First Nasum gig ever on YouTube

Posted: January 23, 2018 10:56:56 by ANDERS JAKOBSON

After 22 years and change, I’ve re-experienced the first Nasum gig EVER as a video has been uploaded to YouTube. Sweet memories? Well, not entirely…

Where to start? Perhaps by telling the complete story. The recording of ”Industrislaven” became Rickard’s last effort as a drummer and singer of Nasum. We recorded it in February of 1995 and when the release of the MCD drew nearer half a year later we got an invitation to do a show in Berlin as a sort of release party. Rickard said that he didn’t want to do any shows and departed from the band. We weren’t really drowning in grindcore drummers at that time, but we managed to find a stand in drummer in Per ”Perra” Karlsson. A former local guy that had moved around in Sweden and made a little career as a death metal drummer in Suffer. Perra was a solid drummer who perhaps didn’t really get the crust punk side of Nasum, but could deliver some mean blast beats when needed.

We did a few rehearsals with him and taught ourselves how to sing and play our own songs. Mieszko and I decided to split the vocal duties and I got to be the guitar player while Mieszko handled the bass. A weird line-up for sure.

Somewhere along the way we got a gig in Åstorp in the south of Sweden, on the way to Germany. Mieszko and I had been there a year or two earlier with our punkband Charles Hårfager, so that became the very first Nasum show. I don’t remember a lot of details apart from Mieszko breaking a string on the bass during soundcheck so we had to borrow a bass from one of the other bands, most likely Arsedestroyer. It’s also possible that we borrowed a double pedal from their drummer as well as I have a slight memory of Perra complaining about some mysterious screws in the pedal.

So, this show is what has been added to the many millions of videos on YouTube. The video is just 16 minutes long and it’s hardly the entire show. There should be at least 10-15 minutes missing before the clip begins. Sadly, I don’t have any old notes about the setlist, but I would suspect that we started with ”Löpandebandsprincipen”, ”Cut to Fit" and a few other ”hits” from ”Industrislaven”. But we’re not getting that in the clip, we start of with a poorly played cover song instead. Ouch!

This is the playlist in the video:

1. Dom styr våra liv (Mob 47 cover... sort of...)
2. Krigets skörd
3. Scarecrows
4. Escape   
5. Revolution   
6. No Time to Waste
7. Stalemate (Napalm Death cover)
8. Re-create the System
9. Domedagen
10. Dolt under ytan
11. I helvetet
12. Smile when you're dead
13. For some reason just improvised noise

The last ”song" is embarrassing as hell! Perra alternates between blast beats and d-beats while Mieszko sings and plays ”something” and I’m going full on Sonic Youth on my poor guitar, perhaps as a result of a broken string? So pointless! We did something similar the next day when we improvised ”black metal”, which the Germans seemed to like though…

As for the show at Knaack Club in Berlin I remember two things in particular: 1) When I saw the ”Industrislaven” MCD for the first time I was so extremely disappointed with how the front cover had turned out as it wasn’t at all as we had wanted it to be. (Another disappointment was when I listened to it and realized that the track-list had gotten fucked up… [read more here]) 2) Perra lost his notes after the Åstorp show and although we sort of wrote them all over again it was obviously a psychological thing and most of the arrangements got screwed up.

I wonder if there are some videos from that show as well… If so, get in touch!

Back to the first show with some final reflections:
* I wish the clip was complete because I like the songs! Many years passed until the next time Nasum played live and became a touring band, and most of these songs didn’t make it to future setlists as we had the albums to chose songs from.
* I was slightly afraid of hearing the vocals, but it sounds quite OK in this clip. I guess a crisp soundboard recording of the show would have unveiled the truth. It’s quite fun to see long-haired me and Mieszko on stage. I would say that we only shared a stage in this manner - upfront, that is - three times in total, so it’s quite special.
* Also, one can argue who wore the worst outfit in the clip - me in a Nasum t-shirt and khaki pants or Mieszko in his white long-sleeved shirt? Goddamnit...

Anyway, thanks to Anders Nilsson who uploaded this clip, and thanks to Jonas Alfons who was the original promotor and who held the camera back in 1995. And obviously, thanks to Perra who shared the stage with us those two days in September 1995. For a current dose of Perra, check out Dreadful Fate.

Share this blog post

Preorder brand new official merch!

Posted: November 20, 2017 18:12:02 by Anders Jakobson

About five years ago we opened the Nasum shop again after the Farewell tour had folded. We had a few boxes of leftover merch that since then have sold out. There were also some stuff from related bands and during the years a number of "new" releases have been added (like the 7" version of "Domedagen" and the vinyl represses of all the albums and "Grind Finale").

But no new Nasum clothes. Until now - today you can preorder a brand new design and the classic Nasum logo in the first time printed with gold ink, and we will do a totebag with the logo as well.

Here's a mockup of the brand new design:



Actually, this design was originally created while we were preparing designs for the Farewell tour and we opted not to print it then because we had so many designs to choose from. I really liked the design and wanted to do it someday, and with some minor adjustments that day is finally here.

This design was made by Robert Samsonowitz (rbrt.org) who designed the "Shift" CD/LP back in 2004, and some elements from the album artwork can be spotted in this design.

As Robert is doing a year long tour (summer 2017 to summer 2018) with his old hardcore band Adhesive where ALL profits goes to Médécins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) a part of the sales of this particular design will be added to Adhesive's fundraiser.

As of now we're accepting preorders for the three new items, where the t-shirts have a lower price. We are also taking preorders for t-shirts in bigger sizes (2XL-4XL) that will be printed on demand and not be stocked once the preorder is over.

The preorded expires mid-December so place your orders right now at the merch page!

Share this blog post

Scarecrows IV: The t-shirt

Posted: June 22, 2017 13:37:37 by ANDERS JAKOBSON

On the very first Nasum recording, ”Blind World” - the split 7” EP with Agathocles, I wrote some lyrics to a song Rickard wrote. It was ”Scarecrows”, in which I described stale politicians as scarecrows ”on a field”. A few recordings later I wrote ”Black Visions” for the ”Smile When You’re Dead” split 7” EP with Psycho and yet again I used scarecrows as a description for politicians not doing anything. So the song got the parenthesis title ”(Scarecrows II”).

Then, yet another few recordings down the line, I concluded the trilogy with "The Final Confrontation (Scarecrows III)” on the ”World In Turmoil” 7” EP. I don’t know why this theme didn’t continue on further recordings (although that type of ignorant politician described as scarecrows certainly figured in numerous lyrics during the years), but now many years later ”Scarecrows IV” is here - as a t-shirt.



I was contacted by Darius Alas, an artist in Estonia who wanted to do a t-shirt design and when we started discussing ideas I re-read some old lyrics to see if there was something to work from and got stuck on ”Like scarecrows on a field, you stand stale and quite” - the chorus from the original ”Scarecrows”. That felt Nasumish and easy to work with from an artistic point of view.

So Darius got cracking and after a couple of weeks the design was finished and is now available from Selfmadegod Records. It’s a great design and doing a white t-shirt for a change felt really good and fitting for the design. Thanks a lot for your work, Darius!

Check out his design studio Midiankai Arts at Facebook.

Share this blog post

Nasum vs Soundgarden

Posted: May 18, 2017 20:52:54 by ANDERS JAKOBSON

The sudden and tragic death of Chris Cornell struck me really hard as I've been a fan of his and Soundgarden for many years. I am especially fond of the later Soundgarden albums, "Superunknown" and "Down on the Upside", from their first period. I've listen to them countless times. I really liked the dynamic within the band, where all the members contributed with songs. Matt Cameron is an amazing drummer that has a style that I really liked, but obviously the big selling point was the soulful and amazing voice of Chris Cornell.

As I write this it's been confirmed that he took his own life, which saddens me a lot. Rest in peace...

Back in the 90's Soundgarden actually inspired a few Nasum songs, how strange it may sound. I believe the working title for "Feed them, Kill them, Skin them" was "The Soundgarden song" as Mieszko borrowed some ideas from "Jesus Christ Pose". Here are the songs, listen as see if you can spot the similarities.

Then we have "When science fails" that I probably took a lot of inspiration from "Spoonman" when it comes to the rhythmic drum beat that opens the song...





One final note - the image of Cornell is from an early show in Stockholm. My friends in the Örebro band Cripple went there and handed him a t-shirt that he wore that night. What a guy!

Share this blog post

Grindcore parking lot

Posted: January 26, 2017 11:24:23 by Anders Jakobson

Believe it or not, but this parking lot is the birthplace of Nasum. Obviously it hasn't always been a parking lot. Once upon a time there was a run down house here that had a few rooms for bands to rehearse in. The house was called Bokcafét Räven (roughly "The Bookclub The Fox") that might or might not have had some illegal operations on their agenda. In the early 90's I started rehearsing with my crossover band F.R.M.T. in one of the rooms. It was small and probably smelly but it was my very first rehearsal room and we had a lot of fun playing there every week.

A while later we started to share the room with some youngsters. Two of them were called Rickard Alriksson and Dan Wall and as F.R.M.T. disbanded I started a new band with these two younger guys. That band was Necrony. That eventually led to the forming of Nasum, first as a side-project to Necrony, then as our main band.

Before we ultimately moved out of this room we shared it with a little outfit called Millencolin, but nobody probably remembers them anymore...

Today, soon close to 30 years since I first moved in there, it's a parking lot and it's been that for quite a while. I go by this place quite often and remember the crazy and creative times we spent in that room.


Anders and Rickard rehearsing some Necrony stuff inside Bokcafét Räven, 1992. Photo by Mieszko.

Share this blog post

Auction: Signed Shift LP from 2004

Posted: December 14, 2016 22:12:42 by ANDERS JAKOBSON

The story: "Shift" was released on CD and LP during the fall of 2004. Basically immediately after the release we embarked on our first headlining European tour. In the meantime Burning Heart promoted the album and got a deal with the huge Swedish metal/hardcore magazine Close-Up where a number of signed Nasum items were supposed to be part of a contest.

Burning Heart had promoted "Shift" by pressing a few white coveralls with the "Shift" artwork a some employees in gasmasks and coveralls (similar to the look in the "Wrath" video) gave away Nasum t-shirts at a Slayer show. We got these coveralls and gasmasks and signed them along with five copies of "Shift". Mieszko and I signed the stuff with gold ink at Burning Hearts offices while Urban and Jon signed them with silver ink at the last Swedish show for the "old" Nasum, at Fellini, Uppsala, December 4.

Well, the stuff were never submitted for the contest before Christmas and you all know what happened then. Since then, the stuff has been in the vault waiting for the right moment. Well, the right moment is sort of here now.

For the last nine years the Swedish national radio (Sveriges radio) and the P3 channel in particular have spent one week in December doing Musikhjälpen (The Music Aid) where three presenters are locked up in a glass box for 144 hours playing music all around the clock in benefit for a certain cause. The project is supported by the entire Swedish music industry (and many others) who donates stuff to auctions. It's quite a huge thing, really. Read this article if you want to know more and what the theme of the year is.

This year Musikhjälpen is broadcasting from Örebro, the birthplace of Nasum, and I decided it was time to give away one of the LP's for an official auction. The auction ends on Sunday and is held at Swedish auction site Tradera, but it's open for international buyers. All you need is a verified PayPal account.

• The auction
• Sign up for international buyers


One final note: As I wrote the signatures are in two different colors, and it's basically because we couldn't find a gold pen for the second part of the signing - we are not sorting the members in gold or silver status!

SUPPORT A GOOD CAUSE AND PLACE A BET ON THE LP! Thanks!

Share this blog post

Rehearsal videos from 2010

Posted: October 3, 2016 20:05:49 by ANDERS JAKOBSON

On this very day, October 3, six years ago, Nasum had the second band rehearsal for the 2012 Farewell Tour. At that time we were still in "feeling the songs" mode as it was about a year left until we finally decided to do the tour once we had had a few "feeling the songs" rehearsal with Keijo as well.

So, to put this into a timeline - in July 2010 I met the Stockholm guys for a nice Indian meal before a Converge show and put forth the idea of doing a (as in ONE) final show to end Nasum on our own terms. As the discussions started and everyone slowly started to like the idea, it developed into a tour since it would take as much time to rehearse for one show as a tour.

The Stockholm guys then started to rehearse a few songs every now and then and having a few beers or some Swedish fika while I was in Örebro not doing that... And in September we had the first band rehearsal totally in secret. As the second rehearsal got planned I decided that I had to tell my fellow Coldworker members what was going on, and my bass player Oskar asked if he could film the next Nasum rehearsal. So he did, and from the very noisy clips I've uploaded seven songs in six clips to YouTube, six years later. Here's a playlist:

Share this blog post

The lost (almost) Nasum recording

Posted: November 16, 2015 17:19:04 by ANDERS JAKOBSON

An 18 year old recording with "Nasum" that most Nasum fans didn't knew existed was released as a 7" EP last week. Something for the die hard collectors to track down at once, because only 500 copies exists.

I write "Nasum" because it's Nasum but it's not a Nasum recording per se. To be perfectly clear: It's Mieszko and I doing some Swedish death metal.

The band was called Bloodshed and it was something we fooled around with for a few rehearsals in the early version of Soundlab Studios. I can't remember all the details but I guess it was born out of funny jams we had while rehearsing some Nasum stuff. All of a sudden we had some songs and made a three song recording. I played the drums and sung, while Mieszko played the guitar and the bass. When it was mixed I made a sleeve for the demo tape and we came up with a four piece line-up where only my name was the only real name. It was sent to a few fanzines and we made copies to anyone who were interested.

Then we basically carried on with Nasum and finished the songs that would be the "Regressive Hostility" recording. Bloodshed was just a fun little project for a little while, nothing more. Until now.

One of the few people that got the tape back in the 90's was Jonas Granvik who at that time made the fanzine Metalwire and sung in the death metal band Without Grief. A few years after the recording Jonas contacted me and wanted the lyrics for one of the songs as his band wanted to cover it. He raved about the demo and I found it amusing. Panerai Replica Watches


Fast forward to 2013 and Jonas contacts me once again about Bloodshed. Currently he works for Sweden Rock Magazine and wrote to fact check a detail as Lawrence Mackrory from Darkane had spoken about the demo in a little feature. Jonas suggested that the recording needed to be put up on YouTube or something for the masses to hear it. That didn't happen.

Almost a year later Jonas contacts me again and tells me that he's going to start a label and wants to release the Bloodshed demo as a 7" EP, and obviously I couldn't refuse the biggest fan of the band! I started to track down a master of sorts. I had a tape copy that was slightly distorted but knew there was a DAT-master somewhere. Once located I borrowed a DAT-player and plugged it in the computer only to realize that only one of the three songs remained on the master... Damnation! The whole thing was polished slightly by Dan Swanö while I put the cover together.

In the spring of 2015 (!) everything was ready to go, but it took another six months to get the recorded pressed. Today I got it in my hand and it's as always quite a tingling sensation to hold a physical release that bears your name. I've loved it every time the last 25 years.

The 7" EP is released by Bone Records in 500 copies, 100 in red vinyl and 400 in black. The only way to get it right now is to write to bonerecordssweden@gmail.com.

It's been quite fun bringing this out from the vault. It really feels like a lost Nasum recording, although it's death metal the way Mieszko and I liked it back in 1997... Have a listen to the first track here:

Share this blog post

Among the tapes of the past

Posted: September 2, 2015 17:42:35 by ANDERS JAKOBSON

A few years ago I realized that tapes were back in style. Not that they replaced vinyls or CD's but tapes were definitively back on the merch tables. That puzzled me slightly. Who has working tape players anymore? Well, I have...

Back in the day I had crates of tapes and I still do. It was very easy during the tape trading days to send a tape to someone and get something in return. New musical experiences came through a cassette and not through a lyric video on YouTube. A part from that it was really easy to record something on a tape, copy an album from vinyl or CD or just simply record yourself. Preferably in the rehearsal room.

For many years I've been longing for the day that I can go through all my tapes and make digital copies of them. Hidden on many unmarked - of course - tapes are pieces of gold. I know that I have a number of rehearsals and studio outtakes somewhere but I don't know exactly where, so the task of going through it all and cataloging everything is quite a big one. But I have started.

A wrote a little bit about it on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. I shared the photo above and wrote the following text:

I'm digging through my many boxes of (mostly unmarked) cassettes in search of gold, and this is a prime example. This has an in-studio rehearsal recording of Mieszko and I working on songs for "Inhale/Exhale". There were 26 songs on the tape of which five (5!) never made it to the final record! It's not the studio outtakes I've been searching for but an instrumental guitar/drums rehearsal with excellent sound. On the other side of the tape there's a similar recording done for the "Regressive Hostility" songs AND a few hardcore:ish songs for a little project called Illuminate we fooled around with from time to time. This is prime nostalgia for me, going back 15-20 years in time.

In the future I hope to make some sort of companion thingy to "Grind Finale" with all this rare stuff I have on tape. It will not be a physical or even official release, but I want to do SOMETHING with all this stuff. Unfortunately, my tape player isn't really in it's best state so I have to find another one that will play the tapes in the best quality possible, or get mine cleaned and served. But I really want to share this stuff as soon as possible!

Well, now my tape player has been through some maintenance and it was totally worth the cost because it plays the tapes much better now and I can continue to look for the good stuff. Since the Facebook post I've found a few more rehearsals from some other sessions, most recently one featuring original drummer Rickard with Mieszko and I sharing guitar duties working on the songs for the Psycho split 7" EP and "Grindwork" recording. It hasn't got a crystal clear sound for sure, but it's something.

Consider this a first update on this tape project. Next time I will be more specific with what I have found and hopefully I will have found what I'm really looking for: the four discarded songs from the "Inhale/Exhale" recording. I know that they are somewhere...

Share this blog post

The Studio Guestbook Pages

Posted: August 20, 2015 17:32:43 by ANDERS JAKOBSON

In May I did a little recording with my new band Axis of Despair, and we did it in Soundlab Studios. The studio still exists and bands record there every now and then, but not as frequently as in the old days. While in the studio I flipped through the old guestbooks where the visiting bands wrote and drew shit while killing time in the studio. As did Nasum, and on the last day of the recording I brought a scanner to make digital copies of the Nasum pages in the books.

There were ten entries in the books, from the first real recording in Soundlab (the "Regressive Hostility" compilation tracks) to the final one ("Shift", obviously). Here you have them with some additional comments. Click on the images for larger versions.

Recording #1, June 1997



This recording was primarily done for the "Regressive Hostility" compilation and we recorded 16 tracks for it plus a Discharge cover for a tribute album. That's basically what's written on the page. It's pretty clean for a guestbook entry, and obviously I spent quite a long time drawing the Nasum logo as precise as possible.

Recording #2, December 1997 - January 1998



Oh yeah, it's the mighty "Inhale/Exhale" session! It was done on real tapes and the lengthy entry is actually a list of the three tapes it took to make the recording. The die hard fans can notice one thing - or actually four things as there are a couple of songs not featured on the album in the list. Track 13: "Truth Fed Through a Tube", track 25 "Need some…", track 27 "Dark Thoughts" and finally track 36 "Crash".

If you have read the lengthy liner-notes to "Grind Finale" you might remember that I couldn't find copies of these tracks in time for the production of the compilation, apart for one song, which I opted to exclude mostly because it sucks, but also as I felt it was incomplete without the other three. The song I found was "Dark Thoughts". I have slight memories of "Truth Fed Through a Tube" and "Crash" and no memory at all of "Need Some…". It's been well over 15 years since I heard those songs, but I am still looking for them. If I ever find them, I will make them public, even if they suck...

Yet again, these pages are pretty clean and with a good rendition of the logo...

Recording #3, October 1998



A "ten hour session", according to the page, where we recorded eight tracks. Four that we sent to Relapse for multiple uses (in the end they became the split 7" with Warhate) and four that were supposed to end up on a very exciting split 5" box set that never happened. Read the "Grind Finale" liner-notes for the whole story.

Pretty clean page this time as well, and the logo came from a promo sheet or poster for "Inhale/Exhale". Notice the old shortcut URL come.to/nasum...

Recording #4 - part 1, October 1999 and part 2, November 1999



The "Human 2.0" recording was divided into two two-week sessions and about a month between the sessions. The idea was an attempt to avoid destroying our voices, which didn't really work that well. The little word balloon in the lower left corner says that my throat hurts.

This is a weird entry. In a quite short form and with a Yodaesque language, it reports what we did and where we ate (!) each day. All righty, then… On day 13 we "show went", which meant we went to a show, and if I remember things correctly it was a Neurosis/Today Is The Day show in Stockholm. Imagine that.

According to the first page, Jesper recorded his bass tracks in just two days. That's good.

Recording #5, March 2000



This is the only recording session in the history of the band where we went into the studio solely to recording one song. It was a Carcass cover for the "Requiems of Revulsion" tribute. We recorded "Tools of the Trade" with the almighty Lord Mazza (ex The Project Hate) supplying a Bill Steer-ish quitar solo.

Most of the page is covered by the actual lyrics to the song and the logo was obviously made just for this page… Perhaps it should have been a t-shirt design?

Recording #6, August 2000



This was the recording for the Asterisk* split 7". Another quite clean page and this time a "Human 2.0" sticker was sacrificed to supply the logo.

Recording #7, May 2001



The by far messiest page we did. It's quite embarrassing to read this. I tried to write something in the same style as many other bands who wrote funny journals about their recordings. This isn't really that funny, and today it just feels like a poor attempt to be cool. One funny thing is that a working title called "Krångel-Jeppe" is mentioned in the text, which most likely is referring to the Jesper written "X Marks the Spot" on the split 7" with Skitsystem, as it's that recording session. And "Krångel-Jeppe" himself drew the little guitar player saying "Naagnum" (a call back to a poster in Spain on the tour with Napalm Death back in 2000)...

Recording #8, November 2002 - January 2003



I believe I did the Napalm Death-ish logo, but that's my only contribution to the page for the "Helvete" session. The other stuff is the signatures from all the guests, Shane Embury, Jörgen Sandström, Rickard Alriksson and Mazza once again. Cool stuff!

Recording #9, June - July, 2004



As a sad ending to this story, the entry for the "Shift" session is quite sad in it's own way. I made the tape logo during the first days of the recording and then never wrote anything on the page. Mieszko wrote "A record to piss people off!", which it did when we switched record labels. The boss' name is on top of the page.

BONUS MATERIAL!

Before posting this I remembered that the old Unisound guestbooks were featured on unisound.se and in the "brown" one I found one Nasum page. It's not dated but by viewing the pages before and after this entry it's pretty clear that it was made during the "Smile when you're dead"/"Grindwork" session.



Not much to say, a pretty messy page, from a time when we had long hair and beards. Mieszko has written some anti-black metal remarks, and Rickard obviously had some issues with the band namn Crux Mortis, while I promoted my amp setup (yes, this was from before my drumming phase) - a Peavey bass amp and a Boss DS-1...

And by that, this little excursion in the vault is over!

Share this blog post