Ελληνικά
Hello, everyone; I’m welcoming you to Metal Invader! Thanks for taking the time! Are you all well?
Hi, thanks, and thank you! This is Jonas, guitars and sporadic vocal, answering… Considering that the world is spiralling to ever more depressive and obscene depths by the hour, I´d say that our merry little gang is doing reasonably good. As long as you balance your doomscrolling with a hefty dose of whatever gets your heart pumping, there´s hope. Furthermore, we´re an ageing bunch of farts well past our prime, so “well” is highly debatable on any given day…
It seems you’re having a deep connection with your fans in Greece, judging by your shows in Athens and Larissa. Do I get it right?
Absolutely! I believe this is the fourth time we visit Greece, and it´s always been awesome. I don´t know if it is that our music speaks to some obscure part of your refined, collective psyche, but we always seem to go down great with you guys and gals. As for our side of the relationship what´s not to love? Great food, amazing history and culture, and a climate that´s actually suited for human beings.
Concerning fans, we´re in that wierd spot of having been dormant for a decade and a half, so we have no fucking clue, who, if anybody considers themselves fans of ours these days. The shows we´ve done since sort of starting up again have been generally cool, and what´s been really great is having people who have never heard of us because of the hiatus, being totally blown away, thinking we´re some new band that they´ve somehow missed out on! Guess that speaks to us having somewhat a timeless sound…
Bearing in mind that you’ve been around since 1993, what’s the digest difference comparing that era with today? Are there any similarities?
I´d say that the obvious answer is social media. When we were active back in the day we barely had a homepage, and now you’re expected to deliver some kind of content pretty much every other day. We re-released our final three albums in a swanky box for Pelagic Records a cpuple of years ago, to coincide with doing Roadburn and a couple of other shows, and that´s when it dawned on us what the situation for musicians these days actually looks like. What bums me out is that I find all of that stuff so excruciatingly boring! What I love about music and musicianship has so little to do with that sense of limitless access and transparency, I don´t need to know what the people, whose music I admire, do for fucking excercise, or have them post pictures of every minute on the road. Moreso, I can´t be bothered with producing all of it myself. I´ll gladly hang out with fans and talk about my music or whatever when we´re doing shows, but being in Burst is mainly about writing and performing music, and when I´m not doing that I´ve got a million other things I´d rather do than taking selfies.
Another huge difference is obviously being older. Being a young musician you’re as much a fan as anything else, so I used to be a lot more dialled in to what was happening in the various scenes and obscure ends of the metal community. To some extent we identified with a lot of the other bands on Relapse in the early years of the millenium – Mastodon, Dillinger, High on Fire, and so forth. It seemed like an exciting time, where a lot of bands weren’t afraid of rebooting the old metal tropes, and audiences were open to bands exploring strange and idiosyncratic paths. Nowadays I have no clue what’s current, or what kids are into. Also, I don´t necessarily think that’s my job. I’m sure there are scenes right now every bit as exciting as what we experienced back in the day, it´s just not on my radar.
A couple of times you decided to take a step back and put the band into hiatus. What’s that one thing that made you come back? Are there more than one?
We were offered to play Roadburn in Holland. It´s been one of the coolest festivals for years, with bills to die for. In addition to that, Pelagic approached us about reissuing our Relapse-albums, and then things just kept gently rolling. We can´t really commit to very much as a band, because of family commitments and stuff like that, but as long as we´re having fun, we´re glad to keep playing.
Along the way, especially when bands and artists have been around for quite a long time, there comes a time that they ask themselves why do they keep going. What is it for you? What fuels your interest?
Well, we haven´t really been keeping going, right? We’ve had the benefit of not being in eachothers faces all the time for a decade! The thing is, back when we were releasing albums there used to be a lot more conflicts and internal tension within the band – just classic band bullshit, basically. This time around we´re much more focused on just having a good time. We don´t really HAVE to do anything, we can pretty much cherrypick what we want to do (i.e. Greece!), whereas being in that album/tour-cycle can really put a strain on a band, both mentally, socially and financially. It boils down to us actually loving performing this music, and enjoying hanging out.
At some point you decided to shift gears and strive towards a more progressive path; was this natural or already decided beforehand?
That was very much a natural thing. When Burst started neither me or Robert were in the band, and it was more of a hardcore/punk thing. Over the years the writing duties shifted more towards me and Rob, and our creativity just tended in more of a progressive direction, if that´s how you want to label it. I think, more than us making any deliberate decision about style or whatever, we always wanted every new record to mark an obvious step forward. I believe that´s one of the defining aspects of the band, the impulse of always moving, and I guess that leads right back to your question about the shifts in our music. This is just how our creative impulses function.
Nonetheless, Burst has always been a band that incorporates different styles, thus embracing fans of different genres. Do you feel that during your gigs?
We get a pretty wide selection of people at our shows, and we´ve been able to tour with very musically diverse acts without seeming out of place. I think that´s great, and it also serves as a reflection of the way we as members consider music and art. We´ve always been all over the place in our influences, ranging from Terrorizer to Arvo Pärt, so if that comes through in our audience, and in our sound, that´s awesome. I’ve always been, and am always going to be a fanatic lover of music, and genre seems like such a restrictive thing if it becomes dogmatic, and limits what you consume. When I was a teenager, I would totally identify as a metalhead, but those distinctions are probably more culturally significant when you’re young and you need to find your tribe…
I always thought you had a more poetic approach to your lyrical themes, not writing lyrics just for the sake of it. Is that actually the case? What do you want to convey through it?
It was mostly Jesper who wrote the lyrics, with me contributing more towards the end of our original run. I think we tried to write stuff that fit the tone of the music, while also, to some extent making personal and social comments. That being said, we were so much younger, and the lyrics serve as snapshots of where we were at the time – pissed off, angstridden, pretentious, small-town-mentality, stoned, highbrow – you name it. It´s tough to evaluate in hindsight, and I think whatever value might be gathered from our lyrics, lay best within the potential reader. Half of the time even I can´t remember what I’m on about.
It’s been quite a long time since your last release. Any chance for new material sometime soon?
That the milliondollar-question, right? We are coming up to a point where we feel that it would be kind of corny to just play shows on these old albums much longer. We were never a huge band to begin with, and its not like we could keep doing this forever. In order for us to have some reason for hanging around much longer we would have to write something new, and that´s a kind of crossroads where we are finding ourselves. I can´t really say. These are the questions we´re having within the band right now. I know the creativity and chemistry is still there, and sadly it mostly boils down to fucking logistics, and our ability to commit. It’s not like we could park our asses in the rehearsalroom for months on end. Also we don´t have a rehearsal room… In reference to your earlier question about our musical direction, I´m not even sure we´d have a cohesive vision for where we´d want to go creatively. But these are all trivial issues, what would actually be the important matter would be if there’s that Promethean spark.
In about two weeks you’ll be visiting us again, this time for Mammothfest in Thessaloniki. What have you prepared for us? What should we expect?
We’ll give you our honest best! There´s no gimmicks, no blinding lightshow, corpsepaint, or coordinated moves. There might be an interdimensional elk, and some demented ramblings from Linus, for wich I humbly beg your pardon in advance. We feel deeply and passionatly about this music, and I rely on that translating to our shows! It´s going to be a blast!
Again, thank you for taking the time to talk to us; any messages for you fans as the festival is drawing near?
We fucking adore playing Greece, and are positively stoked to be coming back all these years later!! Please come up and we´ll chat about french prog or the best way to prepare tofu, anything goes as long as I don´t have to post anything on social media. Thanks for the interview and see you soon!!
