Anders begins with introducing the band. He tells that he plays guitar and writes all the lyrics.
“John Henriksson is our drummer and is also a trained sound-tech and operates studio Blastbeat where we rehearse. He is a founding member alongside me and Max Bergman who plays bass. Stefan Kihlgren is our other guitarist and although we both write the equal amount of music and are about equally skilled, he is much better at writing solos so I guess that makes him the lead guitarist. Mikael ”Aron” Aronsson is the singer and he joined in 2003 and really added the last piece of the puzzle.”

The band was formed in April 2001, and in contradiction to many bands out there My Own Grave have only witnessed one line-up change in the band’s eight years’ existence, a change that happened six ago when Aaron replaced the original singer Ramin Farhadian. Anders informs us about the tragic circumstances surrounding their debut album.
“Aron’s first real imprint was the vocals for our fourth demo ”Progression Through Deterioration” which landed us a record deal with Karmageddon Records in 2004. We renovated some of the best demo songs, and wrote some new ones (about 50%), and recorded the debut album ”Unleash” at Studio Necromorbus with producer Widda (Demonical, Diabolical) in Autumn 2004. When it finally came out in January 2006, Karmageddon declared bankruptcy and we got no help with promotion or touring. In September 2006 we got the offer to join our friends Setherial on their European tour in December. Since we had evolved a lot from the musical style of “Unleash”, and were tired of all the “Unleash” songs, we decided to record a mini-album to have some new material to tour with. We signed with Pulverised Records and released “Unholy” in a limited tour edition in December 2006, and as a real digipack release in March 2007. We toured Sweden and Denmark again in winter/spring 2007 supporting first God Among Insects, and later Vital Remains.”

My Own Grave is a different kind of name for an extreme metal band. Obviously Anders had to explain the choice and to my surprise there’s more to it than what catches the eye.
“I came up with the name as a sort of paradox. The saying to dig one’s own grave is considered negative. Yet the world is digging a collective mass-grave, deeper and deeper, day by day. I decided that to dig your own grave in a world like that, is actually a positive thing. In LaVeyistic logic it means ruling over your own destiny; to live your life as you please so that you, at the end of the road, can be proud of the life you’ve lived and the name on the grave beneath which you will rot.”

My Own Grave write the songs as a band in the rehearsal room. Many bands have one or at most two songwriters and then just tell the others what to play. If not unique, it’s still a bit different that My Own Grave choose this path. However, Anders and Stefan come up with the riffs, and experience that the whole band is behind each single tune.
“All arrangements and actual songwriting is carried out in the rehearsal room. When the music of a song is finished, we do a rough recording which I take home and write lyrics to. Then I record the vocals to clarify my intentions with timing, scream lengths and such, and Aron records them again. The final vocals are usually a mixture between the two versions and we usually do minor changes to the music to fit with the lyrics or vice versa. This democratic way of writing music is very time-consuming but in the end the band as a whole is very satisfied with the final songs that make it unto the album. After all, we’re the ones who have to play the songs over and over again, and it just wouldn’t work for example if I wrote a song that John hated playing.”

Anders writes the lyrics, as told, while Aron sings them. And this time the theme is death, simply put.
“The album is about death and its role in human society throughout history. The lyrics of the title track sums up the concept I think. It’s about how the deeds of the dead always seem to overshadow the living, and how one can never accomplish true greatness until he dies and is immortalized by scholars, media, etc. It’s also fascinating how history has been manipulated throughout the centuries, and how fiction when uttered by many voices, and over a long period of time, becomes truth. Religion is a perfect example of that which the song “None Shall See” is about.

When My Own Grave started, Anders Härén informs us that they started out as a death/thrash band, and that Slayer was the main influence. But why did they choose to play this fast and extreme music?
“The concept from day one has been to play fast, extreme metal and speed is very important to us. Not for the sake of playing fast or playing faster than anyone else, but for the energy and the adrenaline it produces! The music we play nowadays is death metal, not death/thrash, but the members of MOG span many styles of extreme music and our philosophy is to try every idea at least once. That means you will always hear none-traditional death metal elements in our music, especially black metal which we are very found of. We are all big fans of Immortal, but then again we’re also big fans of Napalm Death, Vader, Carcass, and Darkthrone. We like to mix in the stuff we enjoy listening to but we don’t claim to do something “new and unique”.  I think the sound we developed on “Unholy” sounds like My Own Grave, and if you put on “Necrology” I believe you can still recognize that.”

Many bands seem to play their songs and that’s it. There’s nothing stirring going on and one album is followed by another. What are the goals of My Own Grave aside digging the band’s own grave…
“Our goal is to promote the hell out of this new album by playing live as much as we can. My Own Grave is a “live band”, and we put on a hell of show. By that I don’t mean that we have pyrotechnics, armours and swords, or even naked chicks! By a good show I mean that we put a lot of effort into rehearsing a professional live set, and that we mosh and bang our brains out every goddamn time! Meeting other metalheads and fans means a great deal to us and it’s important to put on a good show for the ones who show up, no matter how few they might be. At the moment we are in negotiations on many fronts, and the only thing I can confirm is that we will tour central Europe together with Demonical in February 2010. Also that we’re unbooked for October 2009 so we’re looking into that as well.”

Speaking of your Swedish friends Demonical, how is the Swedish scene these days and how would you compared it to the rest of the world? Anders is right when he says that the Swedish Death Metal scene emerged over 20 years ago and that he thinks it’s always been full of many, many, many talented bands.
“Over the years it has spread geographically and now there’s at least one prominent death metal band in every major or minor city! This means that there is really low demand for Swedish death metal in Sweden itself, and sometimes I think it’s easier to get gigs abroad (laughs). I try to keep track of all the good bands and a great many of them hang out with us at Global Domination (like Vomitory, Torture Division, and Sanctification) so those bands are easier to keep an eye on. And the local bands like Horde Of Hel, and Syn:drom, and upcomers like Godphobia or Daemonicus.
My impression of the international death metal scene is that there is still great comradeship, and that the interest for death metal is rising again after being somewhat diminished since the rise of black metal in the mid-90s and American crap metal/metalcore, or whatever it’s called, around the millennium-shift.”

But is Anders familiar with the Norwegian death metal scene, which is quite small after all?
“I’m afraid I’m not so familiar with the Norwegian death metal scene; the Norwegian music I digest is mainly black metal. Good Norwegian death metal bands that I can think of are Blood Red Throne and Zyklon. Perhaps Aeternus, and Keep Of Kalessin, do they count as death metal? I really enjoyed the “Armada” album.”

How would My Own Grave describe their own music, in this case the album “Necrology”? We let Anders finish off this interview with telling us the great aspects of the new album.
“When we wrote the material for “Unholy” we developed a certain method for songwriting, and a musical style that we have improved further on “Necrology”. We’ve put a lot of effort into writing the songs and constructing the theme of the album, and we are very fucking pleased with the result and with Swanö’s and Jon Zig’s contributions! Dan Swanö’s mix and master take our musicianship to a new level and the sound he created works perfectly for our music. It’s like a relentless wall of brutality! Swanö understands how to mix our take on death metal that spans not only traditional death metal but also sharp thrashy riffing, and atmospheric, evil black metal. Jon Zig also did a great job transforming the lyrical concept into grim, graphical renderings, seen both on the cover and inside the booklet. For me, “Necrology” is a solid album. Music, lyrics, sound, artwork – everything fits together.”

courtesy of www.eternal-terror.com
www.myowngrave.com
www.pulverised.net
www.sureshotworx.de

Composed by Stjernestøv aus The Sickening