• Thank you!

2.SO, WHAT HAPPENED TO CARNAL FORGE FROM “PLEASE…DIE!” TILL NOW? DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING MEMORABLE TO MENTION?

• We pretty much took it easy between these 2 albums. We did a European tour with Mortician and then we did some smaller gigs in Sweden and also some gigs outside Sweden. This is pretty much actually. We took it easy and we were writing some songs for the new album.

3.YOU HAVE A NEW ALBUM OUT SO COULD YOU PLEASE TELL US SOME THINGS ABOUT IT?

• Ok! Well, it’s recorded in the same studio where we record all the Carnal Forge albums in Studio Underground located here in Sweden and it took us about 5 weeks total to record, mix it and do all the funny things we have to do and as always we produced our album ourselves. We don’t go with any producers or stuff like that. We have a strong mind on how we want Carnal Forge to sound and it would feel wrong to have someone else telling us how to sound. This would not be Carnal Forge anymore, so it took us 5 weeks of hard work to finish the product and that’s pretty much it…

4.MOST OF THE BANDS NOWADAYS TRY TO RECORD THEIR ALBUMS IN VERY FAMOUS STUDIOS, BECAUSE THEY THINK THIS WAY THEY WILL HELP THEIR ALBUM GET NOTICED MORE THAN IT WOULD BE IF IT WAS RECORDED IN A NOT SO FAMOUS STUDIO. HOWEVER, YOU HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING LIKE THAT AND ON THE CONTRARY YOU PRODUCED THE ALBUM YOURSELVES. WHY?

• Well, I don’t really know…We found this studio that we use, studio Underground and it’s great for us and we don’t see a reason to change studio or to get a name on the album that is the recorder of the studio as maybe for The Haunted or stuff like that. It wouldn’t make sense to us. Some bands do that and I think when you get a little bit older you want to find the studio that suits you best and don’t care so much who is owning the studio or what’s the name of the studio. I think it’s the same thing with producers. I think we could have someone else to produce Carnal Forge, but at the same time it wouldn’t feel Carnal Forge and from my point of view you have something missing in your band if you have to bring someone in to produce you and get you sound better. I think it’s better to stop and start thinking why you need a producer and if there’s something wrong with your songs, but at the same time there are bands that use big names, the put a name on the album and then people see it and say “Ohh it’s him on the album I have to listen to it!”, because it must be good if you like the things he has done this far and I think that’s probably the case. I don’t think there’s a chance for Carnal Forge to do that and we have discussed it sometimes but we have agreed not to bring anyone in without denying that in the future we might bring someone to mix the album. Example, you can record it in one studio and mix it in another and that would also be a case cause you might get a better sound than in the other studio, but as it looks like right now I don’t see any reason for doing this.

-DON’T YOU THINK THAT IF YOU HAD A FAMOUS PRODUCER YOU WOULD HAVE BECOME MORE FAMOUS EASIER?

• First of all for Carnal Forge is to e satisfied ourselves with what we do that we have fun when we do it then if everybody else likes what we are doing it’s a huge bonus for us. We are not in the music business to earn money or to sell a lot of records. Of course it’s good for us and it would be fun if we sold tones and tones of records but at the same time if you lose the feeling of fun when you do this then it’s no point of going on. You have to money or to sell records, you have to do good records that you will also like yourself cause if you go on tour and play songs that you don’t like and you’d do it to sell some more records, then it’s weird for me…

5.LISTENING TO YOUR SONGS I’VE NOTICED THE USE OF MANY CLASSIC HEAVY METAL RIFFS AND THERE ARE ALSO SOME GUITAR RIFFS THAT I FEEL HAVE A STRONG INFLUENCE FROM THE EAST AND THEY GIVE A SLIGHT ORIENTAL DIRECTION TO SOME OF YOUR SONGS. DO YOU AGREE?

• Yeah I can agree with that! We kind of have influence from that kind of music. It’s nothing that we planned. I can not write a song and say “now I’m gonna do a song and is going to sound like this”. I start doing the song, I think of the first riff and then when the song is done I can say it’s a little bit like that or a little bit like that. We only do songs by saying “Ok this is a cool riff”. How it sounds? We really don’t mind as long as we like it.

6.WHICH ARE THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN “THE MORE YOU SUFFER” AND “PLEASE…DIE!”? IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO CHANGE IN THE FINAL RESULT?

• No not really! There is nothing I’d like to change in the final result. The thing that is a little different from “Please…die!” is that we added a little more melodies in the new album without being a melodic band. The vocals are also changed a little bit…

-THEY ARE MORE VARIED…

• Yeah! He tries out more things. He is not only singing in one pitch throughout the whole record. He is doing some clean vocals in some parts and that he does these high pitch and low pitch and in between, so I think it’s much easier to listen to the new album than it was for “Please…Die!” and also one thing that still is the same I think is that it still sounds like Carnal Forge and it still is high tempo and the major difference is that we tried out to have a really heavy song for the album that we have never tried before. I am talking for “Deep Rivers Of Blood” and we have discussed before to do a  really heavy song and as I told you earlier I can not decide how the songs will come out and for this record we finally have a really heavy song. So, there’s a reason for having it! We tried it before, but it felt wrong to say “No we are going to do a heavy song. It doesn’t matter if we have the riffs or not we are going to do it!”. This is not right. It has to come out naturally and it took for us 4 albums to do so…hahaha

7.THE SLAYER AND AT THE GATES INFLUENCES ARE OBVIOUS. BESIDES THESE BANDS, WHICH ELSE CAN BE FOUND AMONG YOUR INFLUENCES? NAME SOME OF YOUR MOST BELOVED ALBUMS.

• As you said Slayer’s “Reign In Blood” and “Seasons In The Abyss” I think are masterpieces and also At The Gates’ “Slaughter Of The Soul”, Testament the earlier album and “The Gathering” is amazing, Kreator “Extreme Aggression”. Do you pretty much get the picture of what I listen to?

-WELL I ALREADY HAD THIS PICTURE!

• Yeah!Hahahahaha…

8.MOST OF YOUR TRACK TITLES DEAL WITH DEATH AND BLOOD. WHY? WOULD YOU LIKE TO TELL US WHAT ARE “THE MORE YOU SUFFER” LYRICS TALKING ABOUT?

• “The More You Suffer” lyrics deal with anger, torture, anguish, a lot of things that are not that fun to talk about or people tend not to talk about and Jonas is writing all the lyrics and he is writing lyrics when he is in a really bad mood and when things are not going as he wants to in his life, maybe he doesn’t have money or didn’t get the job he wanted, when things don’t work out well in ordinary life and he gets pissed off. Instead of screaming, shouting and banging his head to the wall he sits down and write it down on paper. That’s why our lyrics are like this. One more reason for it is that the music is so aggressive we want the lyrics also to fit to the music and also to cover art. So, everything’s like a package, but it can take a very long time for Jonas to write lyrics because he is not always feeling bad (hahaha) but when he does then he writes the lyrics and that’s why they tend to be a lot about suicide and violence and anger and stuff like that…

-SO WHAT DOES H.B.F. SUICIDE TALK ABOUT? DOES IT STAND FOR HATE, BLOOD AND FIRE?

• It stands for Hell, Blood and Fire. It basically talks about when everything goes wrong and the ignorance of today’s people…oohhh this is hard for me to explain…It would be easier for me to explain it in Swedish…hahahaha

-HAHAHA…I’M SORRY BUT I DON’T SPEAK SWEDISH…!

• It’s basically about a guy who is tired of living. He stops thinking and he is denying his life and all the things and he wishes he was dead…You get the picture…

-WHAT DO YOU THINK OF SUICIDES YOURSELF?

• It’s hard to say because these things…People talk about it and it happens all the time and it’s really hard to say what you really think about it because somebody could take it as the easy way out, of not taking care of the problems he has and running away and at the same time…

-NEEDS GUTS TO DO IT…THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO SAY THAT SUICIDES ARE FOR THE WEAK BUT ON THE OTHER HAND IT NEEDS GUTS TO DO IT…

• Yeah! I would totally I agree with that! In the same time you can be really mentally ill and that’s why you have all these thoughts. You can be really schizophrenic and have people in your head telling you to do it and stuff like that. But it’s hard to say how I see the suicides, because there are so many things you can say about it. It’s not just the easy way out or it takes guts to do it…and it TAKES guts to do it, but it’s not just that.

9.CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE ARTWORK AND ITS CONNECTION WITH THE ALBUM TITLE?
 

• Yeah! The front artwork shows a guy who is about to drown in a bath tab and it’s Lars our bassist who came out with this idea and took the pictures and the rest. What we want to say with the title is that when you are really twisted in your head you can gain really something through the suffering. Do you understand?

-YES I DO!

• Ok! So, at the same time we wanted to have a title that we could basically out whatever we wanted…the more you suffer the more you gain…the more you suffer…you can go on and go on and get stuff of what you can have with the more you suffer. Basically it’s about gaining something from another suffering.

10.WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE IN YOUR SONGS THAT CAN MAKE YOUR SOUND RECOGNIZABLE FROM THE REST OF THE BANDS OF THIS GENRE?

• I could definitely say that we are going to get a pretty unique sound for Carnal Forge because other bands tend to do different records from time to time. They start out with a really flashy record and then they go a little bit more melodic and they go again a little bit more like death metal…We just do what feels right and I think that people can recognize immediately that this is a Carnal Forge song and that’s because you always find those elements that we always have used and we don’t do it just because we wanted to sound like Carnal Forge. We do it because we like it and I think that people can hear this on our records, that we are really liking what we are doing, because we are not just putting some fresh metal things but some hardcore, and everything that we like we put it in the music and I think that is going to pay off later on…

-WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO A FAN TO CONVINCE HIM BUY YOUR RELEASE INSTEAD OF SOMETHING ELSE?

• Hahaha…It’s always hard for me to convince somebody or to tell them that this album is good. I think this is 100% quality metal and you have all the good parts of thrash, death metal, hardcore in it. I would definitely buy this record if I wasn’t in the band! Hahahaha…

11.LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING WEIRD NOW…THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT AN ALBUM CAN’T BE ONLY FAST OR MID TEMPO BUT SHOULD HAVE VARYING SPEEDS IN ORDER TO KEEP US INTERESTED AND NOT GET BORED. HOWEVER, ALL YOUR SONGS ARE ULTRA FAST. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT OF OR IS THERE A CHANCE TO ADD SOME MORE MELODY IN YOUR COMPOSITIONS?

• As I told you earlier I can not say how our next album is going to sound. What I can say is that for sure Carnal Forge is not going to play nu-metal or add lots of samples or stuff like that. We like to be fast and basically it’s about how you put the songs together. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 songs in a row that are really fast. It does matter if the songs are similar to each other. Then you can’t distinguish them. For our point of view we work hard for each and every song to give it a strong identity and don’t’ mix it and blend it together. How next album is going to sound? It’s impossible for me to say, if it’s going to be more melodic – I don’t think so-  but at the same time it could, so it’s really hard to say but we are still going to be very aggressive and we are going to play fast songs still and all the reason behind it is because this is Carnal Forge. That’s what we like to listen to and that’s we do the music. First of all for ourselves, so that’s why it is like that…

12.DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR TOURING?

• Yeah! We are starting out in April for a full U.S. tour. The headlining act for that tour will be Halford and there will also be Immortal, Testament, Dark Tranquillity, Symphony X. So it’s a bunch of really really bands. It’s going to be really nice and that tour is going to last for 6 weeks, so we are coming home in the middle of June again and after that we’re going take it easy and stay here and work for 1-2 months and after that we are doing a full European tour with Exodus, Testament, Behemoth, Agent Steel, some more great bands. That’s also going to be a really nice tour…

-IS THERE A CHANCE TO COME TO GREECE?

• I don’t know yet, because I don’t have the dates yet for that tour but that tour is going to start at the beginning of October this year and we’ll see how many countries we will visit but we will go definitely to many countries in Europe. After that the Japanese label told us that they’d like us to go and do one more tour this year, because we were already in Japan and did a headlining tour earlier this year and they told us that they want us to go one more time and that is going to be after the European tour so most of this year is going to be touring…

13.IF YOUR MUSIC WAS AN EMOTION, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

• Fury I’d say!Hahahaha
• It’s hard to explain it in some other way because when we perform for example live…I can listen to our songs at home and think this is cool…but when we come out and play it live it’s 100% adrenaline, we look like we are going to kill somebody on stage. We look like mad but that’s it we let the adrenaline get out of us. I’d say the feeling you get is fury!

-IF IT WAS A PAINTING WHAT WOULD IT SHOW?

• Chaos maybe! Organized chaos! Hahahaha!

14.IF YOU COULD TRAVEL IN TIME, WHICH HISTORICAL PERIOD WOULD YOU LIKE TO VISIT AND WHAT WOULD YOU MISS THE MOST FROM OUR TIMES?

• Ohhh that was a hot one! Hahahaha! I would like to travel back in the medieval times and what I’d miss the most…my guitar! Hahahaha

-YEAH! THERE WAS NO ELECTRICITY BACK THEN…

• Yeah! Hahahaha…

15.THERE IS A BLOODY AND CATASTROPHIC WAR GOING ON RIGHT NOW IN IRAQ. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT?

• Ohh…I am not so much interested in politics and I think this was is all about politics…

-POLITICS AND MONEY…

• Yeah! Saddam Hussein has his power and he is one of the worst dictators ever I think and at the same time I don’t think it’s right from the Bush side to be like world police and go there and drop bombs and stuff like that…

• I don’t think it’s right, I think it’s stupid actually. I think it’s better way to try and solve it than go and make a war because even if they manage to get Saddam Hussein off his thrown still you have killed a lot of innocent people so that’s why I think it’s totally wrong to do it the way they do it now.

16.YOU ARE GRANTED ONE WISH. WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE IN THE WORLD?

• Ohh…Hahahaha…That nobody have to be poor!

17.WHICH IS THE WEIRDEST QUESTION SOMEONE’S EVER ASKED YOU?

• Hhmm…It’s the Japanese custom that asked me the weirdest question…They were pointing at a paper that had a drawing on it of marijuana and they asked me “do you have?”, like I would tell you I have! Hahahahaha
• That is the weirdest question I ever got! Hahahahaha

• No!!!!Hahahahhahahahaha I don’t have!!!!!!

18.IS THERE A QUESTION YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ASKED AND NO ONE’S EVER ASKED YOU?

• Hmm…No!!!Not really!!!! Hahahhahahahaaha!

19.IF YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO MEET THE CREATURE THAT CREATED THE UNIVERSE, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO ASK HIM?

• What he was thinking of! Hahaha

20.THANK YOU! THESE LAST LINES ARE YOURS. LEAVE YOUR MESSAGE…

• Definitely check out the new album “The More You Suffer”. It’s a great album I think and it’s 100% metal and also if we come somewhere near you in the European tour that is going to start in October, because I can promise you 100% a furious adrenaline kick!

• Thank you! Take care! Bye bye!