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Face Down - Jocke Carlsson

23/03/05 || Global Domination

Interview by: Chazz, Hannastacia and Lord K Philipson

Face Down logo You don’t know Face Down? We can’t blame you. You DO know them you say? You should. Sweet thrashband from Sweden, now bound for some success when vocalist Marco Aro (ex-The Haunted) is back and the group’s been charging their batteries for some years. We needed to team up with loco/darling/sex-object Jocke Carlsson (guitars) to see what the fuck they are up to. We also needed to ask him some chick-questions, but more of that later.

Naturally… Am I on the guestlist?

Fuck off, sweetbeard. I mean it. Sorry about that, love. Of course you are. On any other band’s list besides ours, that is.

Back in 1999 or 2000, I don’t remember, we all thought we heard the end of Face Down… What happened? Did the split come after Marco left to join The Haunted or were you planning to split anyway?

I think we played our last show in February 1999, if I’m not mistaken. Could very well be the wrong date, but it was at Studion in Stockholm with support coming from Insania (Sthlm) and Hardcore Superstar. The attendance was something alike the gig portrayed in the first part of Bad News (“You didn’t let the dog in for free, did you?”).. I can’t really say that I blame Marco for leaving us at that point, even though it was hard to deal with at the time. I guess the band was pretty much done for anyway, as we didn’t have a label backing us (before that we had two labels that didn’t back us, so it wasn’t much of a difference anyway). If my memory serves me right, we were dealing with Music For Nations at the time. We had almost all the material written for a third record, but when I go back and listen to the material I have on tape from that period I’m actually glad we didn’t get a chance to record an album. Most of it lack the spark we had in the beginning, which we have found again now after resting for a while.

So, you guys decided to re-form… Why? It would be quite an exaggeration to say that the world’s been dying for you guys, right? What the hell happened with Marco getting back into the bunch? Was it all planned? Marco leaving for Haunted, getting some success, then he quits that band and gets right back to re-uniting with Face Down. Now all of a sudden you have a star in the band… Smart business move if you ask me. Did you keep in contact with the rest of the guys during that time off? You are in it only for the money and drugs, right?

Fuck if I know, I didn’t make it happen. I was happy to be asked though, I’ll tell you that. Even since we split up, I’ve felt we had some unfinished business of sorts to deal with, meaning I had more FD music in me that I wanted to record. I actually gave up on music for a couple of years before my other band General Surgery started doing stuff again, but I digress.. What happened was that our bass player called me up one day in April last year, and asked me if I wanted to do a third FD record. By that time, he’d already talked to Marco who was into it, so naturally I jumped on the chance after thinking about it for about 30 seconds. I think Marco missed being in a band, and this was a good opportunity for him to get back into making music while not having the pressure to tour all over the world again.. and as you pointed out, we get free publicity thanks to him, what a fucking bargain, eh? It works out good for everybody. I had not seen Marco for like 2-3 years before we sat down for the first meeting last spring, actually. Purjo I’ve had some sporadic contact with over the years as he ran a club here in Stockholm (along with a former FD member) called Machine Bar, which I used to frequent on occasion.

Where did the name “Face Down” come from? With a name like that I’d expect you guys to be in some hardcore band. Didn’t you used to go under the name “Machine God”? Who’s idea was that, and how long did you use that name? When I think about it… “Face Down” actually sounds pornographic. Care to elaborate?

When I joined the band in spring 1994, the band was still called Machine God. Yeah, the Machine Head album wasn’t released yet, thank you very much… It was when we found out about that album that we figured we had to change the name. I guess our bassist came up with the first name. I think we got the Face Down name from some gangster/police movie or something… Anyway, I still think it’s a great name. Easy to pronounce and the logo is readable. I won’t go into the pornographic aspect of it, you seem to have all the bases covered… you dirty slut.

What did you do during the 5 or 6 years Face Down was split up?

I quit music completely for two years, as I was so fed up and frustrated with the music business after dealing with it for 10 years. I figured I was going to finally make something of myself after working shit jobs (or not working at all) for the past 10+ years, so I studied computers for a while. Then I got a couple of IT-related jobs, and subsequently got fired after a while. So much for trying to become a regular citizen. During this time, we started up my old band General Surgery again and started making quite a lot of music, released a bunch of splits and played some shows starting from 2002 and onwards.

You fuckers were all set to play your first gig in like 6 years or something opening for Pain. Actually as I type this, the gig in question is happening this weekend (when you retards read this, it’s been a while since this gig was supposed to happen). I’d imagine Pain draws a pretty decent crowd so you guys were probably pumped as fuck, but you have cancelled the gig. What happened?

We cancelled that because it turned into too much of a hassle. Not worth our time for getting 30 minutes on stage playing in front of the two other bands. It would have been fun if the circumstances had been different though. Next time…

I heard you were planning on filming some of your live gigs later this year for a possible DVD. What’s the plan with that, is this for a bonus to be included with the album, or are you planning to release a full, separate DVD? And how the hell could you guys even have material for a full-DVD?

Fuck if I know. I’m just surprised they’re actually going ahead with this (Black Lodge, that is). It’s cool to document the shows, and I guess there’s no better way to document something than to bring in a full camera crew and shoot the show and the backstage stuff which I’m sure will be pretty interesting. I seriously doubt that this is gonna be released as a separate DVD with just this show on it. Maybe some footage will end up as bonus material on a future release, maybe we’ll use it for some kind of compilation DVD later on. We have about 15 songs we could play right now, so there’s no shortage of songs.

Your debut full-length was released on Soundfront/Roadrunner and the second album on Nuclear Blast. Why did you guys leave Roadrunner after only one album? You were dropped, right? I get the impression neither of those labels gave you much support anyways… Were those two labels at least gentle when they fucked you over or were they pretty randy about it?

We got dropped from RR pretty much instantly after the Soundfront folded. I don’t think they knew what to do with us in the first place, they just put out the record. We had a manager back then who took care of all the business and got us on tour with funding from Soundfront/RR. Needless to say, getting money from them was like pulling teeth, but at least we managed to go out for a full European tour with Napalm Death and Crowbar (and At The Gates for the last 5-6 shows), plus a headlining club tour in the UK after that. We also got Hultsfred in 1996 which was nice. Going on to Nuclear Blast.. well, that was just a clusterfuck of pretty gargantuan proportions that I prefer not to discuss in public. Don’t wanna get sued, you know. Let’s just say we had a couple of friendly people working for us at NBR, and even more people that just worked against us, which makes it hard for me to understand why they wanted to sign us in the first place. This period is one of the reasons I was wary about getting back into music at all. No, I’m not joking.

Did they ever give you mofo’s a royalty-check? Or do you still owe them 25 bux for the 2 albums you managed to sell during yer career?

I think you can figure that out by decrypting the info from the previous answer. Alright, honeybucket?

You have recorded in the past at the legendary Sunlight Studios with Tomas Skogsberg, any idea where you are planning to record this latest album? Have you chosen a producer yet? Would you care to explain why all the productions from Sunlight the last 600 years have sucked Cock De Luxe? Did Skogsberg just lose the touch?

Well, your partly right there. Out of all the stuff we recorded with Tomas, only three songs made it onto the 2nd record. The rest was re-recorded at DugOut Studio with Danne Bergstrand producing (as well as the whole first album). The reason for this was that NBR didn’t like the production that we got at Sunlight, so they actually made us re-record the whole album all over again in about two weeks. We spent 6 weeks on the original recording, I might add. It turned out good anyway, I think. The new album will be recorded at the Meshuggah/Clawfinger studio with Jocke Skog twiddling the knobs (not ours, hopefully). I hope he’s gonna get the best out of us. It’s gonna be a nice change to record in Stockholm, I hated commuting to Uppsala to record. I haven’t recorded anything at Sunlight since 1998, I can’t really comment on anything that has come out of there recently besides the Sayyadina stuff that sounded pretty killer, IMO. I think Sunlight got over-saturated, just like any other popular studio does after a while. Tomas is a great dude, I can’t say anything bad about him.

By the way, doesn’t it just fucken suck that the NHL-season is definitely off now? What team might you be rooting for and you DO know who’s the best player in the world is when it comes to hockey, right? A hint would be his jerseynumber: 21.

Trying to bore me to death, are we? Fuck sports… hey, fuck you for being into sports! Die in hell!

You have been in the scene for a few weeks or something… What bands out of Sweden, seriously, do not deserve the attention they get?

How about all the bands that reside in the current top 20? I think any band that get a lot of write-ups in the mainstream media generally tend to be a bit overrated. There’s many bands who might be equal to them (or even better) that won’t get any attention simply because they might not have the right contacts and/or backing from their label. It’s not a fair game, but that’s the way it’s played.

So far, what would be the highlight of yer so-called career? You know, being on guestlists and shit is always a good thing, were you ever on any important lists? Were you ever on ANY guest-list?

You know, I’m really not the most outgoing guy in the band so none of that crap have ever been important to me. I’ve been on plenty of lists and it didn’t make me any happier mingling with a bunch of cretins who doesn’t understand the music in the first place. That’s when I usually get piss drunk and make fun of everybody, or just go home. The highlight of Face Down’s career so far would definitely be playing the LA2 in London two times to an unbelievable crowd support. Hultsfred was great as well, it’s not often you get a good moshpit going in Sweden. Also, we had Peter Siepen stagedive at Hultsfred. That might actually be the high point of my entire life, I think.

My girlfriend has a few questions, you know – chick-questions, if you don’t answer them we’ll make up yer answers and make you look even worse than you do now, understood? Give your answer and then an explanation as to why you chose it.

Shaved or not shaved?

Shaved. Why? Bald is beautiful!

Blondes or brunettes?

Don’t really have a preference there, I like ‘em all.

Big and beautiful (as if there is such a thing) or thin and sexy?

How about big, beautiful and sexy? A girls gotta have some meat on her bones.

Sahara Hotnights or The Donnas?

Nevermind. No explanation needed.

Partychick (who fucks your only friend) or stay-at-home girl (who cleans and sorts the dishes. And once in a while sucks yer coyote)?

I could take both, depending on my mood. Notice how I’m cleverly avoiding to explain this as well.

2 large tits or 4 small? Preferebly female ones.

Not into the plastic, over-sized look of today, but I do like some curves on a female, that’s for sure. There, I did it again!

Schoolgirl-outfit or Playboy-outfit (whatever that is)?

Let me know what the Playboy-outfit consists of, and I’ll get back to you on that one.

Roses and chocolate or massage-oil and a teddy?

For me or her? I’m about as good with romantic stuff as your average brick wall, so bring on the massage-oil and stuff, baby. No, not you, you stinking bearded brute!

Svensson life (dog/car/house/boring sex) or rockstar-life (noodles/water/stinkin’ flat/jerk-off’’s)?

I’m not exactly family-man material, on the other hand I shun the rockstar-life as well. Fuck knows where I’m heading, sir.

Fuck on first date or sweet, sweet love on the 100’d?

I don’t think there’s any woman alive who could hold my interest for 100 dates. It’s a challenge to date me!

White wedding or beach-wedding?

Not interested. All that stuff is just boring and means nothing.

Wetting yer bed or wetting yer fiancee?

Tough call there. Who gets to clean up the bed?

Tomboy or Barbie-girl?

Not fond of either type, can I mix and match?

“Days of our lives”, “Glamour” or “The bald and the beautiful”? (yes, that was three options…)

Brain melt. Cannot compute more than two options at a time.

Your true love (male or female) having: A.) An awfully deformed face (and no feeling from the waist down) or B.) Jennifer Connelly-looks (and no feeling from the waist up, combined with alot of debts)

You make this really tough on me. Can I have pictures?

Let’s get completely unserious for a second… Weren’t you guys better in the back ol’ days compared to now? Don’t you think that’s like what everyone is going to say anyways, no matter what ya do now recording-wise?

You’re probably right. Not that I care anyway. I think the record will speak for itself once it’s actually out. We managed to silence a few doubters with the demo tracks we did, so I’m not that worried. I know we still have (at least) one more killer record in us. I got to admit that I prefer the GAMLA hits/songs/albums with every other band besides my own though.

It’s impossible to do a Face Down-interview without asking the obvious… How many chicks have you conquered this far? Judging from yer looks brother, there would be many…

Hey, that’s a secret between me and the boys! Wait, that should read “ladies”. I meant ladies. Really.

We are seriously running out of questions here, would you take a rain-check on some 20 more ones the day you guys get more popular?

Bring it on mate, you know I’m fast as a motherfucking shark when it comes to answering interviews. Right, eh? Come on now, it didn’t take as long for me to answer it as it did for you to make up these goddamn questions!

That’s that, cat in the hat, baseball-bat, rat, fat. Whatever. Finish this off and don’t forget to mention you love us unconditionally.

I love you. Well, at least I love your girlfriend. Hugz!!!!!

Interviews