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from RIP magazine, June 1994
[Most of my rock articles relied a lot on the chemistry I developed with the band. That's true of this story, too... except that the chemistry in this instance started off negative! Jeff Walker of Carcass was a tough interview for anyone, but he was also a good interview if you kept pressing ahead. Honestly, I can't blame Jeff for giving me a hard time — clearly grindcore is not and never was my milieu. This article probably should have been given to someone like Jerry Rutherford (who's still writing rad stuff about extreme metal music), not me. But it just so happened I was in New York for the CMJ Convention and several labels — I believe Columbia included — had sponsored my trip there. What that means is that they helped pay for my expenses so I could interview their bands. So I was sort of a package deal and Jeff and his bandmates were stuck with me. I think we made the best of it in the end.]
The early evening is biting but not brutal. I'm in a mad dash, running up some snooty street on New York's Upper West Side, hoping I'm not late for the party that Columbia Records is throwing for Carcass. I finally locate the building where the soiree's being held — it's in an art gallery that's featuring H.R. Giger's works — and burst in through the glass doors. Surprise — I'm not late, I'm early. The guest-list table isn't even set up yet. After a beat, the elevator doors open and out comes Columbia publicist Jocelynn Loebl with Carcass singer/ bassist Jeff Walker in tow. The two of them are lugging the table. I watch as Jeff, the party's star attraction, pulls out the table legs and helps Jocelynn throw a cloth over the top. He glances over at me with an ironic grin. "Rather Spinal Tap, isn't it?" he remarks.
Is Jeff an arrogant Brit getting his comeuppance or just some heavy-metal kid who really doesn't mind doing a bit of grunt work? It depends on who you ask. Jeff, of course, opts for the latter. A lot of people who've had to interview him take the former, more negative point of view. Jeff is a smart guy. He's also a smart ass who can drive anyone up a wall — and he'll take delight in doing it, too, as I soon discover upon sitting down with him, guitarist Bill Steer and new axeman Mike Hickey. Drummer Ken Owens is off exploring points unknown.
Admittedly, the interview starts off on a bad note. Just so the guys don't think I was some Jane-come-lately to the world of Carcass, I point out that I'd written a brief profile of them a couple years back for a RIP Pure Speed special issue.
"I had fun writing that little piece," I begin. "Since you guys are from Liverpool, I had to compare you to the Beatles."
"You didn't have to but you felt compelled," Jeff corrects me, laughing. I get the distinct impression he's laughing at, not with me.
"Well, I was comparing the Fab Four to the Festering Four—"
"You deserve a medal for that one," he says, again with that sarcastic grin.
I decide it's best to get down to business before either I throw a drink in his smug little face or he has my brain for a pre-dinner snack. There's a lot to talk about, after all. Carcass has just released Heartwork, their best album to date. For anyone who knows the group's prior records (Reek of Putrefaction, Symphonies of Sickness or Necroticism — Descanting the Insalubrious), Heartwork is a revelation. Grindcore has never before been so tuneful. Metal has never been so heavy. Carcass has straddled the line between mayhem and melody and created a niche all their own. Tunes like "Buried Dreams" and "Heartwork" have texture and a complex emotional feel. And the lyrics have gotten more subtle. Instead of song titles taken from medical dictionaries — "Crepitating Bowel Erosion" or "Corporal Jigsore Quandary," for example — you'll find "Blind Bleeding the Blind" and "No Love Lost." This is a radical departure from Carcass' earlier gore-driven, sledgehammer attack.
"No, it's not that radical a departure at all," Bill protests. "I think it's only marginally more accessible than the last album."
This interview is gonna be a tough one, I think glumly to myself. But as the guys elaborate, I realize they do have a point.
"We don't want to exaggerate the difference," Bill explains, "because to us it isn't a difference, it's just an improvement and we see sense in everything we do. We feel we haven't changed direction at any stage in our career. To us, it's obvious that we're going to get tighter as a unit, and it's obvious that we're going to want a clearer production. All those things have happened, but at the same time we're heavier than ever."
And Jeff doesn't miss the previous albums' medical terminology. With Heartwork, he says, "Lyrically, it's the kind of thing that I really want to do, not fulfilling people's ideas of what they want. People can take it or leave it. I mean, a song title like 'No Love Lost,' I did that deliberately. I wanted to put a word like 'love' into a song title 'cause I knew that I'd piss so many people off! But at the same time, it's a challenge to do that and still make it make sense within what Carcass is about. And I've done that."
Carcass has never fit into one neat category. Bands who were labeled grindcore based their sound on a blatant use of noise and speed. Jeff stresses that one extreme is necessary to highlight the other.
"Without simplicity you don't have technicality. Without slowness you don't have speed. You need all those elements. If you have an album that just starts fast from beginning to end, it's not fast, it's just monotonous. You have to relate things back to a concept of what speed's about. You have to see texture."
At this juncture, I'm beginning to think that perhaps I misjudged Jeff. His sense of humor is snide to be sure, but his commentary is starting to pull me in. I admit to him, not at all grudgingly, that I find him quite intelligent.
"I'm not," he retorts. "If you get me drunk, I start these stupid arguments. I start contradictin' myself."
"Within the same paragraph!" Mike adds.
"He's smarter than me," Jeff says, motioning towards Bill, "but he keeps quiet."
"Actually everyone in the band's pretty intelligent," Mike comments.
"Except for you," Jeff tells him.
Mike is not at all perturbed by this. "I'm American. What do you expect? We're only 200 years old over here."
This seems like a good time to ask how Mike Hickey came to replace Mike Amott.
"The Swede left, so they wanted another immigrant, I guess," Mike reasons.
"No — he was always on our list," Jeff tells me, "'cause we got this feeling that Mike wasn't into it anymore and he was the first person we could turn to."
So what was the old guitarist into?
"Hard rock, 70s tunes," says Jeff. "Some people are so much into what they listen to, they just want to play that, whereas we interpret what we listen to in a different way. We don't listen to a song and sit down — 'Let's write a riff like that, it was so good.' That's not the way it works."
"It's really sad, though," sighs Bill. "It shows that there are a lot of people out there who are unhappy with the present. I mean, they really wouldn't like to be here, if it's at all possible."
Carcass is not a band that's into romanticizing the past. "Arbeit Macht Fleisch" is a case in point. Jeff explains the tune's origin.
"It's based on an image from a book called Krieg dem Krieg, from the first world war. It's just full of photographs on a battlefield. It's really kind of ethereal looking 'cause the pictures don't look real. They look as if they've been painted. One picture in the book is of a person working at a forge who's obviously had his arm blown away and had it replaced with a kind of metal rod. It's about the idea that a human being's a machine and a tool. So it's just about the vulnerability of a human being as a machine."
And he has even more to add. "The reason why it's called 'Arbeit Macht Fleisch' is because ''Arbeit Macht Frei' comes from the labor camps in Germany. I've corrupted it and changed it to 'Fleisch' so it means 'work will make you flesh,' whereas ''arbeit macht frei' was work will make you free, which was kind of a sick joke that the Nazis — I mean, it's not about the death camps or anything. It's kind of the ultimate corporate logo. It's about industry, basically."
I take in this monologue with mute fascination. I'm not surprised when Jeff later tells me that on the road, "The amount of philosophical discussions I have with people is unbelievable." No wonder Carcass gets impatient with press hacks who merely focus in on the band's interest in unpronounceable body parts, or the fact that three-fourths of the band is vegetarian.
"It was just a coincidence that the three of us, when we formed, were vegetarians," Bill gripes. "It wasn't like an agreement."
In England, Jeff asserts, "four in ten young people are vegetarians. When we started we were just into death metal and it was cheesy as hell and we wanted to make it a bit more intelligent. But at the same time, it just so happened that we were vegetarian. It's like asking, 'Are you gay? Or are you a Catholic or are you a Jew?' I mean, what does it matter? The only people who are hung up about it are people who've got a problem with it."
"Well, that sort of thing could matter or it couldn't," I say. "For example, one thing I've noticed — and I don't know why this is — is that a lot of musicians, especially singers, come from heavy-duty Catholic backgrounds. Maybe it's some sort of Catholic angst."
Jeff does a double take. "Well, I must confess I grew up Catholic, but I think it's complete bullshit. I've got no hang up about how I was brought up!"
Nevertheless I see I've rattled him a bit. I relish the moment, knowing it's probably the only time I'll score a point over him. Of course, he solidly comes back with a few comments about Catholicism in general.
"Catholic is bullshit for a start," he claims. "It's repressive and the ideas are pretty non-human — I mean, oppressing your emotions and your true feelings and that. That's why you end up with someone like Anton LeVey and that Satanic bullshit."
"Yeah, but that's still the esoteric idea of Catholicism," I argue. "If you go down to the real, historic origins—"
"I know what you're saying," Jeff interrupts, "'cause historically, Catholicism is closer to Jesus Christ than any other religion, as it's been handed down first hand to Peter. It's not a completely direct descendance because it's been twisted and a lot of the values that are there now are contradict what was at first. I mean, religion is the earliest form of science, to try to prove our existence, and no one has the answers. Even physics as a science isn't correct. A lot of physical laws contradict each other."
We've come a long way in this interview. I've gone from being irritated to being impressed by Jeff's razor-sharp mind, and the singer and his bandmates are no longer on the defensive. It's clear that when we part, it will be as warm acquaintances and not adversaries. Oh yes, and we've gone way off the subject of Carcass and their new album. We haven't even talked about the fact that their label, Earache, made the jump from Relativity's indie distribution to Columbia's major-label clout. Apparently a lot of people working Carcass' album come from indie backgrounds themselves and are bringing a lot of enthusiasm to Columbia's ivory tower.
"They're all 100% into doing this," Mike enthuses. "They're not just getting their paychecks."
"If we ever went silver or something, it'd mean as much to them as it would to us," Jeff adds.
"You mean platinum!" I correct him, laughing.
"I'm being humble," he replies. Good comeback, I think.
"You'll notice he hasn't had gold or platinum — none of us!" says Mike. "I've got black. Black vinyl, that's good enough."
"He's got flexi-disc," Jeff cracks.
I'm just happy that he's picking on someone else for now.
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