat slouching body posture. All that – during many years – combined with one single event caused the herniated disc. I was sitting in a very bad position working for a couple of hours, two days in a row, and after that the pain snuck up on me. For a while the pain was unbearable. Luckily there are strong painkillers. And eventually I got to see the right doctor who really took on my case and made this surgery on me. It wasn’t an easy road to get there, I can tell you. Sweden is great in many ways, but the healthcare is sometimes a fucking joke. After the surgery and the rehabilitation, I’ve been forced to adjust my approach to drumming based on the injury. I have had to adjust my drum setup slightly and my posture while playing, so it gets as ergonomically correct as possible. And improving my posture alone has made wonders for my playing! I’m also very careful with how I lift my gear nowadays to minimize the risk of re-injury.

You put up a cover of Napalm Death’s “Mass Appeal Madness” on your Myspace page, which was supposed to be on a tribute album, wasn’t it? What happened and why did you decide to cover that particular song?

Yes, that version was originally recorded for a Napalm Death tribute album that was supposed to be released by a Swedish label. But it never happened, so instead of just letting it be, we decided to release it on our Myspace page instead. It was too old to include as a bonus track on the new album but too good to not release at all. So Myspace was a good solution I think. We picked that song simply because it’s awesome. One of Napalm Death’s best songs ever.

When was the last time Vomitory played in the States? Was it Maryland Deathfest? Talk about that appearance as well. Will you be coming back?

Yes, the last (and so far only) time Vomitory played in the States was Maryland Deathfest in 2007. We were of course all very excited to finally play in the U.S. We did a good show and the crowd was great to us. We’d love to come back for more shows, but as always it’s all about the financial part. We have got a lot of really good opportunities to go on tour in the states during the last few years, but it never happened because of the funding. It’s difficult these days to get the tour support that you need so bad to make it happen at all. I really hope we will be coming back sooner or later for some shows. We will see what the future brings.

Do you think Vomitory sometimes gets overshadowed by all the attention that has been given to the classic Stockholm sound? Or do you even give a shit? I suspect not.

I think we have been overshadowed many times, but in the long run, I honestly don’t give a shit. Sometimes I feel we don’t get the attention that we rightfully deserve, but that’s just how it is. I think all artists feel overlooked sometimes, except Lady Gaga maybe.

Is it possible for Vomitory to get even heavier? Could the fans even survive such a thing?

[Laughs] Well of course that’s possible. We’re definitely not the heaviest band around and we know a few tricks that would make us even heavier, if we wanted to. But I don’t know if we want that. Time will tell. But I’m sure our fans could handle that anyway!

http://www.vomitory.net/

http://www.myspace.com/vomitoryswe

Yup, you get just me and my unfiltered opinion [laughs].

Well let’s get to it. The last time I spoke with guys, around this time last year, Dan (Briggs-bassist) and Dusty (Waring – Guitarist) were being very coy and secretive about your deal with Victory Expiring and what your potential new label might be. So then here we are, Tommy has his solo release on Metal Blade, you guys sign to Metal Blade and within a couple of months you’ve got a CD out. How long was the deal with Metal Blade in the works and how long have you had the new material written to where it could be released so quickly?

When we finished our last record with Victory it’s safe to say we knew we were going with a new label but there’s a certain grace period where you can really sign with another label. During that period we were still being a band, writing music and we knew we were going to put out another record as soon as we had a deal. A lot of the new EP was written during that limbo phase where we didn’t really know what our next label would be. Metal Blade has always been a cool label and the best fit for us.

What other labels were in play if any?

Metal Blade was really the only one we were seriously considering. There were a few that were just casually looking but we didn’t like the contract or didn’t like their roster. We also considered the idea of releasing the CD ourselves and bypass the whole label thing. The way things are nowadays, if you are an established band do you really need a label? We entertained that idea but at the end of the day Metal Blade were really interested in us. And to be honest it’s quite an undertaking for a band to take the whole DIY step and do everything themselves, so at this point in out career it made sense to sign with them.  They’ve been awesome so far and I think we made a good decision.

Explain me the decision to go with a two part album where this first part, the current EP Parallax: The Hypersleep Dialogues, comes out so fast. I don’t want to use the word ‘rushed’, but was there some urgency to get a release out after the switch to Metal Blade?

There is certainly some truth to that. When you switch labels, you are out of the spotlight for a while, and there’s that limbo period where you aren’t on a label. So if you are out of the spotlight for too long and don’t have a label pushing you it’s easy to be forgotten in this business.

Even a band like you guys?

Absolutely. The fans forget about you and move on to the next big thing.  So we did want to get something out fairly quickly but we didn’t want to sacrifice quality so it made sense to do a shorter record.

So is the second part of concept the written?

No. But the way the first one was written musically is that there are some themes on the first record that we will revisit and expand on in the second record.  An actual concept album is something new to us. Even though Colors was written as one long piece of music and even The Great Misdirect had this flow to it, so we are used to writing music that flows seamlessly. So, we decided to try adding a lyrical concept as well and do a two part record. The story is basically done lyrically, but musically were gonna take it as it comes.

Could you give us a brief idea of the concept that the two releases will be covering?

The first record, the EP, actually picks up where “Swim to the Moon” left off to end The Great Misdirect. That story was basically about this guy who gets fed up with life and decides to go off on this suicidal trip where he just drifts off to sea to die and that song kind of ends there. This EP picks up with that character; he’s drifting at seas and starts going in and out of consciousness and starts having these visions and becomes subconsciously aware of this other characters who exists millions of light years on another planet. And at the same time, the characters on this other planet becomes subconsciously aware of this guys and we’ll learn more about that on the next record. The EP is sort of an introduction to these characters and some exposition about their struggles within these realms of reality. We can assume that on the second album that through some cool Science Fiction stuff, they will physically meet.

Is this EP just a taster for a full album or will the second part be an EP also?

The second part is going to be a full CD. A taster is a good way of putting what the current EP is. The next one is going to be a full-length, hour long typical Between the Buried and Me album full of crazy stuff. We pretty much got the outline of the story so we are excited to get the music written for it. And we are trying to write the music to fit the story.

How does writing music for a concept album that tells a story differ from just writing a regular album full of single songs? Do you write music to fit certain parts of the story?

Absolutely.  I mean you don’t want the story to be at this very somber sad part and have this happy, jolly riff playing or vice versa. The music has to mirror what’s going on in the story lyrically; it’s like scoring a movie. It’s going to be challenging but we are pumped to try it. I think we did a good job with the EP, but that was just sort of an introduction.

To switch gears here. As I’m getting ready to interview a band I always prepare by listening to that band’s entire discography. So for you guys I’ve spent the last few days with your self-titled-debut, The Silent Circus, Alaska of course and the newer releases. It struck me how more and more progressive and experimental you’ve become over the years. You go back and listen to the likes of “Fire for Dry Mouth” or “Aspirations”, and even though there’s plenty of proggy stuff and experimentation, that older material is really heavy and harsh with lots more death metal and grindcore influences. Are you guys just less angry now or have you matured as song writers since then?

I’d say both. I mean firstly Tommy and I were the only ones in the band back then that are in the band now. And back then we were young and in that rebellious age were like “Screw college! Let’s get an apartment and get crappy jobs and play shows on the weekend!” So was this teenage angst — even though we were in our 20s?  And back then we wore our influences on our sleeves. We were heavily into grind and death metal, so a lot of that music was reflective of that. And as we got older we got less angry, and as musicians we branched out and got into more proggy stuff like Dream Theater and Pain of Salvation and those influences are bound to creep into your music which you can hear that in out later CDs.  Actually I think this EP is pretty heavy.

[...At this point, vocalist Tommy Rogers strolls by and says hello and I managed to get his attention for a second and after some peasantries and such squeaked in one questions that’s been bugging me for five years...]

Tommy, we spoke back in 2006, right after Alaska, and you told me that you were trying to do a Darkthrone and Emperor styled black metal solo project. Now, I’ve heard your recent solo project, and that sir, is not black metal! What’s up with that?

Tommy: [laughing] I know, I know. I still want to do a black metal project. I’d love to do it! I actually talked to some drummers and I have two black metal songs written but they are only 2-3 minutes long, so I’ve got some more writing to do! It still might happen though!

OK Paul, back to you. I’ve meant to ask this question every time I’ve talked to you guys but I always forget. Not this time! On The Silent Circus there’s a song called “Ad a Dglgmut” and I’ve always wondered what the fuck that meant?

That particular song is the stupidest thing ever. Our first guitarist Nick, stole Tommy’s cell phone and just wrote a bunch of random text on the home screen. Tommy found his phone and saw the text and decided he was going to name a song with that.  And he did. We thought it was funny to have our own little inside jokes and that’s one of them. It’s funny to hear people try and say it.

Here’s a nice random question: why is there a truncated version of “Prequel for the Sequel” for Rock Band 2?

I guess they just don’t like long songs. They asked us for an edited version, but how do you edit a song like that? What parts do you take out? So we just told them to shorten it. Still, it’s kind of an honor to be asked to have a song on a phenomenon like that.

Speaking of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, can you do DragonForce’s  “Through Fire and Flames” on Expert?

Hahaha! No actually I have not. I can’t do it. I’ve tried it and it’s not good. People always say “you’re good at guitar, you should be able to do it”–but no–it turns out badly.

While on the subject of guitar playing, I think The Silent Circus and definitely Alaska where I was aware of “sweep arpeggios” and they became niche and now they are everywhere -with all sorts of bands…from recent bands like The Human Abstract to Journal, and even death metal like Origin. What’s your insight in using those vs. over using them?

Well, it’s like anything. It’s a technique and you can if you use that technique blindly and without taste can be pretty dumb, I’ve been guilty of it myself, especially when I first learned how to use them. But ultimately does it fit into the song? Obviously it has a certain, sweeping sound and if I think it would sound appropriate, I’ll use it. And it really goes for any technique, even say…dive bombs, you have to pick and choose. As a guitar nerd I love them when used right. A lot of it is that there are good guitar players out there now who can pull them off and to be honest, it’s cool to play them when you can.  There are some nice young guitarists now with legitimate talents, dudes that can play guitar — and the music is getting pushed into a good direction.

Are there any specific young upcoming guitarists you enjoy listening to or watching?

Yeah, the kid in Animals as Leaders, Tosin Abasi. I’ve known him for a long time, since he was a teenager and before he went to music school, and then he came out of school and is just a beast now. I love watching him play and he blows my mind. There’s the young kid in Born of Osiris, I mean, I’m in my early 30s now and these guys are so talented so young. For example that giant kid over there–he’s the guitarist for Job For a Cowboy–he’s only 21 and he’s a total shredder already!

Speaking of Job For a Cowboy this tour is you, Germany’s The Ocean, Job For a Cowboy and Cephalic Carnage — who will join the bill starting tomorrow…that’s a pretty varied bill covering a wide scope of music.

When we do a headlining tour, when we talk to a booking agent that’s one of the main things we look for. Every band sounds different and that’s what we wanted. Who wants to go to s show where all the bands sound the same?  It’s a full show and not too much of one thing; it brings in a variety of people and it opens people minds to other music.  Especially kids that come to the shows, you know that are told what’s cool to like,  but they can come and hear something different…they come and hear post-rock and death metal in one show.  Well tour with anybody.

Who would you really like to tour with that you have not toured with yet?

I think it would be really cool to tour with The Deer Hunter. They are just this awesome band with ridiculous vocal harmonies. I don’t know if the metal kids would like them, but I would love it!

So I’m going to put you on the spot. Have you seen Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny?

Yes I have.

OK, you are in front of Lucifer having a rock off for the fate of your very soul, and you get to play one single song from Between the Buried and Me’s catalog to save you and your band from becoming Lucifer’s eternal sex slaves. What song do you play?

It’s gotta be “White Walls”. Just the epic ending does it for me.

I would have gone with “Selkies” or “All Bodies” personally.

Those would work too.

With long songs like “White Walls” “, “Swim to the Moon” and such, how do you balance your set list with these longer sprawling songs and your older shorter songs. I assume you are going to promote the new EP and those are long songs too…how do you decide a set list with so many great, long songs?

That’s always a problem. But on this tour, we are actually playing an hour and a half. So 30 minutes of that is playing the whole new EP, then we have about an hour for other stuff. We actually play a shorter version of “Swim to the Moon”, the instrumental section only which we incorporate into a medley. We try to mix it up, although on this tour we aren’t doing anything from The Silent Circus or the self-titled.

Really? No “Mordacai” or “Aspirations”?

Nope. We do a couple of songs from Colors a little from Alaska. And by a little bit, I mean one song.

That has to be a problem, balancing old songs versus new songs now…

It is.  But we are trying to promote the new EP for this tour. We are touring again later this year and we are going to unofficially think of it as our 10 year tour, so we will be definitely playing some old stuff for that tour.

So Tommy has his solo stuff, Dusty and Blake have Glass  Casket, and Dan has Orbs. When are we going to get a solo or side project from you?

I have nothing. I have some stuff in the works though. I’ve been working with some musicians from other busy bands so it’s hard, but I will have something. I can’t be the only guy.

What can we expect ?

I think it’s going to different. It’s going to rocky, riffy guitar driven stuff. Not as techy as Between the Buried and Me. I want it to be fun to play.

Well, thanks for your time and have a great set!

http://www.myspace.com/betweentheburiedandmeband

Vanessa: It’s been a great accomplishment! To think I was considering giving up on music for the past couple of years, and now I’m helping run a record label and I’m writing and performing music again! I’ve been working overtime the past few months.

Scott Alisoglu: Can you take us back to the origins of Wooden Stake? The feeling I get is that the band’s formation was the realization of a vision you had for the complete musical/lyrical horror/doom package.

Vanessa: Wayne had a song that he was working on and sent it my way. I really liked the feel of the music and heard a vocal pattern right away. The lyrical theme formed instantly, so I wrote lyrics, did my vocals and bass, and the next thing we knew we had the track “Forbidden Oath,” which is still one of my favorite songs that we’ve done. From there we started working on more songs and it formed into an occult/horror doom metal band!

Scott Alisoglu: Wayne Sarantopoulos is no stranger to Razorback Recordings, so I can’t say I’m surprised to find him as one half of Wooden Stake.  The guy is nothing short of a riff machine.  How does this partnership work with regard to the writing and recording of Wooden Stake music?

Vanessa: Wayne is one of the easiest musicians I’ve worked with – and that’s saying a lot because I’ve been jamming in and out of bands and with friends since I was 13. Sometimes it’s hard to get on the same page with people and this creates conflicts within the creative process. When we recorded Scaremaker’s What Evil Have They Summoned… album and the Grim Reaping MCD I learned that we could create ass kicking songs with very little communication. I played the riffs that I wrote and then he put the beats to it.

Wooden Stake is different in the way that he writes the music and I learn the bass by ear, and create the vocal arrangements. Basically, he writes the music, records it, and then he sends it to me to do my part. We communicate through email, but most of the time the songs are in my hands after he writes them. It’s a total 50/50 contribution with this band.

Scott Alisoglu: What I find especially impressive about Wooden Stake is the compositional diversity, albeit within a doom metal framework. Sometimes that may just mean vocal variation or certain musical nuances, but there is always plenty involved to keep one’s interest. Is this a conscious consideration for you and Wayne during the writing/recording process?

Vanessa: Well, I can’t speak for Wayne, but he and I both have influences outside of the metal genre. I think this helps in some ways add variation and spontaneity with the arranging of the music. My inspiration and influence come from so many styles of music whether it’s Bauhaus, Stevie Nicks, or Morbid Angel. I like having the dichotomy of all vocal styles in one song because I think it conveys more than just one emotion and tells more than one side of a story. I think Wayne and I both wanted that in the music and vocals for this band as it allows us to stretch out our talents beyond what we do in other bands.

Scott Alisoglu: Along those same lines, your bass playing truly stands out here, not to mention the monolithic, earth shaking tone you got on this sucker. The role of the bass guitar in Wooden Stake is definitely integral to the style.

Vanessa: Thanks for the compliments! I have always thought bass players do not get the respect they deserve, especially when they’re really good, and I see the bass guitar as an instrument that is too often ignored. The bass should stand out, especially in a band like Wooden Stake. I tried to write bass lines that moved around the guitar, as well as harmonies in some parts. I’ll be getting a better bass soon and a better set-up, so next time it will be even more pulsating!

Scott Alisoglu: How long have you been playing bass? Was it your first love, instrumentally speaking?

Vanessa: I started singing when I was 3 and I started playing guitar when I was 9. I didn’t take it seriously until I was about 11 years old though, and I started writing my own songs for several fake bands that I was creating. I still have a trunk full of notebooks and tapes with lyrics, music, and art where I was plotting all of this stuff out [laughs].

I don’t think I ever picked up a bass until I was around 13 or 14. It was always an instrument that I liked and wanted to explore, but I was more into the melodic possibilities that you can have by playing guitar. My brother played bass, and still does, so I would sometimes take my guitar in his room and we would jam with my dad whom also played guitar. But, again I don’t think I played a bass seriously until I was about 14 years old. At that age it was hard for me because my hands were too small and almost still are, but I manage.

Scott Alisoglu: Vocally, you’ve outdone yourself. The changeups in style (growling, spoken, whispering, etc) and the inflectional shifts also contribute to the compositional depth. You also make special mention in the booklet that “no vocal effects were used in the recording of this album.”

Vanessa: Yes, the reason I put that in the liner notes is because people still can’t believe it’s all my vocals on these recordings. Wayne still gets recognition on backing vocals every once in a while in reviews, and it’s nothing against anyone, but I would like recognition of the work that I do. I guess there are some people who can’t imagine one person making all those crazy noises, but I have always been interested in a layered approach with music and that’s how I have always performed.

When it came time to do the album, I wanted to take what I had been doing to the next level and sharpen my vocal abilities. I wanted an even mix of singing, growling, hissing, screams, harmonies, and I liked the idea of a spoken word soliloquy somewhere on the album. Some people have said I sound really angry in some parts, and I guess I do in some ways. I have many emotions that I express and it comes out in the music. It’s easy for me to create a character almost, yet have my own personal approach to my performance.

Scott: What kind of critical reactions have you been seeing for Wooden Stake releases thus far?

Vanessa: So much great praise has come our way with this band, and I am grateful for it. We are really into the elements that make Wooden Stake, so it’s not like we’re fake and just doing it as another “side project.” Wayne and I have other bands, but we do music because we love it and I think people see that.

It’s unfortunate that we aren’t able to play live. I wish all of my bands were able to play shows, but maybe in time. I think the word would spread more and gain a little more respect if it were possible. Getting on the stage would be a great way to prove that we’re really into what we do and that it really is me singing and growling [laughs].

Jodi Michael: How would you compare the music of Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades to that of previous Wooden Stake releases, such as Black Caped Carnivore or the split with Blizaro? Would you call it a progression? An improvement? A Refinement?

Vanessa: We have definitely progressed in our sound and ideas. From Vampire Plague Exorcism on you can tell that we have more focus on what we’re doing and improved in many ways. It seems like each release we do we find a way to make it different from the predecessor, but not so different that it sounds like a completely different band.

Black Caped Carnivore was recorded around the same time as the album, so that EP is the closest thing we’ve done to sounding almost identical to the album. Our split with Blizaro was definitely nearer the beginning of when we first started recording, so it has more of a raw sound than the newer stuff.

Jodi Michael: By the way, how did the Black Caped Carnivore 7” end up getting released on Germany’s Sorcerer’s Pledge Records?

Vanessa: I have many German friends, so the up and coming label Sorcerer’s Pledge is actually run by someone that I have been in connection with for a few years since around 2006 when I was searching for a label for another band I was in at the time. We never lost contact and when she heard that Wooden Stake was gaining steam she was excited to work with me finally. The label has done well so far, so I wish her the best of luck.

Jodi: It would appear that every aspect of Wooden Stake’s existence is rooted in horror.  With that being said, was there a specific horror influence that sparked the band’s creation?

Vanessa: Some of my favorite horror movies of all time were written about in this album and our other releases; underrated movies like Crowhaven Farm, Blood Spattered Bride, and the Night Gallery movie, along with Hammer and Amicus films. Those are some of the roots of the band as well as having an interest in the occult and Satanism. The things I write about for this band are lyrical themes I have written since I was a pre-teen, so it comes pretty natural [laughs]!

Jodi Michael: Is there a particular horror genre or time period that influences Wooden Stake the most?  Some tracks seem to take pointers from classic horror scores, while others seem more inspired by ’70s vampire flicks.

Vanessa: With Wooden Stake, I like using atmospheric movies to marriage with the moody, ominous music. I don’t like modern movies anyway, but I would prefer to not write about slasher movies or anything post-1980; it just wouldn’t fit and it would take away from the mood.

Movies aren’t the only lyrical inspiration though, like you stated. I grew up in Kentucky, so my childhood was reading and telling ghost stories. We take great interest back home in telling really spooky stories, and some of them are quit graphic. It was always inspiring to me to go to a story reading and then go home and put on my metal tapes. I would think to myself “one day I am going to tell those stories in my own album!”

Jodi Michael: What are some of your favorite or most influential horror films or books?

Vanessa: My childhood was consumed with watching horror movies, and reading horror comics and books. My mother read Stephen King’s The Stand when I was still in the womb, so that may play a small role in developing my interests. Also, my Dad would let me read his stack of horror comics anytime I wanted: Tales of Voodoo, Tales From the Tomb, Weird, Creepy, Witches Tales, etc.

I didn’t have cable when I was a kid, so I had room to expand my imagination. My choice books are: the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark trilogy, Midnight Fright, The Complete Edgar Allan Poe, Kentucky Haunts, Haunted Kentucky, The Walking Trees, Queen of the Cold-Blooded Tales, If You Want to Scare Yourself, Look of Horror, and many more! Later I found myself delving into Lovecraft, Anne Rice, Clive Barker, and Stephen King.

Some of my favorite movies were: Children of the Corn, Blood Spattered Bride, Tales from the Crypt, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Black Sabbath, Bad Ronald, The Shining, Halloween, The Omen, Maniac, The Boogeyman, Hellraiser, Texas Chainsaw Massacre…this could go on forever [Laughs].

Jodi Michael: If Wooden Stake were to write the soundtrack to a horror film—either an existing film or one to be made—what would it be?

Vanessa: I have always dreamed of making my own movie. I would love to do this one day, but film is dead and so is horror. It would be interesting, yet not sure how it would fit, to do music to the movie The Omen. That’s been one of my favorites since I was a zygote [laughs]. If I ever made my own movie I would definitely do my own soundtrack.

Jodi Michael: Are there any modern horror influences for Wooden Stake?  And what’s your take on contemporary horror films?

Vanessa: I gave up on horror movies in the early 2000s. I can’t stand CGI, and the dialog is too teen drama-ish. Session 9, Ginger Snaps, and Milo are the only movies that I can think of from this past decade that I actually liked and own. There was a movie called Kolobos that I found amusing only for comedic purposes.

Jodi Michael: And here’s a very important parting question: what is, without doubt, the worst horror film you’ve ever watched?  For me personally, it’s Nail Gun Massacre.

Vanessa: Wow! [Laughs] I could list soooo many movies here. I liked Nail Gun Massacre for its stupidity, but it isn’t a movie I go out of my way to watch, so I can understand why that would be your choice. That reminds me of The Toolbox Murders, which I think is pretty lame and boring actually.

I would say Scream and all of those horrible movies that it inspired, but I’ve never even seen any of those movies, including Scream. Anything by Rob Zombie sucks. I have to be honest and say I can’t stand I Spit on Your Grave either.

Jodi Michael: Any closing comments or praise for these insightful interview questions?

Vanessa: Thanks so much for the interest and support! I appreciate the chance to open up and answer such in-depth questions! Wooden Stake still has some releases in the works, so keep your eyes peeled! Everyone can keep up with us on Myspace and Facebook, and also through the Razorback Recordings website!

www.myspace.com/woodenstakedeath

www.razorbackrecords.com

Everything’s been awesome in the U.S. The reception is getting better each time we come down here. Crowds are getting crazier. Only thing craziest is the price of gas.

Your first tour of the U.S. was the “Abusing US Tour,” right? How did that one compare? I understand you had some Visa problems that delayed the start of it.

It was easier this time around. Everything went smoothly except for a little scare for Arif. Arif had his visa approved last amongst the three of us. His passport was returned to him without the visa attached and he was to give all his particulars to the embassy for assessment, which could have taken up to a month to process. But he got his visa approved a few days after, so it’s all good.

What other places had you played prior to this tour, at least outside of Singapore and how did those shows compare to the U.S. ones?

Our first ever tour was in the EU to promote our Abuse album DIY. In EU is where you find the die-hard grind fuckers. [The] Obscene Extreme [festival] was one of the highlights of my life. We’ve played in parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and even Vietnam. The kids there, they are hungry for this kind of shit to happen at their hometown. It’s a priceless experience.

You did an in-store appearance at Ernie November in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Was it well attended and did the fans riot in the streets of Cheyenne when you arrived?

Well I thought the attendance was better than expected, and we’re always not expecting much for every town we play in. Well, I can see they enjoyed themselves! [Laughs] I doubt that we spurred any riots whatsoever. Or did we?

Accommodations for underground overseas touring acts in the U.S. aren’t exactly luxurious. How often did you get to shower and where did you usually sleep?

I guess we get to shower almost every day. But I follow my own body clock; I shower when I feel uncomfortable, usually once in three days. No one’s gonna take a sniff of me anyway.

You made a huge impact on the grindcore world with the release of Abuse, an outstanding example of classic grindcore. How did Earache find you or did you find them?

I think the news of how we’re picked by Earache is widely circulated by now. But to summarize it, Earache discovered us through a mixtape compilation through online blogs “Invisible Oranges” and “Grind and Punishment” and contacted us on Myspace.

How long had you been a band prior to releasing Abuse? Are you all long-time musicians and have you played grindcore from the beginning?

Wormrot’s been around for two years prior to Abuse (if my memory serves me correctly), but only got serious one year prior to Abuse. We’re not full time musicians at all and Wormrot is our first venture into grindcore. Arif has played in a brutal death band, and Fit has played in a skinhead band and a black metal band. I have not played in any serious bands other than playing covers.

What makes Abuse and new EP Dirge so great is that it is grindcore in the finest tradition, yet you still find ways to pack a lot of little changes and accents into each song, no matter how short. What’s the key to writing a great grindcore song?

We do not know what makes them great; you guys have to tell us because you guys are the one buying them [laughs]! Personally, a good grindcore song is one which you can feel it take over you and melt you from the inside. Technicality aside, it’s all about the feel.

You include some crust punk bits into many of your songs as well.

We love crust punk.

Dirge is 25 songs in 18 minutes! How long did it take to write the songs for this album and do all the members contribute to the writing process?

Dirge took close to four months to write and record. Everyone contributes to this evenly. It’s not like Abuse whereby I’ll come up with full songs at home and bring it into the studio. For this one we entered the studio with nothing and literally started from scratch. Some days we get nothing, some days we get two to three songs.

It took eight days to record, mix, and master the EP? It has a very live sound to it, not to mention a raw, in your face one.

It did not take eight days to record. All drums and guitars were recorded in less than 12 hours. Vocals took around two to three days. So that’s four days or five days maximum. We hate long recording sessions, trying to perfect this and that. Fuck that. We prefer the raw, unpolished, dirty sound. You will hear little imperfections, like unwanted feedback at times, but it will not distract you from the whole delivery of the album.

Are there certain lyrical themes on which you tend to focus?

Arif: As far as lyrics wise, it’s still the same concept as what is on Abuse. Social issues, good and bad experiences on tours, in the army, etc. I’ll try to stay away from politics as much as possible. Enough already. We have no hidden messages in our music. It’s all about us; us and only us. In my opinion, it is way more meaningful and it will never run out of idea, as we experienced tons of different shit every single time.

By the way, why did you change your name from Rotting Worm to Wormrot?

Our name has always been Wormrot. Rotting Worm was a suggestion from one of us because there was a point of time we thought of changing the name. But fuck it.

What can tell us about the metal scene or the extreme metal scene in particular, in Singapore?

Singapore is growing. We have a solid scene, although small. More kids are coming to shows, more bands are coming from around the world to inspire these kids to make good music, more bands are taking the right step of playing overseas DIY. Sure we have our own politics, but I’m proud of my local scene.

Was it your intention to follow up Abuse with an EP from the beginning?

Our initial plan was to do some splits after Abuse. We had talks with Joe Pesci from the UK to do a split but that became unfruitful. Maybe in the future. But recently we did a split with I Abhor from the U.S. and it was released through I Abhor’s label and Scrotum Jus Records from Singapore.

What are you plans for recording the next full-length and, for that matter, anything else for the remainder of 2011?

Dirge is our next full length; it is not an EP. We’ve planned it to be an album of 20-plus tracks; we just did not plan it to be 18 minutes [laughs]! We have a mini-tour in Malaysia this coming June and are currently planning a six-week tour through the UK and EU in September.

Thanks and good luck!

Thanks dude!

www.myspace.com/wormrotgrind

www.facebook.com/wormrot