CARCASS Guitarist On Possibility Of New Studio Album: 'Never Say Never'

Voices From The Darkside recently conducted an interview with guitarist Bill Steer of the reactivated British extreme metal pioneers CARCASS. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

Voices From The Darkside: The chemistry between Michael [Amott, guitar], Jeff [Walker, bass/vocals], Daniel [Erlandsson, drums] and you seems to be very good. Do you think that — if these reunion shows go well — there's a possibility for a "real" tour later on this year?

Steer: "It's a possibility. But to be honest, I have serious doubts that this will really happen. There are many reasons for that, especially on the practical side. We all have our own lives, our own bands, and all kinds of things which we have to take care of. This playing at festivals is already a very big step for me. We can still have a look at all that once we have done all these festivals. I think that after those gigs, everybody will probably like to have some time off anyway. In the beginning of our career, we played so many gigs. We're not going to plan such a hectic tour schedule like we had in the past, that would ruin everything. We're going to have a look at everything and then we'll see. Somebody already proposed a tour of two weeks through the States to us. Something like that is somehow realistic."

Voices From The Darkside: Do you think there's also a possibility of a new CARCASS album?

Steer: "I would be very surprised if that would really happen. But never say never, I'm always the last one who needs to be convinced. Michael and Jeff are much more busy with those things than I am. I'm also not very much involved in the planning of all the festivals which are scheduled. At this moment, I barely know in which countries we're all going to play (laughs)."

Voices From The Darkside: Daniel Erlandsson will replace original CARCASS drummer Ken Owen at these reunion shows. It's rather well known that Ken had a hemorrhage in the brain several years ago and has had some rather serious health problems since then, something which you can really notice during the interview you can see on the re-release of "Necroticism". He talks very slowly and you can see that he really has to concentrate in order to get some things said.

Steer: "You may not forget that Ken spent several months in a coma. Ken almost died, it's really a miracle that he's still alive. When he was still in the hospital, all the doctors told us that he would most likely never wake up and that we would never be able to talk to him again. Ken is obviously much stronger than they expected. It's correct that he reacts much slower than in the past, physically he's also not the same as he used to be. But his character is still the same, he still has the same kind of humour. His long-term memory is excellent but his short-term memory is not so good anymore. Since Ken woke up from his coma, he played drums but he stopped with that recently. But he's still very interested in music, he's even studying recording techniques these days."

Voices From The Darkside: What are your most fond memories when you think back on the old CARCASS days? The gigs and the life on the road?

Steer: "Personally, I always enjoyed working and recording in the studio very much. And all the small things and all the amusing stuff of course (laughs). Jeff and Michael were always the two jokers of the band, it was always pretty funny to watch those two. I remember a gig in Ireland in 1992 where the backstage area was behind the stage. There was no backdoor, you could leave the club only through the entrance so we had to leave until the audience had left. We had just finished our set when the audience started to scream for more and Ken answered that that would be slightly impossible as he had thrown all his drumsticks in the audience. Our roadie got on stage and asked the audience through the microphone if we could get two drumsticks back. After five minutes, one returned (laughs). And after searching for a long time, they also found another fan out on the street who also caught a drumstick. In the end, we still played two more songs. I was so utterly ashamed that evening, the only one who didn't seem to have a problem with it was Ken (laughs)."

Read the entire interview at Voices From The Darkside.

A five-and-a-half-minute video compilation of "highlights" from CARCASS' June 28, 2008 performance at the Gods of Metal festival in Bologna, Italy can be viewed below (clip uploaded by YouTube user "varg76").