Carcass
I Didn't Wanna Play It Too Safe

07.04.2022

Our conversation with guitarist and vocalist Bill Steer of legendary Carcass took place in September 2021, just before the release of their long-awaited album, "Torn Arteries". It’s ironic that with that release, which took many years to create and put out, being the main focus of this interview, the work on the interview itself also took us ages. Well, some say that things happen when they’re due, and it might just be the case here. Read on to find more about "Torn Arteries", its best songs according to Bill Steer, the story behind the album title, and other interesting anecdotes about Carcass. If they help somebody escape for a while from the madness of the brave new world, then this work was not in vain.

First of all, let me congratulate you on the forthcoming release of "Torn Arteries".

Thank you.

Could you please briefly introduce it to the audience of our webzine?

Ok. This is the album we spent a long time on. Years, in a way, because some of the material was written back in 2015-2016. And then we just couldn't really get into recording properly for another couple of years because the touring schedule was so harsh. So I think after about five years of doing festivals and tours to support "Surgical Steel" (2013) we finally set aside some time to work on more material and then we started doing demos and so forth. Gradually that led to the album that people will hear now. We actually completed it about two years ago but, of course, due to the pandemic situation the label shelved it for a while.

Ok, so the consequent question is was it hard to hold the album for a year or more, and didn't you want to re-record some parts?

No... Do you mean were we thinking about changing some things on the album?

Yes.

That's a valid question and a couple of other people asked something similar in the last week or so. But to be honest with you - no, that was never an issue for any of us because we spent so long recording this album and mixing it that on that last day in the studio to us it was truly finished. I'm not saying it's perfect, there's gonna be things you criticize when you listen to it. When it's your own work, it would be little strange if you're 100% satisfied but you have to know when to let go. And luckily for us there was an understanding between the three of us and we just knew it was time to walk away and push the thing out there. Of course, at that stage we didn't know that we would be waiting for so long for it to be released, but that's another story.

I'm glad you're fine the work you've done. Unfortunately I have so far only heard the singles off the album, such as "The Dance of Ixtab" and a few more. I'd like to say that I love the songs, especially "The Dance of Ixtab". I'm looking forward to hearing the whole album the day after tomorrow. Could you please tell us what other highlights of the album should be mentioned in your opinion?

I guess my favorite track would vary from week to week but if I was gonna name a couple, I really like the song called "The Devil Rides Out" which is kind of hard to describe but there are some elements in that song that are probably quite new for Carcass. Nothing radical, just things that you would hear in the drum groove and the flow of the song, maybe the intro, the outro. Yeah, it's just one of my favorite tracks, it came together really naturally. It was the song I was quite confident about as soon as we completed it. Then another one would be "In God We Trust" which is buried away towards the end of the album but in many ways I think that's the strongest tune because it just hits the ground running, you know. The drum pattern that Dan (Wilding) is playing is just relentless. It's one of those tunes where there's always something happening, something new coming out with it, whether it’s a vocal, a quick burst of lead, or whatever. It's very representative for the album as a whole, I think, because it's got a lot happening dynamically. Yeah, it's kind of brutal but it's also quite melodic and rhythmic too.

Ok, thank you! I'll pay special attention to these songs. It's interesting that you've mentioned that the song that describes and represents the album is hidden in the end of it because one of my favorite songs from the previous album is "Mount of Execution" and I was wondering why was it placed in the end, too. How do you sequence the songs, do you follow any advice of the labels or producers? How is it working?

Well, it's always between the people in the band. We wouldn't want to get the label involved because, you know, they're not part of what we do creatively. For example, "Mount of Execution" on the last record... It's funny, you should mention that song because that would be my favorite from that record as well. But we try different running orders for the album as you do. And there was nowhere else that that song could have gone. It really had to be the last song, you know, just the atmosphere is happening in that tune - nothing could really follow it. So that was an easy choice to make. This record was maybe a little tougher to do a running order. It's difficult to get three people to agree on everything, maybe nearly impossible. So we had two of us agreeing on how the album should start... like the first three tracks, for example. And that were Dan and myself, Jeff (Walker, bass, vocals) didn't really see eye to eye with us on this, but, you know, he was respectful enough to kind of step back and say, “Well, look, I'm being outvoted, so I'll go with that”. So once you've got the first three songs, you can kind of build off those. And even though the song that might be my favorite is near the end, that's really where it belongs on the record. I don't think you should stack an album in a way where it's top heavy, you know, and all the best stuff is right at the front. You just gotta find the right place for a song and sometimes one of the best tracks will have to appear later. You know, it's just a case of listening to the flow.

Yeah, I see your point. So let's talk about the album's title now because I heard that the album's title comes from some project of Ken Owen, your former drummer. So can you tell something about it?

Sure. Yeah, that goes back to the mid-80s when Ken and I were at school together and it was just a tape he made at home and I remember being very impressed by it because it sounded so distorted and depraved, and just crazy. I mean, he had done it in a really, really amateur DIY kind of fashion where I think he had a couple of very cheap tape recorders, so he could bounce recordings across, but the guitar parts were recorded using a Spanish guitar, a really cheap one. And the drums weren't used... I think he used books for the drums. And then once he'd recorded that stuff, he screamed over the top of it. And with the tape copying and the poor quality microphones, it just distorted wildly. So it sounded really, really heavy even though in essence, as I said, it's just a kid screaming in his bedroom with books and an acoustic guitar. So that always stayed in my head. I mean, I don't know where the tape disappeared to, but I remember mentioning it to Jeff and I think he was really taken with a whole idea of it. And then suddenly when we were in the studio he was saying, look, that should be the title of the album. And yeah, it just proved to be the best idea we had.

Well, such a cool story! Thank you. I guess it's like a script for a movie.

Hahaha.

So if we're talking about Ken Owen...what's his role in the band now? He's not playing, but is he involved in the band in any way?

Well, he's involved in quite a profound way. If you look at the influence he had... Yeah, it's been many years since he played drums with the group or wrote any material, but you can't spend that much time with somebody as a friend and as a bandmate without their influence creeping into everything you do. So yeah, Carcass has evolved over the years. We certainly don't sound like our second album now, for example, but it's been a gradual evolution for us, I think. And there's still some of that feeling that Ken Owen brought into the music with what we do today. It's something that happens without even trying, it'll just be a moment like a certain riff or a certain feeling in the drums or whatever, but yeah, his influence is always there. And just on a friendship level, of course, we're still in touch all the time. I mean, every week.

Ok, I got it. And since we are talking about the evolution of the band now...I mean, both "Heartwork" (1993) and "Swansong" (1996) are now considered classic metal albums, classic death metal albums, but as far as I know, they got quite mixed reception at the time they were released.

Oh yeah.

And with "Surgical Steel" - as I've just said, I enjoyed a lot, but I know some guys who were disappointed with that album. Don’t you think the situation is the same now and "Surgical Steel" is going to become another classic Carcass album in the future? Can something similar happen to "Torn Arteries"?

Possibly yes. It's really not for me to say, because I'm so close to this. You know, I don't really have any perspective. But yes, I know exactly what you mean here, because an album like "Heartwork" that has gone on to be quite respected and maybe influential wasn't a tremendous success at the time. And that might go for certain other records we've done. But you have to accept that. I mean, not everybody can be in a band where you're doing the right thing at the right time. You might be flying in the face of a trend, you know, there might be something going on that you are contradicting with what you do, and that's gonna put you in an awkward position, but you might as well just carry on. If you're being honest with yourself, that's all you can do. It's really not for everybody to have a kind of Zeitgeist record. We've never had one, we've never done something that's been completely in tune with what was happening in contemporary music, even in metal, really. So I don't tend to worry about that stuff too much. You know, the reaction to "Surgical Steel" for me was actually bizarre, because that's probably the best reaction we've had to an album so far. We anticipated a small amount of interest, but nothing like the kind of attention we received. So yeah, I mean, relative to to certain records of the past that we did back in the 90s or whatever, I'd say that it actually had a surprisingly good response all across the board. There are definitely people saying, you know, I don't like it, it's not underground enough or whatever, but that was inevitable. You can't avoid that stuff. It was more for me just a shock of the high percentage of people that were being positive.

Well, that's cool. I guess, everyone missed Carcass and was looking forward to new records. And "Surgical Steel" is a very good album in my opinion. Once again, I may be wrong but it's also my opinion that "Surgical Steel" tends to be more like "Heartwork", and the songs that I've heard from "Torn Arteries" so far remind me of "Swansong" which is, let me say, my favorite album of your band. Do you have the same feeling?

Well, to me "Torn Arteries" is the most varied thing we've done dynamically. It covers a lot of ground. There's some really crazy stuff, you know, very intense, twisted kind of music that might remind people of some of our earlier stuff, the third album or something. But then there are things that are more in that vein of "Heartwork" or "Swansong", perhaps, yeah, sure. And there's a whole other bunch of stuff that's quite fresh, 'cause that was kind of the underlying intention for each song to display something new for the group, you know. I just didn't wanna play it too safe. By that I don't mean, you know, going crazy, doing weird experiments on the music. I just mean, some artists, they reach certain points and they're kind of petrified of making any progress in the music. You know, they'd rather give their audience another version of something they've heard before. And between the three of us, that was exactly what we wanted to avoid, that weird kind of insecurity. We had a whole load of material that we'd had going for years and, and we worked quite hard on it, we believed in it and we wanted to put it out there. So it's a genuinely new album with elements that people haven't heard from this group before.

It's really cool that you are still changing, still making something new and yeah, I know that Carcass has never released two similar albums. I'm not a grindcore guy as you can understand but I have to ask you - do you remember the "Gods of Grind" tour that you did with Entombed, Cathedral and Confessor? And can you remember anything funny from that tour? I must ask this because I know that this interview will be read by some guys who like early Carcass, and they’re gonna comment like, "The reporter knows nothing about the history of the band".

Yeah, I got it. I sort of remember the tour, but not in detail, it's just so long ago really (1992 – ed.). It was definitely a cool lineup because each group was quite different. Especially a band like Confessor, I mean, I believe that was their first visit to the UK or Europe in general. And yeah, they were nice people, you know, Steve (Shelton) the drummer was just like a monster player. And then yeah, you had Cathedral, which was, you know, especially at that time, doing something that was quite doomy, I guess. Entombed were doing their thing, we had ours. It was good. I mean, looking back, it was just a bunch of, at least for some of us, it was just a bunch of kids just still getting to grips with playing gigs, you know, audiences, you know, 'cause professionalism was not part of our resume at that time. We were still struggling with kind of what we doing and how to do it.

Now I have a couple of personal questions. The first one is directly from me because I like some stoner music and hard rock music and personally I enjoyed your Gentlemans Pistols band a lot. What's up with the band at the moment? You released a brilliant album like six years ago and the latest post on your Facebook page dates back to like 2018. Is Gentlemans Pistols alive or what?

Yes, it is. Essentially what happened was the main man, James Atkinson, he opened a new studio, he's a recording engineer, so this was a much bigger venture than anything he'd been involved in previously. So it took an enormous amount of time to get this new studio happening. And then he also became a father around that time too. So it was kind of agreed that we’d just sit back and let him do his thing, and when he is ready, he'll let us know. I think James has plans to block off some studio time so that we can work on some tunes for new album, because we do have a bunch of demos already in the bag. And they're very good. I mean, I think I can say this 'cause I didn't write the songs, it's all James Atkinson's work, but yeah, the band will be going back in some form before long, I think. I'm really happy about it because you know, it's always great fun playing with those guys and we're all very good friends.

Well, I'm also very happy to hear this because I was thinking that everything's over. So now I can hope to hear another album! That's really great! And the next personal question comes from one of my female colleagues from our webzine. She wanted me to ask you the following question: "How do you manage to look so young and good-looking? What's your secret?". Actually, this thing interests me too, as well.

Well, I'm very surprised to hear this. I don't know. It's certainly doesn't feel that way if you know what I mean. But it's nice if someone says that. I think I'd just be like anybody else soon. You have good days and bad days. That's pretty much all I can say on the subject.

OK... do you miss touring? And do you plan to tour Russia again? I've been to a couple of your concerts in St. Petersburg in 2013 and 2017, and they were awesome. So what are your plans for the near future, for touring?

To be honest with you, it's probably still too early for us to have much in the way of plans. We've got a couple of festival dates in the diary. For next year I think there's one or two things in mainland Europe, maybe one in America and then for the remainder of this year we have one thing in the UK. I reckon as the weeks and months go by, we'll have a clearer idea of what's possible. Obviously at one stage we were supposed to be part of this big Behemoth and Arch Enemy tour, that was supposed to happen around now, I think, but that had to get postponed for, you know, the usual reasons. Yeah, I think essentially we'll just play it by ear and I know our agent will be very keen for us to get out there as soon as we can. And we would be. But you don't wanna go too far into arranging something that can't happen. If we can forge ahead with a bit of confidence, that's what we'll do, but I'm guessing the next, at least the next few months will still be kind of quiet for a lot of bands really, while the world kind of sorts this mess up.

Yeah, I understand. Surely it's a sad thing to hear but I got it. So I think that I'm running out of questions and I guess you have to do another interview in a few minutes, so the last question I have is could you please say something inspiring for the audience of our webzine, for the Carcass fans here in Russia, you have lots of them.

Well, the obvious thing is just a huge thank you. Thank you for sticking with us and giving us your support over the years. And we really hope we can get back out there and play. You know, it's something we've been missing tremendously. I'm trying to stay optimistic, that's the way I'm looking at things, you know. This is a slow recovery for all of us, but I do feel like things are on the right path.

Carcass on the Internet: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialCarcass

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Pavel Vlasov
September 15, 2021
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