Morticians

First of all, who are you?
- "My name is Andreas Rimheden. I write most of the music for Morticians and I am one of the two singers of the band."

Morticians got a pretty long history, can you take it in a short version?
- "Morticians was formed back in 1991 when I met Stefan Thor at an art school in Hässleholm that we were both attending and we decided to start making music together. The music we made when we started out was hard EBM/industrial with influences from bands like Ministry, Skinny Puppy and Leatherstrip and this is the style that we have now returned to. Morticians have also existed in a synthpop version but that project has now got its own name, Eternity Range, and recently released a new album 'Solitude'. Stefan hasn't participated in the band the last few years but reappeared on the new CD, Mutilation Recreation, which is a re-release of our first demo but with some new material. On the next record, which is planned to be released sometime during spring 2006 and will contain mostly completely new songs, I will instead work with my cousin Jonas Rimheden."

The sound has changed since the start, tell us about that development.
- "We have recently returned to our original sound, like I previously said, but throughout the years we have tried a few different styles. After our first demo we started making a quite minimal type of industrial music inspired mostly by bands like Klinik and Dive. By the mid/late 90's I wrote most of the songs myself and I started putting more and more melodic elements into the music, which by then could be described as a crossover between industrial and synthpop. That music is what eventually became the side project Eternity Range. Meanwhile Stefan experimented with his own music in genres like drum and bass and electronica and he is now a quite well known name within the electronica scene with his project Folie."

I have a compilation album from an old club in Gothenburg, Electropolis on which you have a song, ''Supergirl''. Why did you pick that song?
- "We liked to provoke and do things just the opposite of what could be expected of us. Instead of sending in a song in the typical Morticians-style, which then still was a lot more industrial and aggressive, we chose this happy pop song, just for the fun of it. We even performed it live at Electropolis which worked quite well even though it was very unlike the other songs we played."

Latest album 'Mutilation Recreation' is quite dark, what's the idea behind it?
- "The idea behind the CD is only that it is supposed to be pretty dark, like you said, and not much more than that. We liked watching cult horror movies and wanted to do something similar with our music. Unlike many of the bands we listened to, like Skinny Puppy, we had nothing that could be mistaken for a message in our music. It was only made to entertain, in about the same pretty primitive way that a really bloody Friday the 13th movie can be entertaining. An American webzine recently wrote that our music works well at Halloween-parties and that's just about what we were aiming for."

The song I like best on that album is ''Hyperfear'', can you tell me a little bit more about it?
- "We got a lot of our ideas not only from horror movies but also from their soundtracks and "Hyperfear" is the song where this is most evident. While the other songs build upon horror movie music, "Hyperfear" is more like an attempt to make an actual horror movie track."

There is also a lot of remixes of the songs, how did you think when you added that record? Or was it the labels idea?
- "The original idea was to include a couple of covers by other artists on the same CD as the original songs as bonus tracks but after a while we got so many and so good covers and remixes that the label suggested that we include them all on a separate extra CD."

Which of the remixes is the best? Motivate.
"Cryos remix of "Deathstars" is my favourite. Cryo is in my opinion currently one of the greatest acts in the Swedish EBM scene and makes music in a style that reminds me of early Covenant mixed with Front 242. I believe a CD with Cryo is due to be released by Swedish label Progress Productions. The hilarious interpretation of our song Cannibal Sex by Krakilöki, who renamed it to Animal Sex, is also one of my favourites."

Let's change subject for a while. What is best with playing live?
- "To see music that you have produced yourself and is performing on stage really affect an audience."

Tell me about your best and your worst live performance.
- "The best one was probably the gig at Electropolis in Gothenburg. Both we and the audience, which was one of the biggest we have played for, were completely wild. It was so wild that there unfortunately was some damage done to the club. The audience was apparently influenced by our music to break things. We had loved to play again at Electropolis but the people who ran the club was probably not interested after what happened on this event. Anyway, we had a really great time. The worst one was probably with Eternity Range, which was then still named Morticians, at the club Nuclear Nation in Linköping where the audience was at the most 20 people and the sound technician got the idea that the volume should be low enough to make it possible for people to still talk without raising their voices."

Is there any gigs planned in the future?
- "Nothing booked at the moment unfortunately. It is terribly hard convince the people who run Swedish electronic music clubs to arrange a gig, for some reason. We will continue to try though and we would love to play live as much as possible."

And what happens next? What can we look forward to in the future?
- "A completely new Morticians album with songs in about the same style as 'Mutilation Recreation', but with a slightly more futuristic approach. We are currently working on new material for this CD that is planned to be released in the spring 2006."

This interview was made 2005 and initially published on Neurozine.com