Swærmmm interview

 Hi! Swærmmm started as a solo project and later mutated into a full band. Looking back, was that evolution inevitable, or did the material become too physically impossible for one person to contain?

I always wanted it to be an actual band. There are several reasons why I still decided to release material as a solo project (with the great DM on vocals, of course). I moved around a lot for a long period of my life and I didn't know when I was going to live long enough in one city to warrant finding other members. But I had accumulated a lot of songs. I didn't know when I would actually be able to start a band. My inner perfectionist wanted me to wait, of course, but my life is a series of battles to defeat that perfectionist - hence, the release of the first EP and subsequent single. But I always felt Swærmmm would make for great live music, and here we are.

You originally called it Swærmm, then added a third “m” because two felt like a copout. That’s absurdly specific. Was that joke, instinct, or a genuine statement about excess?

Honestly, if I could go back and do it all over I wouldn't even have picked Swærmmm with the extra M. What a dumb idea, there's already a trillion bands named something like "Swarm", except Swærmmm is a trillion times more annoying to spell and find online. I think I chose the original name as an homage to Swarrrm, and I don't know why I only went with 2 M's instead of 3. All good things come in threes, as the saying goes. Anyway, when it came time to find members and promote the band again, I decided to add the extra M because it just felt better, but also because I still couldn't think of a better name.

Your influences range from The Dillinger Escape Plan to Immolation to Mr. Bungle. That’s a dangerous cocktail. How do you stop it from becoming pure fragmentation instead of an actual identity?

That's a great question, one I've been asking myself. I don't have an answer. Swærmmm is kind of like my musical playground. I get to toy with all of these different influences and wims. I get to throw shit on the wall and see what sticks. I don't know that there is a distinctive Swærmmm sound yet, but perhaps that will change. I do love a lot of bands that have a very distinctive sound, like TDEP, Converge, The Locust or Immolation. With some bands, it's like the stars are right and they manage to capture a very specific kind of magic. The rest of us are lucky to stand on the shoulders of those giants, and if we're lucky we're able to create something good, if not as innovative.

I also don't really know if it's fair to say that Swærmmm "sounds like" either of our influences. I'm not saying that to claim any originality. Rather, influences in a Swærmmm composition can consist of really small detail lifted from a bunch of different origins. There's a lick in Γ - Gallows which is heavily influenced by a Malignancy song. Does that mean Swærmmm sounds like Malignancy? No. Similarly, the combination of so many different influences is definitely inspired by Mr Bungle, but I don't think we sound anything like them either. But in the end, we have to promote the band somehow and listing influences is one way of doing that.

Mathcore has a strange reputation now - once dangerous, now often hyper-technical and over-disciplined. Do you think the genre lost some of its violence by becoming too clever?

I don't even know much mathcore. Not enough to answer your question anyway. I'm originally a metalhead, and I'm more well versed in death metal and black metal. I've only really dipped my toes in mathcore or hardcore punk. Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan happen to be two of my favorite bands but they're basically it for me, I haven't done a ton of digging in mathcore beyond that. But I love Converge and TDEP enough that they have deeply affected the way I approach music.

But let's take Meshuggah. They've inspired a host of bands. And none of them really do it for me. It's like whatever intangible elements Meshuggah has that makes it work is somehow missing from the other bands, like the other bands feel too sanitized and safe. Maybe that's what you're getting at with modern mathcore? By the way, my intention is not to shit on any bands, even those I dislike. I'm of the opinion that there's no objectively good or bad music. The bands I have in mind just happen to not be my cup of tea.

A lot of experimental heavy music today hides weak songwriting behind chaos. How do you know when a Swærmmm song is genuinely unpredictable rather than just random?

I think that's mostly unknowable, and largely up to the listener to decide. When I write music for Swærmmm, my intention is never to be random for its own sake. I just follow whatever my instinct/ gut feel says. I will give you one notable exception - Brood IX has a few riffs (the intro riff for instance) that is just me randomly hammering the guitar strings. I couldn't think of a riff so I just... Didn't write one. I suppose you could call it noisecore or whatever and I think it sort of works because it's used very sparingly. Maybe the listeners feel otherwise. But I mean, heavy songs jumping from idea to idea without coherence isn't exactly new either. The Swærmmm way of fusing different ideas together doesn't only come from Mr Bungle or TDEP, it comes from a long line of metal riff salads.

The EP titles - ¥ and Γ - suggest pieces of a larger coded structure. Is the trilogy conceptual, or is the connection more instinctive than narrative?

More instinctive, I guess. There is sort of a narrative. I've reused some lyrics on the new EP, referring back to the first EP. But it's all based on "rule of cool" and vibes. With Swærmmm, I just like to fool around with words, meaning mostly gets attributed afterwards. There are multiple references to a circle of life, a wheel of torture etc - and the trilogy is very self-referential. Part of what I'm trying to convey is the idea that life is suffering. Some songs will lean more heavily into this idea, others will just be a game of words. I had a burnout a few years ago and without realizing it, I wrote a lot of the lyrics on the newest EP based on that experience.

The track title I Have No Mouth (ᮅᮚᮔᮙᮔᮨᮔ ᮆᮔᮖᮦᮞ ᮏᮤᮛᮊᮤᮔᮜᮤᮮᮤ) immediately feels like a deliberate rupture. Is that an I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream nod, or are you playing with something even more abstract?

It is absolutely a reference to that excellent and harrowing short story. During these past years I've been grappling with existential questions, and different scifi thought experiments as a part of that. Aforementioned burnout made it feel even more relevant. It's also just a reference to the fact that it's an instrumental track. By the way, on the subject of writing music that is potentially too random or chaotic, even I understand there has to be dynamics. I think this song is a well needed breather in an otherwise pretty intense listening experience.

If anyone can decipher the tagline/ subtitle (ᮅᮚᮔᮙᮔᮨᮔ ᮆᮔᮖᮦᮞ ᮏᮤᮛᮊᮤᮔᮜᮤᮮᮤ), contact us and you'll get a Bandcamp download code.

There’s an interesting contradiction here: grindcore and mathcore are often about compression, while progressive and experimental music usually stretches outward. Do you feel tension between those instincts?

Yes, definitely. I really like bands like The Locust or An Albatross, who are able to condense really intense but super fun ideas into relatively short songs. At the same time, I'm kind of allergic to the grindcore format of 25 1-minute songs. It just gets too intense for me. Let me namedrop Blood and Locusts by The Arson Project as an excellent example of a short grindcore album. Anyway, on the first EP there were some shorter songs, and I think I then wanted Swærmmm to be mostly like that. But I just can't help myself, and as a result the new songs are longer. But there needs to be balance, and I will always strive for brevity wherever possible.

The Instrumentalist becoming The Vocalist after the lineup shift almost sounds like an identity death. Did the project lose something in becoming a band, or did it finally become what it was supposed to be?

Dude, these are such good questions. I think it was a bit of both. It took us 3 years to get ready for our first gig and release the new EP because of conflicting schedules, we were lucky to rehearse once every 3 months. If I had just recorded the new EP like the first one, it would have been out long ago. So that's one huge difference. Other than that, we finally have a line-up that can play live, so in that sense it's become what it was always supposed to be. Since I've had this trilogy of EP's planned from the start, I will likely be the main songwriter for the next installment, but it seems the others have some ideas too that will be interesting to incorporate.

A lot of bands cite The Locust, but very few understand how much of their power came from brevity and precision rather than pure weirdness. Do you think modern “chaotic” bands often misunderstand that lesson?

Nail on the head with their brevity. Not sure I can answer that question, I would have to hear some examples. There are modern chaotic bands that I personally don't understand but that's not so much to do with a lack of brevity. There are more classic chaotic bands that I also don't get.

Your song titles feel like coded fragments - Cortisol Invictus, Ġealdor to Āwendenne to Dēore, Uruburus. Are these linguistic constructions part of the composition itself, or do titles come afterward as another layer of disorder?

Sometimes the titles come before the music, because they serve the concept of the trilogy. Uruburus being one such example. It's a portmanteau of "ouroboros" and "urubu", the latter being a species of vulture (and unless I'm mistaken it simply means "vulture" in parts of South America). It refers back to the vulture god of the previous EP, and the idea of cycles, and hints at the next EP as well. Again, you will notice my fondness of wordplay, which I owe in part to The Mars Volta. Sometimes the titles/ lyrics are just an expression of my love of languages. But some of the lyrics do have a deeper meaning, it's just that they're hidden behind perhaps unnecessarily convoluted phrasing. Or coded fragments, as you put it.

There’s less and less room in modern heavy music for true discomfort - everything gets categorized quickly. Do you think Swærmmm is making music for listeners, or against them?

"Music against listeners", that's a good slogan right there. I'm not sure I agree there's less and less room for discomfort. If anything, bands like Meshuggah, TDEP, Deathspell Omega etc have really paved the way for some really wacky stuff. Of course, a band like Thantifaxath will always play smaller venues than a band like Sabaton, but hasn't that always been the case? I think it has always been true and always will be true that truly uncomfortable artists will make art regardless if there's room for it or not.

I know it's a trite cliché but I make music that I enjoy making and listening to. It's not necessarily "for" the listeners but it's also not actively against them.

With Jonathan gone and The Vocalist now handling drums as well, how has that changed the band’s chemistry? Did it simplify things or make them even more unstable?

Too early to tell. We had our first gig as a threepiece a few weeks ago and it went really well. But that was before Jonathan had even left the band. He just wasn't available for that date, and with how difficult it's been for us to get gigs, I didn't want to miss the opportunity. It might potentially make it easier to find time for rehearsals, now that there are only 3 schedules to plan for instead of 4. But we're gonna try to find a vocalist so I can focus exclusively on the drums, maybe that will mess up our scheduling again. I will say this: Jonathan is a great fucking drummer and he's done things I couldn't have done. Notably the outro to Uruburus.

Name one criminally overlooked chaos/grind/math record that shaped Swærmmm more than the obvious classics.

Only one? Shit. Let me be obtuse and name two: De Anarkistiske An(n)aler by Parlamentarisk Sodomi. Now that's a band with an instantly recognizable sound, and an instantly recognizable drumming style. Second mention: Människan en ruttnande process by Dödsvarg. Dödsvarg is pretty well known in the Swedish underground, but I don't know how well known he is outside of Sweden. Människan en ruttnande process is a collection of three EP's, and I straight up stole the entire idea of a trilogy of EP's from there.

The influence of Immolation stands out to me because they’re one of the few death metal bands who make dissonance feel ritualistic rather than technical. What specifically do you take from them?

I really like Immolation's heavy use of 3/4 and I've incorporated it in songs like Ġealdor to Āwendenne to Dēore from the latest EP and Wyrrrrrmm from the first one. Cortisol Invictus too, from the new one. It's that kind of rhythm that feels like 4/4 but where you just remove the last beat, rather than feeling like 6/8 or triplets. The main riff in Father You're Not A Father is an example of 3/4 in an Immolation song.

Also, take the part at 1:25 in Γ - Gallows. That, to me, is very Immolation.

Let’s talk structure - when writing, do you map songs deliberately, or do you follow collisions until something survives?

I'd say I generally map songs pretty deliberately. I'll have a general feeling for which direction a song should go, and it often starts with a drum part or at least a rhythm. But in some cases I don't exactly know, and in those cases it's a matter of pairing different riffs/ sections - or having them collide, as you say, and see what survives.

Experimental bands often age badly because their “innovation” was tied to novelty. What makes you believe Swærmmm’s material will still feel dangerous ten years from now?

Again, I don't see Swærmmm as particularly innovative or novel. Perhaps our lack of a distinctive sound will allow the music to age better than a band with a really distinctive sound, if that sound is heavily associated with a certain era. Whether we're innovative or not, I hope people like our music, and I hope people will like it 10 years from now as well. But allow me to contradict myself to humor you, and allow me to go on a tangent: there's a cumbia section in Uruburus. It was heavily edited by our producer Victor Svahn, he added a bunch of effects and made the section sound completely different to the original, which was a more standard cumbia section. He did it for the fun of experimenting and we just loved it so much that we decided to keep it - but we still play the cumbia part live.

I got into cumbia a few years ago, mainly through electronic cumbia like Dengue Dengue Dengue. Then Stromae released an album a few years ago that featured quite a bit of it. I'm a fan of Stromae but the Uruburus part didn't come from him. Anyway, him making that music and then seeing it analyzed by Adam Neely on Youtube, it made me wonder whether cumbia is part of the current zeitgeist (or the zeitgeist of a few years ago), maybe I wouldn't have discovered it otherwise? And maybe ten years from now, that section in Uruburus will be a dead giveaway that the song was written in the 2020's and we'll be branded as trend chasers.

When the trilogy is complete, should listeners understand it - or have you failed if they do?

There are hints at a connected work throughout the song titles, cover art and lyrics on the two EP's that are out now. Like I said earlier, a lot of it just follows the "rule of cool" but attentive listeners/ readers should at least be able to pick up on that. I'm not that pretentious that someone "getting it" will feel like failure. Honestly, it would be cool to even get enough exposure that someone will even try to understand it. The two first songs on the latest EP have some common musical elements between them, especially in some of the rhythms and drum beats. Next EP is sure to have at least some musical callbacks to previous stuff, in true Dream Theater style.

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