Memorial - Studio Dagbog

MR: I’ve just seen your live performance at Revolution Music Tour in Hjoerring. What’s your view on this event and your own performance?
Kurt: I think the idea is great. I think the bands are a good match. It’s not like we play the same kind of music or whatever. But then again, it’s like, if you’re a 999 fan, you’re probably able to enjoy the other bands as well. And if you’re a Hatered Conspiracy fan, you’re going to get a kick out of Downswitch and 999. There was a bigger gab between the bands on our latest tour and that was cool as well. But I really enjoy this line-up and I love that everybody is drunken idiots, (Laughing) we just have a good time and there are no pushing each other down, no egos…maybe Balle. (Laughs again).

MR: Did Carsten from RMT approach you with the question of playing on this tour or was it you who took the initiative?
Kurt: I actually knew Carsten from some time back, great guy. I actually think it was Tore from Hatered that came up to us, first time we played in Hjoerring, which was last year. And he was drunk as fuck and told us that Carsten was working on this thing and he wanted to talk to us about joining the thing. So of course we’re ready to do it. Then the tour got put on hold and the dates started coming for November and the first months of 2009 and that was great for us, because we had the recordings in august, the tour of Europe in October and then to be able to return to Denmark and start a tour with these fine people… lovely. We’re a bunch of lucky bastards!

MR: You have few demo releases behind you, and now you’re recording new album, a full-length one, right?!
Kurt: Yep. We did a few demos and have gone through a ton of line-up changes. Every time, we grew as a band and expanded our approach to what we where doing. It feels like we only been together for two and a half years though. Because, that’s when we got Neil in the picture, in the end of 2005. Jeppe had been in the army and I had been living in Los Angeles for some time, so after our second vocalist Jacob, jumped ship and Neil entered it felt like a new start and a different band. At that time we started playing more thrash and more death. So we could just as well have re-named the band at that point. But Jeppe and I are the only guys from the beginning of this thing and we’ve been to allot of crap together, so I thing we just figured that we’ve got the right to keep calling the band Memorial, ‘cause that’s what this is.

And the album? We recorded with Jacob Bredahl, who is just about the coolest guy we could have ever picked. We where extremely happy, that he agreed to do it. We loved working with him and we love what his done with it. It’s not very polished. It’s kind of raw and you can hear that its people playing. It doesn’t sound like it’s been cut, copied and pasted and I love that. I’m not badmouthing the bands that want the perfect almost sterile sound going on, but that would be lying to our self and we don’t want to sound like a million, if we sound like two bucks live….not that we do…or do we?

MR: Any further details you would like reveal here? How many songs and what can we expect from it?
Kurt: 9 songs. Details, hmm. It’s our first album and we learned allot from recording it. We know more about what our weakness and our strong sides in the studio are.
The album’s got some crazy songs on it. Some I think allot of people are going to hate or love. Maybe they’ll just shake their heads, you never know. But I think they’ll see that we do stuff a bit different from most bands. The songs are mixed up with all kinds of different stuff. And I think it’s important for us to do stuff that’s a bit off, every now and then. And I do think that we’ve got some songs that are good for the live-show on this thing and that was really important for all of us, because that’s what we want to do. Play live.

MR: Who wrote the lyrics and what is the main subject in your lyrics?
Kurt: Neil and I wrote most of the lyrics. I’m glad that Neil has become more into writing lyrics for the band. When he started, he kind of feel into this band, that already had some plans going. His first show with us was in Berlin, so he just got thrown into it. And since the Chinese Finger trap Devisor demo from 2006, he really started writing more and adding allot to some of my ideas. I love writing lyrics, so hopefully I will be allowed to write a chorus or half a verse every now and then, but of course it’s great that Neil is doing more and more.
Jeppe actually wrote most of the lyrics for the song ‘Till It’s Over’ I think Neil helped, but Jeppe wrote most of that one.

MR: What about writing process? I mean, what comes first, lyrics or music?
Kurt: Well, Jeppe comes up with most of the basic ideas for the music. Like the tempo, the beginning of the song and then he goes “Play a riff that sounds like this and this and this” and you TRY to get it right and make it sound like he wants. And that will often get the ball running and then Cueto, Rune, Neil and I start adding riffs and stuff to that basic. Cueto started writing more and more as well, which I love, ‘because I’m not good at pulling riffs out my ass. Two years ago, I would have said that Jeppe and I write most of the music, but luckily everybody is doing a great deal of work in the writing process. So that’s great. Cueto came up with most of “Walk With The Fallen” and that’s one of my favourites.

MR: You’ve had some line-up changes in your band. How does it affect your writing process and your musical evolvement in general?
Kurt: Well, with every line-up change, we pretty much changed the approach. Back in the day we where kind of into nu-metal. I know, sorry. And then as we got a different vocalist than Jonas, which we had on the Act Before You Thing demo. We tried out some different genres that fit the voice of Jacob better. So we kind of went into more of a thrash, hardcore unit.
And now with Rune, Neil and Cueto, we’re more of a thrash metal band that pulls in the inspiration from progressive, rock, death, grind and good ol’ metal. And as I mentioned the writing is different today as everybody is doing something and that’s what I love about this line-up, you can count on everybody to bring something to the table.

MR: What are your main musical influences? I believe that I, in one of my reviews, wrote that you’re inspired by Machine Head & Pantera. Do you agree on this description?
Kurt: Yeah, you did. And that’s cool. I don’t mind Machine Head being mentioned in the same sentence as us. (Laughing) I’m a big fan of both those bands. Dime was the king. I think that Bredahl mentioned Pantera a few times in the studio and that’s fine by me, because those bands represent the approach to music I like. You know, they’re fantastic. But you know they’re about the live-show. Both are far more complex than Memorial music. But they both have the ‘let’s drink, play metal and have a good time’ attitude. And I really like that. I’m not the person to decide which bands you should like if you want to check us out. But I guess if you like Machine Head, Pantera, Devildriver, Lamb of God and The Haunted, those kinds of bands, I guess you can get what we’re doing. Maybe. (Laughs)

MR: Are you interested in politics? What do you think of Obama’s victory in the States?
Kurt: I am not. But I think that it’s cool, just saw it today actually. When I lived in the states I remember being stopped on the way to Wal-Mart and this guy told me that “A Vote for Bush is a vote for a happy God” (Laughing) And I was like “Sorry, I’m not going to vote at all…” and the guy was like “Do you want to go to hell son?”, and I said “Nope, I’m not allowed to vote” and he went “But son, it is your right!”, “Nope, I’m Danish” and the guy just looked pissed at me. So I don’t think that’s a good way of getting people behind you and trusting you, by scarring them. But I don’t want to get into anything about politics, I think it’s great that the states got a new president and that Obama is the first coloured ever. But I don’t want to comment more on it, because the other guys probably don’t want me speaking on their behave, about politics.

MR: You have supported some bigger metal acts such Vital Remains & Devil Driver. What can you tell us about this experience and what are some of the bands that you would like to tour with in the future?
Kurt: Devildriver was great! Great show and they where nice people. I think allot of Copenhagen bands kind of hated that we got that show, but it was great for us to play with a band that big, so far from our “local area”.
Vital was great! Our first real tour and just the sweetest dudes you can imagine. I was kind of afraid that they would be as evil as their music, (Laughing). But no, they where just great guys, who wanted to party and get shithoused. Just like us, he he and it gave us allot of balls to do something like that, same thing with the Nocturnus tour. Some days are shit and you just want to get out of it and some days are great. That’s what tour is, I think it’s up to your self to get the most and the best out of it and I feel we did, both times.
What bands would we like to tour with in the future? Hmm…AC/DC? (Laghing) naah, I don’t know, there’s allot. The Haunted would be awesome, so would Machine Head, Chimaria, Unearth you know some of the American metal bands that’s doing good now, I think we are all kind of into those bands as well. In Denmark we really like this tour. But Lipid could be interesting, we all like Mercenary, we played with them once and our music is far simpler, so I don’t know if that would fit. But we would just love seeing them live! The Headbangers Ball Tour is of course the one tour, we’d really love to get a chance to play on. We love Ulm, and Last Mile as well, so that would be cool just for the party.    
But we’re from the middle of nowhere, so we’ve always had to go away from our local area to get shows and we will continue to and believe me nobody is lining up to help, so it’s up-hill. Like always.

MR: Are you attending this year’s Aalborg Metal Festival? Would you like to play Aalborg (metal capital of Denmark) again soon?
Kurt: No! I think all of us really like Opeth and I really, REALLY want to go, but I can’t. It’s a great line-up this year and I think they always got good bands! We would love to play there and actually Memorial never played Aalborg, so we would  L O V E  to!

MR: Any message for our readers and your fans?
Kurt: Fans? (Laughing) I don’t know, let’s say friends instead! Well, if you came all the way through this I owe you a beer! Thanks to Metal Revolution for doing this and reviewing two of our shows, we appreciate it. To anybody out there that likes metal, and thrash and whatever you want to call it. Check out our album In the Absence of All Things Sacred – it will be out in January. Also, at the end of November. We will put up a few songs as a teaser, along side our new Tour-video and other stuff! Thanks to Otto for driving us around Denmark, Rhino tours rocks!
And… yeah, check out The Revolution Music Tour if it stops by near you, come by and have a few cold ones with us! And give the album a chance, don’t throw it away after the first lesson, I think it might grow on people. It did on me.

MR: Thank you Kurt, as always it was pleasure talking with you.
Kurt: Thanks to you! Take care and all the best!

Interview done by Bato