After the split with Thundermother Guernica Mancini (voc.); Emlee Johansson (dr.) and Mona Lindgren (bass, git.) didn't fall into some kind of depression but used all their emotions, time and energy to focus on a new band called The Gems. With "Phoenix" the Swedish girls released a furious debut album with really cool rock songs and caused quite the sensation in the scene. This of course was the reason enough for me to try and talk with Guernica and find out a little bit more about all that happened and the plans for the future of the band. Enjoy reading and check out the album (read my whole review here).

Michael

Hi Guernica, how are you doing?

I'm good, thank you for having me (laughs).

First of all, congratulations on your fantastic debut album "Phoenix". It has become a ass-kickin' rock album. Are you satisfied with the feedback you got so far?

Yes, I'm incredibly happy with the feedback. Most reviews I have seen are very good and very reasonable (laughs). I mean there are no like 10s but I think that if we would only get the highest score on all the ratings there would be a lot to live up to for our next album actually. I still think we got good rating; I would say like 6 or 7 out of 10 which I think is really great for a debut album.

The Thundermother split was about a year ago now. Did the wounds healed up a little bit since then?

It's a work in progress. I would say some are but I think that in a situation like that, it takes years to heal completely because the girls and I devoted our entire lives to the band and building up the brand and everything. There are always new things coming up but I'm very proud of the progress that we've made so far. We're all in a much better and happy place now and that's the most important thing.

Did you have any contact with them after the split?

No, we've been only communicating with Fillipa through our lawyer. It's been like a really bad divorce.

How hard was it to start as a quasi-new band after that? I mean, you had great supporters with The Scorpions and Whitesnake and then you had to start new.

It sucks but we're all really hard-working and I believe that we accomplished so much in Thundermother while being treated like shit for so many years so I don't see why we wouldn't be able to do the same thing now that we feel really good. But it does suck to have to go back to square one and build up everything again. I think that due to what we have done before, we have a bit of an easier time than other brand-new bands. I am fully aware of that. So certain aspects suck but at the same time, I am so excited for this new beginning. It's very exciting and I think we have done it in a way I'm very proud of.

You released "Phoenix" on Napalm Records. How did you catch their attention?

We've been in contact with Thomas (Caser; M.) the CEO of Napalm since Thundermother. Obviously, we were signed to AFM back then so that wasn't relevant for that time being but we stayed in touch. As soon as the news broke that what happened happened a lot of labels contacted us. So we decided on Napalm because it just felt like the best fit. After all the tumultuous years we felt it was important to be on a label that is stable and has been around for many years. They are professional and know what they're doing. We have huge dreams we want to accomplish and take over the world so you need to have a label that has some kind of manpower. We also want to go back to America because we did very well there on the Scorpions tour and we have a lot of fans from there already. They also have a good office over there, too. So it just felt like the right match for us.

Listening to the music, I find a lot of parallels to some 80s rock bands, is this your main influence so to speak? It is much more sleaze-rock-orientated (GNR, The Almighty, Mc Queen Street, Skid Row) than this AC/DC stuff you did with Thundermother.

None of those bands are our influence (laughs). So it's really funny that you mentioned that because everyone hears what I guess they are listening to themselves. Our influences have been more Van Halen, Queen, Led Zeppelin on this record and I guess there's a mixture of that on the album, I do like Sebastian Bach as a vocalist and Skid Row of course, too. So I guess you could say it's a little bit of Skid Row and Guns n ' Roses mixed into that. Iron Maiden and a lot more stuff…it's a mixture of everything that we love.

What about the lyrics? I don't have them and the music sounds pretty much like a party.

No, only "P.S.Y.C.H.O." is some kind of party song. The rest of the album takes you through the grief that we felt and all the feelings that we went through while dealing with all this heartache we had to deal with. If you have the time and listen to the lyrics you can basically follow through the emotional rollercoaster it was for us. We have some faster songs that we enjoy and we also had in mind while writing the album that we would be able to play them live and we wanted to have a mixture of songs. We have "Force Of Nature", "Queens" and obviously "P.S.Y.C.H.O." that could go under the umbrella of "party songs".

So this is more a "fuck off"-album to cope with the whole situation you experienced?

It's an empowering and not-giving-up album. It's a hopeful record. We go through emotions but there is always a glimpse of hope, empowerment, and self-love which has always been super important for us. It's a message that we believe in and something that we live and breathe and it came out on the album, too.

Apart from The Gems, you have a solo project. How is it currently going on with that?

It's on hold. In 2023 I wrote a lot of songs for it that I was dying to put out but everything that happened has taken a lot of time to rebuild the whole band. So my main focus was just to rebuild and have this new band up and running because I love being part of a band. But my solo career is definitely something I'm gonna work on as soon as I have time and I will keep releasing stuff just kind of randomly, no specific way for now (laughs).

I've read that you worked together with the producer from The Black Eyed Peas in 2014 because you won a song contest.

Yeah, exactly. I won a songwriting contest when I lived in America. I studied in Los Angeles at a school called Musician's Institute and while being there I had a teacher, Robin Randall, who pushed me to do my own songwriting, which I am super grateful for. She really encouraged me to write my own stuff because she saw something in me and I did write a few songs there and ended up winning the showcase and got to record an EP with Darryl Swan. I guess he's mostly famous for working with Macy Gray. He was super cool.

Cool. Did you think about collaborating with any of those bands in the future?

I mean I would love to in the future but you need to be famous enough to get a chance (laughs). I'm open to any collaboration if I like the music. I mean all of us three in The Gems like a lot of different styles of music.

I read that you had some cancer-related surgeries. Is everything fine with you again?

Thank you for asking. I had it twice. 2019 and then it came back in 2021. I was lucky because it was a tumor that was encapsulated so they could take it out. I didn't have to do any chemo or anything like that but I still go on regular checkups. After this summer I'm only gonna go two times a year which is like going towards not going there at all. You have to have a check-up for five years. It was a very tough thing to go through.

And of course just like every band you want to perform your music live – are there any plans for a tour so far? I couldn't find any information about this.

Yes! We are planning a four-week long European tour in the fall which I think we will release in a few weeks. I'm excited about that. We have to update our website, so it's always updated like our Instagram and Facebook which always are updated with the latest info. We have shows in Sweden, and some festivals - we're playing Reload in Germany and some other festivals. I'm excited for all that.

The last words are yours!

We appreciate everyone who is supporting The Gems and who joined us on this new journey, I think it is gonna be a very interesting ride. Follow us on all our social media accounts and if you use Spotify, we would really appreciate it if you would make sure to follow us on there and also subscribe to our YouTube channel because we're trying to build that as well. We've already released some acoustic tracks there, tutorials and all kinds of fun stuff. And finally, I'm excited to see you guys on tour!

"Christus Hypercubus" is the new album by Swiss death metal legends Messiah (read my review here). I talked with drummer Steve Karrer about the changes that came up with the album (of course about the tragic passing of their former member Andy Kaina) and we also did a very cool and interesting throwback into Messiah's past while we were sipping some local beers. Enjoy the interview and of course the new album. Cheers!!

Michael

Hi Steve, how are you doing?

Great. We are just rehearsing our live set for the release party on the 16th of March. This is going to be a long set with about 90 minutes playing time and the very special challenge is to rehearse the new songs together. We still have to do a little bit more but it really makes fun to play them.

Your new album "Christus Hypercubus" will be released soon. What are the most significant changes to your last album "Mont Fracmont"?

The line-up of course, you already mentioned it in your review. Andy quit (and was replaced by Marcus Seebach; M.) and died a year later which made us very concerned because we still were in contact and kept being friends. A little bit longer on board is V.O. whom I know like the back of my hands because I played with him in Gurd for 15 years and have known him since the 80s. He is an old friend who returned; 1987 he replaced Brögi for a short time and some shows. So he played practically before me in Messiah (laughs). The change probably also comes through these two guys. V.O. wrote 4 songs and Markus' voice gives the band some kind of new appearance. I think we have searched very well for a new vocalist. He should have this classic old school voice but he didn't need to sound like Andy but not too modern so that it would match to our sound. And this we accomplished very well, I guess and so we have the right person on board, also when it comes to the human aspect.

Did Marcus also participate in the songwriting process?

He did the lyrics for 'Acid Fish'. Brögi is always the hyper creative guy. He gets some kind of burst and then suddenly he shoots out these riffs and with them come some ideas for the lyrics. In some parts, also for "Fracmont", Andy matched the lyrics on himself but mainly the ides come from Brögi. Musically we did 50:50 and we have a stupid drummer who injured himself while he was skiing so that I was absent for half a year. I injured my shoulder and broke my wrist and so the whole songwriting process changed. On "Fracmont" we had Brögis ideas and met for songwriting in the rehearsal room which was pretty much like in the 90s and very old school. For the new album I wasn't able to do some sessions so the guys did work with a drum computer and did some home recording. After that we did some changes in the progress and then I went to the studio and played my drums for these tracks.

What should we imagine when hearing the very cryptic title "Christus Hypercubus"? Is it a kind of homage to Dalí's painting "Corpus Hypercubus"?

Well, Brögi did some kind of comparison to to combination of belief and Christ and this tesseract and all this is pretty weird story. He gave me some notes what to tell about: the world is getting more and more compressed because there are more and more people and because of this and an issue in the matrix of mankind's question of evolution. The quintessence is that there isn't any more space and only the void and infinitive compressed mass. It's some kind of hypothesis about to be or not to be. Because of this also the titles which were always very special with Messiah. We don't have any titles like "Kill, Hate, Eat Al, Die Something" (laughs) but they are pretty hieroglyphic and what Messiah always dealt with.

Personally I think that the new album has become one of the best in your discography. The songs aren't that bulky like on the predecessor and they have a certain dynamic and freshness. Why did you decide to incorporate more catchy stuff?

We have two songwriters and V.O. stands for catchy. When he writes Gurd songs, he writes pretty easy sequences and we told him to write something fast. The result were some of these songs. What I found pretty cool was that he orientated himself at some old Messiah song, concerning the riffing and some other trademarks we incorporated into our songs back then. Brögi often sprawls in his songwriting and also with the lyrics (laughs). He is a very creative person who doesn't care about any quarters in the tact or any logic in the music and so he always says: "I am a feeling guy". So if a part only works 3 ½ times it is that way and quite often then I come along and say that this doesn't work (laughs).

So let me guess, the title track was written by Brögi?

No, this one is written by V.O..

Hm, okay. When I listened to it on the YouTube premiere I thought that it would be a very hard album if every song would sound like this one. This one is the one I don't get used to most.

I think this is one of the best songs, to be honest (laughs). It has some kind of unequal pace and I already heard comparisons like Meshuggah. So it is probably a little bit bulkier but since I understand the sequences and I can play it, it works better (laughs). I think this one really has a great impact when we perform it live. But you are right, this one is very bulky. But the opener 'Sikhote-Alin' is by Brögi though, for example.

This one is one of the tracks I wanted to talk about a little bit more in detail. What does 'Sikhote-Alin' deal with? I know that it was a meteorite that went down in Russia in 1947. When I hear such stories, I always have to think about the X-Files with the aliens and the black oil.

The inspiration was that he owns a fragment of this meteorite. So he wanted to write about that. Fortunately he gave me some info so that I can tell a little bit more about that. So he researched and it is about the origin of life on Earth. Related to mankind and the alleged ancestors, the primates, the theory of evolution by Darwin (especially selection and detection) is queried. Even the most adaptable species will not evolve continuously but the universe brings and takes back. That was with the impacts of meteorites, the disappearing of the dinosaurs and eventually also mankind (laughs). This is very philosophical again.

'Venus Baroness I and II' is split into two parts. What is this about and why did you decide to split the track?

I come back to my notes. 'The Venus Baroness I' is about the transmigration of a soul from a prevented female pharaoh named "Neith", daughter of duke Djehuti Nacht who got assassinated. The source for that comes from the Berlin-Brandenburgische Academy of Sciences. The voices in the intro come from the Saxon Academy Of Sciences according to the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptia who excerpted and edited them. Although it is not scientifically proven if the Egyptians sounded like that 2000 years ago. The topic in this song is the transmigration of souls of the deceased with the help of a sun barque which follows the equinox and leads ad astra. That was the belief of the Egyptians; that life would continue in a future world.

The second part he created by himself. Neith comes back to Earth after having traveled and becoming one with planet Venus, hoping to find a better world. She uses the soul of the mentally retarded girl Shelley. But Neith recognizes that the world hasn't turned out to be a better place than it was 4000 years ago and decides to return to Venus. Shelly dies but she sees the world like it actually is and what remains hidden to the future rulers of the world.

So you split the song into two parts because of the two different stories…

Yes and because you do this with strange music (laughs). We had this concept album Rotten Perish and he likes telling stories. This one isn't a concept album but these lyrics have something in common and so they follow in row and I think they are pretty good for the end of the album. But with the running time of them, this is a long finale (laughs).

Ah, "Rotten Perish" was my first Messiah album and I still love this one.

We had 10 months for writing that record back then. We just had released Choir Of Horrors and after that the label drew the option and told us to release another album within one year. 10 months later we were recording and this was pretty much stressful.  Considering all this, I guess the album has turned out pretty great. And we wrote some more songs because we didn't have enough stuff. In these days it was like to better have 90 minutes than 45 on an album.

Haha, I remember reading an interview where you talked about being in a boys' choir.

It was a boys choir from Berlin called Omnibus and the choir director was the vocal teacher of Nina Hagen he incidentally told us. That was pretty cool. And he was that strict to the boys – they came with 10 boys and 2 mothers and 6 were allowed to enter the studio. So he told them that everybody had three chances and if one screws it up, he is out and will be replaced. We all were a little bit perplexed how he treated the little boys. He told us that he had 40 boys in the choir and if it doesn't work this way you will founder.

Haha, since I am a teacher I know that you have to talk with the kids sometimes a little bit harsher!

Well, I think nowadays you should be careful what you're saying otherwise their parents will come to visit you. But it was an exciting thing. Also with the girl who spoke. We recorded it in the Morissound studio and she was the daughter of the cleaner of the studio. It was told to her that we need an "angel" and she said that she has an angel and put the girl into a white dress and brought her with her. The mother auditioned the lines and the girl repeated it then and so they recorded it. But everything was self-made, nothing was copied, also the melody-line was created by the chorus director himself.

Coming to the predecessor "Choir Of Horrors" – I think that the production is very weak when it comes to the vocals. This is really a pity.

Yes, that was not the best one. But check the remastered version from High Roller Records by Patrick W. Engel. There you can hear the vocals much better and it sounds like in the past like it should have been there. It has pretty much power. It is a pity that they are so faded because I think the album is my favorite one. We also play more songs from Choir Of Horrors than from Rotten Perish live and Rotten Perish is quite bulky in some parts in my opinion (laughs). But there are a lot of people who like this one and sometimes we have to respect that. We also played 'For Those Who Will Fail' but it really didn't turn out great live and never was good to play live. In contrast to the record version.

What about "Underground"? Do you still play songs from that one, haha?

No (laughs). I think for the days back then, the production was really great and musically it was a very important album for me for a long time. The song writing was really good but it was probably the "Endorama" by Messiah (laughs). You were searching for something and didn't find it: a new vocalist who wasn't allowed to shout like Andy so that poor Christofer (Johnson; M.) had to try to sing but wasn't able to and so it sounds.

Hm, yes…especially this 'Ballad Of Jesus' song was em, well….

Of this one exists also a remix CD with four or five different versions on it.

Haha, unfortunately I don't have it, haha!!

We went with the trend back then, do you know (laughs).

You're going to play your record release show with your compatriots in Commaniac and Poltergeist who aren't really newcomers. Comaniac released a superb last album a few months ago. Do you recommend some other, newer bands from Switzerland who the people should support?

Yes, Klaw is a very recommendable band. The guitarist also plays in Poltergeist and Pat from Gurd plays second guitar. It is very technical thrash metal and they have a very young vocalist who is about 20. I already heard some new recordings and it sounds pretty cool. Also Vorax, they are doing some kind of dinosaur metal (laughs)

Pardon? What do they do?

Dinosaur metal. They have a dinosaur in their logo and is a little bit like Bolt Thrower when you listen to the groove. Our bassist Patrick is playing there and that is all I have on the radar at the moment.

And the reason Comaniac are playing with us is because when I had to quit because of my injury we had to decide if we would quit PartySan and other shows or not. I asked Stefan from Comaniac  and he did a super job for the first show Marcus did but not at PartySan where I could play again. So he learned the whole stuff for just one show. I told him that he can play PartySan or we do 50/50 but he insisted that I should play if I can. So this is a part of our thank you to them and also because we like the band.

Finally a little quiz. Yesterday I was at Abbath in Dortmund and wore my old Psychomorphia shirt. There was a guy who asked me if I knew which two Death songs Messiah did cover back in 1987. Do you know that?

'Baptized In Blood' for sure and the other one I can't remember. I saw them back then and V.O. played guitar there. But I don't know. But you can find a video for 'Baptized In Blood' on YouTube. I really have no idea. 'Scream Bloody Gore'?

No, 'Evil Dead'.

Ah,yes! 'Evil Dead', of course!

Haha, so we completed each other. Steve, thank you very much for the nice interview.

Thank you, too, Michael!