Jonas Carlsson:WE did not start as a punkband. Three of the original members (Johan, Johan and Johan) were previously members of a punkband (Powerpig). Carnal Grief has never been a punk band in any way, just wanted to iron that missunderstanding out. Powerpig aimed to play some kind of punk rock but I can’t really compare it to any other punk music I’ve heard. Powerpig were some kind of unique in our own crappy way ;o). The other members have played in several local punk bands before joining Carnal Grief, but nothing too serious. Although it’s very cool that you know of the band Dia Psalma, since they’re a band playing punk-rock in Swedish (and we didn’t know that they were known outside Scandinavia).

Johan Olsen:Well, the only one in Powerpig who actually was into punk was me. However, Johan Lindgren and Johan Larsson were pretty much into death/heavy metal at that time and Johan Lindgren convinced me that we should play heavy/metal or something and I saw it like an opportunity to be a better bass guitar player. It didn’t take long time until I was into metal as well, but, this was a long time ago.
Jonas Carlsson:The change from Punk to Death Metal therefore came instantly as we started the new band Carnal Grief. Let’s just say that the one member of Powerpig who decided we should play Punk never was considered as becoming a member in Carnal Grief. Furthermore many members of metal bands in Sweden have played in punk bands prior to playing metal.

Jonas Carlsson:To get ourselves a contract in Europe is not very easy, since the competition is very hard. And prior to signing to Trinity Records we had contact with other south-east-asian labels and got kind of good response there (with a contract failing at the last minute btw). So, we used the Internet to find some good labels and found Trinity Records and sent him a promo. Soni (the boss of Trinity records) really liked our stuff and is a very nice guy and we agreed on signing a deal almost right away. About Amon Amarth, well maybe in some small way we had it in the back of our heads, but we did not aim ourselves at south-east-asia only for that.

Jonas Carlsson:The songs were written before sealing the deal. Furthermore they where also recorded like 2 years earlier. What happened is that a company showed huge interest in us 4 years ago. Then they realised they lacked the funding for a good studio in Sweden so we where about to get dropped until we came up with the idea that we would take care of the recordings ourselves.
Recording the songs took a while and the contact with the label faded away. So there we where, with a fully recorded album and no label. Well, there were a few labels along the way that showed interest, but the deals didn’t sound appealing enough for us until Soni at Trinity Records HK showed his interest in us.

Jonas Carlsson:Sure, we’ve separated the answers so that the person responsible for the lyrics will answer for each song.
The new era
Johan Lindgren: At the time I wrote the lyrics I had a girlfriend that wasn’t of the most caring kind. So it’s actually a love ballad in hi velocity. ;o)

Selfclaimed king
Johan Lindgren: It’s about a guy in my class during school that always had to be... an asshole (as described in the lyrics).

IInsanitary
Jonas Carlsson: Well, this is kind of a fictional story of a guy going mad and ending up in a sanatorium. I don’t really know from where I got the inspiration, but probably from a movie or something I saw.

Entrapment concealed
Jonas Carlsson:This lyric was written by a friend of mine and I would interpret the lyric as to be about atheism, don’t let religion fool you. But it’s open for interpretation, as are all our lyrics.

Just another RPG
Johan Lindgren: One of my philosophical lyrics. It’s really not that deep but deals with the concept of people having different roles depending on where they are and who they’re with.

Entangled in chaos
Johan Lindgren:The lyrics for this song were written by the time of the composing the songs for our second demo, back in 1998 and was written in some state of anxiety I guess. It’s about expressing some kind of angst towards your whole life. The idea was probably good when I wrote it, but it’s not that very great lyric-wise.

Poem of the impossible
Johan Lindgren: As I love to write about people who pisses me off, this lyric are no exception. This time it’s about people who think they have solutions to everything... even things that works fine and hence doesn’t need to be fixed.

Theatre of the flesh
Jonas Carlsson:Oh, politically correct Jonas. It’s about motherfucking racists and their effort to separate some people from other, a topic I feel strongly about.

Rapid eye fiction
Johan Lindgren: The oldest song on the album. The lyrics are really thin in this song. It’s just about dreaming and daydreaming. There is really no point to the lyrics in this song.

Twin sisters
Jonas Carlsson:I got to explain the lyrics for this song, don’t know why, since I didn’t write it and I don’t know the girl who did. I’d say it’s a vampire-romantic lyric I guess. The original lyric was shortened to this to fit the song, so the full message of the lyric might be lost somewhere.

Deadlands
Jonas Carlsson:Ah, a tribute to our hometown and to boredom! It’s about a REALLY boring place from where we all are from (Arboga), a small, boring town. It seems to fit three persons in the band still though. It was written at the peak of my boredom of that town, just before moving to my new hometown.

Jonas Carlsson:At the moment we do not have any official distribution in Germany, but Soni is working on it and hopefully it’ll be a big distributor so that we can satisfy the German metal-market. The record can be ordered from some Internet-shops delivering within the EU such as CDON.com or GMRMusic.se (see our homepage).

Johan Lindgren:Hard to say, I would say more Heavy Metal, but ignoring the Death and Melodic influences would just be plain stupid (was going to say "ignorant" but that could be interpreted as even more stupid ha-ha). As for punk-wise I have no clue how the ones that reviewed our album could hear any punk influences at all, but metal has some similarities with punk. I only played drums in that punk band; I never really listened to punk. As for the other guitarist who was in both bands, he was more eager to play Black Metal.
Jonas Carlsson:From my point of view it’s always a bands goal to find a niche of their own and not to sound like everyone else. But it’d be as Johan stated, stupid, not to see that there are places that our music sounds a bit like other bands. In the beginning I guess we sounded more old school deathmetal and has from that developed to the metal we now play, which I’d categorize (if I have to) like heavy-metal with a death-metal influence. Categorization of music in my opinion is good in one way, to describe music. It’s easier to say that a band plays Gothenburg-style death metal rather than trying to describe the style.
Johan Olsen:Yes, I believe we have some Gothenburg and Carcass influences. But when people hear our melodic parts in Carnal Grief they in my opinion takes it as classic Gothenburg sound and to that I don’t agree. More rather we take melodic influences from heavy metal and classic music. There’s one more thing that I think should be straightened out, we don’t really want to be placed in some “metal category“. We make a song that sound great for the moment and if people think we sound Gothenburg death metal. Well... then we might and that’s not the point. The point is that we only make songs that we think sound great and if it sounds Punk, Gothenburg deathmetal, black metal or whatever, well… then it does. But it feels great to be compared with great bands such as Carcass since they were a great metal band.

Jonas Carlsson:Carcass is right on target when it comes to being an influence in our music.
Johan Lindgren: I would also like to mention At The Gates and Purusam as well. But bands like In Flames, Children of Bodom are not as accurate.
Jonas Carlsson:As I’m the main composer (writing about 75% of the music) I would like to say that though neither In Flames nor Children of Bodom in no way play crappy music. I haven’t fallen for their stuff and I have made no attempt in making Carnal Grief sound anything like them. The similarities in our music are totally coincidental since I still to this day haven’t heard that much of their work. Could it be that they also are influenced by bands such as Carcass, At the Gates and Purusam.

Jonas Carlsson:Yes I have at least, and I must say that I was positively surprised. Both bands are very competent black/death-metal bands that deserve a lot more recognition in Europe than they have gotten yet (they’re also available from the links posted above).

Jonas Carlsson:At the moment, finding somewhere to rehearse. We’ve been out of a place to rehearse for some time now and we need to get that fixed to be able to rehearse for upcoming gigs. Otherwise it’s at the moment mostly promoting the album and trying to figure out stuff for the next album, to follow up our debut.
Johan Olsen:If you ask me I am looking forward to write new songs. Some of the songs on the album were written as far back as -98.

Jonas Carlsson:Well, let’s hope that the distribution in Germany is fixed in the near future so that you Germans can get hold of our music and drag us down for a BIG European tour and some of your legendary metal-festivals!