In the wake of the recent “mellowing out” of ‘Speed’ Strid’s main band Soilwork, many fans were starting to get worried that the thrash had been lost in our fellow Soilworker. Well those fans can indeed rest assure that this is certainly not the case as Terror2000 get ready to release their sophomore album. Harsher and faster than before, Terror2000 take you on a thrash ride you will never forget. I had a chance to speak with the singer/bassist Bjorn Strid about the new record and possible future plans for the project. Read on...

Adam Block


First of all I would like to ask you how does it feel to be releasing a new Terror2000 record? I know for a while many people might have been thinking that you had softened up or something.

Well I guess Terror2000 is like a substitute for Soilwork. A way to get all the thrash stuff out of your head. The album is even faster than before. It’s even got more retro thrash influence like Kreator, Sodom, Slayer and stuff like that. So it’s a hell of a fast album with a lot of ripping riffs...

So a nice balancing act with the more melodic direction that Soilwork has taken...

Yea [laughs] exactly!

With each Terror2000 member dedicated to his respectful project, how difficult was it to get everybody back to do another record?

Well I guess it was pretty much the label that pushed us. (In a label exec. accent:) “Hey guys you gotta record another album.” and we went “Oh!” cause we had not thought of Terror2000 in a long time. We started to go down to the rehearsal room to see what we got with the riffs and stuff and try to pull songs together. I think it worked out pretty good cause we had received such an amazing response on the first one so we decided to do another one. I guess we wanted to be even faster than we were on the debut.

Doing new Soilwork and Terror2000 around the same time, did you have a moment where you just had the give the chords a rest for a couple days. I hear Devin worked you really hard on the new Soilwork album.

Yea that was very tough being in the studio with Devin I’ll tell you. Oh man! He pushed us to the very limit. I think we recorded the vocals for like 12 or 13 days and that’s like 5 days when my voice was totally fucked up and I couldn’t sing. I couldn’t sing a tone so I had to rest for like three days or something.

Did you do Terror2000 before or after you recorded the Soilwork one?

After... directly after actually because the day that I got the master of the Soilwork recording, we started to record the Terror2000 album. So that was a pretty tough time. Maybe it was a little too much I guess...

Well your new record is called "Faster Disaster". What would you say you went about differently when writing the music on this one as opposed to your debut?

Well I guess we wanted the album to be even more retro cause that was the whole idea for the first one. but it went out pretty 90s thrash I guess. It was pretty much At The Gates II, but when we started to write new material we wanted it to be more retro while putting a little bit more heavy metal into it, but keeping it very fast. I guess that was the thoughts about writing the new material. The previous one was pretty technical and it is still technical but more straight forward.

The artwork is incredible! Who came up with the idea for the cover art?

Well I guess I had some ideas to make a very ironic cover with racing stuff. You know... with the racing flag and all that stuff and I think it was me and Carlos sitting at his place drinking some Vodka trying to figure out a cool cover. The motorcycle was supposed to be the original cover, but this one is even better with the skeleton holding the flag and some burning tires on the back and I think racing is very suitable for thrash music. The lyrics are ironic with lots of mumbo jumbo stuff so it’s pretty cool.

So Nuclear Blast is releasing the record June 25th in the states. Did the fact that Soilwork is on the same label help to get this deal together?

Well I guess it started when we went to the Milwaukee Metal festival last year and I talked to Phillip about it from Nuclear Blast. He had heard the first album and liked it very much and we talked about it and he said that I should send the next album to him to check it out. I sent it to him and he liked it very much and they really wanted to put it out in the states so that’s how the deal came through.

Do you ever see you guys doing any touring as Terror2000 or do you think it is best to be left as a studio project?

I think we’re keeping it as a studio project because there isn’t too much time to tour with Terror2000 because of...

Darkane, The Defaced, Soilwork, Construcdead...

Yea exactly and I work part time and I have a girlfriend so I guess we will have to keep it as a studio project. It would be cool to do some gigs but I guess it is impossible. There is a pretty tough schedule for Soilwork this year.

I am curious to hear about some of the guests you have on the new album. Peter from Soilwork was telling me it was almost like Terror2000 with friends. Did this help to fuel a carefree and fun environment while in the studio?

Yea that was very cool to invite some friends into the studio for some guest solos and some guest vocals too. That was a pretty cool thing to do. As you probably know, Peter has a guest solo on the track 'I Am Speed At Night' and then we had Christofer of Darkane with a guest guitar solo on I think it was 'Back With Attack'. Henrik from The Defaced did some guest vocals on one of the tracks so there was a lot of people in the studio and when we had the listening session for the new Soilwork, all the journalists did some gang vocals in one of the songs. I guess there were like 30 people doing gang vocals so that was very cool.

What would you say was the main inspiration for some of these lyrics?

[laughs] I guess the main inspiration is alcohol... alcohol, racing... you know all that stuff... death and destruction... all that thrash is about. Those would definitely be key words for this album.

Do you see yourselves doing another record further down the road?

Well that’s hard to say. I guess we will busy with Soilwork for the next two years I hope. Hopefully we will get to tour a lot more. We will see in the future but there are no plans yet. We will see how the album goes and if we find any inspiration to make another album.

This year Megadeth, who were one of the leaders of the American thrash movement along with the now country trio Metallica, have announced their breakup. Has events like this along with the deaths of Chuck from Death and Paul Baloff from Exodus effected you as a metal fan in general?

Oh it is so terrible to hear all this stuff. There are a lot of metalheads who are dying. And I don’t know why there are a lot of singers dying. I hope it’s not all about the screaming vocals. That’s very sad to hear because Chuck was a great singer and a great guitarist too of course. I hope I will never get cancer...

What are some of the bands you are into right now and what are some you just would like to go away!?

I do not listen a lot to the new metal records at the moment. I am pretty much listening to old AC/DC vinyls like "High Voltage" and stuff like that. I still like the Opeth album. I listen to that album a lot and also the Dimmu Borgir album...

Aaaaaaaah...

Yea you like that one...

Hell yea... it is really fast and whenever I listen to it I feel like jumping into the walls and stuff!

Exactly, that is the same with me.

With bands like Dew-Scented, The Crown, and Carnal Forge gaining a massive underground following, do you feel thrash is making a comeback within the extreme metal community?

Well that is hard to say. Melodic metal seems to be very popular at the moment but I guess the thrash scene is growing. I have heard that Carnal Forge have received a lot of good response for their latest album and hopefully there will be a growing thrash scene like the one at the end of the 80s. That would be cool.

Well that is all I have for you now Speed. Any final words you would like to share with the Terror2000 fans reading this?

Well just check out the album cause it is even faster than before. That’s a good reason to buy it I guess (laughs). It is hard to say if we are doing any shows. I do not think so, but check out the album and I hope there will be a lot of Terror fans at the Soilwork shows so we can grab a few beers!

Official Terror2000 Domain

What can I say in my little introduction for this Meshuggah interview? Not much, because I’m just a little man compared to a band that by many is treated as one of the most influential groups in metal. I can only be grateful to live in times that I can listen to their music, see them in concerts and have fun phone conversations with them as if we were best friends. I don’t remember laughing so hard and so many times on the phone... ever... and this is the first time I ever spoke to the guy! Marten Hagstrom (guitar) was great, he was funny and entertaining... like his band. If you’ve never heard them I don’t know how the hell you found your way to this site...

Chris


How did idea of “Rare Trax” come to life?

Basically, it was an idea from our boss Markus Tiger at Nuclear Blast in Germany. We come back from touring after the “Chaosphere” album, we went on the European tour and went to tour with the Slayer in States and what basically happened was we had to decide what to release next. We though we would like to start working on the new album right away but that wouldn’t be finished soon enough for Nuclear Blast, so they suggested we put together a rare tracks album and we said OK, why not and that’s what we did.

What did you guys do over those three years since your last regular studio album?

The first year, actually almost year and a half was just touring and then we were supposed to finish the “Rare Trax” in just six months but we had some problems with CD-ROM staff as video footage and we also had a bit of a trouble putting together all those master tapes, finding them and putting them over to digital for mastering. So, that’s why it took so much time.

The promo letter says that in ’96 you, Jans K. and Tomas had some free studio time and you thought of doing something but didn’t know what and result is 'Don’t Speak' and 'By Emptyness Abducted' which were never meant to be released. How often do you have free time and do something like that and do you still have some songs on future rare tracks?

Not often. [laughs] I would say that pretty much was the only time. What happened back then was that Fredrik (Thordendal) was doing his solo album and that’s why we had a lot of time on our hands and we were just messing around for fun in the studio where Jens (Kidman) was working back then at that time. However, I know that Jens has some stuff that he’s recorded by himself and I have some stuff that I’ve recorded by myself when we were just messing around but it’s not like regular Meshuggah stuff. You know, for fun...

Are you saying more stuff for future “Rare Trax”?

[laughs] I hope we won’t have to release another “Rare Trax”. I guess in a couple of years we’ll have a few songs that will be laying around but 'Don’t Speak' and ‘By Emptyness Abducted’ are pretty Meshuggah like songs, the stuff that we have written since then and haven’t been included isn’t that much Meshuggah style.

It had to be quite a party since you even recorded ‘War’ for Fredrik’s 30th birthday... How did that happen?

Oh yeah, it was quite a party. [laughs] Actually we recorded an entire album with six or seven songs but every song had like a very different style. We had a ‘War’ song which is near death metal or whatever grind-core metal and we had a couple of soft songs... what we wanted to do was to make an album where all the lyrics were really downgrading towards Fredrik [laughs] ... we had a lot of fun doing it.

‘New Millennium...’ is going to be one of my all time favorite videos, it’s simply hilarious... who came up with this idea?

Thanks. Actually I can’t remember cause that idea come up when we were in the tour bus on the Slayer tour and we had a day off cause we had to cancel the show and we were just riding. We had a 10 hour drive or something like that so pretty much we were stuck in the bus and Gustav Hielm, our bass player, he had this cam-coder with him and I don’t know who come up with that idea but we were talking about how really hilarious would it be if we could make a video riding the bus, playing air-guitars and just making fools out of ourselves. [laughs] We recorded this just for our own sake it wasn’t meant to be released...

Based on ‘New Millennium...’ and ‘Tour and Studio Clips’ video it seems like you guy had a really good time during the US tour with Slayer... tell me something unusual that happened during that tour.

Oh man, what didn’t happen. You know, the weird thing is that you always remember the bad things about the tour or something like that cause it sort of sticks to your mind but one thing that was really great about this tour was when we met up with Fear Factory, I think it was somewhere in Main, the tours met up so it was like a multi-band deal. We had a party on Fear Factory bus and that night was really great cause everybody was just partying. I was like six bands just had a blast. That was a really fun thing. Another thing that was really really great was in San Francisco cause Exodus, Testament and Machine Head come around and we had a great party after the show. It was so cool... us, Slayer and all those bands... we had a blast.

A lot of bands either listen to your music or dream of playing with you. Who would you like to play with?

One band that was great playing with obviously was Slayer. We grow up on this, personally I listened to a lot of Slayer when I was young so going on the road with them was like a child's dream. We would really really like to go on tour with Strapping Young Lad cause the stuff Devin Townsend has been putting out I think it’s really cool. That would be really fun to play with live. Also, of course all of our young heroes we ever had we would like to go out on the road with, like Testament and bands like that...

Outside of the band, do you guys hang out together or each one of you lives your separate lives?

Well it all depends on the time of the year... Oh, we hang out a lot but we live in different parts of the city so it’s not always as easy to just swing by each other. When we are on the road or when we are working together we see so much of each other that when we have a holiday we’ll leave town on our separate things just to chill out but we all hang out and we all have parties together cause we’ve been friends for so long. I know Tomas (Haake) since I was 6 I think and we were friend before anything else, you know. And this same is between Jens and Fredrik. We have great friends base in our band before anything else. It comes before the music.

Have you ever bit the crap out of the members of another band?

[laughs all the time till the next question] No, we haven’t. I don’t think we ever felt like it either. We’ve come along with all the bands we’ve met. We’ve never been in any great fight, not among ourselves and not with the other bands.

What’s your favorite alcohol?

Right now... Beer.

Who’s the craziest and most unpredictable member of Meshuggah?

I would say that we all are but it depends on when you’re asking. I mean Fredrik is pretty unpredictable sometimes but I would say that we all have our moments. [laughs] If it’s something I learned during all those years it’s very hard to predict what anyone in this band will do and I can’t even predict what I’m gonna do myself [laughs] It’s pretty hard...[laughs]

Do you realize that you guys are probably the most unpredictable band in a whole world?

Thanks, I take it as a complement. I mean I never though of us as being the most unpredictable band but we always do whatever comes into our minds. It doesn’t matter how silly, strange, weird or whatever it is. We only consider one thing and that is ‘do we like what we’re doing, are we having fun?’ If we come up with an idea that we thing is good we go with it and I think that’s what keeps it interesting for us being in a band.

Is anyone of you involved in any side projects right now?

Not at the moment. Right now we are not doing any side projects that I know of. Jans has been writing some stuff on his own and I’ve been writing some stuff on my own and I know that Frederick has a couple of thing lying around but nothing serious. Nothing that is a band or even going to be an album.

When can we expect new studio release? Do you have any songs written yet?

We have stuff written but not that much but we have all the lyrics and we have a couple of great cover ideas so I would say if we’re lucky and everything goes the way we want it to we’ll be able to release it in like early 2002, first half of 2002.

Any plans to promote this CD with a tour?

No, not at the moment. It might happen that we would but I’m not sure. You never know, we might swing over to the States for a week or do a couple of shows here in Europe but the way we see it, it’s a way better to our fans to get a real album real soon and then we’ll tour on that one really extensively instead. Cause if we go on tour now and tour this “Rare Trax” album I think that it would take too long for us to complete a new album.

I guess that would be all, it was a pleasure to talk to you. Any last words?

Thanks a lot man it was great. It was nice talking to you too. As for the last words; come check us out next time we are around and buy all our shit so we can get rich anytime soon. [laughs]