CLOSER

A darker kind of salvation

Hailed from Sweden, death metal band CLOSER has a potential to become another rising star of Scandinavian metal scene in a very short amount of time. Released a few months ago throught Pulverised Records band's debut album contains a delicious coctail of heaviness and groove with some Swedish melodic death metal ingredients. A few days ago CLOSER vocalist and guitarist Per Bergquist met up with Metal Portal to discuss „A Darker Kind Of Salvation” and some other aspects of band's activity.

-CLOSER was founded in 2005 so it's still a relatively young band but listening to your debut album „A Darker Kind Of Salvation” there can be heard a lot of maturity in your songwriting and playing. Did you play in any other bands before? Are you experienced musicians?
Well I wouldn’t call us that experienced but we all are self learned in what we play and we love every minute we can get on stage and such. Johannes is not a real metal-head like us others and I think that gives us another dimension in how we play and put our songs together. All of us played in other band as we grew up to become the Closer of today.

-Can we say that CLOSER is your one and only band? The question is justified since Swedes have been known for playing simultaneously in many bands, projects, side projects, tribute acts and so on...
Per and Johannes are playing in other bands right now, Per in The Bereaved and Johannes in Alva.

-How did you actually come up with the idea to form this band and follow a metal direction? What forced you to express yourselves that way?
The Idea of the band is a long story, but we have always liked metal because it’s a combination of good songwriting and hard technical instrumental work. We have all grown up with metal and hard-rock in one or another way, so it came natural to keep it into the metal-scene.

-You have a record deal, the frist album has been released some time ago and met with a pretty good response. So, now everything is going great for you guys. But beginnings are always hard. What were the biggest obstacles for you to reach the point where you are now?
The biggest obstacle I think is to get out there on the road and show that we are so good on stage, playing live is our strongest feature I think. It’s the greatest feeling in the world when you can share the energy and power that comes with playing metal.

-Unlike all those bands who can make a living off playing music CLOSER members holds regular jobs. What it is like to balance music with a regular, full time job?
So far it’s working for all of us, it’s hard nowadays to live only on your music and touring, you have to be a really big band to pull it of. The only downside is that we don’t get to practice as much as we would like as I live in another city from the others.

-You come from Sweden. As far as I know there's a very favourable atmosphere in your country for young, talented people interested in art. Can you confirm that? Do you get any support from your government?
Yes I can confirm that Sweden has a big cultural heritage, but we don’t get any support from our government. We have to struggle as hard as many other bands in other countries do.

-People in Scandinavia, but especially in Sweden are very musical. What is in your opinion the reason for that?
I think what makes Sweden so great in metal is that we strive to progress and create something new all the time, you see a lot of kids that love the older bands and takes their music and mixes them with their own. Then we mostly are excellent live and really cool people, hehe…

-Ok, let's get closer to CLOSER. By the way, how long did it take to find your band's name? Not too long, I guess?
Once we were called Withered about to release an album on a label that was called Armageddon Media, but they screwed us over and the album was never released. So we decided to start all over with a name change and all. We wanted something short and something that people could relate and remember, so Closer popped up from Per I think it was and we all decided it could work.

-Band's first official release, I mean the EP entitled „Darkness In Me” was released by Pulverised Records in 2006. How did it happen? Did you send them any demo recordings first? Were there any?
“Darkness In Me” was original a demo recording named “Nothing Is Everything” from us that would state us as a new band and our new start. So we saved up some cash, nailed all the songs and went into a well known and great studio called Studio Mega. After that we posted a lot of envelopes to magazines and labels trying to get our voice heard. Close Up Magazine here in Sweden liked it and named us Best Unsigned Band in Sweden and then recommended us to the label Pulverised records in Singapore and they wanted to release the demo as an EP.


-Many people haven't heard the EP so I think it's a pretty good idea to describe this material in a few words. How much does that EP differ musically from your newest recordings?
I don’t think that the music is so different now from then with the two recordings, it’s heavy, fast and catchy like the new work. We just took it to another level I guess with how we recorded it and how we wrote it. But my vocals is one of the things that has developed the most between the two, for better or worse you tell me!

-Two year later you released your full length debut album „A Darker Kind Of Salvation”. During its completion guitarist Jonas Skoog decided to left the band due to lack of motivation and time. Have you already found a permanent replacement for Jonas?
No we haven’t found a new replacement for Jonas yet, there are some that has shown interest but it’s hard to find someone to replace a good friend and band mate like Jonas was. Now it’s working real good with only four of us and we keep moving forward, four or five doesn’t matter right now.

-Actually, where does your motivation to play in this band come from? What is that, what keeps you together, moving in the same direction?
I think everyone in the band wants to see Closer on the big stages. We know that we have the quality to compete with the big names in the metal-scene. That’s why we’re keeping it up and won’t give up until we have reached our goal! The musically directions of our members are far from the same, we often discuss our material and what direction Closer are heading for.

-Released last year, „A Darker Kind Of Salvation” is a pretty good album. It won't change the world for sure, but there's no reason to feel ashamed of anything you did on it. It's well written and played, also well produced. Many bands could only dream of such a solid debut release. How do you feel about that album? Are you totally satisfied?
As you said, it’s a solid debut album that can compete with the big names! But you can never get totally satisfied. We all are perfectionists when it comes to music, and you always come up with new ideas that you could have done in the songs. But we truly feel that it’s a great debut album!

-Your music can be generally described as melodic death metal with some atmospheric and doom metal indredients. Songs like „Open Your Eyes” or „It Dwells In Darkness” combining heavy, powerfull riffs with some epic keyboards and dark melodies are good example for that. How would you describe your music style to anyone who hasn't heard your music yet?
We have many influences and our songs are pretty different, but still Closer. So generally speaking I would describe our music as "stylish darkness with an evil swing!".

-Could you tell me some more about your musical inspirations? Could you define your taste in music in three particular albums? Would it be possible?
Ooh that’s a tough one! But for me personally I guess the first album do describe me musically would be “Restless and Wild” with Accept, the second “Death Metal” with Dismember and the third it’s hard to chose between “Nightmares Made Flesh” with Bloodbath and “Cruelty And The Beast with cradle Of Filth. But everything influents me in the way that I write lyrics and all, good lyrics is everything in a song. And of course a badass ‘80s guitar solo!

-Now I'd like to talk for a while about your dark and quite pesimistic lyrics. Where do you look for inspiration to write such gloomy stories?
All the lyrics that I write comes out of my thoughts and feelings, the album is basically me dealing with everything that happened when I had a personal meltdown a few years back. Reading other bands lyrics is also a big influence and great inspiration for me, a few that I love is Dani Filth from Cradle of Filth, Anders Fridén from In Flames, Mikael Stanne in Dark Tranquillity and Jonas Renkse from Katatonia, I always loved the dark and gloomy side of life as I never had any other experience from it..

-Could you tell me some more about „A Darker Kind Of Salvation” lyrical concept? What does that „darker salvation” mean?
Um for me the salvation stood and stands for suicide, is the darker way to escape from everything. The lyrics describes what I felt and went through to deal with the pain and sorrow that came from breaking up with the love of my life, I know it’s a cliché to write about it but it’s easier to write when you are down than when you are happy. But the meaning for me could be another meaning for someone else who reads them, I don’t want people to just read them from my point of view. Pain is something big in this world for kids and adults and I just would want everyone to just listen to each other sometimes, for me it helps a lot to write down what I think and feel. Don’t just hide from the world and everything, that’s when the bad ideas and things happen.