MARDUK Guitarist: 'This Was Probably One Of The Smoothest Recordings We've Ever Done'

Jackie Smit of Chronicles of Chaos recently conducted an interview with MARDUK guitarist Morgan Håkansson. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Chronicles of Chaos: I think that my response to hearing "Rom 5:12" for the first time was probably quite similar to a lot of people, in that I could hardly believe that I was listening to the same band. There were definitely a fair few similarities, but the new material sounds so much more mature and so much more diverse. It's a truly multi-dimensional album.

Morgan: It is, and that was never really something that we planned in any way. We never sit down and plan to do an album that sounds a certain way. Our goal when we're writing is to always draw together our music and our lyrics and make the one reflect the other, and that's what happened here. I think that another major difference was the amount of work that we actually put into the production. We did it to an extent with "Plague Angel", but here we were recording at a studio in our home town, and it made us all more relaxed and eased the schedule for everybody, which to me reflects in how the album turned out as well.

Chronicles of Chaos: So why choose to do a concept album now?

Morgan: Well, it's not a purely conceptual album from the perspective that all the songs tell a story that all ties in together. I think there's more of a common theme running through everything; more of a red line running through each track reflecting the title. We actually had a number of titles while we were working on the record and none of it really captured what it was about. So I was working on lyrics that stemmed from the biblical idea that through sin came death, and that's really what the album is about. I think that phrase really captures the spirit of the album. The lyrics don't all fit together, but they certainly all have the same basic theme. It has to do a lot with the Baroque thinking of death, and at that time the people also returned to a lot of the medieval thinking — the memento mori symbolism and so on.

Chronicles of Chaos: You've mentioned that working with Mortuus (vocals) gave you a greater sense of creative freedom with this record. Can you expand a little on what you meant by that?

Morgan: His whole personality — when I knew that we were going to change vocalists in 2003, he was the only guy I wanted. Of course I could have found someone else in the long-term, but I had heard the music that he'd worked on previously and I absolutely loved it. So I really set out to get him in the band and he and I worked really well together. We share the same philosophy and the same ideas; we just like creating music together, basically. When we brought him in for "Plague Angel", about 95% of the music was already complete, and so his participation was limited. But this time round, he was part of the songwriting process from the beginning and he could do a lot in terms of bringing new ideas for lyrical arrangements, vocal patterns and so forth to the table. Personally, I think he has one of the most powerful and emotive voices I have ever heard in my life. With "Rom 5:12", he could write a lot of the lyrics too, and I think that when you're singing your own stuff, it just allows you to be that much more dedicated to the material. That in turn really helped add to the power of the new songs, because for me music is 50% and lyrics are 50% and they need to come together to form one armoured unit, so to speak.

Chronicles of Chaos: "Rom 5:12" was the last record to feature your former drummer, Emil Dragutinovic. With him operating almost as a session drummer on the new record, was there ever any question over whether or not he'd participate when he first announced that he was going to be going?

Morgan: Yeah, well, we told him that we wanted him to stay on to do the drums for the new album and he did about six songs. I found another local drummer to do a few different parts to some of the songs and to re-record a few parts that I wanted to re-arrange. So I ended up working with two drummers on the recording.

Chronicles of Chaos: Aside from that, did you approach the writing and recording of the new record any differently to what you've done the last couple of albums?

Morgan: Not really. This was probably one of the smoothest recordings we've ever done. We worked on it for quite a while, but we didn't spend more than about ten days actually recording in total. When I work, I tend to be able to finish up a lot of things in a short space of time. I know what I want before I go into the studio, so I have everything ready to go ahead of time. It took me about a minute to get my guitar sound, for example. I just came in and put down my Marshall amplifier, plugged it in and got the same sound that I normally use in the rehearsal room. So, the album was kept purposefully basic. We normally used to layer our guitars; we didn't do it this time — just one guitar track on either speaker the way that SLAYER do. For me that helped the music be even more dynamic, because it allows you to hear everything that's going on rather than have one particular instrument drown out everything else.

Read the entire interview at Chronicles of Chaos.