For the past 35 years, Karl Willetts has been a staple of English death metal. First as the frontman for the legendary Bolt Thrower, and now with the mighty Memoriam, there is no slowing down the Willetts crusade. He remains dedicated to as craft as ever, as heard on Memoriam’s fifth and latest studio album, Rise to Power: A pummeling onslaught of old school death metal glory. We sat down with Willetts to discuss Memoriam’s ongoing Rise to Power, what fuels his songwriting, the impact of punk on English death metal, and so much more. Just remember: In Battle There Is No Law!
Greetings Karl and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Karl Willetts: Good evening! I’m absolutely fantastic. It is a cold January night here in the UK. It’s freezing, as it should be, but it’s all good. And yourself? Where are you calling me from?
It is just after 12 PM noon here in Chicago, Illinois.
KW: Oh Chicago! The Windy City! Home of Reggies! Those are some good memories.
I was just going to mention that the last two American shows Bolt Thrower ever played were at Reggies in 2013.
KW: Absolutely. We have some great, very fond memories of playing in Chicago. Reggies will always hold a special place in my heart. Great times indeed.
Reggies isn’t the only legendary Chicago venue you’ve played. There was also the Thirsty Whale, and correct me if I’m wrong, but was it Medusa’s on the Grindcrusher Tour?
KW: Absolutely yes! Home of Wesley Willis, God rest his soul.
Absolutely. Cheers to our hometown hero, who of course sang an ode to you. I love having that Windy City/UK connection there.
KW: Well we are both Midlands towns, aren’t we? We’re both in the heart of the country. We are the beating heart of the nation *laughs*.
That is true! We are currently a couple weeks away from the release of Memoriam’s fifth studio album, Rise to Power. When the band formed in 2015, was the plan to be this prolific in terms of new releases?
KW: Well, it’s a bit of a long story. I’ll try and keep it short *laughs*. We didn’t intentionally start the band. We started the band as an outlet to create a little bit of joy and pleasure in our lives in an otherwise dark place. We’d just come off the back of experiencing the death of a close friend, Martin “Kiddie” Kearns. It made me reevaluate my life and think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It made me realize life is short and you gotta make the most of what you can do, while you can do it.
So I thought, “What do I enjoy doing?” I enjoy playing in a band. So I thought, I’ll get some old friends together, go to a rehearsal room, jam some punk rock covers, have a laugh, have a few beers, every Friday. That’ll be fine for me. Maybe we’ll release a 7 inch of some punk rock covers and do some local shows? At that point in time, that was all I was thinking about doing. That’s really the spark of what it was all about, but when we got down to having our first meeting, prior to going to the rehearsal room and jamming out songs, it involved Mr. Scott Fairfax coming along with his little riff bag, saying “I’ve got some riffs! Do you wanna hear them? Maybe we’ll start doing punk rock covers, then do our own songs.”
We had a listen to those and it just rolled out from there. It’s gotten out of control really. It’s something we didn’t anticipate at that point, but very quickly, the whole concept of being a punk rock cover band, rehearsing, playing local gigs, and releasing a 7 inch, developed into a full scale supergroup releasing albums on a regular basis *laughs*. We did intentionally decide, if we were gonna go down this path, let’s do it properly. We wanted to recreate that old school death metal feel of how we were when we first started out in the late 80s, early 90s, where bands did release a new album every year because of that creativity, that spark, that fire was in them. We had that with our new riff-master Scott Fairfax.
As a result of that, in the first 3 years, we released an album every year until COVID came along and curtailed that process. In retrospect, that impact of COVID and that extended period of isolation made you take stock of where you’ve got to with the band. Being forced into a long period of not being able to do anything was pretty productive. It was pretty positive for the way we’ve moved forward as a band. We spent a bit longer, about 6 months or so, on the pre-production process of writing the album. Rather than do it every year, we now do it every 18 months. I think that extra 6 months gives a little bit of space to work on the pre-production side of things. For me, as a vocalist, it works really, really well because it gives me the opportunity to write lyrics, change the lyrics, strip them down if I don’t really like them, rewrite them. But more importantly, it gives me a chance to demo them, which I’ve never done before.
The last 2 albums, I demoed the vocals in advance of going into the studio, which is a massive progression for me because when I go to the studio, we cut a demo of them. I know what the words are gonna be, they’re not gonna change. I know what the structure of the song and the timings of the lyrics is gonna be, so when I go to the studio, I’m in a stronger, confident space because all I gotta do is deliver. I have to concentrate on the actual delivery as opposed to all these other aspects of what’s going on. In that respect, it’s had a massive positive impact in what we do. We’re still moving on at a frenetic pace. We’re at album #5 in 7 years. That sounds pretty good. I think we’ve taken onboard some of the things that have happened to us and made them work in our favor.
It’s all good. It’s all productive, and we’re moving forward still at an alarming pace. In fact, last Friday, 2 days ago, we were over at Riff Central Studio formulating and writing album #6. We’ve got the songs in place. We just gotta structure them and I gotta concentrate on the lyrics. We’re hoping to get that recorded towards the end of this year for a release sometime in early 2024. We try to keep 18 months spread between the albums, which works really well for us, but yeah, good times!
Your lyrics range from chronicling war and its consequences to today’s ongoing societal plagues. What steered the direction of this album’s lyrics and are there any underlying themes?
KW: It’s ironic, really. Believe it or not, I’m quite well known for writing songs about war *laughs*. It’s been my bread and butter for the past 30 odd years. Always underneath, the lyrical theme is there. They’ve been drawn from historical aspects, the first World War, the second World War, and beyond. Or some kind of ephemeral war of the future. There’s always been this topic of war that’s been a major constant flow throughout the lyrics I’ve written.
With Memoriam, I’ve managed to open up the gates a little bit and write songs that have a little bit more of a social-political element to them. I’m quite proud to be in that position now where I can write songs that have some kind of social meaning to them. It’s also because I’m knocking on a bit. I’ve got a few years of experience behind me. I do tend to write songs about life in general and its experience: Sorrow, grief, joy, that journey through life we all go through in our own different ways. I think for me, that’s my favorite lyrical content because they resonate with people that come to our shows and listen to our music.
With this new album in particular, it’s very ironic in many ways because that thematic subject of war I write about a lot is now particularly more relevant than ever. We’re living in a society where war is on our doorstep here in Europe. We have a massive potential global war on our doorstep. We see the neo-fascist, imperialistic maneuvers of Putin in invading a sovereign state of Europe, under the pretext of denazification which is ridiculous. There are more Nazis in Russia than anywhere else on the planet through their nationalistic identity. To see that occurring is horrifying. It’s a frightening subject.
It seems on this album the subject matter of politics, war, and life experienced have all merged into one. It’s all condensed into one giant mass, so you can’t say, “That’s a song about war. That’s a song about experience. That’s a song about politics.” They’ve all merged into one big conglomeration because that’s the world we’re living in right now. So yeah, I do draw inspiration from the world we’re living in, very much so on this album in particular. A rich source of lyrical inspiration is upon us right now. Frightening times upon us.
Indeed, but we do our best to get through it with our music.
KW: Absolutely. All I can do is make social commentary on what I see around us and make statements against what’s going on in the world that I think is wrong. If that engages with people and makes them feel that their mindset is right, then that’s great. I’m not really seeking to change peoples minds that are not of my mindset and never will be. I’m there to engage with people of a like mindedness and make them feel engaged. That’s all I can do, really. It’s just words.
We did a gig last year in Germany, a festival called Dong *laughs*, and we played with a band called 1914, from Ukraine. I’ve seen quite a few bands over the years as I’ve played gigs. Not very often do I get moved emotionally by watching a band perform. Seeing 1914, their feelings were totally out there. The fear and horror of what they’ve witnessed is very apparent in the emotional delivery of the songs they put out. I was very, very moved just to watch them play and give them some support, just through words. That’s all I can do. All we can do is show support for the people who are suffering. That’s what a lot of the words on the new album are about and dedicated to the people of Ukraine.
Playing alongside you in this band is former Benediction bassist, Frank Healy. How long do you go back with him and how owuld you describe your creative relationship?
KW: *laughs* Oh Frank! He’s one of a kind. Me and him go way, way back to when he was playing in Cerebral Fix, even before Benediction. We always used to go and hang out at the same pubs and clubs in Birmingham, so we kind of grew up together in many respects. We always said, “Oh yeah, we gotta do a band together!”, drunk and rolling around the floor. For 30 years we talked about doing it and never got around to doing it because he was busy doing what he was doing and I was busy doing what I was doing. Our paths musically never crossed.
When the opportunity to create something new and formulate that sense of joy I was mentioning at the start of the interview came about, Frank was always gonna be the person to fill that place in the band. It’s completely full circle, to do what we’ve been talking about for 30 years. To finally get around to being in a band with that gentleman is a pleasure. He’s a good friend, and that’s really what bands are all about. It’s all about that social element of what we do. Equally as important as the music we create is the bonds of friendship that you create through the music you make. God, that rhymes *laughs*! See I can’t help it! I’m a lyricist!
It just happens!
KW: It does. I talk in rhyme all the time. See, I did it again *laughs*.
On the musical side of things, how does Memoriam construct a song? Does it start with a riff, a lyrical idea, or something else entirely?
KW: It always starts with a riff. It always has been that way. It’s always about the riff. That is the central driver of what we do. The glorious thing about Memoriam, and another reason why we are such a prolific creator of music, is through Scott. Scott is the kind of guy who will go and do his day job, go home, have something to eat, then go into his studio and he’ll write music. That’s all he does. He lives for writing music. He doesn’t watch shit telly. He just writes music everyday, every night, all the time, consistently.
That’s why we got a million dollar riff box rammed full of riffs. We could potentially write another 6 albums with the stuff he’s got locked away. That’s why he’s got so many other bands going, cuz he’s got so many riffs to get out there. He’s got As the World Dies. He’s got a little project with me called H Drive Project. He’s got Memoriam. I’m sure he can do 5 or 6 other bands and fulfill them all with riffs that he’s got in his million dollar riff vault. But because he writes so prolifically all the time, that is why we can move forward, and it always comes from the riff.
He will write a song at his home studio, Riff Central Studios, and then he’ll fire it over to us in Dropbox. That’s where all the magic comes together. I can then listen to it over and over, figure out the time structures. We do go over things a lot. As I said, we were at the studio last week getting ready for album #6 already. But yeah, it’s always about the riff. The riff is king to what we do. That is the driving force and driving energy of any song we ever produce.
Right on. If you want a killer death metal song, you need an equally killer riff. You’ve growled over some of the best, first with Bolt Thrower and now with Memoriam. For you, as a musician and as a metalhead, what constitutes a killer death metal riff?
KW: It’s gotta have that groove to it, and a time structure that’s a little bit different. Timing structures of riffs are what trigger those synapses in my brain, the right lyrics too. The timing structures are key. Scott comes up with some amazing riffs with totally different time structures. That creative process of being around in the studio and listening to them when they first come out, you get that feeling. Sometimes you’ve got the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. That makes you go, “Oh! That’s the one!”
Even the other day, I was listening to the riffs and it was triggering ideas in my head for lyrical content and song titles, which is where it all develops from. It’s like being involved in the early, embryonic stage of the writing process. When you first hear them, it has an impact. 9 times out of 10, what you hear and what formulates in your mind, that’s what works. If you try and mess around with it and change it, it never works. It’s almost an organic response to the music that you hear that triggers off the lyrical response. It’s like a question answer that comes out from the riffs that are created to the lyrics alongside it, so they flow very well in that respect.
I agree that one has to have that visceral reaction for a riff to truly work. Take Black Sabbath for example. I’ve heard “Under the Sun” two million times, but every time that riff hits, I get that same reaction. The same goes for Bolt Thrower with “World Eater”. Every time I hear that lead riff, it’s just a total “holy shit” moment.
KW: If we strip it down to that level, what else would work with that? It’s the natural thing that fits in. A lot of that comes from experience. We’ve been doing it for quite a long time now, so I’d like to think that I know what I’m doing *laughs*. It works really well. We just really enjoy doing it. That’s the key. We enjoy it for what it is. Everything else is just a bonus. We’re really proud of what we’ve achieved in the short time we’ve done Memoriam. We’re purely aware that it’s down to the support we receive from the record labels, the press such as yourself, but more importantly it’s the people who come to the shows and buy the records. Without them, we wouldn’t be in the position we are now. So we’re very proud, very grateful, very humble for what we receive. Long may that last.
I want to talk about the song that was released as the first single off this album, “All is Lost”. What is the story behind this song?
KW: Right, “All is Lost”. That was quite an experience as well. One of the glorious things about doing this band is we’re still, after 35 years on and off of doing it, experiencing new things. We always leave it to the record label to pick what they’d like as a single. We recorded them, you decide what you want to release as a single. So they picked “All is Lost” as the first one and we said, “This time around, we want to do a video.”
In the past, we’ve done lyric videos. They’re good: Footage of war with us playing live and lyrics. Cheap, effective, and does the job. But we thought, “Let’s roll the barrel out and spend the budget. Let’s do a full length video.” In 35 years of being in a death metal band, I’ve never done a full length video before that involved going to a studio, a set location, a few days filming with actors, makeup, and things like that. I’ve never done it before. It was a great experience at this point in our lives to go and do that.
We engaged the services of Mr. Hal Sinden, who is the nephew of a famous British actor named Donald Sinden. He was very famous for The Cruel Sea (1953), which is a great World War 2 film. So there’s a rich historic pedigree of British actors. He’s also a fan, so he knew exactly what we were looking for. He had a real clear, concise idea with what he wanted to do with the song “All is Lost”. From my perspective, it was a pretty straightforward song. It was all about hope. It was about when all is lost, look to the future and it’ll be good.
For me, it was a song about getting through shit and moving on, but he took a different stance to it. As you can see in the video, it’s constructed upon the “life is short and moves very quickly” idea. That’s what he keyed into on the vocals, so he formulated a storyline about a king being crowned and being killed within minutes. It’s a different interpretation of what I intended with the vocals, but it works really well. It also fits in nicely with the crowning of a new king here in the UK, and also with our album cover as well. It all ties in in many different ways, different ways from how I originally intended it.
That’s the beauty of lyrics. I can write what I want to write about something, put it out there, and then my ownership of it is gone. It’s interpreted by the public in a million and one different ways, and that’s the glory of lyrics, words, and music as a whole. People draw reference to it themselves and interpret them in ways prevalent to their own lives. That’s a great thing to experience. I’ve had that across the years, people interpreting lyrics to songs I’ve written in many, many different ways, taking strength to them and giving meaning in their own lives. It’s a magical experience to go through.
I’ve always felt that English death metal, whether it be bands like Bolt Thrower, Benediction, Napalm Death, or so on, stands out for its strong hardcore punk undertones. How did punk impact your life and does it still influence you today?
KW: Yeah, absolutely. We come from Birmingham, which has a rich line of punk rock credentials. We all grew up going to the same venues in Birmingham in our inaugural years, before forming bands, when we were just listening to music. We were always going to an infamous venue called the Mermaid, which was like home. Napalm Death used to play there every week in the early days, when Nic Bullen was with them and Mick Harris and Justin Broadrick. Those were out formative years, listening to that anarcho crust punk.
I pretty much grew up listening to Crass, Antisect, Flux of Pink Indians, all those kinds of bands with a social-political element to them. We were children of the 80s. There was a massive miner strike and the threat of nuclear war. There was a lot of social-political discontent in the UK at that time. Punk was a reaction to that in many regards. We were part of that in that’s where we got our sense of identity through, listening to that kind of music.
That’s always been an inherent link in the music we create, specifically here in the UK and even more so specifically in Birmingham. There were so many bands who had a massive influence in the music we all created. It’s a massive part of our heritage and the music we formulate as well. That’s where we came from as a mindset when we first created music, and it’s always gonna be there. You can’t take it away. That’s who we are as people. In fact, I went to see GBH just after Christmas! It was a good show and good fun. There’s still a strong scene of punk music coming from Birmingham as well. A band called Rotunda, they’re still doing it as well, so yeah, there’s lots of exciting things happening with the punk scene in the UK.
Expanding upon that, in the 80s, did England ever experience the clash between punks and metalheads that America did?
KW: Not really. When we first started out, the traditional metallists, people into Judas Priest and things like that, it was a different world. Punk and metal were totally different worlds apart. There was a clash between skinheads and punks, but there’s a clash between skinheads and everyone really *laughs*. That was the main rivalry when I was growing up, punks and skinheads at gigs. You’d never really find metalheads and punks at gigs until the likes of Slayer and Metallica started to emerge. It was never really a rivalry between the two at that point. It was more like, “This is really new for everyone.”
That’s where we emerged from. We were entrenched in our world of punk rock here in Birmingham. Then we started to hear these bands coming across from America such as Anthrax, Metallica, and Slayer, this more metal musical style developing with an aggressive edge to it. They almost took the ethos and mindset and aggression of what we were doing with the punk stuff and the musicianship of metal music and welded it all together.
That’s really where the whole grindcore thing, Napalm Death, Bolt Thrower, Carcass, that’s where we came from. It was the crossover between the two different scenes. It was a very exciting time to be part of something that was fresh and new, a new wave that we were creating. It all evolved form there. Those were the early days, great days.
Speaking of the early days, this year marks the 35th anniversary of Bolt Thrower’s debut album, In Battle There Is No Law! What memories stand out to you from making that album?
KW: For me, it was quite the experience. I was their driver. My best mate at school, Tom, his uncle (Andrew Whale), married to his aunt, was a drummer in a band called Urban Chaos, a good punk band from Birmingham. He joined Bolt Thrower. Everything was fine. They recorded a couple demos. They needed a driver and I could drive, so I drove them as my job. About 3 weeks before they were heading into the studio to record the first album, the singer (Alan West) decided that he really couldn’t commit himself to doing it on such a large scale, so he left!
They had some auditions. About 5 or 6 people went down and did some shouting into a mic. I didn’t get the job through skill or ability. I got the job because I could drive *laughs* I knew them already, so I almost got the job by default at the end of the day. It was more by look than judgement. That was it. I was in the band with 2 weeks to go before we recorded the first album. It was all a bit of a chaotic mess *laughs*. We recorded it in 3 days. Half of one of those days was trying to work out how to sample a mini engine to get the intro, that spaceship sound. We spent more time trying to record the intro than we did recording the album *laughs*. Great days, glory days.
I look back at those days with great fondness. For me, it’s always been the firsts that stick in your mind the most. Doing my first John Peel session and hearing myself on radio for the first time. Recording my first album and hearing that play. Doing my first gig. Doing my first gig in America. My first tour in Europe with Autopsy. The firsts are always the things that stick in your mind and are memorable times, and there’s been a lot of them. There’s been a hell of a lot of them, and I’m very privileged to be a part of it.
And still making new memories with Memoriam.
KW: And still doing it! I think I’m enjoying it now more than ever. I think I appreciate it now for what it is because I’m not just living in the moment doing it. I’ve gotten to this point and been through experiences to get to this point. We appreciate what we’ve achieved and just enjoy doing it. Everything else is just a bonus. It’s great *laughs*.
In recent years, there’s been a resurgence of new bands playing the classic death metal sound, with many borrowing heavily from Bolt Thrower. Are there any new death metal bands today who catch your attention?
KW: No *laughs*. I mean, yeah, it’s great to know there are a lot of bands out there, and there are a lot of them, who use and draw reference to music I’ve been involved with in the past. That’s great. It’s nice to know I’ve had that influence on the music people create. However, I’m just too old to start listening to new stuff. I’m stuck in the late 80s, early 90s. For me, the first time around is the best. I don’t really need to listen to a rehashed version of it done in an inferior manner *laughs*.
But I’m really proud that people are doing it and pleased that old school death metal has made a resurgence. Possibly without that resurgence, I wouldn’t be in such a strong position to be able to do what I’m doing now. There’s some good bands: Celestial Sanctuary, Gatecreeper, Frozen Soul. There’s lots of great bands out there doing Bolt Thrower-esque type of music. Good on ’em, fair play. Copyright control’s in the past *laughs*.
In closing, what are Memoriam’s plans moving forward? I assume continued work on album #6?
KW: Yeah, absolutely! We’re right on the cusp of releasing album #5, so we’re looking forward to the reception that is gonna receive. Once that’s released, we’re gonna be doing, as we always do, a large number of shows, mainly across Europe because that’s where we can logistically and financially make it work for us. For all of you in America, you probably stand more of a chance flying over to Europe than we do flying over to you. We’re pushing forward and currently in the process of writing album #6, which we intend to record towards the end of this year. All good times, all exciting times! Busy, busy, busy, that’s the way we like it.
The new Memoriam album, Rise to Power, is available now on Reaper Entertainment. For more information on Memoriam, visit www.facebook.com/Memoriam2016/.