Beseech pour l'album "Sunless Days"

1. At first, a simple question. Does the name "Beseech" have a signification?

No. I wasn't a member back in the days when the band started. But I've heard the story about the name. And it's actually pretty boring. The members back then had to come up with a name. And for some reason they thought Beseech sounded cool. But nowdays it's just a name, nothing more.


2. There's a new guitarist in Beseech : Manne Engström. How did you find him? What has he brought to the band?

He's part owner of "Studio Mega", the studio where we have recorded all of our albums. He helped us alot whith recording "Drama" and since then he's been a great friend of the band. We felt that after Klas left the band (after the release of "Souls highway") something was missing, especially live. We needed a fatter guitarsound.
Then we played on "Sweden rock festival" and we invited Christian Silver (our producer) and Manne to come along. We had a great party and somewhere between the beers we decided that Manne was gonna try out as a second guitarist. A couple of weeks after the festival he came to our rehearsal and he made a great impression, and he's been a member since then.
Everyone in Beseech takes inspiration from somewhere, and Manne takes alot of it from American bands. So I guess that is the biggest thing he brings to the band. But he has alot of ideas when it comes to everything, from drums to vocals. He's easy to work with.


3. What has changed in the band between "Drama" and "Sunless Days"?

As I said Manne brought a little of the American style with him, and I guess you can hear that on the first track "Innerlane". But besides that everything has become better. We've been experimenting with our sound alot. And I guess you can say in some way that the result has become a mixture between the simplicity in "Souls highway" and the experimenting sound of "Drama". We've taken the good parts from our old albums and put it together, and then we threw in some new flavours. The vocals are more balanced than ever, and everything just flows. We also put extra much time into writing lyrics, and this time it's more personal than ever.


4. I follow your carrier since "Souls Highway" and I found that this new album mark a step ahead in your music, technically and emotionally. The voices of Lotta and yours has become very complémentary too. Do you change your way to compose, to apprehend your music? How long did the writing process last?

The way of composing hasn't changed that much. We're working as we've always done. Everyone comes up with ideas and there's alot of teamwork behind everything we do. We're saving eachother from making fools of ouselves, haha.
Me and Lotta has been singing together now since "Souls highway", and we've been growing alot since we begun. I guess that we are still surprised by eachothers skills sometimes though.
Oh, I can't remember how much time the writing process took. I guess it was somewhere around six months.


5. How would you define your style today?

That is the hardest question. I hate to put a label on something that I've been part of creating. There are two places to put music "Good" and "Bad"... and I think Beseech would be defined as "Good"..


6. All your covers seems to be songs of yours (I think about "Devil Plaything" and "Gimme Gimme Gimme"). How do you choose them and what is your technic to appropriate them?

As I remember it "Gimme gimme gimme" was more of a joke in the beginning. But then it turned out to get serious. We wanted to do a cover, and ABBA is something that everyone has some kind of connection with. And when starting to listen to their songs we fell for "Gimme gimme gimme" at once, just listen to the lyrics, it's hard to believe it's a disco song. So dark and all.
Then we started working on it and all the pieces fell on place at once.
Then after a couple of years we fell it was time for another coversong. Since we had so much fun making the ABBA cover.
And the search began. And one day Manne was watching some musicshow on TV and saw the video for "Devil's plaything". He told us about it and we all listened to the song. And we decided at once. Another perfect song to make a cover of.
And we don't have any technic when we make the covers. Everything we make comes out Beseech-style.. haha.


7. What is your favorite song of the last album?

"Emotional Decay" without any doubt at all. I love it. Probably since the lyrics are so personal. I open up myself, and it was such good therapy to write the lyrics.
Then I think that the music has a feeling over it that is hard to describe, melancholic but still bittersweet.


8. Is there a tour to promote "Sunless Days"? Do you envisage to come to France?

There is no tour planned. But we would love to come to France. Beseech haven't been there since (I think it was) 2001.


9. What are you listening to these days? Any good metal (or not metal) albums to recommend?

I listen to everything. At the moment there's alot of Danko Jones in my cd player. But also some Fear Factory and 16 Horsepower. And Kent of course...


10. What do you do for a living apart from the band?

I'm working in a store that sells computer/video-games. Videogames has been one of my biggest interests since I was four years old, so I love my job.


11. What is your position about downloading? Do you download music sometimes, to discover new bands for example?

I download alot of mp3s. There are a bunch of demoartists out there that deserves more attention. And I buy alot of music from iTunes musicstore.


12. And the last questions, what is your opinion concerning the metal webzines? Are you a reader of them?

I read some of them, yes. And I really like people who puts in alot of time in what they do. Actually alot of webzines are better than some of the bigger magazines.


13. Thank you very much for your time. The last words are yours!

If you haven't heard Beseech before, please visit www.beseech.net .
And if you have heard us before, visit www.beseechfanclub.com and become a member now.
Take care, and hope to see you all soon.