Carcass are the undeniable legends and forefathers of grindcore! With over 30 years of developing and crafting their sound to what it is today, releasing several classic albums in that time and changing the trajectory of extreme metal with each consecutive release. Whether it was inventing gore-grind (Reek of Putrefaction & Symphonies of Sickness) or creating the template for melodic death metal (Heartwork), Carcass has always made records by which bars were set and rules were broken.
The hugely anticipated comeback album ‘Surgical Steel’, rose to the occasion and gave fans an album that held up to their classic repertoire and delivered another milestone, with every era of the band represented. With news of an upcoming new album and their return to Australia this March including appearances at this year’s Download Festival Australia, we caught up with guitarist Bill Steer to talk all the latest.
Andrew: So hows things with you guys at the moment?
Bill: Yeah pretty good! We just started rehearsing again for the first time in ages and we’re going to Northern Sweden on Friday for a festival.
Andrew: Nice! Well obviously we’re very excited to see you coming back to Australia, it’s been a couple of years since the last time we saw you here right?
Bill: Yeah I think it is, something like that yeah.
Andrew: Yeah it’s always a good time seeing you down here and this time you are part of Download Festival which is obviously a very iconic festival. You guys must of played the festival somewhere down the line in the UK before?
Bill: Yeah we did not too long ago. It was actually a lot of fun, we had no idea what to expect and we were all exhausted because we played somewhere in southern Europe the night before and not really slept but it went really well which was quite a surprise to us.
Andrew: That festival has obviously changed a lot and it used to be called the Donington Festival and that kind of stuff. As far as a musician does that festival still hold any interest or any special place in your heart as far as the history of that festival over the years?
Bill: Yeah precisely. I guess when we were going to the site we were thinking more along the lines of Monsters Of Rock, Castle Donington, even if there’s been a name change and they decided to stick with the name change, we’re looking at it differently, naturally the people of our vintage.
Andrew: Yeah definitely and we’re excited to have it down here as well. Obviously a festival show is different to a club show, do you approach this kind of a show the same way as any other show or do you do ita little bit differently?
Bill: Well we do it differently in the sense that there are certain practical things that have to be different and any band will tell you the same. You rarely get a sound check at a festival and your crew might get a quick line check right before you go on. You got less control of the elements because there’s also things like weather, if it’s really windy that blows the sound all over the place and it’s really not favorable but you can’t control those things. You really just gotta go out there and do your best. Playing in a club, you got way more control over that and this kind of music in my view is more suited to be played in a building. I love playing the outdoor gigs but yeah, it’s a mixed bag, you never know what you’re going to get so that’s the challenge side of it I guess.
Andrew: Yeah and it’s good you’re doing both type of shows in Australia as well playing all around the country. So it’s been a few years since we saw you last so what can we expect this time around? Is it going to be largely the same show or will you be changing it up?
Bill: Yeah we’ve had talks about changing it up fairly significantly, I mean for ourselves as much as the audience really because we did quite a lot of touring off the back of that last record “Surgical Steel”. So one of the songs on this new album has been out there in the public domain for a while so we feel Ok about playing that tune as some people would be familiar with it but otherwise it’s just a case of trying to pick interesting things from different eras of the bands past.
Andrew: So as you mentioned the new song “Under The Scalpel Blade” is one you’ve recently released and I guess it’s coming off an album coming out some time later in the year?
Bill: Yeah I heard yesterday it’s going to be August 7th which I don’t know if it’s actually true but it sounds good, I mean it would be nice to have some closure on this after so long!
Andrew: Yeah definitely so how has the whole writing and recording been going so far?
Bill: It was a load of fun, I would say it’s probably the longest we’ve spent on an album but it’s very hard to quantify because we did this one in chunks whereas in the past you do everything in one session or maybe two long sessions or whatever it might of been. This was a week here, a couple of weeks there so it definitely felt longer and also I think the standards were higher. “Surgical Steel” had a certain vibe to it and an energy and we definitely were quite painstaking about it but nothing compared to how we were on this record. So I guess you could say we finished up around the end of last year and I’m really foggy on that one but it’s been done for quite some time.
Andrew: OK so based on the largely successful feedback from “Surgical Steel”, did you feel a bit of pressure on yourselves to really top that one so to speak?
Bill: Not exactly, I mean I would hesitate to use the word “pressure” because it’s almost a little grandiose because it is just music and hopefully nobody’s life is at stake here! But yeah I know what you’re saying, there was an awareness that there would be no point making another record if it wasn’t better. That was the unspoken thing between Jeff, Dan and myself and equally we saw point in making a new album if it wasn’t substantially different. I mean it’s going to sound like Carcass anyway with the way we play and the way Jeff approaches his lyrics and his vocal style and the way we arrange the tunes so we just kind of let our imaginations run free because we just couldn’t play it safe and retread on a previous album. So I would say this one is border stylistically…I don’t know, there’s a little bit of everything that people know from carcass and then maybe some newer elements. For me it’s a lot heavier and I don’t just mean in a brain dead kind of way, the guitar tone is heavier kind of way, I just think it feels heavier, there’s more weight behind this.
Andrew: Yeah I guess it must be difficult to at least not be somewhat aware of your signature sound because after a certain amount of years you would be conscious of a certain sound that belongs to Carcass only. I don’t if you as a musician and as someone very close to the song writing process if you are aware of that sound.
Bill: No I guess you don’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole because you start to become a bit, whatever it might be, self conscious or narcissistic or whatever. But there are certain things that we do without even thinking about it that are kind of signature Carcass things but that shouldn’t mean we can’t stretch ourselves. I think most artists in music there are parameters to what we do and we are no different and there’s no harm in pushing against those occasionally just to see what extras you can get out of it.
Andrew: So as far as the process and the ideas and stuff, was there anything in particular that you hadn’t done before that you really wanted to try and achieve on this one?
Bill: Yeah but those are things that are quite hard to summarise. I would say I’ve always been very fixated on drums, not just our stuff or metal in general, I’d say rock music in general. I always tend to listen to the drummer quite carefully, in a way a great drummer you don’t need to listen to, it just grabs you, it’s a feeling. Dan and I have discussed this quite a bit by saying I really wanted to hear some slightly different drum grooves for want of a better term on this record because it’s so easy to play it safe blasting away at hyper speed or locked into a kind of Slayer thing or whatever it might be. So there’s some things in those medium tempos that I wanted us to explore a bit because it just seemed fresh and exciting, if can you take a certain groove that might be associated with a slightly different style of music and make it really, really heavy, something that sounds quite ripping where it’s actually originated somewhere else entirely.
Andrew: I’m fascinated by the process of how an album starts from essentially nothing to something that comes out as something hopefully original. At what point after the “Surgical Steel” cycle did you start coming up with ideas for this album?
Bill: I would say it was about 2 years after Surgical, about January we went into the rehearsal room and started working on a bunch of stuff. I had a load of riffs and chunks of songs that we were working on but I think from my part I had kind of forgotten how much the music world has changed because I was kind of operating still with this 90’s mindset where we had done an album that was 2 years ago so it’s time to make a new one. But I’m not the business brain of the band, that’s Jeff and he felt that it was too early to do that so we ended up squeezing in at least another couple years of touring. Dan and I had kept that material on the boil and then when Jeff came to get involved it obviously just stepped up a whole other level and that’s really where work on this album really began I guess.
Andrew: So because of that would you say there was more of a lively feel to the songs then?
Bill: Yeah there is for whole other reasons because with Surgical we hadn’t toured as a unit together, we spent loads of time in the rehearsal room but the 3 of us had not appeared on the stage together and we certainly haven’t toured. So I think that explains some of the frantic energy on the record, I mean it’s cool but it’s not the same thing as listening to a band that really plays in the pocket and I guess that’s what people will hear on the new record.
Andrew: Well definitely looking forward to hearing the new stuff live then. I guess Carcass has a bit of a reputation in Australia as being one of those great live bands and that’s probably something you probably pride yourselves on as being a really solid live band.
Andrew: Well we do our best, it’s a load of fun playing live. I guess there are newer acts out there who approach it in a very, very rigorous almost militaristic way where the drummer plays through a click and there’s some pre-recorded stuff and that’s a whole different aesthetic.I mean it’s not for me to comment on that because it’s not my era, I don’t come from that generation but I guess what we offer is the opposite, it’s a little bit different every time for better or worse.
Andrew: Before I let you go do you have any last words or messages for the Aussie fans before you come down to Australia?
Bill: Simply that we’re really looking forward to it! I mean we always do and we haven’t played live much, in recent weeks anyway so this is very exciting for us. Besides how killer the shows are going to be in terms of the fun of that, I think also we’re just really excited about getting back to Australia
AUSTRALIAN TOUR MARCH 20 – 28, 2020
March 20 – Melbourne, Download Festival
March 21 – Sydney, Download Festival
March 24 – Hobart, Altar
March 25 – Brisbane, The Triffid
March 26 – Adelaide, Lion Arts Factory
March 28 – Perth, Slayfest
GA TICKETS ON SALE IMMEDIATELY at:
MELBOURNE & SYDNEY – www.moshtix.com.au
HOBART & PERTH – http://soundworksdirect.eventbrite.com / www.oztix.com.au
BRISBANE – www.oztix.com.au
ADELAIDE – www.moshtix.com.au
Download Festival info at downloadfestival.com.au/tickets
