Interview - MY OWN GRAVE

English text

Martín: Hi there! Your new album is out now; how do you feel about the band´s career and the new work?

Anders: Greetings! This is Anders, guitarist and lyricist of My Own Grave. It feels great that the album is finally out so we can start touring, play the songs live and meet the fans. We are truly proud of Necrology and consider it to be our best material so far.

About the career of My Own Grave, we received a lot of praise for the Unholy MCD and I’m very happy that we keep getting strong reviews and positive remarks for Necrology as well. When we released Unleash, a lot of critics labelled us a typical melo-death band, and our three-words band name didn’t exactly make things better. Hopefully by now, when people see the good reviews, they will take an extra minute to actually listen to us before they judge us.

M: All the members of MY OWN GRAVE are playing in other bands. Is this a main band or a side project?

A: My Own Grave is the main band for all involved. Retorture is just a goofy grind/punk side-project and Depraved, even though it’s a serious band, is also a side-project.

M: Dan Swanö did the production of “Necrology”. Are you satisfied with the results? How was the experience?

A: We are very satisfied with Swanö’s work. Our version of Swedish death metal also involves black metal, US death, and thrash metal. Swanö really understood this and all the elements sound great individually and as a whole. The production is clear and crisp yet very brutal, just the way we wanted. Dan was very professional and easy to work with, and we basically had the same vision from day one so that made things easy.

M: What themes inspire the songs? Is there a main concept behind “Necrology”?

A: It is a concept album. A necrology is a list of people who have died, and in a way that sums up our entire human history – a list of dead people. We live our lives in the shadow of these dead masters and one cannot achieve true greatness while alive. When a great personality dies he is immortalized, and his legacy is put atop unreachable pillars. Disciples write exaggerated epitaphs and the victors of wars dictate what will be written into history. In the end, is what we conceive as history even near the real truth? And do we even care anymore (Hail The Blind). Through the 11 tracks of Necrology I contemplate death and how it affects us. That includes subjects like War (Disciples Of War), Religion (None Shall See), and the brutal being buried beneath the flesh of modern man (Carnal Revelations, Age Of Torment).

M: Your music is as brutal as technical. How is the process to create that kind of music?

A: Me and Stefan bring a bunch of riffs to the rehearsal and then we, as a band, put the pieces together. Half of it is pre-written, and half is made up as we go. It usually takes at least 10 hours all in all to finish a song, and we have a tendency to discard the songs who aren’t finished in that period. It’s rare that we’ve picked up a half-finished song several months later and finished it (Incineration though is an example of that). When the music is finished, we record the song in our studio and I take it home and write the lyrics. Then I record my version of the vocals, how I intended them. Aron listens to that and makes his own interpretation, and the end result is usually somewhere in the middle. Then we usually make some minor adjustments for the music to fit better with the vocals.



M: Many extreme bands are making videos for its songs. Are you planning to make a video for one of your songs?

A: It’s been up for discussion but we haven’t had the time to do it. Also we don’t want to stress it and end up with something that just looks cheesy. If we do a video I think it has to show the rage and energy that we channel through our live shows. The Dittohead video by Slayer comes to mind, something like that would be really fun to do.

M: Do you see Death Metal as something positive or a complete madness?

A: I’ve listened to metal music since I was 5 years old. Back then it was Kiss and Iron Maiden, today it may be Suffocation or Immortal. To me, death metal has been a natural continuation, it’s simply a more brutal genre of metal and I enjoy it very much. It’s definitely something positive for me and I enjoy the comradeship of the band, between bands and with the fans!

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

A: Death Metal used to be big in Sweden as well, like in the mid-90’s. Nowadays there are too many bands so the interest for Swedish death metal is much bigger outside Sweden. The quality of Swedish bands is very high and the competition has always been tough, yet the bands (most of them) are more often friends than rivals. I’m very proud to be a part of the Swedish scene and its rich history!

M: What is your opinion about music in our days with internet and mp3 downloads?

A: I’m a record collector myself, yet I also download a lot because I like to listen to music in my walkman phone wherever I go. I think the industry needs to understand that times have changed, that there are a lot of kids out there who don’t even own a stereo, and a lot of people like me who want their favourite music to be mobile. We have a good relationship with Pulverised Records and I mean no disrespect to them with this statement, but in the end I’m not playing death metal to make money. As long as there are people listening to our music and coming to our shows, I don’t care if they bought the record or downloaded it illegally. It’s their loss that they’re missing all the awesome artwork Jon Zig created, and the lyrics I have put a lot of effort into.

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

A: We have a European Tour coming up in February 2010 together with Demonical and Deathbound. I hope there’ll be at least one Spanish date this time cause we would very much like to wreak havoc on Spanish soil! Also we are looking into festivals for next summer, I don’t know of any Spanish metal festivals but that would of corpse be awesome! That’s it for me, thanks for taking interest in My Own Grave, and to those who read this and want to get in contact with us: Register at our official forum at http://www.globaldomination.se/forums and chat with us, or any of the other cool bands there like Dark Funeral, Vomitory and Aeon.

Keep on rotting!

http://www.myspace.com/myowngraveyard
http://www.myowngrave.com