Slavestate was a Swedish metal magazine written in Swedish in the early 2000’s. Here we have an interview with the mighty Dismember from 2004, translated to English.
DISMEMBER
It doesn't take many two-bars into the new work "Where Ironcrosses Grow" before you can exhale and rejoice that Dismember has aged with dignity. Many death metal acts have been celebrated and fallen over the years, but the legends from Stockholm remain untouched, with a status that grows higher every year.— Now we don't have to compete with anyone anymore, explains drummer Fred Estby.Fred Estby is relieved that the band's sixth full-length, "Where Ironcrosses Grow", is finally here. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the predecessor "Hate Campaign" saw the light of day just after the turn of the millennium. At the same time, there have been some changes behind the scenes.— We lost Magnus (Sahlgren, guitar), so we've brought in a new guy called Martin Persson. We've also changed rehearsal space and then me, Matti (Kärki, vocals) and Richard (Cabeza, bass) have had children. In addition, several of us have changed full-time jobs — in the beginning you want to walk a tightrope there, so that you can take time off when you have to play.The fugitive Magnus got a job as a researcher and lost interest in the band, at the same time that his interest in hard music and the scene around it gradually became marginalized. Fred is not slow to praise the replacement the band found in Sins Of Omission.— He only needed two ropes on him, then he went with us to Italy, but it went well. He is not on the album, it was already finished when he joined the band. All the band photos for the new album were taken before he joined, that's why there are only four of us on them.In addition to Martin, a dear reunion has enriched the strength. Richard Cabeza is back in his place as the plucker of the thickest strings, after, among other things, an unsuccessful session with the Norwegian black metallers Satyricon.— I don't know much about what he did while he was away, to be honest. He doesn't want to talk about it, so we've stopped nagging him. Anyway, he had nothing to do and when Sharlee (D'Angelo, bass on the "Hate Campaign" album) was in a thousand different bands and couldn't play with us, we brought in Richard who knew all the old songs. Then he ended up doing most of the tours on the last album, or rather all the gigs. We felt he might as well come back to the band.However, there were no plans to fully reunite the original line-up, which would have meant a comeback for guitarist Robert Sennebäck. Robert, who like his colleague Cabeza disappeared from the band after "Death Metal" (1997), has been away from playing for so long that according to Fred he was no longer an interesting option.A D-Teens in the works?
“Hate Campaign” was the guys’ auf wiedersehen to the German label Nuclear Blast, which had been their permanent home since their debut album “Like An Ever Flowing Stream” (1991). Nine record companies out of ten would try to milk the last drops from the cow at this point, but not even the mass-market swindlers Nuclear Blast followed the unwritten rule of profiteering in this case. Whether it was a poorly designed best-of with unreleased/rejected material included, a live album with a pissy sound or an embarrassing remix edition with the Dismember logo, they have seen the light of day between the long-drawn-out laps.Matti and Richard have in and of themselves provided the market with two Murder Squad creations. Last year’s release “Ravenous Murderous” featured a guest appearance by former Autopsy singer/drummer Chris Reifert, who is a highly glorified gentleman in the old-school movement. There has been no talk of any excursions outside the protection of Dismember’s wings for Fred. The father of three has been busy with family life, where three kids produced over the past ten years have had to share priority with Fred's new career as a personal trainer at a gym.He is an eloquent man on the other end of the line, who often thinks for a second or two before answering. He rarely interrupts in the middle of a sentence to correct what he has blurted out, like many other interviewees, where "uhh", "no" and "I don't know" make up large parts of the recorded material. We break new ground in the conversation by giggling and speculating about whether a mini-Dismember might appear in the future, where hit songs like "Skin Her Alive" are interpreted by Estby Jr, Kärki Jr and Cabeza Jr.— Sure, it won't be long before the oldest starts his first band. Matti has a kid the same age so we've talked a little loosely about whether there will be a rerun of Arvingarna, laughs the beatmaker.While Fred makes sure he feels good and that others keep their bodies in shape, Matti struggles with graffiti removal at night. A job that affects Matti & co in more ways than strong cleaning agents.— It's a good job in that he has full time off every other week, and he earns quite well. It's a bit difficult to get him to work all the time, since it's every other week. Since he works shifts, he's completely lost for a whole week. That makes a record recording take longer than you'd expect.
New methods
A band of Dismember's caliber will of course hit the road. The only question is where and when. A new record label might provide new opportunities, or is it the other way around?— We're currently discussing back and forth, we have England, Greece, Italy, the USA and Scandinavia in the pipeline. We'll see how we do with a European tour. We'll try to split up the gigs as much as possible. If you release an album this time of year, it's best to play certain parts here and there. There are so many bookers these days. They should be able to offer, so that you get some money at all, that they book a few gigs that they do themselves. You don't take an agency for an entire European tour, but take two gigs in Greece, two in Italy, two in Germany... or ten in Germany. We're going to work with a separate booker per country. It pays off in some way, you don't have to take the smallest cities just because you have a bus that costs a lot of money. Then you have to mix in the less good gigs so that you can go to the good gigs. This is to not lose money, do you know what I mean?Yeah Fred, it wasn't hard math. It's always crazy expensive to go by bus.— Then it's better for people to finance the few gigs you do, so you can fly down and drive them. Then you do the next country a little later. It's also going to be a bit exclusive, I think we'll do that with this album to see if it works.Flint and Durst's namesake are really looking forward to getting out and playing again. The interest seems mutual from the fans' side. The new album's self-titled opening title track had been available as a downloadable mp3 file on Karmageddon Media's website for a week when this interview took place. The response has been overwhelmingly positive in the Internet forums that the undersigned has visited, a sign that the loss has been great in many homes during the four years that have passed since the last chapter in the band's history was written.Fred promises a lot
December 20, 1995 is an important date in Gothenburg's hard rock history. At The Gates played their last gig on home soil before splitting up the following year at Musikens Hus. The band was joined by Dismember and Dissection, who have not performed in Gothenburg since then.— Yes, it's been a while, Fred apologizes with an open and thoughtful tone. We've talked about it so many times, but we're going to talk to Skrikhult to see what he can do for Sweden and Scandinavia. I hope he can bring something to Gothenburg.That's eight and a half years, damn it, I say. That's a long time. In 1995, Sweden was ruled by Ingvar Carlsson, EU membership was as fresh as nu-metal and no one had the slightest idea what an mp3 file was. Fred feels compelled to make amends.— Yes, it's a scandal. It's the same thing as in northern Sweden. I don't think we've played there properly since 1992 or something like that.I warm up his interest in playing in Norrland by telling him that another Stockholm band from the same school, Necrophobic, has been wreaking havoc up north. So it's not just my dear hometown, the stronghold of winter rainstorms, that the two-stroke ruler is promising gigs. Dalarna, Småland, Skåne, yes, wherever people can possibly come, they'll play. Fred's quick calculations say that if three hundred can come to see them in Linköping, there should also be enough traffic for them to play in a larger city in the far north.Drunkenness and fights
Dismember's last visit to Gothenburg also became known for a major brawl. In the middle of the concert, groups of spectators began to gather, and it wasn't long before the concert atmosphere was replaced by the fear of involuntarily ending up in a fight. Musikens Hus was a war zone for the rest of the evening. Fred also remembers this incident, albeit from the stage.— Well, it was fucking chaos! I never understood what was really happening. When chairs started raining down on stage, you couldn't figure out who was fighting with whom, whether it was one of the bands that sucked or if the audience didn't like each other. I got so many different versions from so many different people that it's completely impossible for me to know what was really going on.Rumor has it that the satanic order MLO was behind the commotion, which can most closely be compared to a big bar fight from an old Western movie. Everyone fought with everyone else, and when fists weren't enough, people hit each other in the head with bar stools. The fact that I, at seventeen, came home without a broken nose or cracked eyebrow is a bonus.— If it was Jon (Nödtveit, Dissection) who was behind it, I don't understand why, Fred sighs. It was just as much their gig as anyone else's.While we're on the subject of fights, it feels like it's time to dust off an old story. It's said that you guys in Dismember got into a gang fight against another, fairly well-known British death metal band once upon a time. Is that something you want to remember?— Well, that happened, right? Fred replies without the slightest second of hesitation. Do you mean it happened in Arvika or in Denmark?I only know parts of the story about the fight with Benediction in Denmark, where one of your roadies got into a bad situation. A support tour with Morbid Angel was at stake. — There was quite a lot of English drunkenness there, that's all it was about. In 1993 we were supposed to do a tour with them, but we didn't want to do that tour because it wouldn't be profitable for us. So we went as a support for Morbid Angel instead because it would work better. Then we met them in Copenhagen. Then they started fighting with us and it was pure chaos. It was a fight that lasted over several meetings during the evening, it was strange. Then we played with them just over a year later and then they didn't even want to talk about it. They probably didn't think it was that cool to start that fight. The strangest thing was that it was the bassist in Cynic, who went as a support for Benediction, who started it all by jumping on one of our rowers and kicking him in the face. I don't know what he had to do with it at all. It was simply the bad guys who wanted to fight.Looking for the groove
Dismember has more than just street violence on their conscience. Twelve years after their debut, the band once again shows where the closet should be. It should be in Stockholm. The fast-paced "Where Ironcrosses Grow" shows the side of death metal that Dismember dominates. The album is permeated with a biting rawness and classic gravelly guitar sound. The expression "Less is more" still fits. However, that doesn't stop the album from offering the occasional melody loop, amidst all the chaos, chaos and mayhem. Nor can Dismember be blamed for being frivolous, the album is teeming with interesting ideas and stylish arrangements. Back to Fred again — what were the band members' thoughts when you were sketching out the new album?— We wanted to bring out more rawness and I wanted to get a production that was fatter. A little more swing to it all. It's David (Blomqvist, guitar) and I who have done most of the work together, we've put everything together and recorded it ourselves more or less. Rickard has made a few songs and Matti has written some lyrics, but it's me and David who have been rehearsing everything for three or four months. We felt that we wanted to take away some of the melodic stuff and bring out the aggressive stuff.So what's behind this journey among iron crosses? The well-coiffed drummer has nothing against breaking down his album into its smallest atoms this evening. Opening "Where Ironcrosses Grow".— We put it together very quickly. You could say it's a riff from each member of the band. It was a form of brainstorming I had when I knew that everyone had their own thing. We put it together very quickly and it was perfect. The song is also the title track of the album.“Forged With Hate”— This song is a real hit! I feel like this song represents the album quite well. I made it entirely myself — a little “Painkiller” influence and Slayer of course. It just felt like a pure discharge, I think you should always start an album with full speed. There’s no reason to skimp on the powder when you make music like this.“Me-God”
— It’s quite interesting, because it’s probably the most Autopsy-influenced song we’ve done. David and Rickard did it while I wrote the lyrics. I think the song is a bit funny because we got the structure so well. It’s swinging, fast and very heavy. It feels like an Autopsy song but in a Dismember style.
“Tragedy Of The Faithful”
— This was supposed to be the melodic song on the album. We didn't want to let go of the melody completely because it's part of our sound. You shouldn't make epic songs like this too long, it'll be too damn boring I think. We have to show off our Iron Maiden influences a little bit. David has done that last part and the melodies themselves, then we try out how we're going to play and so on. He and I have made the music for it while Matti has written the lyrics.
"Chasing The Serpent"
— I actually made that song all by myself. It's a good song that feels pretty solid. There's not much more to say, actually. A typical song that you write in your head before you go to sleep, and have to get up to write it down.
"Where Angels Fear To Tread"
— It was the first song that was made for the album. It was made by Rickard and is also quite Autopsy-influenced. There are two really heavy songs on the album and that's enough. I got help from a guy called Anders Jonsson, who works a lot with commercials and videos. It's actually a constructed war, so it's not taken directly from a movie. We sat up all night and constructed everything with different sounds. A very laborious job, says Fred and loses the thread in a giggly laugh when I point out that it sounds a bit pretentious for a band like Dismember.
"Sword Of Light"
— A catchy song that is pretty straight to the point. It sounds like old death metal, typical Dismember and Entombed. A typical Autopsy variant.
“As The Coins Upon Your Eyes”
— It’s David’s song. He likes to write with the older influences like Autopsy and the old Brazilian bands like Pentagram, old Sepultura and stuff like that. I think he’s got that pretty well.
“Children Of The Cross” and the final “As I Pull The Trigger”
— Those were the last two songs we did for the album. It’s me, Rickard and David who did them together. A really heavy song and a bang on beetroot song
Anyone who wrote down how many times Fred mentioned Autopsy?Dismember has found the internet
The predecessor’s eleven songs mangled in flock. That is to say, the different numbers on the album were stuck to each other like Siamese twins. This variant of arrangement and its transitions between the songs worked on the album, but unfortunately much worse on stage. Either the band will have to play the songs in a row or cut them off in a way that feels wrong and unnatural. The new material will work better according to Fred.
— We have actually rehearsed the entire album properly so that we can play all the songs. We will try and see which ones work, but there is no song that we have said we will not play live. It has happened to me before on every album that we have made that there have been songs that we thought “we can’t play these live”.
— On the US tour we did right after “Hate Campaign” we played the first three songs at full blast. But it didn’t work so well there, it might have worked better in Europe. People get a little irritated when you play three new songs in a row. Not that we are the oldest in the bunch, but I would have probably been angry if Slayer had played five new songs straight away, without at least one old hit. We have noticed a tendency for people to get irritated if you play too much new stuff. We may have come so far that you shouldn't burn half the new album in people's faces. In the US it didn't really work. Sure it was okay, but it wasn't the same pressure as when you start something from the first album.
Something that didn't exist in the same way in 1991 as it does today is the two-way communication between fans and band. The rise of the Internet has made it easier for Fred and all the other musicians to respond to fans' opinions and questions.
— We've had a very big problem in recent years and that is that we haven't had a website that has worked. Something is happening now, finally. It's been so complicated with all that. The problem is that the person who was supposed to be in charge of it has seized all the domain names that are worth having. We could have started something else, but it would have been such bad names for the future. Now we've finally got a good address and when the new website is finally ready it will be better. Then you can have updated information and see what people think. Now you have to go to forums like Blabbermouth to see if people still have an interest and craving. It's not something you can do via your personal email. On the other hand, you should be glad that the Internet exists, because otherwise people would have gotten tired of us a long time ago.
For all the brave souls who have been looking for official information about the band, I can happily say that www.dismember.se is the address you should bookmark.Good and bad messages
From music and communication to lyrics and messages. Most people who listen to death metal have probably at some point encountered insulting words like "you can't hear shit they say", "they just scream and gape", "the person who sings can't be really healthy". This brings us to the question of what Fred Estby's written down word sequences are about.
— It's mostly religion and nasty stories from everyday life. A lot of shit you see and hear about, there's a lot to be pissed off about and inspired by. It's not hard to find topics right away. I get very irritated by how religious people try to rule over others. This also applies to politics, but in many countries religion rules over politics. It becomes very primitive when some parts of the world are moving forward while others are standing still. Who should obey whom, that is a question that should be discussed more. It may not be so wise to take for granted that we are the ones who are right or they are the ones who are wrong. You have to start a discussion, you can't just force your own opinion on people.
Religion has recently become an inexhaustible theme in the daily and evening press, at least when articles are written about the town of Knutby and its now nationally famous Philadelphia congregation. I throw out a philosophical thought to Fred about what Sweden could have looked like with Philadelphia-like sectarian rule. My personal thinking is that we would probably have been subjected to mass oppression of the same kind as what the Taliban subjected their fellow human beings to in Afghanistan earlier. Fred seems understanding and gives his point of view on the whole thing.
— If the Pentecostal Church doesn't have control over its own small congregations, then it's probably a question of it's not a sect? Then it's not an active church union but sects, of which there are as many as you want. It's also quite strange how they can isolate themselves and live the way they do.
It's interesting that the media has taken a stance against the free churches, and with a very sharp tone. To state my own opinion again — it's not a day too late.
— It's a shame it's taken so long, but it's nice that something is happening. It's nice that we in this country have moved on from hypocritically pretending that we are a certain way. It also has to do with the church's power having waned a bit, it has been shown that it didn't work that well.The Devil's Tool
Hard rock and Christianity have never been good friends, unless the band is called P.O.D, Blindside or Stryper. The remaining 99.9 percent are part of the unholy alliance as a Christian would probably describe it. In their younger years, Dismember had a lot of blood and hatred against Christianity in their image. Has the band ever had a taste of resistance from the “good” fight of the forgiven?
— No, not like that. It’s worse in other countries after all. When we were over in the US and played with Deicide, it was the free churches that put out Bibles and threatened to bomb the premises. Deicide is a bit more extreme than we are, but it’s enough that a long-haired band comes there to be seen as the devil’s tool. It hasn’t happened that often in Sweden, it’s probably only once in a while that some poor people have come down to the country to talk to us. I don’t think it’s that common here for people to get involved in what rock bands do.
Fred sees bands like P.O.D more as an ill-conceived phenomenon than as another form of hard rock. An interesting detail is that most Christian stores in the US see P.O.D as the music of evil. Dismember has always had a provocative style, especially in the early nineties when “Skin Her Alive” from their debut album fell victim to British censorship laws (more detailed reading about this can be found in the double article about Dismember in Slavestate issues 3 and 4). My interviewee doesn’t think the song would have encountered the same rabid attacks if it had been released today.
— No, absolutely not. Everything has its time and people don’t get as upset about church fires anymore either. Of course people get pissed off when a church burns down, but it’s not the same outcry as before.
Today it’s much harder to provoke. Today’s young talents fuck each other in front of Channel Five’s cameras and then get praised like any other big star. Norwegian black metal combo Gorgoroth also creates publicity, albeit through a very macabre approach. The band recently performed in Poland surrounded by slaughtered ungulates. The uproar and condemnation of the bloody evening in strictly Catholic Katowice has spread like wildfire. A trial and possible imprisonment are to be expected. Fred Estby has no idea about the incident, which occurred just a couple of days before this interview, but he seems very interested in knowing more.Let Matti smoke
From Gorgoroth and Poland to Stockholm and Dismember again. After a two-year absence, Dismember is finally back on their home stage in the fall of 2002. Before Fred starts the first song, Matti hisses into the microphone, "We are Dismember and we are going to clean the communist shit out of your ears." Was it irritation over the band Totalt Jävla Mörker’s (Translates to: Total F**king Darkness) incitement against Stockholm and their blatant anti-capitalist message, or was there something else entirely behind this statement?
— Feed Matti something like that — it's doomed to be what it was then. He has the opportunity to stand there and gape. Matti & Rickard couldn't smoke in the box because of the guys in Totalt Jävla Mörker. Maybe that caused irritation.
— Isn't one of the guys in the band in the Refused singer's new band, The (International) Noise Conspiracy?
Don't trust me, but I have it in my head.
— I've worked with The (International) Noise Conspiracy before, they and especially Refused have done a lot of good for Swedish music, I have nothing against those guys. But then they have themselves to blame if they complain about Stockholm in Stockholm.Survived all trends
Dismember has survived all trends, and has thereby achieved a form of cult status. In 2004, it's as cool as ever to drum in two-beat and play with a gritty guitar sound. How does Fred see the current situation and the path to get there?
— It feels like you have nothing to compete against, we are accepted for what we do and people seem to appreciate it too. They know what they're getting. It used to be that “the trend will pass and you will start playing rock ‘n’ roll too”
But Dismember never followed in Entombed’s footsteps. Entombed laid the foundations for the sub-sub-subgenre death n’ roll with “Wolverine Blues” (1993) while Dismember continued to stay within the same framework throughout their career.
— Our goal has never been to play the fastest, but more to get a drive in the music. It should be aggressive, like getting hit. You want to headbang and throw up when you hear it. I listened to a lot of grindcore before this scene started and even though it was insanely fun when it went so fast, it wasn't the songs that stood out. It was the songs with more two-beat than grind that felt heavy. Grind parts can be added to make something happen, not to drive the music. You can't just pour it on in the same way.
What about the friendships within the Stockholm scene? As an outsider from Gothenburg who rides the tram, it's easy to imagine that everyone knows everyone and so on.
— We've known each other half our lives, and we meet up sometimes. We went to see Cathedral around here and then you met every single person you know. You met everyone who has had anything to do with the scene, more or less.
When Fred himself chooses music at home, it's usually Mars Volta, except when it gets too jazzy, then he's not as into the music. In true Stockholm fashion, Fred explains the greatness of the Afro-freaks, "the record is very nicely arranged" and "I bought it because Rick Rubin prodded it." Otherwise, Grand Magus and The Haunted are hot on Fred's nerves when it comes to working out and jogging. Wear and tear injuries are not something that attracts this health and fitness expert. So what about your bandmates, do you get them on your jogging trips?
— No, they're so damn lazy, Fred concludes this late Tuesday evening with a long laugh.