The Pain Machinery

Who are you? Some background information would be appreciated.
- "The Pain Machinery consists of me, Anders Karlsson. I've been a musician since the middle of the 80's. Mostly with industrial and experimental music. On the last The Pain Machinery record I also had some help from Jonas Hedberg on vocals and Jonas Berndt from the band Mörk Gryning who has made some guitar sounds. On the next The Pain Machinery album I hope that I will have more guest artists because I find it interesting but also I can develop my self more."

How did it all begin?
- "I have been working with music for a long time, but The Pain Machinery saw its daylight in the beginning of the 90's when I felt that I needed to give my musical projects some structure. With The Pain Machinery I wanted to combine the straight power that exists in the punk music I used to listen to with a more electro/industrial sound."

Tell me a bit how you have developed since the start and to today.
- "I think I have the same ideals on how I want the music o sound as when I begun. I still want to make noisy and brutal electronic music with a good tempo."

Recently you released a new record, 'Hostile', tell me a bit more about it.
- "'Hostile' became an album that leans over to a more cold and minimalistic and electronic sound than my earlier records. Where my previous releases have been more violent I think 'Hostile' has been more held back aggressive record. Compared to other music 'Hostile' aren't a nice guy album though."

I suppose there will be a lot of gigs now to promote the new album. Where will you play?
- "I'm really peckish to go live with The Pain Machinery again. Last gig was at Shocks in Gothenburg this spring so it's time now again I think. But, we have no gigs planned right now but we still hope for some to come in Sweden. And with a bit of luck we have a gig in Germany; there's been some interest in The Pain Machinery there."

And when we still talks about live gigs, the very first gig? Where? How? When?
- "The first The Pain Machinery gig was in London, at Camden Underground back in February 2001. IT was really cool and it's defiantly more fun to start in London than in a youth recreation centre. I had sent a record to some guys in England who liked what they heard and they wanted us for a gig. They contacted me and asked if we had some live experience, I lied and said that we had made a lot of gigs in Sweden. I'm still a friend with the festival crew and I think they were satisfied with the gig."

If we turn back the time a bit and look a little bit closer at the album 'The Venom Is Going Global' then we?ll see that it was a quite varying record. Which songs are you most satisfied with?
- "When I make an album I always try to think of the album as a whole where each song is as important as all the others are. Then you always got favourites where your ideas works as you intended. I like the structured chaos in "Blind Faith" and the forward raging sound in "One" for example."

Two songs that I like is "Face Down" and "Shapeshifter", what are they about?
- ""Face Down" is one of my own favourites. The meaning of the songs is for each listener to make up his mind of what they're all about. But when I wrote "Face Down" I had the riots in Gothenburg in mind. I think that when you try to fight injustice with stones an firebombs then you act just like the people who wants a police state want you to act. Just because then they get a reason to demand more polices and harder restrictions. Some short words about "Shapeshifter", that song are about the fact that you can benefit from a psychopathic behaviour in our modern hysterical life."

Emu-Bomb is a project you and Severe Illusions is working on, can you tell us a bit about it?
- "Ulf and Fredrik from Severe Illusion and I have during a long time talked about doing something together. Last year we released a super limited split album on vinyl with The Pain Machinery/Severe Illusion that we were really satisfied with. With Emu-Bomb we want to take our common influence, mutate and twist until a nice madness-like sound is born, everything with a big portion of punk attitude. Take a look at: http://www.myspace.com/emubomb"

Final, what's the best with being on stage?
- "To play live is a perfect way to get contact with the audience. I work hard on giving each The Pain Machinery live performance to be an experience over the usual. The best with being on stage is when you get something back from the crowd. This can manifest in many ways, like people are dancing, someone buys you booze or you get a mail from someone that liked your performance last night."

And what happens in the future?
- "I have already begun working on a new The Pain Machinery album, I have also some interesting side projects like Emu-Bomb. Then I also hope for some more The Pain Machinery gigs of course. So I have a lot to do."

This interview was made 2005 and initially published on Neurozine.com