Info
- Band(s): Fleshcrawl
- Interview Date: November 7, 2007
- Author(s): Ricardo
Some bands aren’t really looking for something new or fresh. The nice Germans of Fleshcrawl have the same thoughts as they keep on creating Swedish Death metal like they’ve done for years now. And with their new album “Structures of Death” they deserved a little bit of space of the VM server once again. Oliver Grbavac is the unfortunate one who received my questions…
To start this interview, a phrase of my review: “What I like most about Fleshcrawl is the fact that they never disappoint a follower of their music. Some would label it as “boring” or “predictable”, I would like to label it as “Never change a winning team”. Am I right or wrong?
You´re absolutely right! We are following our way for about 20 years now, playing and developing old school death metal. Why should we change something which is good as it is? We never wanted to be innovative or progressive in any way so you always now what you can expect from a Fleshcrawl album.
You´re absolutely right! We are following our way for about 20 years now, playing and developing old school death metal. Why should we change something which is good as it is? We never wanted to be innovative or progressive in any way so you always now what you can expect from a Fleshcrawl album.
So what happened during the previous release and recording of “Structures of Death” within the Fleshcrawl camp?
Well, we had some problems when it came to start the songwriting for the Structures of Death album. First of all Tobias, our former bass player left the band due to personal reasons. During his time in the band, he was a major songwriter and composed a lot of riffs. We had to change the songwriting focus to Mike and myself then which took some time. Also we had some major delay in the songwriting because of health issues of Mike and Basti. Additionally Basti married his long time girlfriend and became a proud father of a daughter.
After all these issues we started over and finally managed to get the old school death metal machine running. Once started our inspiration comes by itself. One riff demands another fitting one and so we write our songs. This time maybe with more melodies than usual because of the change in the songwriting focus.
Well, we had some problems when it came to start the songwriting for the Structures of Death album. First of all Tobias, our former bass player left the band due to personal reasons. During his time in the band, he was a major songwriter and composed a lot of riffs. We had to change the songwriting focus to Mike and myself then which took some time. Also we had some major delay in the songwriting because of health issues of Mike and Basti. Additionally Basti married his long time girlfriend and became a proud father of a daughter.
After all these issues we started over and finally managed to get the old school death metal machine running. Once started our inspiration comes by itself. One riff demands another fitting one and so we write our songs. This time maybe with more melodies than usual because of the change in the songwriting focus.
For the first time we didn’t record the whole album in Sweden but in our homecity Ulm, Germany. We had to choose a studio near our location because Basti couldn´t go abroad for three or more weeks because of his young family, which is fully understandable. So we found the right place in the Toninfusion Studio with Martin Schmitt behind the desk. After 8 albums we exactly know how a Fleshcrawl album has to sound like and we know how to change things to achieve this. We just need the technical equipment and a good engineer to handle it. Both we found in Martin and his studio. We are fully satisfied with the whole album. The songs have a good variety of all of our trademarks which makes a Fleshcrawl album sound as it sounds. Uwe Jarling composed again an awesome artwork and booklet design and proved again that he is the right man for the job.
During the recording of “Made of Flesh” you’ve said that you spent a lot of time on the guitar sound. You’ve changed settings on the amp and the distortion pedal before you were really happy with the result of the guitar sound. Have you had the same experiences during the recording of “Structures of Death”? Can you tell us more about the recording process?
This time we played around a little with different amps but in the end our usual combination of a Mesa/Boogie Amp with an ENGL Cabinet produced exactly the sound we were searching for. Fortunately we found this sound very fast and could spend more time on other important things during the recording like fine tuning some songs and riffs. We recorded all of the the basic tracks at Martin Schmitt´s Toninfusion Studio in Ulm and mixed and down mastered the whole stuff in Sweden at Studio Underground with Pelle Saether where we also recorded the former 2 albums.
You’ve recorded the cover song “Rockin is my business” of The Four Horsemen during the “Made of Flesh” recordings. The cover song is included on the new album. You were so satisfied with it that it must be included on the new album? Did you also have another cover song in mind?
We planned to release this song on a possible Japanese release of “Made of Flesh”. Unfortunately there was no such release, so this song remained unreleased. It´s a very cool song and so we decided to put it on the digipack release of “Structures of Death” as a bonus track. I have already a good idea for the next cover song but this is not to be published yet.
You’ve said in our previous rendezvous: “The lyrics are not so important in the music of Fleshcrawl. It is more of a means to intensify and brutalize the music. In our opinion, our lyrics are written and put together to make the vocal lines fit best to the music. I wanted to write some classical and cliché death metal lyrics which all have the stuff every fan is looking for when reading it.” While creating the lyrics of “Structures of Death”, you still have the same opinion and vision?
Yes, of course! Even after 3 years we didn’t get any wiser and so we wrote the lyrics we know best…brutal stuff about blood, flesh, demons and death, haha!
In my review I mentioned the following: “At the end I do miss an outstanding track like “Made of Flesh” or “As Blood Rains from the Sky”, but as a whole “Structures of Death” is a pleasant album”. I don’t expect that you have the same vision, but have you heard or read this somewhere else as well? I miss that particular stunning track that everyone will scream for during your live gigs.
As you can imagine it’s not easy to write those outstanding songs. It’s not like, “Hey, lets write an outstanding song!” and things are done. There’s some luck involved in songwriting when you compose riffs that fit perfectly together and create an intense atmosphere like in “As blood rains…”. We always do our best to write killer songs and are hardly satisfied although I think that the title track “Structures of Death” is indeed one of those songs which creates this atmosphere.
You must choose… ”Left Hand Path” or “Like an Everflowing Stream” …which one and why?
Hmm, hard to tell but I tend more to “Like an Everflowing Stream” because I´m more a fan of melodies which Dismember uses. That´s the only difference. Both albums are still fuckin’ awsome.
You’re in the scene for quite some while now, could you give us an old school Swedish sound undiscovered band of the early years as well as a new band? You know…the hidden gems!
You should check out Necrotic Flesh if you like brutal old school songs from the early 90´s! It´s a German band and I think they managed to recreate this sound really good.
Once again, a phrase of our previous interview: “Now, as death metal is growing and becoming more popular again, all those bands suddenly want to be there again and want to be part of a cool movement again. And also want to take some of the profit and attention of those bands that didn’t stop playing this music during all those past years. That’s strange and weird to me and makes me wonder a lot.” Some weeks ago the At The Gates reunion has been made public…your opinion?
I think it’s a trend at the moment. Just look at all the bigger festivals and which bands they booked. There are a lot of death metal bands, new or old on the billing which of course is a good thing. We can’t change trends but we can use them to gain more attention and spread good ol´ old school death metal to the people, haha!
I also read about the Carcass reunion for the Wacken Open Air 2008. I think I have to go there just because of those two bands. I hope that I’m not going to be disappointed since they were off the surface for so long. I still have a strange feeling about these reunions and I can imagine that therhttp://web.archive.org/web/20071109230752/http://www.myspace.com/bloodyfleshe’s a lot of money involved in those so called reunions…
Alright, I’ve asked my questions…if I have forgotten anything, here your space to shout it out! Cheers!
Thanks for the interview and your support! Check out “Structures of Death” and visit our homepage and our MySpace page. We hope to see you on tour somewhere!
