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For those not acquainted with the band, ARISE may
be confounded with some SEPULTURA influences outfit – but the idea is soon
proven wrong, when listeners are faced with the blasting melodic Death the
band have come up with. After all, this Swedish gourp is on the right track
to become well known – due to their professional relationship with the Finish
label Spinefarm. The current interview, in the context of the
recent release of Kings of the Cloned Generation, has been brightly
answered by their fierce drummer, Daniel Bugno.
Back To The Grave - Heyls!!! Hope you are all well! I’ve known
your band for quite some time, but it
was with your latest output that I finally heard your sound. Anyway, because
I think that, in order to perceive the present album, one has to take a
glimpse at the past, I will start by it. You started covering band such as
SEPULTURA (you even bear the moniker of one of their greatest albums),
PANTERA and MACHINE HEAD yet seemed to have been carried by the NWSDM style,
which has a lot in common with some
80’s thrashier outfits. As your biography isn’t that profound, could
you tell the readers what were the main reasons why you followed the NWSDM
style? Apart from taste, I gather it was something to do with the line–up
changes… Daniel - I guess the main reason was that we got
sort of tired of playing “Bay-area” metal after covering those bands for a
couple of years. Suddenly we discovered our own Swedish scene with bands such
as DARK TRANQUILLITY, IN FLAMES, AT THE GATES, HYPOCRISY and so on. We
thought is was great, and now, influenced by the Swedish death-metal, we
began writing our first own material, which sounded very much like early IN
FLAMES. And you could have a point there – I don’t remember really – but when
Björn left (the cover-singer) and Erik took over, we realised that he
couldn't sing in that way. He had a more shrieking voice, and that’s the
perfect one for Swedish death! BTTG - Did you ever think you could be considered “just another
band” coming from the Swedish scene even if you have a lot of musical
influences such as AT THE GATES, HYPOCRISY, IN FLAMES and CARCASS in your
sound, trying to be a bit more original? What did you think, back then and
now, could carry you apart from that same tag? Was it hard at first to play
in some gigs due to the amount of bands and the small extent of the
underground circuit in your country? Daniel - At first we just had this dream to release
our own album. And so came the It’s very hard to get gigs here without a
booking-company, but luckily we got one last year and now we’re doing shows
regularly. Mostly in Sweden, unfortunately. BTTG - So, what was it like to cover a LED ZEPPELIN song which
appeared in their tribute “Dead Zeppelin”, released by Dwell Records? How did
you get that opportunity? Surely, you must have been happy to participate and
let your sound hover around one of their songs… By the way, which one was it?
Had you covered it before or were you asked to by the label? That was your
first contact with Studio Mega, right? You liked the experience that much
that you recorded both of your CDs at the same studio… Daniel - At that time we were an unsigned band,
and when Dwell records contacted us asking if we wanted to record a song for
their upcoming LED ZEPPELIN tribute. We thought that we had nothing to lose
and went to Studio Mega – for the first time. And you’re right there, we
liked “Bullens” work and besides, it wasn't that far from where we live, so
the choice was easily made. BTTG - Apart from that, you have entered several compilations
and although it was only about some Swedish acts, it must have given you
better promotion… Want to recall those “hard working” days when you had no
label to help you? Daniel - Well, the promotion in the beginning was
non-existent. Even these days I think it can be bad sometimes, but during the
last year, it has begun to be quite alright. Without promotion, you can do
nothing! You can exist for several years without people knowing about you, and
that sucks. So no way I wanna go back to the old days... it’s very ungrateful
to be a musician you know. Most of the times anyway. BTTG - Having entered a recording studio several times, you must
by now have a more precise idea of what ARISE’s sound should be. What have
been the major musical differences and influences between the demos and the
debut CD and from this one to your latest output? Daniel - The main difference is that we have
become better songwriters. Our idea has always been to mix AT THE GATES’
furiosity with HYPOCRISY´s heaviness and CARCASS-influenced melodies, and I
think that we have succeeded very well with that. These are our favourite
bands and of course they influence us, but we listen to a lot of other music
as well. The difference in the future will be that we improve as songwriters
once more and take it to a new level. BTTG - You have used the same producer, Christian Silver, which
means you feel more comfortable working with him than ever, although, this
time, your CD wasn’t mixed at the Finnvox Studios as the début was. Why was
that? Do you plan to have Christian Silver as the “fifth” element, even if
solely as a producer? Are you happy with the sound of Kings of the
Carnival Creation? In my opinion, you got a really tremendous second full
length… Cleaner but still harsh, still grabbing us by the throat with its
melodic aggressiveness… Daniel - We will also record our third album with
Christian. That’s just because we feel that he is the man for the job. He
knows us well by now and we know where we have him too. As for the last
album, Spinefarm didn't think it was necessary to get it mixed in Finnvox, so
Christian got to do it by himself. But now afterwards we’re still not 100%
satisfied with the sound. We all agreed that we will bring back the “fat”
production from the first album and mix it with the cleanliness from the
last. That way, we will get a monster-production next time, ha-ha! BTTG - How did you get a deal with Spinefarm Records? Had you
thought about several other labels before? How has the promotion and
merchandise sales been so far? For how many albums have you signed the
contract? Does it make you proud being the first non–Finnish band signing to
them? Daniel - We had sent them a demo before, which
they rejected. So we hadn’t any expectations with the next demo – Abducted
Intelligence. But surprisingly we got a mail saying they wanted to sign
us directly for 3 albums and we got very flattered of course to be the only
Swedish act on the label. Something only DARK TRANQUILLITY and GATES OF
ISHTAR have succeeded in doing before, I think. The Finnish are very
patriotic, you know and you can still tell, ‘cos their bands got a lot more
promotion than we do unfortunately. But as I said, the last year has been better
with the Europe-tour along with VADER for example. Now we have one more album
to do on Spinefarm, and then we’ll see. Just before we signed Spinefarm we
had some other companies interested in us – but they couldn't offer a direct
deal, so we chose Spinefarm. The companies were: Relapse, Pavement and
Century Media I think. Relapse would be great, but I don’t think we’ll fit
into their band line-up really.... Who knows? BTTG - Could you take us to those days before releasing your
début CD and tell us how the opportunity to work with Niklas Sundin and Cabin
Fever to do the cover art appeared? What exactly do you tend to transmit with
the cover art of both CDs? Daniel - We had seen some of the cover art he had
done and since he lives in Gothenburg it was easy for us to contact him
personally and show him our ideas. When we told him that we where into
biomechanics he got very interested, ´cos he really wanted to do this thing.
It was my idea from the beginning – I just love the art of Giger and I guess
you can tell by looking at our cover-arts and booklets. The pictures are
mostly our ideas, he just translated them to the computer, you know. BTTG - When reading your lyrics I was glad to observe you don’t
focus solely on one subject, which could have become very monotonous but
dispersed thoughts and feelings through a broader spectrum… It seems you are
an avid reader, so you can come up with different subjects. Tell us which
ones you are keen on writing about… Will you stick solely to those themes
portrayed so far as lyrics for your songs or do you have some other ideas
for, maybe, a conceptual album? Daniel - A conceptual album is very hard to do,
especially in this style of music. It gets monotonous as you said. A subject
that always has interested us is fear and the human mind. You can screw it up
completely and get a human being to do the most unbelievable stuff without
any remorse. It’s very interesting. Manipulation of several things is also a
topic that got us – like cloning. I think it’s really pretty scary what you
can do and that you should leave the human DNA alone. BTTG - You were nominated amongst BREACH, ENTOMBED and DARK
FUNERAL for the Best Hard Rock Artist at Rocket Swedish Rock Awards. What did
you feel when knowing you would run against such icons (forget not that I
refer only to ENTOMBED and Dark Funeral, for I know nothing about BREACH)
among the underground? Who won? Could you comment on the Rocket Swedish Rock
Awards and how was it like? Daniel - As I said earlier, we got very surprised
by the attention the first album received. This nomination was most
unexpected, but of course fun. We knew already before we went there which
band was going to win, but it was fun anyway. We just went to Stockholm and
got drunk as hell and had a good time. It’s always like that you know, the
most famous band wins all the prizes and nevers get a bad review. So ENTOMBED
won the award. Every time they release a new album it’s better than the
previous, and both THE HAUNTED and THE CROWN get the highest scores when they
release new albums, even if they are heavily influenced by other bands
sometimes too it doesn't matter – they’re just great. They have reached the
position when you can do whatever you want and still get all the credit when
other, minor bands get a lot of shit if they remind you of something. That is
the worst thing about it all. BTTG - You’re becoming a well-known band nowadays and after a
European tour with VADER and ARKHON INFAUSTUS you’ve headlined the Linköping
Metal Festival late November. Could you tell us a bit about those two
experiences? How good was the European tour? What did you think about the
Portuguese gig at Hard Club? How was the Festival like? Did you feel any
pressure? Any plans to headline another gig? Daniel - We had been die-hard looking forward to
that tour! VADER is one of my absolutely favourite bands and I felt such an
honour to go on tour with them. But it wasn’t really as we expected. We had
just one bus for the four bands and the sound technician and roadie – 22 people
in one bus! It’s too damn much, you know. And BTTG - With Time comes experience and motivation, new ideas
appear and one gains more confidence. Have you written any song after the
release of your second CD? If not, have you in some way widened your range of
interests after the successive gigs with different sorts of bands, meaning a
more mature and experimental ARISE recording a third CD? Will you cover a
band for that? Daniel - We have some new songs, but it’s still
too early to say in which direction they will be. We are still working with
the sound and arrangements so we’ll just have to see about that. Maybe we
have caught up something of VADER... I don’t know. BTTG - Are you planning to release a DVD, as it is the favourite
output nowadays to help give the fans something more about a band? If you
ever thought about it, could you give us some of the ideas you think would
make it a bit more original? Have you ever recorded a gig using a video
camera? Any ideas for a videoclip? Daniel - We would love to be able to give our
fans all they want, but that is just not in our hands you know. Making videos
and especially DVDs is extremely expensive and it’s up to the company to pay
for that. First of all, we would like to do more tours so that everyone that
likes our music will be able to see us live, ‘cos most people say that we are
so much better live than on record. And when it comes to video we have plans
to make one on our upcoming album if we can solve the financial problem. We
have a live-shot on our homepage I think, which is amateur-filmed. But that’s
all so far I’m afraid... BTTG - Well, although I
think I could have made the interview better, it’s preferable to end it and
let you grasp some air at last… hehe. Give us your stained comments then! All
the best!!! Daniel - I think it was well executed anyway
he-he. You are very well informed and updated! I must say that I raised my
eyebrows more than once during your questions. Cool that you are so knowing
about us. Not many are, and I give you credit for that. Well, I really hope
that we will be able to do a tour again soon so people get the opportunity to
see us and that we get a better bus driver this time...until then: spread the
word about ARISE and keep signing our guestbook, so that we know that you’re
still out there. During August we will record the third attack, so keep
yourselves going with The godly Work of Art and Kings of the Cloned
Generation meanwhile. Believe in yourself – not in God! By Solitudinis - Back To The Grave January 24, 2004 Photos - Arise2004 |
