MIKE AMOTT: CARCASS Has Rehearsed And May Reunite For Tour

Former CARCASS guitarist Mike Amott (currently in ARCH ENEMY) has revealed that the legendary U.K. death metal band may reunite for a tour.

In an exclusive interview with Sweden's Close-Up magazine (web site),Amott said that he and guitarist/vocalist Bill Steer secretly met in Halmstad, Sweden last year to rehearse old CARCASS material. A couple of months later, they were joined by vocalist/bassist Jeff Walker for another practice session. ARCH ENEMY's Daniel Erlandsson was handling the drum duties at these rehearsals.

"It sounded really good and it was a lot of fun," said Amott. "We rehearsed pretty much the entire 'Heartwork' album [1993]."

The original plan was for CARCASS to play several festival shows this summer, but that fell through.

"I hope we can do some reunion shows at a later date," explained Amott. "It would be a lot of fun and I'd love to play the songs live again. Unfortunately, it can't happen until 18 months from now, at the earliest, because ARCH ENEMY has a totally full schedule. It's different for the other guys who don't work as actively on their music careers."

Have you discussed writing new songs?

"To write something new seems unnecessary. People still only want to hear the old stuff," said Amott.

After the "Heartwork" tour, Mike Amott left CARCASS. The band then released the appropriately titled album "Swansong" (1996).

What did you think of "Swansong" when it came out?

"I wasn't a fan of it," Mike replied. "But we actually rehearsed a couple of songs from it last year and they sounded pretty good. I think the production partly ruined it. It sounded sparse and basically all the extreme stuff that characterized CARCASS was gone. It felt boring."

Have the other members of CARCASS heard ARCH ENEMY?

"Jeff has flat-out said that he thinks we suck," Amott stated. "Bill is not into that kind of music. I think the guys left the metal world as it was in the middle of the '90s and haven't thought about it since. It seems they think it's a little bizarre that I'm still doing the metal thing full-on."

Original CARCASS drummer Ken Owen suffered a brain hemorrhage in 1999 and was hospitalized for ten months, slowly emerging from a coma.

"Ken is doing fine today, but he's not a metal drummer," Amott explained. "He's not capable of playing entire concerts with an extreme band like CARCASS. I still hope that he, if we do a tour, will travel with us and play a couple of songs each night."

Earache Records will re-release the CARCASS back catalogue with bonus material, including extra DVDs with brand new interviews and other footage.

"Jeff has negotiated with Earache and been able to make the label pay us a lot of old royalties," Amott revealed. "Of course money means something, but it would be great fun to go around and play songs that truly are classics in a genre. I've never played stuff like that to people before. I mean, songs that somehow have been soundtracks to people's lives. It would be fun to dig up the old corpse again."

Close-Up's new issue with ARCH ENEMY on the cover is out now.

CARCASS's video for the song "Heartwork":

CARCASS live footage from Rome, Italy in 1992: