To me there’s nothing quite like a nice slab of Sleazy Rock and Roll, the sort of music that injects a bit of fun back into those dark nights post-grunge. The music that was the soundtrack to the days where the party might well have been first an foremost in people’s minds but the music was so damned good too. People don’t still make music like that do they? Well yes they do, in Norway and they go by the ear-catching name of Suicide Bombers. It’s 40 degrees in Australia when we call, or just a shade over 104 if you go by farenheit…
Mark: Hi Chris thanks for stopping in for a chat, It’s pretty warm here Down-under – you must get those sort of days all the time in Norway – around 40 degrees (or F105) where the road just melts?
Chris: Oh yes, all the time (laughs), I’ll just put on my jacket the snow has already started coming down here!
Mark: We’re here of course to talk about the new album ’Murder Couture’, I loved the last album, but this one, I think, is even better still.
Chris: Oh thanks.
Mark: I’m even digging the one song I wasn’t too sure of when I wrote the review, I love that one too now.
Chris: Which one was that? ‘…Terrorists’ that’s the one you didn’t like initially?
Mark: That’s the one, and oddly it’s one of my favourites now! That I guess is the beauty of having a few more spins since.
Chris: Oh cool, because that’s one of the big ones for me and one of the hardest ones to write. It was the last on to be finished for the record because I knew exactly how I wanted the song to be, it was just a feeling, but I just couldn’t nail it so it took a while.
Mark: Listening to the album there’s so much going on in there, I love the way you start your albums, normally I’m not a big fan of ‘intro tracks’ but I think to set up an album by The Suicide Bombers this one tops the last one – it just makes it such a huge production, over the top, something fun. And that fun element is something we’re missing a lot in ‘Rock’ these days.
Chris: Yeah, we like to do these things on our records, it’s kinda like we come up with a theme and then we make an ‘intro’ and an ‘outro’ that kinda fits with what that general theme is about. But with this one we found ourselves for over a year asking ourselves questions about the image of the band and the way we dress and the way we look, and we decided to push that right to the front for this one. And I’m kinda cool with that, red pants on the cover and frilly shirts, let’s do it!
Mark: It takes me right back, I love it! Where did it all come from? Who were the bands that you listened to as a kid growing up in Norway?
Chris: That’s hard I like so many bands and there were so many that were important to me as there were for the rest of the guys in the band, but I’m not sure which ones I actually took the most influences from. The first really big band for me was ‘Kiss’, that was a big thing for me, but I don’t think musically we are very similar, but I collect all their stuff, their records and their toys and all the shit like that. ‘Vain’ was another one that I loved, the San Francisco band, I really loved his melodies and the way he sings and also the guitar solos and Vin was one of the few bands that had a career in the late 80’s that still kinda sounded fresh and relevant in the 90’s without bending over backwards and taking the pineapple up the ass to sound like the Grunge generation. And that’s another thing you have to respect them for! And W.A.S.P. was another one that I still love and I come and see them very time they come to Norway and buy at least two or three T-shirts every time because I’m a fan. Then Hanoi Rocks, New York Dolls, The Sex Pistols and I also like Warrior Soul.
Mark: Ah Kory Clarke, another great band that were not part of the pack.
Chris: Yeah, I love them for the same reason I like the sex Pistols, the unapologetic attack lyrics. If he wants to say something he goes straight for the throat, kicking and screaming until he gets his point across.
Mark: What a great selection, you’ve been looking through my record collection quite obviously there!
Chris: (laughs) I love lots of stuff, but the band is different, C Slim our Bass player loves old Blues records, I love a lot of Punk stuff too but that side doesn’t really come through in our music, Stevie Teaze likes pretty much the same sort of stuff as me but ‘Ratt’ is his all-time favourite band, all the 80’s stuff and Lyle Star is into Thrash Metal so there’s a lot of different influences.
Mark: It’s a great mix.
Chris: And we’re also influenced by things that isn’t musical also, things like movies and pop culture, anything really you can cut-and-paste onto it and make it exciting.
Mark: And it all comes together great. Way back in the early eighties before what they now erroneously label as ‘Hair Metal’ took hold there were a few bands that put out what I’d label ‘Glam Masterpieces’ some of them were great, some of them were terrible but all really had a certain attitude that was aside from the music. I won’t name too many names but off the top of my head I’m thinking Wrathchild (UK), Motley Crue, Tigertailz maybe, the problem was that none of those bands could manage to put out a really classic album. Listening to ‘Murder Couture’ it sounds like writing must come so easily for you – the songs are great from end to end?
Chris: Thank you, that’s the first thing I have to say, and you mentioned some great bands there, I think what we’re striving for is… I don’t know maybe 15 years ago there was a really strong Sleaze scene in Scandinavia and there were lots of great bands, but same as in the 80’s lots of shit bands, they all looked good and even the worst had one or two good songs. But we wanted to capture some of that but do it in our own style – when you hear Stevie’s guitar or Lyle pounding on the drums we want to be instantly recognisable as the Suicide Bombers and I think now we’ve achieved that. But writing this record wasn’t easy at all (laughs) there were so many songs that came with a feeling or an emotion that I wanted to get across, and I can only speak for myself here as C Slim also wrote two songs for the album – ‘End of The Story’ and ‘Madman’. But it’s like the title track ‘Murder Couture’ I think I had four of five different songs all with that title all with the same intro and same chorus but something wasn’t right so I threw them all away and started again. And it was the same with ‘We Don’t Negotiate With Terrorists.’ And then with a song like ‘Kings and Queen’ we had a band Christmas party the year before last and Stevie was showing me this riff he had come up with on an acoustic guitar when we were sitting round C’s house having a few drinks before going out and I thought I’d try that but I got it wrong as we were listing to music in the background so I just started paying another riff and I think in ten minutes I had the whole of the song ‘Kings and Queens’ – all of the riffs, except for the middle eight which came later, everything, except the lyrics. And the lyrics just took forever, it’s not that they’re particularly great lyrics, nothing you’d get a Nobel Prize for, but they had to nail the exact emotion I wanted to go with the riffs. And it wouldn’t have worked with lyrics like ‘…Terrorists’ or ‘iKill (Suicide Romeo)’ lyrics.
Mark: This sounds like an album that’s made to be played live and crying out for audience participation, there are loads of choruses made tossing along to. Is that a big part of the live show?
Chris: Yeah, (laughs) we like that when it happens! Maybe if people have enough to drink they’ll throw their fists in the air and chant along maybe to the chorus of ‘Blade Runner’ or sing along to ‘So Bad’ on this one. That would be really cool. We’re not one of those bands who takes half an hour to split the audience in two or teach them how to sing the chorus, because quite frankly we’re not playing stadiums! (laughs) But if people like the songs they sing along and that’s the ultimate high. We talked about it on the ‘Suicide Idols’ tour – we’ve done a couple of bigger shows and played to some cool audiences but if no one knows the songs sometimes they end up just standing there taking it in, we played a big show like that one night and then next night we played a small show to maybe 100 people and everyone knew the songs and was singing along! We came on stage and thought ‘Fuck, if this could have been last night!’ (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) That must be so cool when that happens?
Chris: Yeah, but you know even if you just have a couple of guys there who are big fans and they come up and talk to you at the Merch Stand after the concert and you sign their stuff and they ask questions about the different songs, that’s the way we feel about music too and I love to do that too. I sat down with Davy Vain and talked to him about his song-writing, and the first thing I said when I met Paul Stanley was “Thank you for all the songs.” We’re passionate about music we like and passionate about our own music.
Mark: Ad I think that’s the perfect mix, being a fan gives you that added passion because you know what it’s like. I’ve met Davy and interviewed him a few times, ‘Vain’ has lost absolutely nothing over the years as a live act, when I last saw them in 2015 it was like 1989 all over again!
Chris: I know.
Mark: So where do we get to see Suicide Bombers live?
Chris: Now we’re playing Norway mostly. We released the album less than a month ago and Norway is a really small country so it’s a place where it makes no sense to play on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We play on weekends you can get anywhere in the Country. We play through November and then we’re also doing some shows in Sweden, and then we have a break in December before doing a new video in January for the title track, and then we start playing again in February. We’re talking to another band about some possible dates at least through Europe but it kinda depends on them because we can’t do that on our own t this point. We’ve really only been outside of Scandinavia for a few shows.
Mark: Well an album like this is definitely going to win you new fans, but it is so hard to get out.
Chris: We’ll get there!
Mark: Before we go there are a couple of questions we traditionally ask everyone we speak to.
Chris: Cool.
Mark: If you could have been a ‘fly on the wall’ for the creation of any great album just to see how the magic happened in the studio what would you have liked to have been there for?
Chris: Oh fuck, that’s a tough one… There are so many great albums to choose from… You know what, I’m going to go off the track here and say that I’d pick ‘Flaunt It’ by ‘Sigue Sigue Sputnik.’
Mark: Their ground-breaking debut, nice.
Chris: That’s one of my favourite records.
Mark: A great choice, just a shame they didn’t stick around too much longer.
Chris: I’d just have loved to have seen how they did it. That record I think was recorded in ’86, or at least was released in ’86 and I’d have loved to have seen how they did all that stuff with the sequencing –in ’86 that would have been amazing. So I’m gonna pick that ne but I could have picked so many others as well!
Mark: If you could have been credited with writing one song what would you have liked it to have been. What’s the song for you?
Chris: (laughs) I would pick the song that generated the most publishing money, that way I could spend my time writing my own music and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting cash in all the time! But if I was to choose a song I love, I don’t know, again there are just so many songs I’ve gone blank! But I’d love the freedom to write the music I want to write for myself and as passionate as I am about other people’s music I’m more passionate about my own music. As a listener I’m one of those guys who will get seriously into a band for a few months and then I’ll move on to the next one then back again.
Mark: And the final easy one to close – what is the meaning of life?
Chris: think it’s to have fun. Not to worry too much, just go along with it. Make sure you’re the best version of yourself you can be in whatever you choose and just try and stay positive and go for whatever you want to go for.
Mark: Thank you so much for those final words and of course the best version of anyone would have a copy of ‘Murder Couture’ in their collection.
Chris: (laughs) Thank you Mark! Have a good day man.
Mark: You too.
