BURST
Flight Plan Summarized
By: John Gnesin
Slowly but surely, Burst has been making quite an impact on the European metal scene. Having completed high profile tours with labelmates Mastodon and The Dillinger Escape Plan in support of 2003's opus, Prey on Life, the band ensconced themselves in Music-a-Matic studio to commence working on the follow-up, Origo, an album that sees the enigmatic group buck the trends once again, delivering an album that while rawer, angrier and more punishing than their previous efforts, retains the cosmic edge and mysterious aura that have become the band's trademarks. On the cusp of a run of dates with their now legendary countrymen in Opeth, I spoke to Jesper Liverod and Jonas Rydberg about the evolution of Burst from conceptual studio side-project to one of the most intriguing up-and-coming bands in modern metal.
John gnesin
"If anything, it´s made us work harder," reflects Jonas on the transition, "When in the studio there´s always re-takes, over-dubbing and stuff like that, playing live is a totally different experience. Considering the amount of layers we put onto our albums, transferring that to a live setting takes some time and hard work in the rehearsal room."
One way to smooth this transition for the band was, ironically enough, to rough up their usual pristine studio sound out of a desire to reflect the band's live energy on CD. "In hindsight, we feel that to a certain degree Prey on Life turned out a bit too "easy" on the ear." says Jonas of the previous album, "While I am very happy with the album in terms of song-writing and such, the sound of the album became a bit too crisp, too polished, too "good" if you will. It lacks the brutal edge of our live-performances, and despite the fact that it´s a great production, it doesn´t feel true to our actual sound. This was definitely something that we had in mind when we entered the studio to record Origo"
They were certainly successful in that quest. Whereas on Prey on Life even the heaviest moments were infused with a tranquil, almost relaxing sound to it; on Origo, even the softest moments are full of tension and a brooding heaviness. The vocals seem to be just a bit angrier, the guitars a bit more upfront and the arrangements as a whole come off more percussive and attacking than on the previous album. Another major difference is in the mood and atmosphere of the new songs, which are infused with a sadness and melancholy which provides for a dynamic contrast to the more visceral approach in performance and production. The word 'Origo'
itself is commonly used to mean homeland, and while a common recurring theme of the record is the desolation of loneliness and the search for refuge, Jesper wants no misconception that their new record is a concept record.
³As much as we put a lot of effort into making sure everything on our albums music, artwork, lyrics - is interlinked and has a clear connection, one of the few things that we actually decided upon before the recording process even began, was that we were not going to make a grand concept album. Origo is comprised of nine songs, all created individually. It is only after the completion of everything that I have noticed that there is a common denominator to what we did with this thing."
Elaborating on how this approach affects the lyrics he wrote for the album, Jesper does concede that even with a conscious effort not to have a grand scheme in the songwriting process, that connections do arise naturally, ³If you try to write with sincerity and personality, the lyrics are bound to be a reflection of a state of mind at a certain point in time, and of course that renders a kind of homogeneity. As far as I´m concerned, people in general at my age struggle with a kind of melancholy, and I´m no different. What is my connection to civilization?
Where do I belong? Were my choices correct? Did I do something worthwhile with the opportunities given to me? Is it all worth it? All this stuff is reflected in the stuff I write about on Origo, simply because that´s where I´ve been at the last couple of years."
While many things have changed for Burst, one thing has thankfully remained the same, and that is the unique melodic language that Burst has established over their six year history. Being one of the few bands out there today that is instantly recognizable due to certain trademarks of their riff-writing, it is hard to imagine that these songs actually flow out of jamming situations and are not meticulously hammered out by one particular songwriter. As Jonas corrects me, this is indeed the
case: ³Nine times out of ten our songs start out by us jamming together, then gradually, painstakingly we construct songs out of the good stuff. We do have a certain approach to our melodic stuff - there´s always a lot of attention to detail when we write our music. We might use very simple basic ideas which we then elaborate around, fooling around with different time signatures or different keys."
Nowhere does this trademark melodicism gel with their new-found aggressive edge than on the centerpiece of the album, a brilliant song called "Flight's End". Beginning with a towering harmonic marching riff, the band then sinks into a ghostly, off-settling clean interlude before exploding into a viciously catchy refrain which finds the band firing on all cylinders as clean and furious vocals intertwine as the keyboards build epic melodies on top of thrashing guitars. Finding that my favorite song on their new album was more a result of happy accident then perfect design was surprising. Jesper was kind enough to describe the process by which the song came about.
³We had the opening riff for ages, but for a very long time we couldn´t seem to come up with a natural continuation. We just played around with some generic thrashy riffs after it, but it didn´t feel good. So, we put the first riff on the shelf, so to speak, for a long while and almost forgot it, until someone during one of our dense rehearsal weekends remembered that we hadn´t done anything with that old riff. We played it, Jonas had a basic riff idea that became the mellow part, and somehow the rest of the music and arrangements just appeared from nowhere. Those are the times when being in Burst is the most rewarding, when you don´t have to work at being creative it just happens."
While the trade-off vocals really carry the song, it is the lyrics, especially in the chorus, that makes the piece something truly special. Describing how the vocal/lyrical aspect of the song was the perfect finishing touch, Jesper explains that, "Melodic vocals really became integral in that particular song, as opposed to some other songs where it is an extra element, and I think the melodic vocals interplay with the main screamed vocals in a really great way.
³Linus´ screaming performance on that song is also one of his best on the album he sounds harsh as hell, and he sounds like he means every word he growls. The lyrics that came out seemed to flow straight from my state of mind at the time. The metaphors and allegories are heavy, but at the same time I think the words and the subject become obvious. One of the more sorrowful lyrics as well as being one of the more hopeful."
Another song of immediate note (and not only because it begins the album), is ³When the Wave Broke," a powerful song which directly indicates the band's creative debt to the legendary Neurosis. This song was also chosen as the subject for the band's second video, the process of which Jonas describes below:
³It was a cool experience to shoot the video, though a bit hectic considering we only had one day to finish the filming. I think it turned out great, it´s got this cool sci-fi vibe to it which i really dig (like the metal version of THX-1138). I think it´s amazing what Harvestlight did with the time and money afforded them. As for us in the band, we just took directions, had make-up put on by pretty girls, and sweated a lot (and had our sweat wiped by pretty girlsŠ)."
Great tours, pretty girls and high-concept videos aren't the only indicators of the band's increasingly high profile. The group has also garnered the recognition by a bonafide legend in the metal scene, no less than Slayer guitarist Kerry King, who has dropped the band's name in recent interviews as one of his new favorite artists. While sincerely flattered by the endorsement, Jesper is also a tad perturbed and ambivalent about the situation as he reveals the story of how he himself met King at a Mastodon show in Sweden.
³I was standing in a hallway having a beer with some friends, and my friend Jensen from The Haunted calls me and says ³there is someone here backstage that wants to meet you². Jensen comes out, slaps a pass on me, drags me into the catacombs of this huge arena, and all of a sudden i´m face to face with Kerry King and his wife. King starts miming riffs and singing lyrics from Prey On Life and just showers our band with praise, and all I could say was 'uuuhŠI love the solo on ŒDead Skin Mask,¹ dude'. Both him and his wife were very grounded and pleasant, and considering it was one of the few times I was reduced to a fan boy, the experience meeting him was weird and cool.
After the Slayer show, i´m standing backstage talking to Sharlee from Arch Enemy, and Kerry comes up to me and starts talking, only to run away and fetch someone from Slipknot who 'had to meet me'. Sharlee put it very accurately: 'You realize that something is fundamentally wrong here, right? The guy from Slayer is getting the guy from Slipknot to meet the guy from fucking Burst. That´s not right.'"
The topic of Slayer leads to a discussion of the band's influences. The last time we featured the band in Resound, they rattled off on request the heavier artists who have inspired Burst's sound. In a perfect (5 K's) review from British rock mag Kerrang!, the band was described as 'reminding you of Radiohead one minute and At the Gates the next'. With this in mind, I was curious as to what the band's non-metal/hardcore- oriented influences were. Once again, Jesper was kind enough to break it down for us:
³Jonas is heavily into a lot of 70´s rock. He likes Deep Purple, Magma,
Gentle Giant, Yes, and a lot of those kinds of bands, as
well as some contemporary heavy bands.
Linus is into a lot of jazzy electronica, apart from heavy music.
Patrik is the punk in Burst, and likes a lot of street punk and death metal, as well as Dead Can Dance and that sort of thing.
Robert is devoted to John Zorn and the Tzadik imprint, he also likes a lot of the Mike Patton/Ipecac stuff, not to mention Tom Waits and System of a Down.
Personally, I have realized I have two sides of my musical tastes. One has an affinity for melodic music, either regular organic rock and acoustic things, or to a very large extent melodic electronica. On the other hand I like real dissonant, necro, Wagneresque black metal and other real harsh stuff. I have grown a bit tired of some of the Œinteresting¹, arty artists I used to be into I have lost a lot of the passion I had for things that are cerebral as opposed to visceral.²
It seems that not only is Jesper moving away from the complexity and off-the-beaten-track approach in the music he personally enjoys, he is also careful to not see Burst pigeonholed as a band for intellectuals only; asserting that at the end of the day, despite their range of influences and conceptual approach to their work, Burst are ultimately just 5 dudes in a van playing heavy music. "Sometimes I get the feeling that we send out a way more pretentious impression than we should. I recently read an interview with the band Sigur Ros, and the guy was complaining about how people perceive their band. He said that a lot of journalists were expecting them to be fucking elves or something, that they would sit in a corner and bawl and chant Icelandic troll laments and fuck knows what. He said that in the end Sigur Ros were just a bunch of guys in a fucking rock band, sitting around telling fart jokes in their tour bus. Personally, I can relate to that the problem with discussing personal lyrics is that the impression people get is almost always that of self-consciousness and pretension. That´s the scourge of explaining human emotion I guess."
With this said, the band is quite aware that their music is perhaps too esoteric and elusive to appeal to your run-of-the-mill 'meat and potatoes'
metalhead or hardcore kid. Disregarding the band's combination of metal and hardcore elements, the band would like to distance themselves from the recent wave of European metalcore. "I am not trying to be egotistical, but I really can´t see where Burst belongs to that kind of music," Jesper protests, vigorously rejecting my placement of them within that movement. "Hardcore? To me that is Discharge, Sick of it All, Minor Threat, not Burst. Metalcore? That is Earth Crisis, Caliban or one or other of the myriad of black-haired, eyeliner bands that are so popular everywhere these days. Not Burst. That may sound angry, but it is definitely not - we have grown past the point where we worry about tags or genres. But I just find it puzzling that people make the connection between what to me is a very stereotyped and generic musical climate and the music we create.
As far as i´m concerned, people can relate whatever bands they want to Burst or put us in whatever genre they please if people can derive some sort of logic in that kind of categorization, they are welcome. I´m not here to tell people how to regard our music, but I do know where we come from musically, and we have no regard or respect for any genre when it comes to making our music."
While Jesper and the guys certainly know where they come from, how far this new album will take them is anyone's guess. Rarely do you find a band that has almost equal chances to become a major crossover success due to their melodicism and catchiness, yet is just as likely to remain a enigmatic anomaly due to the uncommon depth of their creative vision. Origo can be seen as nothing less than a giant step in the right direction, even if the path of the band's trajectory is every bit as mysterious and elusive as their music itself.
"If anything, it´s made us work harder," reflects Jonas on the transition, "When in the studio there´s always re-takes, over-dubbing and stuff like that, playing live is a totally different experience. Considering the amount of layers we put onto our albums, transferring that to a live setting takes some time and hard work in the rehearsal room."
One way to smooth this transition for the band was, ironically enough, to rough up their usual pristine studio sound out of a desire to reflect the band's live energy on CD. "In hindsight, we feel that to a certain degree Prey on Life turned out a bit too "easy" on the ear." says Jonas of the previous album, "While I am very happy with the album in terms of song-writing and such, the sound of the album became a bit too crisp, too polished, too "good" if you will. It lacks the brutal edge of our live-performances, and despite the fact that it´s a great production, it doesn´t feel true to our actual sound. This was definitely something that we had in mind when we entered the studio to record Origo"
They were certainly successful in that quest. Whereas on Prey on Life even the heaviest moments were infused with a tranquil, almost relaxing sound to it; on Origo, even the softest moments are full of tension and a brooding heaviness. The vocals seem to be just a bit angrier, the guitars a bit more upfront and the arrangements as a whole come off more percussive and attacking than on the previous album. Another major difference is in the mood and atmosphere of the new songs, which are infused with a sadness and melancholy which provides for a dynamic contrast to the more visceral approach in performance and production. The word 'Origo'
itself is commonly used to mean homeland, and while a common recurring theme of the record is the desolation of loneliness and the search for refuge, Jesper wants no misconception that their new record is a concept record.
³As much as we put a lot of effort into making sure everything on our albums music, artwork, lyrics - is interlinked and has a clear connection, one of the few things that we actually decided upon before the recording process even began, was that we were not going to make a grand concept album. Origo is comprised of nine songs, all created individually. It is only after the completion of everything that I have noticed that there is a common denominator to what we did with this thing."
Elaborating on how this approach affects the lyrics he wrote for the album, Jesper does concede that even with a conscious effort not to have a grand scheme in the songwriting process, that connections do arise naturally, ³If you try to write with sincerity and personality, the lyrics are bound to be a reflection of a state of mind at a certain point in time, and of course that renders a kind of homogeneity. As far as I´m concerned, people in general at my age struggle with a kind of melancholy, and I´m no different. What is my connection to civilization?
Where do I belong? Were my choices correct? Did I do something worthwhile with the opportunities given to me? Is it all worth it? All this stuff is reflected in the stuff I write about on Origo, simply because that´s where I´ve been at the last couple of years."
While many things have changed for Burst, one thing has thankfully remained the same, and that is the unique melodic language that Burst has established over their six year history. Being one of the few bands out there today that is instantly recognizable due to certain trademarks of their riff-writing, it is hard to imagine that these songs actually flow out of jamming situations and are not meticulously hammered out by one particular songwriter. As Jonas corrects me, this is indeed the
case: ³Nine times out of ten our songs start out by us jamming together, then gradually, painstakingly we construct songs out of the good stuff. We do have a certain approach to our melodic stuff - there´s always a lot of attention to detail when we write our music. We might use very simple basic ideas which we then elaborate around, fooling around with different time signatures or different keys."
Nowhere does this trademark melodicism gel with their new-found aggressive edge than on the centerpiece of the album, a brilliant song called "Flight's End". Beginning with a towering harmonic marching riff, the band then sinks into a ghostly, off-settling clean interlude before exploding into a viciously catchy refrain which finds the band firing on all cylinders as clean and furious vocals intertwine as the keyboards build epic melodies on top of thrashing guitars. Finding that my favorite song on their new album was more a result of happy accident then perfect design was surprising. Jesper was kind enough to describe the process by which the song came about.
³We had the opening riff for ages, but for a very long time we couldn´t seem to come up with a natural continuation. We just played around with some generic thrashy riffs after it, but it didn´t feel good. So, we put the first riff on the shelf, so to speak, for a long while and almost forgot it, until someone during one of our dense rehearsal weekends remembered that we hadn´t done anything with that old riff. We played it, Jonas had a basic riff idea that became the mellow part, and somehow the rest of the music and arrangements just appeared from nowhere. Those are the times when being in Burst is the most rewarding, when you don´t have to work at being creative it just happens."
While the trade-off vocals really carry the song, it is the lyrics, especially in the chorus, that makes the piece something truly special. Describing how the vocal/lyrical aspect of the song was the perfect finishing touch, Jesper explains that, "Melodic vocals really became integral in that particular song, as opposed to some other songs where it is an extra element, and I think the melodic vocals interplay with the main screamed vocals in a really great way.
³Linus´ screaming performance on that song is also one of his best on the album he sounds harsh as hell, and he sounds like he means every word he growls. The lyrics that came out seemed to flow straight from my state of mind at the time. The metaphors and allegories are heavy, but at the same time I think the words and the subject become obvious. One of the more sorrowful lyrics as well as being one of the more hopeful."
Another song of immediate note (and not only because it begins the album), is ³When the Wave Broke," a powerful song which directly indicates the band's creative debt to the legendary Neurosis. This song was also chosen as the subject for the band's second video, the process of which Jonas describes below:
³It was a cool experience to shoot the video, though a bit hectic considering we only had one day to finish the filming. I think it turned out great, it´s got this cool sci-fi vibe to it which i really dig (like the metal version of THX-1138). I think it´s amazing what Harvestlight did with the time and money afforded them. As for us in the band, we just took directions, had make-up put on by pretty girls, and sweated a lot (and had our sweat wiped by pretty girlsŠ)."
Great tours, pretty girls and high-concept videos aren't the only indicators of the band's increasingly high profile. The group has also garnered the recognition by a bonafide legend in the metal scene, no less than Slayer guitarist Kerry King, who has dropped the band's name in recent interviews as one of his new favorite artists. While sincerely flattered by the endorsement, Jesper is also a tad perturbed and ambivalent about the situation as he reveals the story of how he himself met King at a Mastodon show in Sweden.
³I was standing in a hallway having a beer with some friends, and my friend Jensen from The Haunted calls me and says ³there is someone here backstage that wants to meet you². Jensen comes out, slaps a pass on me, drags me into the catacombs of this huge arena, and all of a sudden i´m face to face with Kerry King and his wife. King starts miming riffs and singing lyrics from Prey On Life and just showers our band with praise, and all I could say was 'uuuhŠI love the solo on ŒDead Skin Mask,¹ dude'. Both him and his wife were very grounded and pleasant, and considering it was one of the few times I was reduced to a fan boy, the experience meeting him was weird and cool.
After the Slayer show, i´m standing backstage talking to Sharlee from Arch Enemy, and Kerry comes up to me and starts talking, only to run away and fetch someone from Slipknot who 'had to meet me'. Sharlee put it very accurately: 'You realize that something is fundamentally wrong here, right? The guy from Slayer is getting the guy from Slipknot to meet the guy from fucking Burst. That´s not right.'"
The topic of Slayer leads to a discussion of the band's influences. The last time we featured the band in Resound, they rattled off on request the heavier artists who have inspired Burst's sound. In a perfect (5 K's) review from British rock mag Kerrang!, the band was described as 'reminding you of Radiohead one minute and At the Gates the next'. With this in mind, I was curious as to what the band's non-metal/hardcore- oriented influences were. Once again, Jesper was kind enough to break it down for us:
³Jonas is heavily into a lot of 70´s rock. He likes Deep Purple, Magma,
Gentle Giant, Yes, and a lot of those kinds of bands, as
well as some contemporary heavy bands.
Linus is into a lot of jazzy electronica, apart from heavy music.
Patrik is the punk in Burst, and likes a lot of street punk and death metal, as well as Dead Can Dance and that sort of thing.
Robert is devoted to John Zorn and the Tzadik imprint, he also likes a lot of the Mike Patton/Ipecac stuff, not to mention Tom Waits and System of a Down.
Personally, I have realized I have two sides of my musical tastes. One has an affinity for melodic music, either regular organic rock and acoustic things, or to a very large extent melodic electronica. On the other hand I like real dissonant, necro, Wagneresque black metal and other real harsh stuff. I have grown a bit tired of some of the Œinteresting¹, arty artists I used to be into I have lost a lot of the passion I had for things that are cerebral as opposed to visceral.²
It seems that not only is Jesper moving away from the complexity and off-the-beaten-track approach in the music he personally enjoys, he is also careful to not see Burst pigeonholed as a band for intellectuals only; asserting that at the end of the day, despite their range of influences and conceptual approach to their work, Burst are ultimately just 5 dudes in a van playing heavy music. "Sometimes I get the feeling that we send out a way more pretentious impression than we should. I recently read an interview with the band Sigur Ros, and the guy was complaining about how people perceive their band. He said that a lot of journalists were expecting them to be fucking elves or something, that they would sit in a corner and bawl and chant Icelandic troll laments and fuck knows what. He said that in the end Sigur Ros were just a bunch of guys in a fucking rock band, sitting around telling fart jokes in their tour bus. Personally, I can relate to that the problem with discussing personal lyrics is that the impression people get is almost always that of self-consciousness and pretension. That´s the scourge of explaining human emotion I guess."
With this said, the band is quite aware that their music is perhaps too esoteric and elusive to appeal to your run-of-the-mill 'meat and potatoes'
metalhead or hardcore kid. Disregarding the band's combination of metal and hardcore elements, the band would like to distance themselves from the recent wave of European metalcore. "I am not trying to be egotistical, but I really can´t see where Burst belongs to that kind of music," Jesper protests, vigorously rejecting my placement of them within that movement. "Hardcore? To me that is Discharge, Sick of it All, Minor Threat, not Burst. Metalcore? That is Earth Crisis, Caliban or one or other of the myriad of black-haired, eyeliner bands that are so popular everywhere these days. Not Burst. That may sound angry, but it is definitely not - we have grown past the point where we worry about tags or genres. But I just find it puzzling that people make the connection between what to me is a very stereotyped and generic musical climate and the music we create.
As far as i´m concerned, people can relate whatever bands they want to Burst or put us in whatever genre they please if people can derive some sort of logic in that kind of categorization, they are welcome. I´m not here to tell people how to regard our music, but I do know where we come from musically, and we have no regard or respect for any genre when it comes to making our music."
While Jesper and the guys certainly know where they come from, how far this new album will take them is anyone's guess. Rarely do you find a band that has almost equal chances to become a major crossover success due to their melodicism and catchiness, yet is just as likely to remain a enigmatic anomaly due to the uncommon depth of their creative vision. Origo can be seen as nothing less than a giant step in the right direction, even if the path of the band's trajectory is every bit as mysterious and elusive as their music itself.
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