Jeff Walker
Country Nowadays Is More Extreme Than Black Metal

12.04.2012

*** ARCHIVE ITEM - DATED 2006 *** It’s been years since we last heard of Jeff Walker, bassist and singer of legendary Carcass, the band that laid a milestone in the development of such extreme genres as death metal and grindcore. And now all of a sudden he comes back with nothing else but a solo album with an intriguing title “Welcome To Carcass Cuntry”, but containing rock renditions of country classics! Moreover, the CD features a horde of well-known and not-so-well known musicians from various countries, including Jeff’s former bandmates, Nick Holmes from Paradise Lost, some guys from Finntroll, and even gothic icon Ville Valo from H.I.M. It’s only natural that we couldn’t leave such an event unnoticed, and therefore here’s a phoner interview with Jeff, made shortly before “…Carcass Cuntry” hit the stores.

(EDITOR'S NOTE - THE YEAR 2012: Those of our readers who have been following HeadBanger.ru for a long time are aware that the website was not born out of nothing. By the time it was established, all of our original authors had several years of experience with other Internet and print media. At that time we came up with a lot of materials, but, for various reasons, some of them are not available on the Internet at all at the moment, or are available in incomplete versions. The fifth anniversary of our webzine is the perfect moment to look back and put them online again. Why? First, because some of these conversations matter a lot to us personally. Second, we know that there is still interest in them on the side of our readers...) 

You were out of the music business for quite a while after your band Blackstar called it a day. What were you busy with all these years? Why did it take you so long to come back?

I wasn’t busy, I was drinking a lot and taking a sabbatical, I guess. I needed a rest to recharge my batteries, so I wasn’t busy doing anything. I think I just got bored with the stuff I was doing at that time, so… I can’t really explain, I’m not trying to make a comeback, it’s just an album that I wanted to do. I’m already involved in a few other bands, so this is not a deliberate attempt to start a career, it’s just having fun.

When and how did you come up with the idea to record an album of country classics? Was it the influence of Mike Ness, Social Distortion singer, who did a country cover album too?

Not really, it has more to do with the documentaries that I was watching. I wanted to do a real heavy album, in the vein of Trouble or maybe old Cathedral. I think all heavy Sabbath-style things are really exhausted, so I wanted to have a new approach to it, so I liked the idea of taking really old songs and trying to play them in a heavier style. But to be honest, the album turned out to sound more like The Pogues and not Black Sabbath.

Could you tell us a bit about the recording process? We know that you recorded the tracks both in England and in Finland…

Most of it was done in Helsinki, basically I went out there to do the drum stuff with the drummer of To Separate The Flesh From The Bones. While we were tracking the drums, we simultaneously started recording the guitars, vocals and bass, so it just seemed more prudent to continue doing it in Helsinki. There were overdubs done in England, America and Sweden, but 80-90 percent was done in Helsinki.

We’ve noticed that a lot of your musical activity is related to Finland. What makes this country and its music scene special for you?

Eeeh, I don’t know, it’s just a very heavy metal country. (laughs) Accidentally I just happened to be there and I got to meet some really cool people that I got along with. I don’t exactly fall in love with the place, but I do like going there, I like hanging out there, and I like the Finnish mentality, it’s about getting very drunk.

You should go to Russia next time then!

Yeah, you know, I’d love that! (cracks)

“Welcome To Carcass Cuntry” features a huge list of guest musicians. How did you pick up all these people – did you invite everyone you wanted to see on the CD, or was it the people who said, “Hey, I wanna play on your CD!”?

I think it was mostly me blackmailing people. (everybody laughs) There were a few people who kind of volunteered or helped me, like Gas, the drummer of HIM. I asked him to do it, and he was really keen. Esa (Holopainen) from Amorphis seemed very keen, and he asked Tomi (Koivusaari) along. But for the most part it was me asking favors or really harassing the people into doing it. It was like that with Bill Steer, it took me three days to persuade him to come to Helsinki and do it. I don’t think a lot of people were desperate to play on it.

Among the people who play on the CD is Ken Owen, the former Carcass drummer. We know that he had very serious health problems a few years ago. How is he feeling at the moment? Is there a chance for his full-scale comeback to the music world?

He’s fine, he did come through his problems. Basically he fell into a coma, he nearly died. He still has to take medicines day by day, but now he’s 80 percent back to the abilities he had before he was in a coma.

You also had Ville Valo of HIM on the new CD. How was it like working with such a big rock star?

(laughs) He isn’t such a big rock star, he’s just a regular guy. He’s only a big rock star to people who treat him like that.

You said you did the album basically for yourself, and if people hate it, it’s perfectly OK. Was it difficult to get labels interested in the album done with such an attitude?

Yeah, extremely. No labels were interested, that’s why I had to release it by myself in Europe. Luckily, Irond in Russia were interested. Other than that and my American label, there was no interest at all. Most labels just don’t understand that. It’s hard to sell records nowadays…

As far as we know, your old band Carcass fell apart because of a lot of problems with record labels and the music business in general. How has the situation in this business changed since those times?

I wouldn’t necessarily agree. I think with Carcass we just were willing to let it go. We’d been around each other for a few years, it’s like a marriage, and we didn’t get along so well. We never really argued, but we weren’t all pulling it in one direction. Things just burned out. How have things changed in the music business? Well, it seems like this business has a really hard time nowadays. Labels are in trouble selling CDs, and too many bands are offering too many CDs. I think the problem in the music business nowadays is that not many bands are doing something creative or interesting. That’s the reason why people are very cynical and jaded, they don’t buy CDs, they download it from the Internet. If there were more good music, they wouldn’t do things like that.

Do you now think it was the right decision to put an end to Carcass in the mid-1990s?

Yeah, because we didn’t wanna do it anymore, and there is no point in continuing something if you’re not into doing it. There was a different time by then, rock was really going underground again, and we’d already been underground, so we didn’t wanna go back. (laughs) We kind of walked away. Maybe it makes me look really bad now, because all these bands reform, and they’re bigger than ever were, and it makes me look like I’m very cynical and deliberately trying to get a piece of the action. That’s not really the case.

But the press release for “Welcome To The Carcass Cuntry” quotes your former bandmates as saying you attacked them for a year with the proposal to reform Carcass…

That’s a joke. (laughs)

The last ever show of Carcass was during the “Heartwork” tour leg around the UK, namely, in Leicester on December 17, 1994. Did you already know that it was the last show back then?

No, we hadn’t recorded the last album, things were still cool then. It was just unfortunate how things turned out.

You already played “Firm Hand” as an encore at that show. Was it the only song that later appeared on “Swansong” (1996) that you had ready?

We also had “Edge Of Darkness”, these two songs. We recorded them at the same session, we just didn’t put them on the “Heartwork” (1993) album.

What do you think about the Carcass compilations that Earache is releasing quite regularly, for instance, the recent “Choice Cuts” album?

I think they don’t offer anything new, so what’s the point in releasing them. There’s material we have that we could let Earache have, but they weren’t interested in making an offer. I asked them for some money, not a lot of money, but a token amount, and they weren’t prepared to give that token amount. It’s a shame, because it shows how much they care about the people who buy the CD, they weren’t interested in offering the people who buy the CD anything new. They just cheat them with the same old crap.

So how much unreleased Carcass material is still left in the vaults?

Pretty not much, but, for instance, there’s a full version of “Heartwork” that we recorded before the album, it’s in very good quality, so maybe that might get released soon.

Did you ever have an intention to release a live album? Have you ever thought of it?

No, I’ve got some DAT tapes at home with live shows, but the quality is not great. Probably there’s not a good tape around that we could release. And we never discussed that. I’m not a big fan of live albums myself. Maybe we’ll leave it to when we reform for our last tour. (laughs)

Speaking about rare stuff, “Swansong” has a very interesting Japanese bonus track called “Death Rider Da”, which is basically a riff from “Rock The Vote”, you are just doing some apeshit there. How did this song come into being?

It was just a radio jingle, it’s basically the riff from that song “Rock The Vote” with Colin Richardson, the producer, screaming over it.

After Carcass you, Ken Owen and guitarist Carlo Redagas formed a new band called Blackstar. You released an album “Barbed Wire Soul” (1997) that we like very much. But why was this band so short-lived? Because of Ken’s health problems.

Yes and no. Carlo also decided he didn’t want to continue playing, he had various problems and didn’t wanna play live. We did actually record a track after he left with another guitarist for a Japanese label, but it was never released. I think I will get back the rights to the album next year, so hopefully I’ll re-release it, and there should be about four extra tracks on it.

But “Barbed Wire Soul” already has a very interesting Japanese version with as many as eight bonus tracks. Where do these songs come from?

It’s demo stuff and also the three tracks, which are cover versions we did for different Peaceville compilations. The Japanese love that shit!

Was Blackstar successful in Japan at that time?

I think we sold about 5,000 or 6,000 albums. This doesn’t sound fantastic, but, for example, if you sell 30,000 in Japan, that’s very big. So 5,000 or 6,000 albums was good enough, healthy enough.

As far as we understand, Blackstar did not play live much due to Carlo’s problems, right?

Well, we did a tour with Cathedral and Anathema and a handful of other shows, there were about 10 shows in total.

What do you think of Bill Steer’s new band Firebird? Have you been to any of their shows?

Yeah, I’ve seen them two or three times, and it’s a lot better live than on the CD. They’re very powerful live and, I would say, aggressive in attitude, for example, they play and sing at the same time. I do it enjoy it, actually. They’re putting together a new album which is going to be released by Rise Above, Lee Dorrian’s label, I’ve not heard it yet, but it’s going to be very good. I appreciate what they’re doing.

Speaking about live shows, your first live appearance after many years was made with the Finnish band To Separate The Flesh From The Bones. Why such an interesting choice? How did those guys get you to perform on their CD and to play live with them?

I ended up doing some vocals on the CD, and we got along really well. The funny thing here is that the guys got offered shows, and the promoters all seemed to be Carcass fans, so they all wanted me to perform with them. (laughs)

Apart from To Separate The Flesh From The Bones, you also appear on the latest Napalm Death CD “The Code Is Red… Long Live The Code” (2004). Does it mean that you are still interested in grindcore as much as you used to be back in the 1980s?

What I do is I’ve got a lot of friends who are in cool bands like To Separate The Flesh From The Bones, Rotten Sound and Nasum. I am quite interested in good stuff, and if it’s good grindcore, I like it, but I’m not really interested in the hundreds of thousands of bands. Grindcore has existed for 20 years since Carcass did its first demo, so that’s a long time.

Do you have any plans to do some grindcore music by yourself?

Not quite. I am involved in a few other things like Brujeria at the moment, so I’m kind of busy. And I’ve got no real interest in writing new stuff. I may be more involved on the next To Separate The Flesh From The Bones album, but I’m not sure. I might be doing some vocals on it, they’re a really good band.

In general, what music do you listen to in your free time? Do you search for younger bands, or do you mostly concentrate on classics?

I’m an old fan of all kinds of stuff, like hardcore, old punk. All the bands I listen to and I like are very extreme nowadays. It’s because I know the guys in the bands. I think 1349 are a killer band, I genuinely like To Separate The Flesh From The Bones. I don’t have free time to study the new stuff, and to be honest, even if I had I wouldn’t be able to tell you if it’s good or bad anymore, because I’m a middle-aged guy and not an enthusiastic teenage kid. (laughs)

OK, and when was the last time you listened to Carcass?

Yesterday actually, because I had to find the demos for “Heartwork” and check them out. It’s not because I’ve been egotistical, it’s because I had to make sure they sound good enough to be released.

It’s an interesting thing – when you started Carcass, you were one of the most extreme bands around, but as time went by, you were going back to the roots, so to say – first to hard rock of the 70s and now to country music of the 50s and 60s. What factors drive you along this particular way of development?

In some respects, doing a country rock album is even more extreme nowadays than doing a black metal album, because of the reaction it provokes. Black metal, grindcore, death metal are not necessarily mainstream, but they are quite well accepted, whereas country really polarizes people, makes a lot of them really angry. To be it is a kind of extreme.

You said on your website that most of the people involved in your album are better musicians than you are…

Right, I’m not a good musician at all.

So what do you consider your own strongest points? In what sphere do you shine above the rest, so to say?

I do a better impersonation of Mille from Kreator than anyone else. (everybody laughs)

Looking back at your time in the music business, what was the biggest mistake that you made? And what was the most correct decision in your career?

The biggest mistake we ever made would be letting Earache steal the publishing from us. Basically we signed a piece of paper when we were very young and didn’t know how to do it right. As a result, we were robbed of all our publishing. The best decision we’ve ever made was getting a very good lawyer. We’re in the middle of sorting things out with Earache at the moment.

Now what are your plans for the future? Will you continue with your solo albums or are you going to concentrate on other projects you are having?

The thing with me is that I never have plans. Hopefully I’ll hook up with cool people and be motivated to do some cool things. At the moment I’m playing bass for a band called Brujeria, I’m gonna do 15 gigs with them in South America and in the States. We also have gigs coming up in Spain. For me it’s a lot of fun that I get to play bass, and it’s not my band, and it’s cool music. I just kind of float along, I’m just having fun. I’m not doing this for money or the fame or any of that bullshit. I’m doing this for the same reason that kids have when they start out – to have fun and to drink some beer.

Jeff Walker on the Internet: http://www.myspace.com/ingrindwetrust

Special thanks to Alexei “KIDd” Kuzovlev (Irond Records) for arranging this interview

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Felix Yakovlev
May 15, 2006
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