MORS CERTA – VITA INCERTA

Nearly 12 months ago I spoke to lead-guitarist Stefan Karlsson from the Gothenburg-based death metal band Soulreaper on the subject of their sophomore longplayer entitled “Life Erazer”. After a relatively fruitless collaboration with Nuclear Blast on their debut album “Written in Blood”, the band opted to find new business partners and a deal was readily finalised with the now late-lamented Dollarhe--- excuse me, Hammerheart Records. But hey, enough introductory talk already… True to our Evilutionary ideals, here is the uncensored and unabridged interview with messieur Karlsson.  

# What has happened musically and personally in the Soulreaper encampment since the release of the debut album “Written in Blood”?

“The thing that happened since we recorded “Written in Blood” is that I joined. And perhaps I put some new ideas into the band, because when I joined we were interested in getting the most brutal, extreme riffs that you can imagine into Soulreaper. But I brought a simpler, although not in the technical sense, way of thinking about music into the band. The songs on “Life Erazer” are easier to listen to. There are not so many complicated arrangements. It’s much better thought out this time than on “Written in Blood”. And they were a bit stressed when they recorded “Written in Blood”; ‘Oh, we’ve got to have to record these songs so we can have the album out.’ Nuclear Blast wanted them to have it released blah, blah, blah… So they had to record right away. It turned out pretty good, though, but I know that I like “Life Erazer” much, much better and I know that the other guys do as well. Everything is much better on “Life Erazer”. The sound is much better, the arrangements are more mature. I think we have matured a lot both in the way of writing songs and also in the way of writing death metal. We don’t want to have a lot of unnecessary stuff into the songs.”

# So it was more relaxed this time around?

“Yeah, in some way. The drums are much more technical on this album. The arrangements of the songs and the riffs are much more to the point. It’s better to listen to this album because you understand it much easier than “Written in Blood”.”

# Whatever happened to the deal with Nuclear Blast then?

“We had to cancel the deal with Nuclear Blast because they had expected to sell about 60.000 albums and that is not usual for this kind of music. If we had sold like 30.000-40.000 albums that would have been: ‘Goddamn!’ They printed 10.000 copies of “Written in Blood” and they are sold out now. They haven’t printed more than that, and how can you sell more than 10.000 copies if that is all you have? I don’t know exactly how they think down there. I can’t understand it at all, because now when people hear “Life Erazer” they will probably feel that they should check out the old album as well – but they can’t get it. That sounds pretty strange to me. They were like: ‘Oh, they didn’t sell as many albums as HammerFall’ or any other of their big bands. Death metal isn’t the same thing, you know. They have dollar signs in their eyes! I’m glad that we are not working with Nuclear Blast anymore. The relationship we have built up with Hammerheart is a thousand times better. Everything is better with them. They contact us all the time and they really like the album. Nuclear Blast can have their big bands and get their money.”

# One recurrent issue that, rather ironically, has come to hog-tie Soulreaper in their endeavours to enter the upper echelon of the death metal scene is the inescapable link to Dissection, in that rhythm-guitarist Johan Norman and drummer Tobias Kellgren were members of said band at the time of its disbandment. Are people still inclined to look upon Soulreaper as a continuation of Dissection?

“That’s the problem. Perhaps that was what Nuclear Blast thought as well. They got the demo from Johan and Tobias, and I have no idea why they did all this Dissection promotion stuff because we are not Dissection. We did not want to be Dissection then, and we do not want to be Dissection now. Nuclear Blast wanted us to sound like Dissection and we didn’t want to sound like them. Johan and Tobias sent a demo tape down to Nuclear Blast, who liked it and consequently signed Soulreaper. Well, and then they started all this ‘ex-Dissection members’ and stuff. And of course, people all thought that we would sound like Dissection when they saw the sticker on the front of the [“Written in Blood”] album. Of course, people were disappointed when they found out that this was not Dissection and that it was totally different. That was the way that we wanted it to sound and still sound today.”

# So in a certain respect “Life Erazer” can be seen as a new debut?

“Yeah, it is a new awakening for us! And we hope that people can finally forget about Dissection and take us for Soulreaper. Because that is what it is. We are a bit fed up because in all interviews there are like five or six questions about Dissection and we don’t have any contact with Jon [Nödtveidt – founding member and creative force in Dissection]. Even Hammerheart were starting to talk about that stuff: ‘Beware! Ex-Dissection members...’ You almost forget about Soulreaper because you only see Dissection. In the biography Dissection is mentioned like five times. I hope that it’s going to go away because we are Soulreaper and that’s it.”

# Let us leave that subject then and turn to more band-specific matters: is there a sort of deeper, cohesive concept to the “Life Erazer” album, or should the lyrics rather be seen as separate meditations on a loosely defined overall theme?

“It’s not a concept album. I’m not that into Christoffer’s [Hjertén] lyrics. As I’ve said in some other interviews, you would have to ask Christoffer about this part. They are his thoughts and feelings. Well, you know... Life Erazer and Death Metal! [laughs]”

# I was surprised to suddenly hear clean vocals on two of the tracks on the album…

“Yeah, but that is not Christoffers voice. We thought that it would be pretty cool to use some kind of doomy vocals. And on “Static Darkness”, where you hear the vocals the first time, we thought it would fit that song pretty good. So we asked a friend to do a couple of things. I think it turned out pretty cool. In one interview they asked us if this was a new thing that we would use more in the future. I don’t think so. It’s just a cool thing on the album. Maybe we will use it again; maybe we won’t.”

# As a band from the Swedish death metal capital Gothenburg, how strong is your affiliation to the local metal scene?

“We want to play death metal the way it should sound. Not like people relate to death metal these days in the sense of In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and similar bands. The Gothenburg sound, so to speak. That is far from death metal so we want to say: ‘This is death metal, goddammit!’ This is how it should be and forget about In Flames. Death metal is supposed to be brutal, dark and very fast and heavy. No melodies and ‘Oh, baby’! This is what we want to do: wake up the death metal fans. This is the way it should sound. I know a couple of bands from Sweden and a couple of bands from the States and a couple of bands that still do this, but most people don’t use the brutal stuff anymore. When you buy a Cannibal Corpse album, you know that you’re gonna get death metal. And we want people to have the same idea about Soulreaper. When you buy one of our albums you will get brutal and fast death metal. Pure death metal...”

# Speaking of classic death metal: there is a cover version of the Morbid Angel classic “Fall from Grace” included on my promo version of “Life Erazer”, and I believe it will feature on the digipack edition of the album as well. How did that come about in the first place?

“That song actually ended up on a tribute album at first. We had to put some kind of bonus on the digipack, and we found it pretty cool to include the Morbid Angel cover because it turned out pretty cool. We played “Fall from Grace” in B as well and the original is in E or D. The heavy parts in the song are much heavier in our recording and the blast beats are faster as well so it’s a pretty cool version. It sounds like Soulreaper in a way. We all love Morbid Angel in Soulreaper and everyone loves their stuff. And everybody knows it because we are often compared to Morbid Angel in the reviews. We want to pay tribute to Morbid Angel with this song.”

Soulreaper




# Could you provide with a few of details on the recording process of the new album?

“Well, we recorded it in Los Angered and that was pretty strange because I have never met Andy [LaRocque – owner of Los Angered and the main guitarist in King Diamond] before. Tobias has visited his studio a couple of times, but I have never met him before and I was a bit nervous as I am a guitar player, and I have always looked up to Andy. So it was pretty strange to pick up the guitar and start to play in front of him. I played the songs a couple of times and he told me: ‘Stefan, you are really good!’ And I was: ‘Okay?!’ That was cool because Andy told me I was pretty good. Then I could play anything. [laughs] Tobias has been there and auditioned for King Diamond once. Even though he never got the job he did an audition with Andy. And they played a few songs together; I think it was “The Family Ghost”. I hoped for Tobias to get the job, but then again if he had Soulreaper would probably have been put on ice for a while. Perhaps everybody would have had to wait for “Life Erazer” for two years or something, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted that to happen.”

# Kristian Wählin is the creative mind’n’hand behind the artwork for “Life Erazer”. Please comment a bit on that collaboration.

“Right. We met up with him and he showed us the big original painting that he did. It blew our minds totally, and I have never seen it done before. Chaos, death, blood and gore! [laughs] We were like: ‘This is perfect. This is Life Erazer.’ I am really glad that we chose him, and at first I was a bit afraid that the cover would end up like a lot of other things he did. We were afraid, again, that people would begin to say: ‘Why did you use him when he has done so much for Dissection?’ But it doesn’t look like anything he has done or what I have seen anyway. I’m very glad that we got Kristian to do the artwork because it’s so perfect.”

# In other words, there is no excuse not to purchase the vinyl edition of the album?

“Yeah, I’m waiting for the vinyl version. I hope they are going to print a picture disc so I can put it up on my wall. I really dig this cover. Kristian told us that we couldn’t even show this picture to our parents. They will think I’m crazy.”

# Do you have any touring plans lined up for the immediate future?

“There are plans for a tour later this year, but nothing has really been booked yet. We hope to go on tour in November or something. There was some talk of going out with Dismember but that is not going to work out. Then there was some talk of going out with The Crown, but nothing is settled yet. We’ll have to wait and see. I hope there is going to be a big tour in Europe this fall or something, because we all hope to get out and play. Tobias plays in a heavy metal band so he is probably going to play a lot of shows, and I actually know that he is going to play at Wacken with a band called Seventh One. They released an album some months ago, or almost half a year ago, called “Sacrifice”. Do you know Decameron?”

# Yeah, but I have never actually heard the music…

“The old guitarist from that band Johannes Losbäck plays in Seventh One, and since they know each other they asked Tobias to play drums when their old drummer left. It’s like heavy metal, not power metal, but more like 80s power metal. What you should check out as well is my other band Brutaliator. Send me an e-mail and tell me what you think. Perhaps I can send you a CD or something. It’s more like thrashy speed metal or something. We only have snippets or samples on our homepage. Maybe you can find some full MP3’s somewhere on the net but we haven’t done anything yet. We’ve released a CD ourselves just limited to 500 copies or something. Just to get our music out because I think our music is really good. It seems a lot of labels are afraid of that kind of music; I don’t know why actually. Everyone who bought the CD thinks it’s good music. I hope our label discovers us and releases our stuff. I’ve played with this band for like 10 years or so, and we haven’t released one album yet. I have played with Soulreaper for four years and we have released two albums already. Or send us an e-mail and I will send you a copy for a review or something.”

# You got it! [author’s note: I did actually leave a message in the guestbook on the Brutaliator website in want of an e-mail address, but no one ever really reacted… Oh well.]

# On a side note, Mr. Kellgren’s drum work on “Life Erazer” is more professional than ever before…

“Yeah, Tobias has become a way better drummer in the last couple of years. His blasts are much, much better. When I started in Soulreaper he was good, but suddenly he just exploded and now he can just go as fast as he wants. He just became better in a couple of weeks. When we did the first gigs after releasing “Written in Blood”, we played the songs much faster than on the albums so I don’t know what happened. He just exploded as a drummer and got much better. He is still getting better because he is a real drummer and not just a hobby drummer. He plays a couple of hours every day and he is a 100% drummer. I really enjoy playing with him because he is an incredible drummer and an incredible musician.”

# I second that completely. Well, Stefan, I’ll let you off the hook. Thanks for your time and best of luck with the album!

“Thanks for the interview. Hopefully, we’ll catch you on tour sometime soon.”

-->> Conducted and written by Misereion.