INTERVIEW: Torstein Parelius – Manes
Having a career that spans not just decades, but genres, MANES are a band that has consistently defied expectation. Shifting from black metal to fusions of electronica, jazz, and more broad genres within the metal scene itself, they’ve often been considered controversial.
While they continue to produce more experimental sounds, often changing their angles and ideas, MANES have always achieved a high critical acclaim. We caught up with bassist Torstein Parelius about their latest album Slow Motion Death Sequence, their time away from music and the intricacies of the album itself.
Fans will no doubt be excited that you’re back. How has the last few years away been for you guys?
Torstein: They’ve been great. The creative process is our raison d’être, and I’ve really liked this whole process with Slow Motion Death Sequence. It’s been a slow cooker, but we manage to keep it creative all the way up to the final mix. We change it up, lay down new tracks and re-arrange all the way until it’s in the hands of the label. There’s never any one of us that brings a finished song to the rehearsal room, in the traditional rock kinda way where we rehearse the hell out of it until it sits. We make things in the studio, and that’s what we like doing. We’re not too keen on playing the same songs over and over on stage. Now and again it can be fun, but not often. So yeah, we’ve been making stuff – and it’s been fun.
In terms of your career as a whole, there have been some gaps between musical releases. Do you think that time has been beneficial?
Torstein: For us, probably. For something else, I don’t know. I wouldn’t call it a career, though. MANES is not our day job, it’s an enjoyable hobby of sorts. Not that we don’t take it seriously, but we would never really want to rely on Manes as an income or anything like that. That would not be good for us and the way we prefer to work.
How was the process of creating Slow Motion Death Sequence?
Torstein: All of us make a lot of music, and we have a vast number of sketches and ideas in the form of guitar parts, skeletal arrangements, melodies, loops etc at all times. I guess we started talking about where we wanted to go with the next album, regarding theme and concept, not long after our previous album Be All End All was released back in 2014. We made a rough selection of ideas we felt had that little something and a spark of magic that would fit with where we wanted to go with the music. From there on we started to toy with the ideas individually. New guitar parts were recorded. We jammed out some bass and drums in a studio. Did some vocal tests, some electronics. All kinds of things. Then we started rearranging, pulling things apart again, new studio sessions. Invited collaborators. Yeah, and that went on for quite some time. Quite the opposite of “less is more” (more is less?), just building and building. Then, slowly but steadily, we started what we could call a final arrangement. Fine tuning and tweaking. Removing excess. Things take time, but it’s what we like to do.
Thinking about the album name, it’s quite an evocative name. can you tell us a little about that?
Torstein: As with most of the things we release, we deliberately invite to interpretation and immersion. We love to see that people invest of themselves in the music (in symbiosis with the words and visuals), so we rarely offer “explanations” of anything per se. We pry open that proverbial abyss, so that it can look back at you. Anyway, the title can have several meanings. We have talked about it a lot. The most obvious one is the nihilistic way of looking at life itself as slowly dying. You can see the songs sort of chronological in order too, starting things off “in medias res” with a vision of the end, leading you into the inevitable black nada.
The video for Endetidstegn is haunting, but also very real. How much input did you have with director Guilherme Henriques?
Torstein: I came up with the initial idea. Some short lines outlining the basic story or scenario, and then Guilherme took the helm and realised it. I really like the end result, and I feel he captured some of the gut-kicking hopelessness I hoped could be achieved.
MANES have an incredible experimental sound; how do you choose which direction to take things?
Torstein: It can be very random and spur of the moment, and it can be thought through and meticulous. We all bring suggestions, new parts, new melodies and points of view to the table in the studio, and we follow the gut feeling. Did we capture the magic that made us pursuit an idea by adding this or that? Do we need to bring it down more? Should we try without vocals? What if we try a fat sawthooth synth-bass underneath and so on. We rarely experiment for the sake of experimentation. Maybe it’s about frames of reference? We’re all open-minded in terms of what we listen to regarding genres and stuff like that, so we basically just utilise the tools we have at hand.
Is there any particular genre or style of music you would like to play around with more?
Torstein: I don’t think we actually play around with genres. We don’t mix genre X with genre Y. We close the curtains in the studio and just try to make stuff we like ourselves. If one of us tests some guitar on a song in the studio, no one will ever say that it is too jazz or metal or prog or pop or whatever. We could say that it sounds a bit too happy or hard or complex or something similar, but we basically try to find something that will benefit the song. Not a new genre to add to the mix. Personally, I’ve been listening a little to the Red Army Choir lately, so that could be something. Mixed with a touch of Gillian Welch maybe. That could be hard to pull off…
When creating Slow Motion Death Sequence, was there ever a goal in mind, or was it an organic process?
Torstein: An organic process. Totally. We had an overshadowing goal to go darker than our previous album “Be All End All”, but that was basically it.
Finally, with this release, are we going to see any more live performances from MANES?
Torstein: Not many, but hopefully a handful. We don’t stress with playing live. We will probably play two or three gigs next year, but we haven’t decided when and where yet. We want it to be something a bit special and in tune with the vibe of this album. We hope to pull off a gig where we invite quite a few of the collaborators from Slow Motion Death Sequence and earlier albums, and make it something truly special. That will most probably happen here in Trondheim. Other than that, we’ve talked about doing one or two gigs outside of Norway. The UK maybe, or Italy. We’ll see.
Thank you so much for you time today, all the best from Distorted Sound
Torstein: Thank you too! Be sure to check out the music video for Endetidstegn on YouTube!
Slow Motion Death Sequence is out now via Debemur Morti Productions.
Like MANES on Facebook.