Interview - THIS ENDING

English text


Martín: Hey Mårten! Your new album is out now. Can you tell us how do you feel with this work?

Mårten: It feels great that Dead Harvest is finally finished and out in stores. It’s been a long hard way getting there with some mishaps on the way. I think we’ve outdone ourselves and taken This Ending to the next level with a more diverse, dynamic and unique sound.

M: Is “Dead Harvest” an evolution in your sounding or is following the same path than “Inside the Machine”?

M: I would say that Dead Harvest is an evolution from Inside the machine. I still find Inside the machine a great album and for Dead Harvest we developed the parts that we thought we’re most interesting on Inside the machine. This created a new beast of an album that gives the listener the opportunity to experience This Ending sounding even more like This Ending and nothing else. We felt that Inside the machine lacked some dynamics especially in the vocal parts (still love the vocals but it can always get better). This time around we have developed the vocal parts more together with the rest of the song structure and tried to get a wider vocal range presented to the audience. In my ears we have succeeded.

M: The record has been produced by Linus Nirbrant at Offbeat Studio. How was the experience? Are you satisfied?

M: It was as usual hard work recording the album. I know that Leo and Linus have been working almost day and night with the guitars to get the right sound of everything. With all the time put into recording and mixing Dead Harvest I must say that I can’t be anything but pleased. It’s always a nice experience to hear how the songs grow in the studio becoming something more than what they were in rehearsals and demos. Lots of laughs and fun during the hard work too…it’s always a good experience recording a new This Ending album.

M: How is the process to record extreme vocals? Is it a hard job?

M: I think everyone who sings from the gut and gives all you got during a recording can tell you that it’s a hard but fun job. How the process goes for me personally is that I try to push myself into giving the best performance I can in the studio and if I’m not pleased it’s just to do it over again until it fits with what I had imagined for each song. We usually take short breaks to listen to each finished song and see if there are things we want to add or re-do to give the song the right feel.

M: Your music mixes elements from Death and Thrash Metal sounding melodic and shows some mechanic and modern stuff. How do you describe your music?

M: If I would describe the music of This Ending I would say it’s like you say a mix of thrash, death and metal with a twist and sound of a possible apocalyptic future. But most of all This Ending music is about aggressive, hard hitting, grooving metal.



M: “Dead Harvest” shows an apocalyptic world. We are living dark times?

M: I would say that there are a lot of doomsday prophets out in our society today. By the way things look in society more and more people seem to go the way of “my way or the highway”. Then you have the massive propaganda around the destruction of our environment. Even in Sweden we have riots and tons of sick people doing sick things so sure we do live in dark times right now it seems like.

M: Recently we can saw your new video for “Parasites”. What can you tell us about it?

M: Parasites is the first “official” video from This Ending. It’s a very dark video that also gives you a visual vision concept of This Ending and our music. It was actually very cool that we got to record parts of the video in the control room of Sweden’s first nuclear reactor. It was the perfect place for us with downtrodden rooms and a really gloomy apocalyptic view to it. If you look properly you can see some of the controls used in the reactor. We also have some green screen shots in the video that gives you a hint of a possible apocalyptic future.

M: How do you feel being part of a label such as Metal Blade?

M: It’s great being part of a label with so much talent on it. The history of the label is massive just as its catalogue of great releases. I think we fit the label well with our sound, attitude and view of how music should be done.

M: What about THIS ENDING members side projects?

M: This seems to be a major misinterpretation. When we started This Ending everyone but Fredrik had put their other bands to the side. So for everyone but him This Ending is at the moment the only thing we focus on. We intend to keep delivering quality metal for many years ahead and then we need to be focused on This Ending mainly.

M: Sweden is one of the most important countries for Death Metal. How do you see the scene from the inside?

M: I think it’s surprising that so many great bands can come from such a small country. But I guess our music education in school gets many people interested in making music. Looking over the last 15-20 years I guess Sweden is the country that has produced most great death metal bands of all countries with pretty tough competition from the U.S. I’m happy that the scene in Sweden is alive and well and that there are new bands coming up all the time just as the fan base seems to grow more and more for extreme music in Sweden.

M: Thank you very much for your time. Here you have space to write what you want as farewell.

M: Thank you for your interest in This Ending. To all metal fans out there, check out This Ending. If you like what you hear support us in any way you can. Keep it metal and reap the Dead Harvest. Hope to see you all on the road sometime soon.

http://www.myspace.com/thisending
http://www.thisending.com/