Arise (2003)

1 – Heyls!!! Hope you are all well! I’ve known your band for quite some time
but it was with your latest output that I finally heard your sound. Anyway,
because I think that to perceive the present one has to take a glimpse into
the past, I will start by it.
You started covering band such as Sepultura ( even have the monicker of one
of their greatest albums ), Pantera and Machine Head yet seemed to have been
carried by the NWSDM style which has a lot in common with some 80’s
thrashier outfits.
As your biography isn’t that profound, could you tell the readers what were
the main reasons you had to follow the NWSDM style? Apart from taste, I
gather it was something to do with the line – up changes…

I guess the main reason was that we got sort of tired of playing “Bay-area”
metal after covering those bands for a couple of years. Suddenly we
discovered our own swedish scene with bands such as Dark Tranquillity, In
Flames, At the gates, Hypocrisy and so on. We though is was great and now
influenced by the swedish death-metal we began writing our first own
material, which sounded very much like early In flames. And you cluld have a
point there – I don´t remember really – but when Björn left (the
cover-singer) and Erik took over, we realised that he couldn´t sing in that
way. He had a more shrieking voice, and that´s the perfect one for swedish
death!


2 - Did you ever thought you could be considered as “one more band” coming
from the Swedish scene even if you have a lot of musical influences such as
At The Gates, Hypocrisy, In Flames and Carcass in your sound, trying to be a
bit more original? What do you thought, back then and now, that could carry
you apart from that same tag? Was it hard at first to play in some gigs due
to the amount of bands and the small extent of the underground circuit in
your country?

At first we just had this dream to release our own album. And so came the
invitation from Spinefarm and it was suddenly reality. When we had recorded
the first album we thought that it would recieve pretty bad reviews, because
it sounded at bit like At the gates, Hypocrisy and so on. But we were
totally amazed! It got great reviews almost everywhere and people here in
Sweden started to talk about us. Our first “big” performance was supporting
Entombed in Gothenburg, but besides from that we didn´t got that many gigs.
It´s very hard to get gigs here without a booking-company, but luckily we
got one last year and now we´re doing shows regularly. Mostly in Sweden
unfornately.

3 – So, what it was like to cover a Led Zeppelin song which appeared in
their tribute “ Dead Zeppelin” released by Dwell Records? How did you get
that opportunity? Surely, you must have been happy to participate and let
your sound hover around one of their songs… By the way, which one was it?
Had you covered it before or were asked by the label? That was your first
contact with Studio Mega, right? You liked the experience that much that you
recorded your two cds in it…

At that time we were an unsigned band, and when Dwell records contacted us
asking if we wanted to record a song for their upcoming Led Zeppelin
tribute. We thought that we had nothing to loose and went to Studio Mega –
for the first time. And you´re right there, we liked “Bullens” work and
besides it wasn´t that far from where we live, so the choise was easily
made.

4 – Apart from that, you have entered several compilations and although it
was only about some Swedish acts it must have given you a better promotion…
Want to recall those “hard working” days when you had no label to help you?

Well, the promotion in the beginning was non-excistent. Even in theese days
I think it can be bad sometimes, but during the last year it has begun to be
quite alright. Without promotion you can do nothing! You can excist for
several years without people knowing about you, and that sucks. So no way I
wanna go back to the old days...it´s a very unthankful to be a musician you
know. Most of times anyway.

5 – Having entered a recording studio several times, you must have by now a
more exact idea of what Arise’s sound should be. What have been the major
musical differences and influences between the demos and the debut cd and
from this one to your latest output?

The main difference is that we have become better songwriters. Our idea has
always been to mix At the gates furiosity with Hypocrisy´s heaviness and
Carcass-influenced melodies, and I think that we have succeeded very well
with that. Theese are our favourite bands and of course they influence us,
but we listens to a lot of other music too as well. The difference in the
future will be that we improve as songwriters once more and take it to a new
level.

6 - You have used the same producer, Christian Silver, which means you feel
more comfortable working with him than ever although, this time, your cd
wasn’t mixed in Finnvox Studios as the debut one was. Why was that?
Do you plan to have Christian Silver as the “fifth” element even solely as a
producer? Are you happy with the sound of “Kings of the carnival creation”?
In my opinion you got a really tremendous second full length… Cleaner but
still harsh, still grabbing us by the throat with its melodic
aggressiveness…

We will also record our third album with Cristian. That´s just because we
feel that he is the man for the job. He knows us well by now and we know
where we have him too. As for the last album Spinefarm didn´t thought is was
neccesarily to get it mixed in Finnvox, so Christian got to do it by
himself. But now afterwards we´re still not 100% satisfied with the sound.
We all agreed that we will bring back the “fat” production from the first
album and mix it with the cleaness from the last. In that way we will get a
monster-production next time ha-ha!

7 – How did you get a contract with Spinefarm Records? Had you thought about
several others before? How has been the promotion and merchandise sales so
far? For how many albums do you have signed a contract for? Does it makes
you proud being the first non – finnish band signing to them?

We had sent them a demo before, which they rejected. So we hadn´t any
expectations with the next demo – “Abducted Intelligence”. But suprisingly
we got a mail saying they wanted to sign us directly for 3 albums and we got
very flattered of course to be the only swedish act on the label. Something
only Dark Tranquillity and Gates of Ishtar have succeded in before I think.
The Finnish are very patriotic you know and you can still tell, ´cos their
bands got a lot more promotion than we do unfournately. But as I said, the
last year has been better with the europe-tour along with Vader for example.
Now we have one more album to do on Spinefarm, and then we´ll see. Just
before we signed Spinefarm we had some other companies interested in us –
but they couldn´t offer a direct deal, so we coose Spinefarm. The companies
were: Relapse, Pavement and Century Media I think. Relapse would be great,
but I don´t think we´ll fit into their band line-up really....Who knows?

8 – Could you takes us into those days before releasing your debut cd and
tells us how the opportunity to work with Niklas Sundin and Cabin Fever to
do the cover art appeared? What exactly do you tend to transmit with the
cover art of both cds?


We had seen some of the cover arts he had done and since he lives in
Gothenburg it was easy for us to contact him personally and show him our
ideas. When we told him that we where into biomechanics he got very
interested, ´cos he really wanted to do this thing. I was my idea from the
beginning – I just love the art of Giger and I guess you can tell by looking
at our cover-arts and booklets. The pictures is mostly our ideas, he just
translate them to the computer you know.

9 – Reading your lyrics I was glad to observe you didn’t focused solely in
one subject, which could have become very monotonous but dispersed thoughts
and feelings through a broader spectrum… It seems you are an avid reader so
you can come up with different subjects. Tell us which ones you are keen on
writing about… Will you stick solely to those themes portrayed so far as
lyrics for your songs or do you have some other ideas for, maybe, a
conceptual album?

A conceptual album is very hard to do, especially in this style of music. It
gets monotonous as you said. A subject that always has interested us is fear
and the human mind. You can screw it up completely and get a human being to
do the most unbelivleble stuff without any remorse. It´s very interessting.
Manipulation of several things is also a topic that got us – like cloning. I
think it´s pretty scary really what you can do and that you should leave the
human DNA alone.

10 – You were nominated amongst Breach, Entombed and Dark Funeral for the
Best Hard Rock Artist at Rocket Swedish Rock Awards. What did you felt when
knowing you would run against such icons ( be known that I refer only to
Entombed and Dark Funeral for know nothing about Breach ) among the
underground? Who won? Could you comment about the Rocket Swedish Rock Awards
and how was it?

As I said earlier we got very supprised by the attention the first album
recieved. This nomination was most unexpected, but of course fun. We knew
already before we went there which band that were going to win, but it was
fun anyway. We just went to Stockholm and got drunk as hell and had a good
time. It´s always like that you know, the most famous band wins all the
prices and does never get a bad reviewe. So Entombed won the award.
Everytime they release a new album it´s better than the previous, and both
Haunted and The Crown get the highest scores when they release new albums,
even if they are heavily influenced by other bands somtimes too it doesn´t
matter – they´re just great. They have reached the position when you can do
whatever you want and still get all the credit when other, minor bands gets
a lot of shit if they remind you of someting. That is the worst thing about
it all.

11 – You’re becoming a well known band nowadays and after a European tour
with Vader and Arkhon Infaustus you’ve headlined the Linköping Metal
Festival in late November. Could you tell us a bit about those two
experiences? How well was the European tour? What did you thought about the
Portuguese gig at Hard Club? How was the Festival? Did you felt any
pressure? Any plans to headline another gig?

We had been die-hard looking forward to that tour! Vader is one of my
absolute favourite bands and I felt such an honour to go on tour with them.
But it wasn´t really as we expected. We had just one bus for the four bands
and the sound technician and roadie – 22 people in one bus! It´s too damn
much you know. And besides we had a busdriver that couldn´t drive. We were
always late to the gigs and we got lost almost everyday. Vader told us that
they hadn´t seen such a bad driver in their whole career. But the gigs
turned out well anyway. I remember the Portugal gig as one of the better on
that tour – in Coimbra I think. Hungary, The Netherlands and Switzerland was
great too. But our best gig by far has to be the one we did at Spinefeast in
november last year - one week before headlining the Linköping festival.
Everyone was screaming “Sweden! Sweden!” between the songs and when Erik got
up to the mic saying “Finland!” they got apeshit. It was so cool! The week
after that it was time for the Linköping festival gig. We felt a little
pressure as we were headliners, but as we came there there wasn´t hardly any
audience showing up, and the responce was miserable. Yep, back in Sweden
again. It´s used to be like this here unless you´re not supporting a bigger
band at a bigger event. We had been looking forward to headline our fist
festival, but it sucked unfortunately.

12 – With Time comes experience and motivation, new ideas appear and one
gains more confidence. Have you written any song after the release of your
second cd? If not, have you, in some way, widened your range of interests
after the successive gigs with different sort of bands meaning a more mature
and experimental Arise recording a third cd? Will you cover a band for that?

We have some new songs, but it´s still too early to say in which direction
they will be. We are still working with the sound and arrangements so we´ll
just have to see about that. Maybe we have caught up something of Vader....I
don´t know.

13 – Are you planning in releasing a Dvd as it is the preferable output
nowadays to help give the fans something more about a band? If you ever
thought about it, could you give us some of the ideas you think it would
make it a bit more original? Have you ever recorded a gig using a video
camera? Any ideas for a video – clip?

We would love to be able to give our fans all they want, but that is just
not in our hands you know. Making videos and especially DVD:s is extremely
expensive and it´s up to the company to pay for that. First of all we would
like to do more tours so that everyone that likes our music will be able to
see us live, ´cos most people say that we are so much better live than on
record. And when it comes to video we have plans to make one on our upcoming
album if we can solve the financial problem. We have a live-shot on our
home-page I think, which is amateur-filmed. But that´s all so far I´m
afraid...

14 – Well, although I think I could have made the interview better, it’s
preferable to end it and let you grasp some air at last… hehe Give us your
stained comments then! All the best!!!

I think it was well executed anyway he-he. You are very well informed and
updated! I must say that I raised my eyebrows more than one time during your
questions. Cool that you are so knowing about us. Not many are, and I give
you credit for that. Well, I really hope that we will be able to do a tour
again soon so people get the opportunity to see us and that we get a better
busdriver this time...until then: spread the word about Arise and keep
signing our guestbook, so that we know that you´re still out there. During
august we will record the third attack, so keep yourselves going with “The
godly work of art” and “Kings of the cloned generation” meanwhile. Believe
in yourself – not God!

/Daniel