DISMEMBER – Interview with Vocalist Matti Kärki

In the late eighties, a circle of friends in the Stockholm, Sweden area came together as architects of the Swedish death metal scene. These friends formed NIHILIST, GRAVE and DISMEMBER. Shortly afterwards, Johnny Hedlund left NIHILIST to form UNLEASHED, and NIHILIST changed their name to ENTOMBED. GRAVE, DISMEMBER, UNLEASHED and ENTOMBED formed the basis of a very distinct death metal sound, a sound honed at Studio Sunlight.

Each band has shared members, which may explain similarities in sound and style are. However, every band has unique characteristics that separate it from the other one. ENTOMBED was by far the most popular of the four; therefore, some would accuse the others as imitators, but each band came out around the same time, and as stated before, each group has its own distinct qualities. Of the four, DISMEMBER is the most melodic and is the only one of the four to blatantly use classic metal elements. These elements have remained with the group throughout it’s long reign.

The churning, down-tuned gruesomeness of their debut full-length, which many consider a classic album, “Like and Ever Flowing Stream” has remained. However, DISMEMBER has experimented slightly with styles. Their 1994 release, “Massive Killing Capacity” was an experiment with a death-n-roll style akin to “Wolverine Blues” by ENTOMBED. Dissatisfied with that trial, the group returned to their savage roots with the bluntly titled “Death Metal.” DISMEMBER has a style that works and fans expect, so their ensuing albums “Hate Campaign,” “Where Iron Crosses Grow,” and “The God That Never Was” maintained this maiming sound.

Sticking to their guns, mortars, canons, nukes and whatever artillery they have in their vast armory of metal weapons is exactly what DISMEMBER has done with their forthcoming album of no title (Matti fervently states it is not a self-titled album) . Here, the group displays the type of decapitating decadence fans of the group have grown to love. While sipping a choice Danish beer, singer, war general and all-around World War II fanatic, Matti Kärki gave Metal Centre the low down on his new, untitled effort.

Please tell our readers about your upcoming release.

It’s a typical DISMEMBER album. We’re on a new chapter since Fred left, but I guess those who liked in the past, will like us even more now. In my opinion, the new album is really strong. I was not involved in the song writing that much, but I think the guys made a strong effort. The new songs are just killer!

Who did the majority of the song writing?

Martin and David did the most and Tobias did some. I made one riff for the whole album (laughs). I wasn’t that much involved the actual writing of the songs, but I was in the rehearsal room when they put them together. Really, Martin and David did a lot of work on this album, and I think it worked.

I’ve heard some people describe it as a cross between “Indecent and Obscene” and “Massive Killing Capacity.” Do you think this album sounds anything like your past efforts?

Of course, we don’t change that much between albums. We try to stay the same, but keep the songs fresh. It’s a little bit slower than usual. We do have fast songs on the album as well, but this has more groove to it than usual. I would say it is like “Like an Ever Flowing Stream,” sound wise. Musically, it is more like the “Death Metal” album. We progress as musicians. We always do. We aren’t the best of musicians, but on each album, we learn new stuff. Musically, this is the strongest DISMEMBER album we ever made!

DISMEMBER has released albums since the early nineties. Why wait this long to release a self-titled effort?

Actually, it’s not self-titled. I usually write most of the lyrics and come up with song and album titles, and I gave them suggestion after suggestion, and they said, “No, no, no. It has to be more catchy.” So I decided, let’s just call it nothing! It doesn’t have a title. Everybody said everyone will call it DISMEMBER “Dismember.” Then we’ll explain to everyone that there is no title. That is how it ended up. The album doesn’t have a title. It’s not self-titled. It just doesn’t have a title.

“Dismember” is the first album without founding member and drummer, Fred Estby. Why did Estby leave?

The main thing was his family. He is a father to three children. The last years we have been really active in touring, and I think he just didn’t want to be away from his family anymore. Also, he was not the leader of the band, but he always took care of everything. He was the one that would deal with people, and if something got fucked up, he was always the guy who was there to solve the problem. In 2006, we did hundreds of shows all over the world. I think he just got fed up with the whole business. There was that and the situation with his kids. He just didn’t want to be away all the time. We were supposed to do a Polish tour, and he called one week before the tour and said, “I’m not going to tour anymore. End of discussion.” Ok, we still had to do the tour, so we were looking for a replacement guy. We started talking about the future. We tour a lot. We try to tour as much as possible, and to have a drummer that doesn’t go on tours…it just can’t be done. Then the Polish tour got cancelled and we had some more time to think. We had a meeting with Fred. He said, “I don’t want to be a pussy. If you want to keep on playing, just go ahead. I have no hard feelings. I just can’t do it anymore.

How did it affect the outcome of this album?

We had already started to make new songs by the time Fred decided to call it quits. Looking back on the situation now, he was usually the one who was a driving force in the band. He always helped us come up with new stuff. When we started to write the new material, he didn’t come through with anything. By the time he had left, we already had about six songs done. Of course, he had one song on his own that he made by his self. So, he didn’t actually do anything. By the time he left, we had found our new drummer, and we continued to write new songs. Martin and David took over the responsibility of the songs, and to keep the progress going. It felt weird to work without Fred because he had lots of opinions and ideas, and then that part of the band wasn’t there anymore. Thomas, the new drummer, didn’t have that much say, although he did have artistic freedom to do fills and such. I don’t think he had that much say in the arrangement of the songs. He would just sit down and play. Yeah, it was weird, but I think we managed pretty good without Fred, anyway.

Tell me some more about the new guy. Where did you guys find him?

Stockholm isn’t that big. Most of the guys in the metal community know each other in some way. When the Polish tour got fucked up, we started to sit down and contact a few friends. We asked if anyone was friends with a drummer to ask him to play. We will let him try out. Through some connection, we heard about Thomas being interested. He used to play in REPUGNANT. We knew REPUGNANT, so we decided to try him out. We also tried one drummer before him. He came to try out, and he has a very Fredish style. First of all, he doesn’t use triggers. Those kinds of guys are not welcome in the band (laughs). Why play drums if you don’t hit them? It felt good; he was really enthusiastic. Of course, he had a hard time learning all the songs. We had some gigs booked, and he had to learn about fourteen songs. That period was pure hell for Thomas! He had to play every day. It wasn’t that hard for us to play songs that were played in 1991. We pretty much know those songs backwards and in our sleep. Sometimes we would say, “Ah, do we have to play “Skin Her Alive” again? When we started to rehearse the new songs after all the touring, it started feeling better and better. Now, it sounds really tight. To be brutally honest, Thomas is way more technical than Fred. Fred is not the most technical guy. I don’t know if Thomas is trying to imitate Fred in some way, but he has a very Fredish style, but it’s way more technical. That has brought the band to a whole new level.

Dismember is unarguably a death metal band in both music and lyrics. Some of your lyrics are gory, outwardly violent. Others take an introspective look into madness. Do your lyrics cover both points of view on this album?

Most of the lyrics are about conflict. I’m a huge World War II buff. Also, we did a Balkan tour and we did ex-Yugoslavia. We visited places where all the signs of the madness went on back in the nineties. Most of the lyrics on this album are about some conflict or some warrior tribe like the Romans. I’m not trying to promote war—I’m totally against war, but it’s an everyday thing. You guys know about it with the war in Iraq. You see it on TV everyday; the newspapers are full of it. I read a lot about the second world war, so for this album, all that came out of my mind were different stories about different conflicts throughout human history. I don’t know what my fascination is with man killing man. I can’t understand why, but I’m passionate about it. It’s strange.

Do you think that because we are the smartest species on the planet, we also have the ability to destroy?

Oh, yes. We don’t have any natural enemies. If we are in the woods and a bear attacks us, the bear wins. He eats us. We have the ability to make weapons. So I guess it’s (war) kind of nature’s own way to put in population control.

A couple of the songs on your new album, “Combat Fatigue” and “No Honor in Death,” bear obvious martial titles. Please explain these tracks.

“Combat Fatigue” I thought of while watching a documentary about the U.S. campaign in the Pacific. It was about combat against the Japanese. Just the pure madness of it made people go crazy. Day after day of seeing friends being killed, being blown to bits, led to people just losing it. There was just too much combat, too much horror. People lost their minds. “No Honor in Death” is a story about ghosts roaming battlefields. Even after being killed, they keep on doing their combat. They keep on doing what they were trained for. This song was from my imagination. I had this dream, I don’t remember what I was watching before I fell asleep, but I thought that would be really fucked up to live through all the combat, and even when you’re dead, your spirit lives on. You’re locked in an eternal conflict with your adversary. It never ends.

DISMEMBER first formed in 1987. Considering the fact that you will never make millions playing death metal, what has kept the group going?

Love of the music. We never went to music school or anything. I guess someone in the band had taken some guitar lessons or whatever; otherwise, we are just self-taught. We are still the same kids, in our minds, as we were when we first started out. The same kids that just wanted to play metal. We just want to do all the things of our heroes: the IRON MAIDENS, the BLACK SABBATHs. When we first started out, we couldn’t play for shit. Then came the death metal genre. It’s not easy music to play, but it’s easier. We just started listening to death metal, to the rawness, to the brutality. It was just different. It changed over years, though. We have gotten better playing our instruments. We’ve done a lot of touring. We love to play live! We love to play the music. We love being on stage and getting a good reaction from the crowd. We like to have fun!

The death metal scene was very small and intimate when you first started. There was internet to use MySpace, so tape trading was the key form of promotion. What extreme metal tapes inspired you to make DISMEMBER?

The band always has to thank for being a great inspiration and for us existing is AUTOPSY. AUTOPSY “Mental Funeral” is a riff bible! When it comes to riffs, that album is so excellent. It’s hard to beat. That’s a huge influence. And of course, we have to mention SLAYER. Without SLAYER “Reign in Blood”, there wouldn’t be a death metal scene. Old heavy metal is another big influence. It’s kind of hard to incorporate all the old metal riffs into our music, so we just picked the best stuff and make it our own.

DISMEMBER was one the first death metal band I heard play an IRON MAIDEN type riff. That was back in 1995 and the song was “Collection by Blood.” You were one of the first death metal bands to incorporate this style. Now, you hear many death metal bands doing that. What is your take on all these new groups?

We feel a lot of the new bands over do it. Instead of having melodic parts breaking off from the aggressive riffs, they just go all melodic. They play melody after melody. There are no brutal riffs. Twiddley stuff, I don’t like it. You have to have a good mix of brutal and melodic stuff. When I hear most of the new stuff, I go, “ok, that’s a good riff, but why do you break off a melody with a melody riff?” Sometimes it almost becomes folk music.

A while back, you embarked on a European tour with GRAVE, UNLEASHED and ENTOMBED. There was talk of that tour coming to America. Will we ever see that happen?

I don’t know. The whole “Masters of Death” tour package thing broke down with, I think, UNLEASHED because they couldn’t do it due to having another U.S. tour planned. Then it was supposed to be ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER and GRAVE. From the beginning, it was supposed to be only GRAVE and DISMEMBER, but there was a huge interest for the “Masters of Death tour. UNLEASHED turned it down because of their own tour. ENTOMBED said yes at first, but due to the organization over in the States, we couldn’t get any answers, and the guys from ENTOMBED started asking what the fuck was going on, so they jumped off, too. Suddenly, the whole tour was cancelled because ENTOMBED left. ENTOMBED was not on the tour from the beginning. We talked to the agent and he told us the tour was on. Then it was on, and then it was off. In the end, we ended up not doing the tour because the agency couldn’t get their stuff together.

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