ENTOMBED Aiming For 'Simpler' Approach On New Album

Antenna webzine recently conducted an interview with ENTOMBED frontman L.G. Petrov. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Antenna: You wrote and recorded "Serpent Saints" as a four piece. How did that change things compared to the albums, you've done as a five-piece? Did anything go smother?

Petrov: Yeah, much smother. As you said we're a four-piece and it was more in the way, that the four of us were thinking in the same way. Everybody was totally into it. On other albums some members wanted to go in other directions and that makes it a little bit harder. Now we're four people who have their mind set on one thing and that makes it smother and easier.

Antenna: So it made the whole process more focused?

Petrov: Yeah, when we got together in the rehearsal room we were all 100% focused, and it made it much easier.

Antenna: Did you use any new approaches to writing and recording besides being a four-piece?

Petrov: Nah, previously we did a pre-recording/demo, in most cases when we recorded an album and the demos usually came out better than the actual album. So this time we did the album straight on in the easy way, thereby making it sound more fresh and spontaneous. If it sounds good you, just take it. That was the main difference. It made it more fun to record because you could move on to the next thing and not stand in the same place and work with one thing for two weeks. It went pretty fast.

Antenna: Did you record the album live or did you use layer production?

Petrov: Some parts we did record live. If we play together and it sounds great, why not take it on to the CD straight away. It makes the improvisation much easier. And it feels more true to who we are.

Antenna: The way I've always perceived the music of ENTOMBED, it has also been about conceiving a feel and power and get this across to the listener…

Petrov: Exactly, some songs we've had in the past were a couple of years old before we started recording them. The songs on "Serpent Saints" were built from the ground. It was more fun, than picking up old stuff you've already recorded or rehearsed a lot. Everything was done from scratch, that was more fun having fresh material all the time to work with.

Antenna: Besides this more spontaneous feel to your album, what was the most important lesson for you as a musician?

Petrov: Not to think and analyze too much. Of course you have to think and make good songs. If get the positive feel for the song from the beginning it makes it more interesting. We're all good musicians, I guess [laughs]. It was like going back to the old days when we were doing a demo. It was kind of that feel we had. For every album we've done it's been a new beginning and we've been fortunate to record the amount of albums we have.

Antenna: Could you say that things had become too "professional" and you needed to go back to basics?

Petrov: In a sense it could be like that. Maybe on some of the albums we tried to approach a different vibe in the music, we in the end wasn't too comfortable with. For this album we wanted to make it simple and straight on. And I guess the songs illustrate that. They're more aggressive and brutal. And my singing is the way I wanted to sing for a long time. So we're happy. Musically it's much easier songs.

Read the entire interview at www.antenna.nu.