Sterbhaus has always moved at its own angle. When Marcus Hammarström looks back on the Stockholm band, he remembers a five-piece that began in 2007 with little interest in taking much too seriously, to the point where Meshuggah and people around them jokingly dubbed them “the joke band from Stockholm”. That first version of the band gave way to something sharper around 2011. From there came a debut full-length in 2013, a sound Marcus still calls “Metal Deluxe”, and a catalogue that pulls from thrash, heavy metal, black, death and progressive music without settling neatly into one lane.
Even then, the story did not move in a straight line. Sterbhaus disbanded around 2019, but only with the idea of tying up loose ends and finishing what it had started. That stretch brought a live album that hit No. 1 in Sweden’s physical sales chart, a full concert film, and now Next Akin to Chaos, the final Sterbhaus album. Marcus, who also has a past in Elvira Madigan and Shining and is currently active in Veile with Charles Hedger of Mayhem, still stands at the centre of it on vocals and bass, alongside guitarist Jimmy Ahovalli and drummer Erik Röjås. Strange ingredient or not, Sterbhaus sounds perfectly comfortable taking its own route.
“Writing an album instead of a bunch of singles is a different mindset.”
Next Akin to Chaos has a title that feels broad enough to cover a lot of ground, but the songs themselves are very pointed and specific. What tied this record together for you when you were writing it?
Marcus Hammarström: I would say the general desire to make great heavy metal. It is not necessarily about all those many different branches like black, death, thrash and all that, and that is why we coined the whole “Metal Deluxe” thing. Since we all listen to quite a variety of music, it all comes out in different forms, but this time I am especially happy with how diverse the album is and how our 70s and 80s inspirations come across more clearly. I myself listen far more to 70s prog and hard rock than I do to extreme music. And when I do listen to extreme music, it is generally quite kooky and experimental stuff like Abigor, Funeral Oration, Mekong Delta and other music that explores the imagination, though I am not so sure that rubs off on our music, maybe when it comes to strange riffs.
Like I mentioned, it is quite varied, and that in itself ties things together for me. Writing an album instead of a bunch of singles is a different mindset, and you never want to repeat yourself too much while still making something coherent. I truly think we accomplished that, because every single song sounds very much like Sterbhaus, even though some are super proggy, some are more blackish, some are thrashy, and some could almost be straight heavy metal if not for the harshness of my vocals. This whole affair of writing music comes extremely naturally to us, and we never actually choose a direction. The riffs decide.
There is a real sense of wit running through this album, even when the material is vicious. Songs like “Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus have a Sword Fight” and “Bad Workers are Slaves… And Dead!” hit hard, but they also sound like they enjoy twisting the knife. How do you keep that balance between anger, humour and pure contempt?
I guess it is my weird brain that is mostly responsible for this. It is much like writing music, really, and it boils down to us being dudes who like to have a good laugh, who enjoy stuff that makes you actively think, and who are probably a bit more misanthropic regarding the overall purpose of the human race, which I honestly think is non-existing, and general human behaviour. But like you say, it is a balance as well, and sometimes I need to work a bit more to cross that finish line.
For instance, with “Wrecking the World”, I worked a lot on that lyric because it was initially too straight to the point, which can become juvenile and a bit less charming. I then made it more lyrically poetic and less on the nose, but then it lost the punch and the humour. So I was tossing lines back and forth until I got what I wanted. And of course, it is not just about spitting words. It needs to make sense when delivered as vocals and as something that sounds like a kickass song.
Man, I think “The Autopsy of the Intergalactic John Doe” was the major nightmare on this album. I almost dropped the whole song, but I felt it was really important to the overall balance of the record. So I stuck to my guns for years until I thought it made sense. The problem with that one is that the hook of the lyrics is in the verse, which makes the choruses and other parts harder to bring across as catchy.
The anti-religious streak is right there in the band’s themes and all over parts of this record, especially on “Wrecking the World”. What still keeps that subject alive for you as a writer?
This is a better question than you might realise, actually. Because let us face it, the metal realm has been bashing religion since bloody forever, so there is always this enormous risk of the topic growing stale, boring, watered down and just yesterday’s news in general. However, I must say that I do not ever actively analyse or scrutinise whether I am at risk of falling into that trap. The reason is that we deal in irony, which is quite stupid sometimes because irony is hard to get across in lyrics and music, humour, and ridiculing the folly of religion, rather than just wielding hateful slurs or immature and ignorant lines.
Using the wit and force of well-crafted lines can be a razor-sharp tool, and as a music lover I have always been interested when other artists do this. So when I write lyrics or concepts, there tend to be quite a few points I want to make, but dressed up in a way that makes you smirk and possibly silently agree that, yeah, this whole thing actually is completely stupid if you think about it. So because of this angle, delivering those messages still feels very much alive and original to me.
There is an obvious Achilles’ heel in putting so much effort into lyrics, though, and I sometimes really wonder why I do it, because I suspect most people do not really bother to look closely at what is being said. It is like Ian Gillan of Deep Purple said some years ago, “as long as it sounds cool with the music, that is what counts.” That is kind of a sad observation, but most likely true.
“Even though the titles may come off weird, they are all thoughtfully crafted in some strange way and derive from the lyrics, with indirect references to something else.”
There is also a stranger side to the album, with titles like “The Evildoer of Pixelville” and “The Autopsy of the Intergalactic John Doe”. Where does that more surreal or offbeat side of Sterbhaus come from?
It all comes down to what is in the pot, you know. And in that pot are a few dudes with a specific kind of humour and a special way of thinking about and approaching most topics. When we create stuff, this comes out as naturally as apple pie. Even though the titles may come off weird, they are all thoughtfully crafted in some strange way and derive from the lyrics, with indirect references to something else.
“The Evildoer of Pixelville” is about some aspects of the mindlessness of gaming culture when it comes to violence. I see a huge difference between headshots and slit throats in Counter-Strike and doing the same in Assassin’s Creed, because Counter-Strike eliminates anything creative or artistically expressive. And how machine guns and general warfare hardware fetish are apparently the shit. Well, I am not really trying to come off as this moral tight-ass that I guess I am, but it is an observation that realistic warfare as entertainment maybe is not that fun if, right next door, your neighbours and friends are getting raped and slaughtered in reality. “Pixelville” is a self-made reference to the digital world on the screen, so it is one of those examples where I come up with stuff to paint a picture.
When it comes to “The Autopsy of the Intergalactic John Doe”, that one is much more light-hearted and has zero moral uptightness. It is about how unfamiliar faces in Star Trek episodes, mostly the original series, TNG and the 90s stuff, are there for the sole purpose of dying and therefore establishing some sort of danger. The main characters always survive, so if you are beaming down and your character is new to the episode, there is a good chance you are not making it back. And of course, an unfamiliar corpse in real life is usually referred to as a John or Jane Doe. By the time we wrote the outlines of this song, the film “The Autopsy of Jane Doe” had come out, and we just referenced that. It is all in good fun, really.
When a Sterbhaus song is taking shape, how do you decide what kind of beast it needs to become?
Actually, the shape itself decides. I would say it almost always starts with one or two riffs, in general. There are odd exceptions, like “The Autopsy of the Intergalactic John Doe”, which actually started with the vocal lines in the verses, and we then started making music out of that. But normally either one person brings almost an entire song to the table and we tweak and rewrite it to fit whatever extra stuff we come up with, or to fit the vocals once those are done, because we want our music to have vocals guiding most of it.
It is either that, or we start writing together by jamming or sitting by the computer with a starting point of a few riffs. It is rarely a conscious choice what kind of song it becomes. It is not like we decide to make something black metal, then revise that halfway through and turn it into something more thrash metal. The riffs and the material dictate that for us, and we enjoy the ride while perfecting the arrangements and the song in general.
“They say the devil is in the details, and to make the devil’s music, well, then it is just a case of getting busy with a billion details.”
You produced the album, with Euge Valovirta handling the mix and master. What was most important to you on the sound side this time, especially with a record that has so much bite and personality in the writing?
I was reaaaally a pain in the ass when we were mixing. Poor Euge Valovirta had to work like a maniac to tweak most everything, and he either occasionally got a little fed up with me or eventually understood that those details made the production a lot better. They say the devil is in the details, and to make the devil’s music, well, then it is just a case of getting busy with a billion details.
Since I was producing this on my own, I had a very specific vision, and I could already hear how the songs should sound before we recorded them. Euge and I know each other from our time in the extreme metal band Shining, and I first reached out to him mostly for advice on the A&R side of things, since he used to work in A&R for Spinefarm and Universal. But then we started talking about him mixing it, and it turned out to be the best choice for this album. He understood naturally that it needed to be raw, as organic as possible, and that you should hear that people are actually playing this, rather than hearing a pure studio creation. He wanted to make it feel like the band was playing right in front of you, which meant it had to be loud and energetic. That is how Sterbhaus is live, so that was perfect.
I think I eventually ended up working too much on the album, though, and by the time we were mastering I seemed to find faults in almost every detail. He had to pull the handbrake a bit, and he was right to do so. You know, enough is enough, because by that time the album was bloody perfect.
“Africa in general is still not thought of much when people talk about metal.”
AFRICA.ROCKS reaches readers across a lot of African underground scenes, many of whom may be coming to Sterbhaus for the first time through this interview. For someone landing on Next Akin to Chaos with fresh ears, which track would you want them to start with, and what does it say about the band right now?
First of all, I am actually really excited about this whole thing. I mean being featured here, because let us face it, Africa in general is still not thought of much when people talk about metal. So I truly hope Africa grows stronger and stronger within the scene, and the fact that this site exists is truly awesome.
As for what song to start with, well, every Sterbhaus album consists only of killers and has no fillers. That has been our motto. So you can basically hit that shuffle button for all I know. Having said that, the album is pretty varied. Why not start from the beginning with “Deth Bu Wolfe”, because it is pretty straightforward and gives a good hint of what the rest of the album is about. If your cup of tea is very long epics, then the 17-minute “Abhorrence” is your song. If you prefer mid-tempo material, then “Wrecking the World” or “Master of the Hunt” is a good choice. Fiercely progressive stuff comes in the guise of “The Man Who Was a Rat, Who Was a Snake”. Riff mania comes in most every song, but “Whippersnapper” is a good recommendation, and the fast tremolo riffing of “The Evildoer of Pixelville” might suit those who listen more to black metal. I do not know. Everyone seems to have their own favourite.
Pick up Next Akin to Chaos on Bandcamp.
