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The voice of Stephan Groth
Apoptygma Berzerk are once again back in the spotlight. The new album "Harmonizer" has just been released and the band are back on the roads for a European and US tour. We had the opportunity to sit down with the mind behind Apoptygma, Stephan Groth, in the bands tour bus and with the official Apop tour drink, Jack Daniels with cola, in our hands.
Like many other bands in this scene Apoptygma Berzerk are being accused of becoming too mainstream. The question is if this has ben done intentionally or what's going on? Stephan tries to explain.
- No, it's not intentional. I think that I haven't changed my music that much, but the rest of the world have changed drastically. If this album was put out ten years ago it would be a very underground record. But since the world has changed, like in the mainstream charts you find stuff that never would be popular ten years ago. And stuff that is in the charts now, especially in Germany, is stuff that would have been considered underground just a few years ago. I think that I've been doing more or less the same kind of music all the way. From the beginning, of course it was much more extreme, like back in 1991. It was more hardcore EBM scene related, but during the years I wanted to create my own sound. Like in the first years we only tried to sound like Front 242, or DAF or
whatever. That was the main important thing, but then after a while we decided that we wanted to try to find something that was only Apop. That's what we are trying to do now.
One starts to wonder how you deal with being criticized all the time.
- It's not a problem anymore because it's the same every time. When we released the "7" album I got so much shit, everybody hated it. All the reviews we got was the worst, in one of the biggest German magazines we got a three out of ten. Now it's a classic album. Then we put out "Welcome To Earth" and the same shit happened again. After the tour everybody loved it. Now it's "Harmonizer" and it's the same thing again. So when people are being a bit sceptic about a new album is a good sign to me, because it means that they at least care and that's the most important thing for me.
I guess the fact that the band has been working with producer Alan Cohen, who have produced a lot of big bands in different genres over the years, has made people sceptic about "Harmonizer". Were there any differences when recording this album, like the way it has been produced?
- Not really. He actually started out as a synth/EBM producer. He released tracks on some of the old classic labels like Antler, Subway and KK. Back in the days, when it was strictly EBM. So he's been doing everything. He's been doing hip hop, reggae and American industrial like Nine Inch Nails stuff. He's been working with everything, because he's a very good technician. And that's exactly what we used him for, because I'm not good enough. I'm a songwriter and I'm not good with the whole tweaking and stereo and frequencies and all that stuff. So we hired him to get a professional sounding album.
Stephan, who is often referred to as a musically schizophrenic man has flirted with a lot of different genres within electronic music. So what was the biggest inspiration when recording the new album?
- What I've been the most musically inspired by the last year... usually when I make a new album I don't listen to anything else. I don't listen to the radio or MTV, I don't buy records. I wanted to find my own sound, and therefore I'm not trying to listen to everything that's going on while I'm in the studio. But of course you're always inspired. Everything you make is a product of what you've heard. So I guess the last Faithless album and the last Depeche mode album has been very important to me when I made this album.
When you listen to "Harmonizer" you can notice that every song sounds a lot different from the other.
- I think personally when you make an album with like ten tracks, and every song is the same style - to me that is boring. It's like buying a gothic compilation or a trance compilation. I want my record to be like a journey, an adventure, and I guide the listener through a story in a way.
The first single from the album is "Until the End of the World", which they also recorded a video for in the deserts of Nevada, or, at least half of it. The other half was recorded in the city of Bangkok. Stephan tells us that is was a really cool experience to be in the desert and that he's very pleased with the video. It´has a kind of a cyber feeling to it with the contrast between the desert wasteland and the big city.
So are you going to make any videos for the forthcoming singles?
- We shot a video for the song "Suffer in Silence". There's also some stuff for... actually I don't know which is going to be the next single, but we shot some stuff that we can use. Maybe it's going to be one single for Scandinavia, one for America and one for Germany, depending on what the label think is the best single to release.
When asked what Stephan is most proud of with the new album he jokes and says that it's the one thing he didn't do: the cover. But as it turns out this is not entirely a joke. When he says the cover he means the one for the limited edition release which is a digipack. It's printed in six colors, a normal record is in four colors and it has golden and silver stripes on it, and also a kind of lacquer so you can put your fingers on it and feel the textures, like for blind people. But of course he's pleased with the album in full and it's the result of more than a year of hard work.
There's probably not a single Apoptygma fan who hasn't noticed that one of the band's live musicians Geir Bratland was a participant of the Scandinavian version of the docu soap "Temptation Island". So, of course we had to ask if this has given the band any more notice.
- What any of the guys do in private, I don't care. It has definitely opened new doors, especially when it comes to promotion 'cause all the biggest newspapers wrote about the new Apoptygma album. So I just rolled with it to get as much from it as possible. If that will introduce this music to people who normally wouldn't listen to it, then that's totally cool with me. It's nothing that I take that seriously and I hope nobody takes Temptation Island seriously.
So what can we look forward to in the future from Apoptygma Berzerk and also from your side projects?
- I haven't made that many plans. We have to get back from the tour and then we start the strategic thinking. Right now, I feel that I just want to make music and do the stuff that I like and hopefully other people will like it too, and so far it has worked out pretty good. As for the side projects, I haven't had time really. Over the last three years I've been either touring or in the studio. But after the tour I'm going to finish a Total Transformation album, which is almost done. It's going to be totally different from the first one.
With these last words we had to leave Stephan so he could get prepared for the show, which that night took place at Club Tech Noir in Stockholm, Sweden.
/Mattias Andersson & Sami Sinervä
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Photo by Olaf Heine
Photo by Olaf Heine
Photo by Olaf Heine
Alon Cohen (producer) and Stephan Groth
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