I only know your MLP "Denial" on the German label MBR Records and that you also released two demos called "The Exordium" and "Wrath From The Unknown". Can you tell me more about the demos and if you released some other demos?

The first thing released was a demo with one song "Mortal Torment" (1989), which was much more of a thrash song than a real death metal song (I might be unfair now). This was before I joined the band, but only a couple of months. After I joined the band we decided to tune down our guitars a whole lot more, and to write some really brutal music. This wasn't something that the first guitarist, Micke liked, so he left the band rather suddenly. That meant that I was the only guitarist whern we recorded the first demo "The Exordium" (1990) in a studio not far from our rehersal room (something like 15 meters). It wasn't a fantastic recording and we weren't fantastically tight, but it was very, very brutal, you couldn't hear anything basically. We did, however, like the sound we got so we used the same studio for the recording of the second

demo "Wrath From The Unknown" (1991). That was an evilsounding recording... if yo ask me. I love the dirty sound we got - still with our guitars tuned way down!

Yes, absolutely. It's a track from "Wrath From The Unknown". It's really neat to have it on CD. Two of the songs on "Denial" are old, too. We took one song from each demo and re-recorded.

Your vocalist were, before he joined CREMATORY, also in NECROPHOBIC. Did you know, why he left the band? He was in CREMATORY first. The NECROPHOBIC thing was just him helping them out when they didn't have a singer and wanted to do some recordings. He never intended to be a steady member of Necrophobic so they were always searching for a permanent singer. When they found one Harrvik was out of the picture. Did the others in the band do something before CREMATORY? I only know that Mats were in GENERAL SURGERY and REGURGITATE.

Mats and Micke (the original guitarist) was in Afflicted Convulsion. Joppe was in Megatherion (later Therion) together with Christoffer Johnsson who handled the vocals on "Mortal Torment". This was back in ´89 - General Surgery and Regurgitate didn't exist yet, for another year or so.

How were the sellings of the MLP and were there also a CD-version of it?

Sure there were a CD version, but I have absolutely no idea how much they sold. MBR didn't tell us anything about how the album was doing.

Do you know what happened mit MBR after all and did they give you a good promotion? How did you get in contact with them? MBR didn't have any distribution in Sweden, so it was hard knowing if they did any promotion or not. We never saw any - that's for sure! I think they contacted us. They told us about the german CREMATORY which sucked big time! Why and when did you split up?

We were tired of it all, and we weren't really getting along very well in the band. I guess we were kinda pissed too, coz a lot of crappy (in our opinion) bands got to tour and record CDs and so on. Finally I felt that I would have a much better time writing grindcore songs in REGURGITATE and rehearsing with CREMATORY felt like a waste of time. I guess that would have to have been 1993, when I joined REGURGITATE fulltime.

Did you have some problems with the German CREMATORY?

They weren't that big back then. And they sucked so hard you won't believe it, so we didn't have any problems.

What did you make after the split? Joppe and you joined REGURGITATE after a while, but happens directly after the split and what's up with the other memebers? As I said.. me playing in Regurgiate was one of the main reasons for the disbanding of CREMATORY. When we decided that it was time to put CEMATORY out of it's misery it was an oportunity to get a bass player to join REGURGITATE, so we asked Joppe who liked the idea. You are from Bandhagen/Haninge?! How was it back in the early ninties and did you play many gigs? With which bands did you share the stage? And were is this town exactly?

We all live/lived in the Stockholm (the Capitol) area so many of our gigs were somewhere here with bands like Entombed, Carnage, Dismember, Unleashed, Therion - we did some gigs around Sweden too, and one gig in Finland, but that's it basically. Not a whole lot of gigs there. Most, if not all, of our friends played in death metal bands too so there were a lot of brutal music going around.

CREMATORY is not very close to the death metal scene like DISMEMBER, ENTOMBED, ..., but more in the grindcore style. Who were your biggest influences and were there other bands in Sweden who prefer to play this kind of death metal? Were you influenced by the old British scene such as CARCASS, NAPALM DEATH or old BOLT THROWER?

Absolutey! I did and still do listen a lot to those bands. I guess CARCASS would be my number one influence - ever! Total brutality! Now that I play grindcore with REGURGITATE I really get to play like that myself. CREMATORY made a concious decision not to sound like all the other Swedish death metal bands... who all sounded like ENTOMBED for a long time if you ask me. We wanted to be a tad more brutal and agressive than the rest of the Swedish bands at the time. Did you thought about, to rejoin in CREMATORY? I think, it would be very great, cause the old Swedish style is dying more and more.