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Questions by: Mickaël
With: Tobias Cristiansson (Bass)
- How are you today?
Hello! I’m still dizzy after the UK tour. We got back home yesterday and it always takes a few days to get back to normal. I still haven’t showered after the last gig we did in London, hehe! It’s kinda disgusting, I know! But the tour was really good, especially Cork in Ireland and the London gig. We did eight gigs in total so it went really quick compared to the last tour that was 25 gigs. But today I have been mostly relaxing and listening to music.
- And what are you listening to?
Right now, I’m listening to a compilation album with Edge Of Sanity called Evolution. It was a long time ago since I listened to that band but some of the stuff are really good.
- Well, I would like to congratulate you for this great new album. What are your own personal feelings about the end result?
Thank you very much! I’m very pleased with the end result, it came out really good. And the most important, the songs are all very powerful. I like it because the songs are quite diverse, I think we managed to put a little bit of everything on there, it was nothing we planed, it just turned out that way. But anyway, it’s basically the same old Dismember style of Stockholm Death metal. The sound is very live sounding and raw with a really fat classic Dismember guitar sound. On the touring we done so far the new songs have been going down really well even though maybe not everybody has heard it yet. And the response we have had from both fans and journalists have been overwhelming, we’ve got many good reviews of the new album. But I guess people who like Dismember will not be disappointed.
- Before to talk a little more about this brandnew album, let me come to years back. With your previous album you tried to come back under the big lights, but it seems that it didn't cause sufficiently the enthusiasm that you've expected.
Since we signed to Regain Records things have changed for the better, they are supporting us in a good way and that label is of perfect size for us and they are willing to do good promotion for us. The only bad thing is that it can still be hard to find Dismember releases in some record stores, I don’t know where the weak link is but it really sucks. But we ain’t really aiming for going on the charts or becoming really big like some bands tend to do, I don’t think that’s really possible when you play this kind of music, it doesn’t really attract the big mass. But I rather play for real music fans than to people who listen to any kind of music just because their friends do, or because it’s the current trend.
- Do you think that it is due to a lack of promotion?
Well, from 1991 to 1997 Dismember was on Nuclear Blast and in the end NB didn’t pay much attention to death metal because they were starting to sign more bigger mainstream acts, so the promotion for albums like Death Metal and especially Hate Campaign where quite poor. It's all about the money so I guess NB put more money and effort in the bigger bands that they thought could bring more money to them. And also Death metal was not that popular in the end of the nineties; a lot of bands was breaking up or changing their style, but today most of the bands have reformed or getting back to their roots again. You can see everything going in cycles, but Dismember have always stayed true to their roots and never given in to any trends, just take a listen to the song "Trendkiller" from the ´97 release Death Metal!
- This year you bring your ninth effort named quite simply Dismember. For me this album is one of best you ever composed. Does the fact of having called it Dismember is to say that it is your most personal album?
Not really, it’s just a new album, it's still the same old Dismember. But this year Dismember has existed as a band for 20 years and also we have a new line-up, but that has nothing to do with the thing that we release an untitled album. It was Matti´s idea to have it untitled, and we couldn’t come up with something that was suitable for a title. We agreed that we didn’t want to have any title written on the album cover, because the cover itself was so strong and it speaks for itself, so we didn’t want to have any title written on there. Like I said there is a different line-up than on the last effort, Fred Estby left the band in April 2007 and that made quite a change in the band, but we found an excellent replacement in Thomas Daun (ex-Repugnant and Insision). He is a really talented drummer and one of the funniest guys I have ever met, he fits just perfect to the band.
- What does this album bring more in comparison with The god that never was?
The god that never was was more based on fast tracks all over - which is cool, but the new ones show more sides of the Dismember sound I think -. You get everything from really fast brutal tracks such as "Legion" to more of doomy slow stuff like "No honor in death" and groovy stuff like "Europa burns" and "Dark depths" and also some melodic touches in "Under a bloodred sky" and "To end it all". That’s just some of the songs, but you get the point. Also I think the production came out much better on this one, there is more power in the guitars for example.
Also the cover came out really good. I think it kinda stands out from anything else today. The original is paint brushed by a guy from Australia called Craig Rogers, we met him when we toured Australia in 2005, he is a Dismember fan and he came to one of the shows we did in Melbourne and we came to think to him when it was time to do an album cover. So Matti came up with the idea to have look like an old medal that you could get in war so he send Craig some pictures of old medals and then he created the cover out of those ideas.
Matti is really into history so his lyrics are about that. Most of them are based on true events, like the song "The hills have eyes" is about the conflict in Bosnia-Sarajevo. We were there last year and played in Sarajevo and it was very interesting to see the city and what marks it left on the country and the people. It was sometimes a really weird and frightening feeling.
- I found the sound of this album and especially the game are more current and a little bit less old school. Do you agree?
I don’t know, we recorded it totally analogue so I think that would be considered as kinda old school today. We didn’t use any klick tracks for the drums what so ever. I think it sounds really raw and live, a lot of new productions are very stiff and cold and I think a lot of the new stuff sounds pretty much the same to me. It sounds as if they all have recorded in the same studio with the same producer and that’s just boring to me.
- This old school touch didn't leave you since the beginnings of the band.
That’s right, you can’t say it is more or less old school now because Dismember have always sounded like this, with some slight variations of course. But it’s not like we have gone back to our roots or anything because we never left them in the first place.
- Could Dismember make Brutal Death Metal in the same way the new bands do?
Do you mean triggered blast beat with low-range guttural vocals and thousands of super technical riffs type of Death metal? No, that’s just not our thing.
But I do think we play brutal Death metal, I mean just take a listen to the Pieces EP or the first Grave LP, that is brutal death metal to me! I think a lot of the new bands that may be considered as brutal are not so brutal to me; it’s just a show off in technical riffs and no substance to it. I can enjoy technical music but I like it when you can hear "songs" behind it. I really like the Human and Individual thought patterns LP’s by Death, that is very technical but I still think there are very good songs on those albums.
- Swedish Death Metal keeps often an approach more melodic than the others. How do you explain it?
I think that the Gothenburg bands are the more melodic compared to the Stockholm bands. But I think it is rooted in the love of old 80´s Heavy metal and Thrash.
The reason for the melodic elements in Dismember is David Blomqvist is such a huge Iron Maiden fan, so he brought in a lot of the twin-guitar harmonies to the sound of Dismember. Everybody in our band listen to old heavy metal, I’m a big fan of a lot of bands from the 80´s like for example: Riot, Exciter, Racer-X, Omen plus all the obvious ones like: Black Sabbath, Maiden, Priest, Rainbow etc.
And in Gothenburg I think it was bands like At The Gates and Dark Tranquility who started to bring in more melodic stuff to their music. At The Gates especially did it on Slaughter of the soul but that’s more thrash, I myself prefer their With fear I kiss the burning darkness album.
- What do you think about the fame that the Swedish Death Metal scene met since its beginnings until nowadays?
I guess we were kinda early with Death metal with band such as Nihilist, Entombed, Carnage and Dismember. And the fact that it was all quality stuff from those bands brought attention to it, because it was something fresh and new in the early days. It was very different and way more brutal than what the thrash bands was doing at the time, so I guess it was very suitable for kids who was looking for something more extreme and darker stuff. The Swedish bands were taking their influences from bands such as Autopsy, Death, Repulsion, Napalm Death and then created something of their own out of that. I think that nowadays people like it because it’s still quality releases from the Swedish bands, and there is quite a lot of bands coming from Sweden even though there is not so many people living here. People seems to like Dismember for sticking to their guns and never giving in even though there was a down period for Death metal or metal in general in the late 90´s. I meet a lot of people who are so happy that we still doing this kind of music and that we still release quality stuff.
- I remember when I was kid to have discovered you in an issue of Hard Rock Magazine where one had confronted you with Entombed. Both of you were young and began your careers in Death Metal music. Today what would you say on the respective career of your two bands? Would it be at a moment given a kind of competition?
We are good friends with the Entombed and I like their music a lot. But the two bands have been compared to each other a lot, especially in the early days, then Entombed did their Death’n’Roll thing which was kinda different and also very successful. I think on the last Entombed release they have gone more back to their roots, but they have been trying out some new ideas through out their carrier. But we are very good friends with the Entombed guys so I wouldn’t say that there is any competition between us. On our new album we used the bass player from Entombed, Nico Elgstrand, as an engineer, and he is a really cool guy, very talented at what he does and he is such a funny guy to hang with. And we did the Maters of death tour with Entombed, Grave & Unleashed in 2006 with a rotating bill just to show that we are all equal. That tour was so much fun, everybody got along really well.
- Today for young metalheads when one speaks to them about Swedish Death Metal, they understand only In Flames, Dark Tranquility, Sonic Syndicate (for the more recent). Which is your point of view on this Melodic Death Metal scene ?
I wouldn’t call Sonic Syndicate death metal at all, and I think that the guys and girl in that band would either. And I don’t think there is much death metal in In Flames, they play a way more commercial music that we do. I really like when you meet younger people who are really into what we are doing and it seems that there are some new blood coming into the scene nowadays, we have got some demo tapes of bands that really captures the feeling of old Swedish Death metal and that is really cool. I really like to see kids at our shows so that there is not only the 30+ people there, haha! You must have some growth to be able to survive. Personally I prefer the stuff that I listened to since the early 90´s like Death, Entombed, Morbid Angel, Grave, Deicide, At The Gates...
- This scene begins to be very popular in the USA and many young American bands are inspired by it. What do you think of this success ?
Unfortunately I haven’t yet heard any new bands from USA that sounds Swedish, beside the bands that are copying the Slaughter of the soul style and mix it up with hard core music, and that is not something that I dig. You know, trends come and go and for the moment this seems to be the thing. But I bought the Hell on earth album by Toxic Holocaust and that was really good! Even though he mixed up the music with punk he managed to get that raw death/thrash feeling to it whish I liked, we will play a festival in Norway called Hole in the sky and Toxic Holocaust will play before us so it will be cool to see them live. There seems to be a thrash metal revival in states and also here in Sweden whish is cool, a lot of them are taking the whole kit with the look and everything and I must say I prefer that compared to people with some kind of Hip hop style that has nothing to do with metal!
- Do you envy such a success? Or better, would you like too to conquer the USA and to cross it during months?
Nah, of course I like Dismember to be successful, but I don’t envy other bands. I think it’s quite difficult to conquer USA, I don’t really know what they are into over there at the moment, but it seems like a trendy country and not many people are into the kind of Death metal that we play right now. Of course we have some fantastic fans there that really are into what we are doing. We did a tour on the east coast in 2006 with Grave and Vital Remains and it was my first tour in the states so it was really exciting being there and seeing the country and meeting the American people, but I don’t know if it was because of the organizer of that tour or what it was but the turn ups at some of the gigs where not so good. But some of the shows were really good like Chicago, Boston and New York. Unfortunately the west coast tour that we had planned at the time got cancelled because of the promoter we where supposed to have was trying to rip us off on money and changing the contract that we had agreed on before. That really sucked, because I would have liked to play on the east coast as well.
- Does the USA always represent a challenge for a band like you?
I think it does, yes. The American bands sounds different from us, so maybe its harder for us to get through there. But I get many mails to our Myspace page from USA asking about when we will come over there again and that they really like what we are doing and that is of course very appreciated. But I think you have to tour there a lot to be noticed and maybe open for bigger bands as well. But it’s tough for us because we are trying to live from the music and money wise it’s not so profitable to go as a support slot.
- In an old interview, Martin Henriksson from Dark Tranquility found that Europe compared with the USA presented quickly limits for the evolution of a band, because the public is here already conquered and especially does not increase any more. Do you have the same point of view?
Maybe that is true... I don’t know really, but like I said before, the majority of the American people seem to like other kinds of music than we play, at least for the moment. But we won’t change just to attract a bigger audience or get played on the radio, so maybe we will never get any bigger than what we are right now. There are so many bands out there on the market and I understand its tough for kids to choose. It’s like when you are out touring, there is always tons of other bands out on the road in the same area as you, and people can’t afford to go to every gig even if they want to, I don’t think most of our fans are the most well paid people either.
- Well I think that for the next tour you reserved good surprises for us.
We are at the moment planning to go to the US sometimes after the summer, but nothing is decided yet. But i hope it will come to reality, it would be so cool to go there again and do a better organized tour and show America some real Death metal for real Death metal fans! I promise you we will deliver a good performance, you never know what will happen. I remember at one gig last time, not sure where it was but we wrote down all the songs we could play on pieces of paper and put them in a ugly pink hat that Martin had got the day before at some party and then between the songs we passed around the hat with all the pieces of paper to the crowd and let them pick a paper and then shout the name of the song that was picked in the mic. That was really funny, and it was always a surprise when you heard what song we had to play. But we never have done anything like that since, so maybe its time to dig up that old hat again, haha!
- Ok. That's all for this time. I thank you very much for your answers and I wish you all the best for the next to come. I let you give the last words.
Thank you very much yourself! Listen to our new album and go and see us live when you can, you won’t be disappointed. If you liked Dismember before you will definitely like us now, the new album sounds as much Dismember as ever - in your face Stockholm Death metal!
Tobias Cristiansson
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