INTERVIEW: Karl Willetts – Memoriam

British death metal group MEMORIAM are close to releasing their second record, The Silent Vigil, teaming up once again with Nuclear Blast. The new record is set to be released exactly a year since their debut record came out, and Distorted Sound recently sat down with front man Karl Willetts to discuss the new album, the progression of the band, as well as a look back on the metal scene and more.

The new record The Silent Vigil comes out on March 23rd – how do you feel MEMORIAM have progressed since your debut record For The Fallen came out last year?

Karl: It’s been a really exciting year for us in our evolution as a band; one thing that I think we’ve managed to achieve in this incredibly short space of time since we first got together is moving forward in an extremely fast pace. I think the first album in many respects was quite a strong debut for us, we were very aware of the expectations that were upon us as a band with our proud musical heritage. What people anticipated and what they got were maybe in many respects a different thing, so I think the first album was tied to those traditions and to some extent we were in the shadows of the past which were really at the forefront of what we did with the first album. What we’ve done in the past year is very much develop our own identity as a band – we’ve been together and playing live and working together in the studio to create the new album, and I think we’ve moved forward at a good pace. This second album that we’ve done is very much more our sound, we’ve found who we are as a band and we’ve developed our own sense of identity, and moved forward through the process of grief, which is what we’re exploring with MEMORIAM. The essence of MEMORIAM is the experience of sorrow and suffering and misery, the darkness that death gives you, and that was very prevalent in the first album. Those things were issues and topics that we explored, and I think in this second album we’ve moved beyond those initial phases of grief, and we’ve moved towards the second phase. There’s a lot more anger in the vocals, a lot more questioning, a bit more lashing out and hatred; the lyrical content of the album itself is very different from maybe anything I’ve produced previously, the songs on this new album are wholly based upon issues that are based in reality. They’re very reflective of the times that we live in, drawing on more social, political implications of the world we live in, there are songs in there which are about transition and change which is what we’re doing as individuals and as a band, and there’s also songs on there which are quite personal which relate to things that are happening in my life. There’s a song about dementia called Nothing Remains, which is all about what’s happening in my life with my mother – she’s 90 years old and over the last year has developed a quite progressive dementia, so that song’s all about issues relating to that. A lot of the lyrical content is about real things, rather than about war which I haven’t directly experienced, so all the songs are about the things that are important in my life right now, and that’s a big change but we’re moving in the right direction as to where we’re going with MEMORIAM.

And a lot of what’s happened in the world over the last 12 months must have had an influence on the tracks in this second album too?

Karl: Yeah definitely, obviously we live in a world where socially and politically there’s been a lot of upheaval over the last couple of years, and the last 12 months in particular. We see the pandemic global lies of the right wing and philosophies that are based on hatred and difference, which are growing in voice and power across the world. These are the issues that are really important to make comments about, and as a creative artist, lyricist and a musician I think it’s our place in society to stand up and counter these issues and make a statement about the things I think are important. There’s lots of social content in there and political content, which is great for me to experience doing that as my whole career has been based on writing songs that have predominately been about war, which has been fantastic but ultimately it’s been quite restrictive in many respects. With MEMORIAM I have an open blank canvas where I can express myself lyrically in a more creative way which in itself is quite a liberating process to do that, so I’m really enjoying this creative style that we’ve got, which is why really we are creating albums and putting them out at such a fast pace. The whole issue and aspect of MEMORIAM is we’re trying to recreate the feeling that we had when we first started out in bands back in the late 80s when we first started doing this music, and MEMORIAM is all about trying to reconnect with those feelings. We often refer to it as being a mid to late life crisis, but it’s important for us to try and touch base with those kinds of feelings and get some joy back into our lives, and that creative process is part of that and that’s why we’re moving forward at such a fast pace. We’re already at a point where we are releasing the second album next month, but at this point we’ve already got plans for the next album cover, we’ve got plans for the studio we’re going to be recording in, we’ve already got two or three songs worked out in preparation for that process. We’ll hopefully be recording another album and releasing another album next year as well to keep that fast process up that we’re maintaining.

What have the recording and writing processes been like for The Silent Vigil?

Karl: Incredibly fast paced! That is enhanced by the technology that’s available to write songs these days. We’re very lucky in respect that we’ve got a guitarist in the band, Scott Fairfax, who I often refer to as a million dollar riff vault; he manages to pull this plethora of riffs that he’s written over the past 20 or 30 years and never used, so alongside these riffs that he’s got stored on his PC along with the new ones he’s writing alongside them, we’ve got a continual flow of input from him in the creativity side of things. It’s very easy for us to write new material because Scott’s already got these songs that he works on regularly, and he fires them over to us on MP3s with the riff structure and a generic drum pattern on them to give us a general idea of the flow of the music. Frank usually has a listen to them and as a band we choose and select what parts we like the most, then Frank will link the parts with his bass – he usually comes up with a nice bridging section and adds the slower churning riffs into the equation, so almost before we even get into the rehearsal we’ve got the basic structure of a song together before we sit down and jam it out. Once we do get into the rehearsal room to work on the song that’s where Whale inputs his signature drum patterns and his style of play again changes the context of the song; at that point the song’s maybe two or three weeks in its development, and through that development process I’ve been listening to it so I’ve got a good idea of the timing structure for the lyrics, where I want to put them and the placements. It’s very easy to do that and that’s why we have a really good fast pace, and what we generally tend to do as well to reflect that old school death metal feel is we don’t dwell on what we’re doing too much. Once we’ve done something and we’ve written it, we don’t tend to go back to it and tweak it or change it, we move forward onto the next song. You often find that a lot of bands who do go back and change things tend to overproduce the song in many respects, and you lose a lot of the authenticity and the integrity of the song structure in the first place. That’s what we’re trying to achieve with MEMORIAM, and considering what we’ve done in such a short space of time I think we’ve managed to tick a lot of the boxes on our bucket list in advance, it’s been an exciting life affirming process so far and long may it last!

Your debut record For The Fallen was very well received, so what are your aspirations for The Silent Vigil?

Karl: Well this is it, it’s all a bit of a bonus really. The bottom line is we are just four individual musicians doing this for ourselves; our original aspirations for the band were just to create some positivity and joy in our lives, and maybe meet up once a week and thrash out some old killer songs, and maybe do some local gigs in Birmingham, play some cover versions and ultimately release a 7 inch – that was the original conception of what MEMORIAM was all about. Two years down the line with two full albums out, we’ve achieved everything we wanted to achieve, and it’s gone well beyond expectations. The way the first album was received was overwhelmingly positive for us and really gave us the confidence to achieve what we’re doing and move forwards with the second album and obviously with the third album too. We’ve very much got a trilogy in mind initially with MEMORIAM, and as I say we’re planning the third one already and it’s all about exploring the process of grief, and the journey through that experience in life which ultimately we do experience in our lives, particularly as we get older. Our expectations really though are not that high, the bottom line for us is that we want to enjoy what we’re doing and we appreciate everything that we get offered. We’re very aware of the privileged position that we’re in at this time in our lives, and it’s all down to the support we receive and the way that we’ve been supported by people. A lot of that is down to the fact that the people that have supported us are fans, friends, family, who in a way have grown up with us over our journey through our musical careers over the past 30 years, and I think they understand why we do MEMORIAM – they get what we’re trying to achieve and why we’re trying to do this following on from our experiences, and people buy into that. We’re genuine and sincere in our approach to what we do, and the fact that all these people are into it and support what we’re doing is fantastic for us and very life affirming for us. Ultimately we’re happy doing what we’re doing just to please ourselves, but everything else on top of that is just a massive, massive bonus to it, and we lap it up. I think that comes across when we play live as well, that chemistry between us and the bonds of friendship that we’ve got as individuals and as a band is something you can’t buy, create or make – it’s a genuine friendship and I think that reflects in the way we interact on stage and that joy we have from playing live comes across to the audience when we’re doing it and they positively respond to that and we feedback off that as well. It’s a beautiful experience, it’s joyous to be able to be doing this and we just hope we can continue doing it for as long as possible!

MEMORIAM were formed in 2015 and have rapidly grown in popularity and reputation, is that something you envisaged at the start?

Karl: Oh absolutely not! MEMORIAM really started for selfish personal reasons really, we originally did it to try and create a bit of light in our lives in an otherwise quite dark place. When Martin died you sit back and you think about what life’s all about, and what you want to achieve with your life. BOLT THROWER, the band I was in at the time, decided to put itself on a hiatus with no real decisions about what was going to happen in the future. I sat back and thought “what do I want to do?”, and you do start to question what you want to do with the rest of your life – when things like that happen you have to. You have to take stock of where you’re at in your life, and try to move forward. I thought there were two ways I could do that; I can either sit here and wait indefinitely for something to happen with BOLT THROWER, maybe in the future something may develop and maybe it won’t, so I wasn’t prepared to just sit around and wait. I think if you want to achieve things in your life and move forward and get ahead, you’ve got to get up and do it – you can’t just sit back and wait for things to happen to you because ultimately it never will do. You have to get up off your backside no matter how hard it is and make things happen, and I really, really wanted to work with Whale. He was the reason I got into BOLT THROWER in the very first place, and we formed a very close friendship which we lost over the years; I rejoined BOLT THROWER back in 2004 and he didn’t because Martin was there and I did feel a bit guilty about that, but when we both left BOLT THROWER in ’94 we tried to do a couple of the bands but it just didn’t work, our hearts weren’t really in it, and the enthusiasm wasn’t there so there was an element of unfinished business with Whale that needed to be completed so it was great to have the opportunity to work with him. That was the one thing that I decided at that point that, to pull myself out of this place of darkness and to create something positive out of this situation, I wanted to work with Whale again, and getting Frank involved was the next step. I’ve known him for 30 odd years and always wanted to do a band with him but never really had the time to do that because we were so focused in the previous bands we were doing, so ultimately it was about doing it for ourselves and making ourselves happy and creating that feeling of joy for ourselves. The fact that it’s taken off and people understand that we are trying to do what we’re doing and buy into that as well has been really positive for us, and it’s worked for us so far and we’re looking forward to it working over the next few years as well! People often say that it’s a project but it’s not, it’s a fulltime band and there’s definitely three albums in us with this trilogy exploring grief which will take us through to 2019, but beyond that there is very much the original concept which is doing cover versions. I’ve still got that very much in mind that I’d like to do that or achieve that at some point in our careers, an album of cover versions of songs that inspired us to be in bands in the first place is very much in my ideas of something I’d like to create with MEMORIAM following this trilogy. There’s a long term plan, let’s just hope we stay alive to succeed in doing that!

Old school death metal has been around for such a long period of time with the likes of BOLT THROWER and a lot of other bands, so how much of a challenge is it for up and coming bands to stand out in the death metal scene and how do you feel the scene has changed over the years?

Karl: That’s a very good question; what I’ve seen over the 30 years is the evolution of the whole genre of metal. I was very much from a scene where it was considered to be grindcore, we never really aligned ourselves to that, and then the whole death metal scene emerged in the late 80s/early 90s. Again we evolved with that but I don’t think we were directly a death metal band – we were just BOLT THROWER doing our own thing. Then in the mid-90s you saw the evolution of the black metal music scene, and for me that was something I didn’t really buy into and didn’t really understand, didn’t like and it really put me off at the time. As different genres and sub genres come and go throughout the decades to the point we’re at now, it’s taken me a few years, maybe it’s because I’m a bit older and I understand the way the world is now, and I genuinely understand it now; It’s going to happen, it’s a natural evolution where each generation has to come along and create its own style, sound, identity and brand of music – something that belongs to them. That’s what I did with BOLT THROWER, and each generation comes along and maybe the stuff they came along with is against or is very different to the stuff that’s gone before them, so in a way I’m not supposed to really like it; I’m not the target audience, it’s aimed at a different audience, a different generation of people, and I think that’s what happens with music. It evolves, it changes, sub cultures and sub genres emerge, and that’s what makes metal such a healthy and exciting genre, because there are so many different types across the world and different types of metal. There may be parts I don’t like but there are parts I do like, and you can take different bits and pieces from each genre and take them for what they are, which is really exciting and very vibrant. There’s a whole world out there and potential for people, and it can only grow – I do see a very healthy death metal scene emerging, and you do get bands that manage to create their own sound that are yet to pay homage or tribute to who’s put them in that position. I’m talking about bands such as GATECREEPER who I think are a fantastic band that have emerged, a band called POWER TRIP, so there’s a couple of bands from America that I think are really good at the moment. In the UK there’s lots of bands that are doing some great stuff; I worked closely with a band recently called THE KING IS BLIND who are doing some phenomenal material, and you can’t forget the stuff that VENOM PRISON are doing at the moment as well, I think they’re doing some really good, challenging stuff. I think it’s a really vibrant and healthy scene out there, not that I like all of it but I can pick and choose which is what makes it such an exciting scene.

Moving on to touring now, MEMORIAM have played a wide variety of shows and festivals worldwide, so what has the reception been like away from home?

Karl: Well the reception we have back home has been great, and our hearts will always be in the UK, but our main power base that I’ve found is in mainland Europe, and particularly in Germany – that’s where the heartland is where we can do sold out shows, but it’s been phenomenal wherever we’ve played. Whatever time we’ve played, whatever festival, they’ve always gone down well and people have always turned out to see us, so it’s been brilliant to get that interaction. We’re only ever really as good as the audience we’re playing to is; I know it sounds cheesy but that’s the reality of it, we feed off the positivity that the audience has given to us, and it’s in that live small club atmosphere that I think we perform the best, so we’re very much looking forward to getting out there this year and doing these smaller club shows and maybe some smaller festivals. We didn’t really enjoy the larger corporate events, you feel like you’re another number on a whole conveyor belt of bands on there, but we do thrive very much on the smaller events and get more out of doing them, and the sound tends to be more intense. We’ve got about 20 or 30 shows lined up this year so it’s all looking good!

And very recently you played main stage at HRH Metal in your hometown Birmingham, it must always be nice for a band to perform at those kind of shows in your home area?

Karl: Absolutely yeah, it’s always great to play in Birmingham. For us it’s where our roots are, it’s a chance for us to play to our friends and sometimes family who sometimes never chance to see us because we’re off every other weekend doing gigs all over mainland Europe. We don’t often get to play Birmingham, so for us it’s a great opportunity to play in front of our close friends and colleagues that wouldn’t normally get the chance to see us. HRH was our first gig of the year too so it’s great to have done that in Birmingham, and the main thing was that we managed to play the new songs quite effectively. As I’ve said Birmingham is the birthplace of metal, it has a special heritage and we are Birmingham old school death metal!

Having already announced a number of upcoming shows including a return to Bloodstock in the summer as well as another album coming in 2019, what else is there in store for MEMORIAM?

Karl: Well this year post March, actually kicking off with HRH last weekend, we’re doing gigs virtually every other weekend over the summer, then once that process is complete we’ll be writing songs throughout the summer as well which we’ll record towards the tail end of this year, maybe the beginning of next year. We’ve got Dan Seagrave lined up to do the next album cover, we’ve got the studio lined up to do the next recording, and we very much hope to be recording the third album around this time next year which will be set for release around April/May 2019. The train is rolling and we are keeping on going and we’re having a whale of a time enjoying what we’re doing!

The Silent Vigil is set for release on March 23rd via Nuclear Blast Records.

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