Tag Archives: Grand Morbid Funeral!

Unite In Pain (Part II) – Anders Nystrom from Bloodbath

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It has been a most eventful year in the Bloodbath camp, with a brand new album in Grand Morbid Funeral (Peaceville) and the shocking and welcome news of Nick Holmes taking the chalice left by Mikael Akerfeldt and returning to his Death Metal roots. In the first of a two part feature, Anders Nystrom chatted to Ghost Cult about the change in their ranks, and his thoughts on the new generation of listeners who may not know or understand the Bloodbath heritage…

 

Ester Segarra

What is apparent is Grand Morbid Funeral is less technically orientated and a much more primal and, ahem, morbid offering than its predecessor The Fathomless Mastery (Peaceville). This does point towards the influence of Nick Holmes’ addition to the fold, bearing in mind his work with doom maestro’s Paradise Lost and of course their debut and death metal classic, Lost Paradise (Peaceville).

“Just by having Nick singing on top of brutal, heavy death metal is going to make it sound naturally like the first Paradise Lost album. The elements are so similar in some ways that it’s going to be a big nostalgic ride to go back to that era.

“It’s hard to say who approached who but it originated from Katatonia and Paradise Lost being on tour together and we were sitting down just having a laugh, having a good time, sharing memories from the old days… and these kind of nights became more and more frequent, and out of that some kind of idea was formed which opened the door for Nick to go back into those years and being able to perform growls again.

“We said we have this side project and we were thinking of the new album and making it really old school and you would be a perfect fit for it.”

In hindsight judging from Grand Morbid Funeral, any notion that Holmes may not have been up to task seem ridiculous; but being away from harsh vocals for so long it surely was understandable for their to be doubts about his capabilities…

“I guess in the back of your mind there was a little bit of hesitation but we kind of killed that really early on. I actually said just like any other singer out there he should audition (laughs). We actually sent him instrumental versions of old songs which he demoed his vocals on and sent back. Based on this we knew what we had coming, this killed all the hesitation and we were all convinced that this was right on what we wanted.”

 

 

Of course there was some backlash to his arrival in place of Akerfeldt,

“I think some of the more conservative fans, they would have just preferred Mike to stay, but you can’t force someone to be a part of a band who has altogether lost his interest for death metal. When that interest decays you have to be true to yourself, otherwise you’re going to be a fraud, a hypocrite. It’s not fair to yourself, it’s not fair to the band and it’s not fair to the fans, if you’re doing something where your heart isn’t in it anymore.”

“One thing that I wasn’t expecting was that some people didn’t even know who Nick Holmes was, and if you don’t know who one of the leading, legendary bands who were there in the roots then you really need to do your homework of metal history.

“It just shows that there is a big gap in the generation and with people growing up these days, the way they treat things is just very lazy how they haven’t gone back and traced their steps and see where its all coming from. If I were in their shoes, im always very jealous because it’s a new world to discover, there’s so much good stuff that they are missing just waiting for them to find.

“You have this thing called Spotify, and of course as a customer it’s a perfect thing, you pay one subscription and you get everything streamed for free but at the end of the day, for me I can see the comfort but I see a lack of magic in that. Theres nothing spiritual about listening to a stream for me, I don’t find myself in position I want. If I buy and album ive paid hard earned money into, I can hold it and I know I own it.

“Nothing says you can’t have both. Life, if you’re on the move then sure, have your Spotify, you can’t take a turntable on a fucking flight.

So, yeah, use your Spotify and itunes but please, keep your collections!”

 

 

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Words by CHRIS TIPPELL


Blakkheim’s All Time Death Metal Classics

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To celebrate the release of Bloodbath‘s excellent new album Grand Morbid Funeral (Peaceville) Anders Nystrom (aka Blakkheim) talked us through his ultimate all time Top 5 Death Metal albums (and couldn’t resist sneaking in a sixth…)

 

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Entombed – Left Hand Path (Earache) “It features the guitar tone pedal called Boss HM-2 and that’s enough said. That pedal represents the ultimate guitar tone in the world so if you want to discover where that came from then this is the album to go to.”

 

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Morbid Angel – Altars Of Madness (Earache) “Probably the classic Death Metal album of all time; where every band, directly or indirectly, draws their influence from. It’s pretty much what started the whole thing. I’m not saying it necessarily needs to be the best in their discography but it’s definitely the essential choice.”

 

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Autopsy – Mental Funeral (Peaceville) “It represents a very morbid side of death metal; it’s sludgy, rotten to the bone and very dark. It also shows it’s not just about production values, you can also create magic with Death Metal by going more primitive and having imperfection as your guide.”

 

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Dismember- Like An Ever Flowing Stream (Nuclear Blast) “This is pretty much up there with Left Hand Path. It’s a little bit more underrated, they always came under the shadow of Entombed, but the song writing on that album is amazing and the production is at its peak and represents Sunlight Studio in Stockholm at its very best. The whole album is very much worth buying just for the opening riff of the first track ‘Override Of The Overture’ that riff is one of my all-time favourites. If you could just bring one Death Metal riff into space for an alien to discover it would be that one.”

 

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Deicide – Deicide (Roadrunner) “At this stage, there was no band as outrageous and controversial, they were outspoken Satanists and this album really shows it. It wasn’t just talk, they were living it. It’s a demonic album, it’s a very violent death metal album and it’s also representative of the whole Florida scene.”

 

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Obituary – Slowly We Rot (Roadrunner) “This comes down as well to Obituary, again an album that is almost loose in a way, it also has a hilarious lack of lyrical tendency! A lot of the growls on this album are made up of just sounds, which was an insane idea to start with. It has a really big Celtic Frost influence, so is good for people to go back with.”

 

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CHRIS TIPPELL

 


Unite In Pain (Part I) – Anders Nystrom of Bloodbath

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It has been a most eventful year in the Bloodbath camp, with a brand new album in Grand Morbid Funeral (Peaceville) and the shocking and welcome news of Nick Holmes taking the chalice left by Mikael Akerfeldt and returning to his Death Metal roots. In the first of a two part feature, Anders Nystrom chatted to Ghost Cult about how the new album came together…

 

 

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“It’s basically an impossible task to get all the members of the band together, that’s probably why it is six years between the last release and this one. Just scheduling, booking studio time, and getting everyone together is one crazy mission. Even though one member may be available another won’t be, and when he is available the first one isn’t and it’s just a never ending cycle, an impossible journey.

“Bloodbath has never been the kind of band that needs to be a collective unit with the same spark to write because we always divided the composition individually between us anyway. The way things work is we make a conscious effort to have group sitting down first and deciding what the vibe is going to be, making sure everyone is on the same page, and once we are we can pretty much fuck off you know?”

 

Despite the immense difficulty in finding moments of writing, the process itself was relatively quick once the foundations had been made.

“Real writing started January this year, and I think I heard demos from everyone within a few weeks. So, yeah, it took a month, but it’s something we had been planning since six years ago, like lyrical ideas, conceptual ideas that sort of thing, but the actual songs weren’t until January this year.”

 

Ester Segarra

 

Grand Morbid Funeral shows a departure from their previous album…

“There were certain elements we wanted to pursue, like a certain approach on the album we hadn’t done fully on an earlier album which was basically to make it way more organic, way more raw, stop overdoing things, stop editing things to death and just go old school. That also involved taking things down a notch. I think the more sludgy, doomier and heavier approach of death metal goes better hand in hand with that kind of sound. Also the last album was a pretty technical affair and we wanted to do something different opposed to that as well.

“We are like a chameleon in a sense, we can change on each album and do something that we like that reflects different kinds of death metal, so no I was never really worried but I kind of expected a bacjlash to happen but it doesn’t bother me, I am so proud and so excited about the album that I can’t be bothered about it”.

 

How do you feel the fans have taken to a Bloodbath without Mikael?

“I think some of the more conservative fans, they would have just preferred Mike to stay, but you can’t force someone to be a part of a band who has altogether lost his interest for death metal. When that interest decays you have to be true to yourself, otherwise you’re going to be a fraud, a hypocrite. It’s not fair to yourself, it’s not fair to the band and it’s not fair to the fans, if you’re doing something where your heart isn’t in it anymore.”

 

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Words by CHRIS TIPPELL