Hey man! I am recovered, but I am restless, and you don't recover from that. So I try to do something creative every day, edit photos, videos, play guitar or something else that calm my nerves. After almost seven weeks of touring getting used to have people around you, see bands, meet people, playing shows and party you'll get restless when you come home. And yeah, cold beer with some friends is good medicine.
And first question about your long-awaited album. Who was
working on its' design? And also why did you decide to make a release on 3 most
popular formats?
The design of the album is made by our drummer Oscar Lindberg. He actually made all the designs for all formats of the album including all shirt designs. The reason why we released it on three different formats (vinyl,cd,tape) is that we want people to choose what fit em best. I personally prefer to buy vinyls and tapes now days. But there is still people that prefer cd. And there is of course all digital people, so we also released it on bandcamp, iTunes, YouTube and the rest of em.
"Disgust" was born with some long struggle... but
the result is worth waiting for. What were the main reasons that recording and
releasing it took so much time? If I am correct, one was that you broke your hand?
There is nothing physical that stopped us of releasing DISGUST earlier then we did. The reasons are many. We all used to live in different towns, we wrote songs to soon forget em, or just start from scratch, play live shows instead of writing new material. I then moved to Malmö where Niklas (singer) and Oscar (drummer) already had moved to. Then we started to rehears at least twice a week, after that it only took us two more years to finish the album.
Let's talk about your tour a bit, hehe) So many cities,
that's crazy! Can you tell us about any difficulties while preparing and doing
it? Did you guys have to take lots of days off for it?
Yeah, there is a lot of planning, work, and time behind a tour like this. I. can't tell you about the booking since Niklas do that, but that is a lot of work right there. Rehearsing takes time of course, but there's is a lot more around it to. Promotion for example, doing designs for shirts, we also did a music video to the song forgotten graves before we left. Yeah, I had to take days of job, so had William (bass), Niklas and Oscar work by the hour and have no problem getting free from work. Our stand in bass player Björn used some vacation days to be able to do the last weeks of the tour.
About some good memories. Where was the best place to play,
which city has the craziest people?
Damn, hehe, there where many good shows, all in different
ways. But the favorite shows of this tour for me was Barcelona and Montpellier,
just because of the crazy, friendly moshing people there. The Montpellier show
is turning into a music video soon to be released on my YouTube channel.
And, unfortunately not everything went according to plan, as
far as I know. You had to pause the tour for some time because of some health
issues. What happened? I hope everything s OK now.
Correct, we had to cancel two shows because of health issues. Niklas had a throat infection, he woke up after being sick 2 weeks coughing blood. So he went to a doctor in Serbia and that's the reason why we canceled two shows. We all were sick at some point on this tour, but I'll guess it affect Niklas more since he sings. Everything is cool now, thanks for asking!
Of course I noticed that the album is full of important
social themes, also it contains parts of Mr. George Orwell's interview. Elis,
what do you think, did the writer manage to foresee the future or maybe Huxley
was closer to truth?
Yeah, the album is not a George Orwell tribute or anything, it is just fragments of whats behind what you see and read about. The world is a beautiful but fucked up and ugly place. I'll guess DISGUST is our way of pointing out the ugly and fucked up parts.
Elis, you're an active musician, playing not only in TAP.
Could you please tell our readers a bit more about your other bands? How do you
manage to find time for those?;)
How do I find the time? I'll take the time, plan to much, try to make things fit. I guess I will die early from stress, haha. I have many different music project, almost all of them never gets released, it is just a way for me to forget everything else for a moment. I play shows for Birdflesh and have done that for almost six years now. If I should tell you anything about that band it would be that Smattro Anjovis and Panda Flamenco are two of the most funny, talented people I know, I owe them a lot of laughs.
What are the first grindcore-related memories of yours?
What's your love story with this genre?
I was a fifteen year old Napster kid, I wanted to download Metallica, I've got Pig destroyer instead by mistake. I didn't know what it was until years later when I met Niklas. I knew the songs, I didn't know what the music was called. I came from metal, then to black metal since I lived in Norway some years as a kid, then to thrash, then it got more extreme. I love all type of extreme music, what I like is when bands are different, that is the beauty of music for me.
You were in so many places, seen many people. Do you agree
with the idea of "nothing spoils the music more than its fans"?
Nothing spoils the music more than its fans? Our drummer has a fan behind him in the rehearsal room. Hmm, I am not sure if I understand the question right, but here we go. The fans spoil the band, that's for sure. Without people going to shows, listening to the band, I would not have done the things I've done, gone to cool places in countries far away. I/we would still have done music I believe, but touring isn't possible without people coming to the shows. Maybe I didn't understand that question, but you got an answer, haha.
What do the three letters "D.I.Y." mean to you
personally?
D.I.Y . Do it yourself, or at least to the degree possible. If there was something that I/we couldn't do our self that would be better with some help then I would ask for it. The quality is important, we take pride in what we do. And when we ask for help, it is from like-minded people.
The name of your album makes me ask this question. What's
the most disgusting thing in the world for you?
The most disgusting thing in the world is people, people who want other people ignorant and stupid. People who use racism, religion and fear for that, make people fight each other for the most stupid egoistic reasons, and just people spreading fear to win an election. I love people, I hate people, I want to trust people, but people are often just sad and stupid. Many people often think that stupid mean evil, but stupid people can be enlightened, evil people is another story. And religion can turn a person very evil when they honestly believe that they are doing good.
If you think about the shit that is going on around all
the time, you can loose your mind. How do you manage to relax and find
happiness? Any specific recipe to share?
Find something that makes you happy and maybe people to do it with, for me it is being creative. Happy for me is when I don't think of being sad or pissed of at the world. So it's more or less just a temporary state of my mind working on something.
And some personal question - did you notice the trend that
girls like guys with beards more than shaved ones?)
Haha, damn what a question. No not really, my girlfriend loves my beard thou. I have always had some kind facial hair since I was seventeen. I have always liked that look.
I don't like to say "Goodbye", but I am out of
questions unfortunately. Thank's for the talk. I think that's good time for
some final words from you for our readers!
Final words. To you Alexander, thank you for taking an interest in TAP and me, I like and respect what you do. To readers. Thank you for your support, if this is the first time you are in contact with TAP, please check it out. And one last thing, check out my YouTube channel "Wheel Must" for extreme videos and music, a new TAP music video is soon to be released and I also release tour blogs of Birdflesh, live gigs from other band and cool stuff like that. Cheers and see you at OEF next time!
