Track by track comments for: Human 2.0

Written by Anders Jakobson

1. Mass Hypnosis

- The opening feedback was actually the intro to another song on the album. I don't really remember which to be honest, but when we decided to put "Mass Hypnosis" first we simply moved the feedback to get a better intro. "Mass Hypnosis" is great opening track, but it took some time before we brought it to the live set as it was tricky to play to a satisfactory result.

2. A Welcome Breeze Of Stinking Air

- The things that makes "A Welcome Breeze..." a good track are of course the closing mosh parts. Extremely fun to play and often well recieved by the audiences. There's a Nasum trademark in this song, and it's the last mosh part. The riff goes four times but every time is different. A detail like that is what we often added to entertain ourselves and I think that in the end it was one of the factors that made Nasum attractive to people who usually didn't listen to grind.

3. Fatal Search

- I don't know if you can hear it on the album but the verse riff on this song is a very fast slidy riff that Mieszko wrote after recording some songs for Arsedestroyer in Soundlab. The track itself is very quick and over before you know it.

4. Shadows

- Probably the most melodic song ever recorded by Nasum. Many people have this as their favorite track, but personally I never really liked "Shadows". It's too melodic! Mieszko took a couple of riffs from Nine for this track (which is why he insisted on that "Thanks to all the bands we stole riffs from" thing in the booklet). When I think of it I think most of my contempt for "Shadows" comes from all the times we played the song as a trio. We really needed a second guitar for this track.

5. Corrosion

- Mieszko wasn't the only riff thief in Nasum - this song has a part that is almost note by note ripped off from Napalm Death's "More Than Meets The Eye" (from "Fear Emptiness Despair"). When I first showed the riff it was exactly the same notes and rhythm. What do you do when you love something? But I changed it so I guess you don't really see the likeness today. I think this is one of my best Nasum tracks, but it was recorded quite poorly with bad vocals from myself. Too bad. The last riff in the song is really strange and complex. I still have trouble playing it!

6. Multinational Murderers Network

- Mieszko always had a clear mind about what drum beats he wanted in his songs, and often the beats were very exciting for me to play as they were beats I wouldn't have played if we had jammed. The drumbeat opening "Multinational Murderers Network" was just such a beat - I would never have come up with it! And it's catchy - during the first tour with Napalm Death, Danny used to play it during soundchecks and did so on the second tour aswell. This track has a really good structure and flow but it was always one of those songs that I dreaded to play live. The only time I really got that little drum solo thing before the outro was on this very recording.

7. Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

- The lyrics deal with breaking up with your family and are not based on any personal experience at all! It's all made up, but it's a pretty good flow in the lyrics and "the extremely black sheep of the family" is a funny line. Another of those short songs with a pretty cool but short mosh part towards the end.

8. The Black Swarm

- One thing about being a drummer who composes songs is that you sometimes write riffs that are impossible for guitarists to understand. I think that the variety of the song writing in Nasum was beneficial for the band. But it took a really long time for Mieszko to understand the timing of the verse riff in "The Black Swarm". Jesper got it quite quick but both Urban and Jon had some trouble learning it. It was always with both amusement and irritation I saw their attempts to learn the riff properly. It's one of the greatest songs on "Human 2.0" in my opinion. Should have been a video! The very simple but striking heavy riff in the end is very cool.

9. Sixteen

- I have no idea why this song is called "Sixteen", and I will never find out. Nice heavy intro and outro... I love how the verses changes slightly the last two rounds and the At The Gatesish "Go!" before the second verse is pure genious. A nice track!

10. Alarm

- Sometimes the music inspires the lyrics. When we recorded our albums we never had all the lyrics written as we started recordring the basic tracks. This was one of the songs without lyrics as we recorded it, but when Mieszko found that hollering note during the intro and outro of the song I imagined it being an alarm, and that inspired the lyrics. Again a quite complicated riff in the verse. Sometimes I think that the riffs I wrote were more like finger excercises than melodies...

11. Detonator

- A slow and heavy crust song. The lyrics and the music go hand in hand in this track. The song was for a short period a part of our liveset. It was always fun to play it since it gave me some time to relax as it wasn't that hard or exhausting to play.

12. Gargoyles And Grotesques

- I think this is what I perfer to call a "drummer's song" - a tight arrangement, many parts, rhythmic playing, lots of breaks and stuff. I've written a couple of these during the years, especially on "Helvete". The lyrics were written in desperation and originated from a photobook I own called "Nightmares in the sky" which displayed a lot of the gargoyles and grotesques that guard our cities from above. I immediately saw the resemblance to a powerful government and wrote the lyrics.

13. När Dagarna...

- Fuck, there's nothing stopping this song! Very quick and intense. I think Mieszko discovered his love for lots of vocals on "Human 2.0" and this song really proves it. It was never played live but at one show in Kalmar, Sweden some guy in the audience recited the first verse from the pit. Kind of funny.

14. Resistance

- "Resistance" has got a sample from the first "Matrix" film. That film had a huge impact on Mieszko and I and helped us develope the "Human 2.0" theme on the album. Luckily the "Matrix" VHS came out in the stores just in time for the mix and mastering so we could add a sample. I enjoyed playing "Resistance" a lot. I have no talent for double bass playing but managed to get some rolls right in the outro. We failed slightly with the part after the first vocal part with the "ihh! ihh! ihh! ihh!" thing on the guitar. The idea was stolen from Meshuggah but not performed well. I remember "Resistance" being one of the very first songs written for the album and I knew that we were onto some good material when we started rehearsing it.

15. The Idiot Parade

- A live favorite that usually came at the very end of the shows (together with "Den Svarta Fanan" of course). Fast and interesting but it's the heavy part that really rocks my socks, but we never played it as slow as on the record live. Very hardcore influenced and an excellent and striking vocal part by Mieszko.

16. Den Svarta Fanan

- A quite fast song in Swedish which is a little bit special since all the bars in the verse starts with a very clear accent. In the end of the song I did these accents on the China cymbal, which eventually inspired the rhythmic chorus of "Scoop" on "Helvete". The whole idea of accentuating things on the China while grinding came from Assück.

17. We're Nothing But Pawns

- The opening riff is really cool and weirdly melodic. I've always loved rhythmic thrash metal riffing, and this song has some thrashy riffing in the non fast parts. Nice.

18. Defragmentation

- The lyrics were written as sort of a joke. Defragmentation is a computer term for sorting the data in your computer to basically speed up the system. You probably did it when your computer had Windows 95,98 or NT and your harddrive was just a fraction of what you have today. Anyway, the process of defragmentation was appliable on the human mind (or whatever) and the idea och human defragmentation went well with the "2.0" theme.

19. Sick System

- A short burst with the excellent line "It's a bullet in the head of every happy boy and girl". I love it!

20. The Professional League

- As "Human 2.0"'s "breaksong" "The Professional League" has a really nice drum beat through the verses. Lots of ghost notes on the snare. Sometimes it's hard to do a beat like this. It may sound awkward and pointless but in this case I think it helps to keep the pace of the song going forward. On the other hand a beat like that can add too much self confidence to the drummer. I remember when we played this song live during the tour with Napalm Death I used to do a new fill in before the last chorus (where there's only drums) every night. Sometimes it was good, but mostly weird and confusing for the rest of the band.

21. Old And Tired?

- The sounds in the beginning of this track is me reversing a rehearsal tape with the exact same song on a small shitty recorder. We recorded a few bars of the song just to use for the reverse effect, ending with the hihat count from the rehearsal. If you listen really close (and understand Swedish) you can hear me talking shit about the band in the other room...

22. Words To Die For

- "Words To Die For" was one of the "Human 2.0" tracks that got into our liveset and stayed there for quite a while. It's not often I think we've made bad arrangements for a song, but when we played it live it was pretty evident that "Words To Die For" should have been a little rearranged. It's a part toward the end that feels a little bit boring - it should have had some vocals or something. Never the less, the song is a good one.

23. Riot

- I love the flow of this song, and the quick accents in the beginning of the song are damn cool. My "Onward, forward!" grunts are really cool and remember that I loved recording them.

24. The Meaningless Trial

- "The Meaningless Trial" is maybe not one of the most exciting songs on the album but it's quite cool with the opening grindpart not at full speed, the mosh break with the inverted snare and the quick crust parts towards the end. Pessimistic, but good lyrics by Mieszko.

25. Sometimes Dead Is Better

- Yet again I wrote the closing track and yet again we felt quite early that it should be the closing track due to it's ending that probably could have been executed a little better. Listen closely for a bass solo! The title is from Stephen King's "Pet Sematary", but the lyrics are actually a love story or a broken love story. You shouldn't poke in the sores, so to speak. A different subject for a grindcore band. I love the complete weirdness of the opening riff, but I hate my vocals on this song. So weak... The sample in the end comes from one of my favorite episodes of The X-files ("Ice").

Track by track comments

• Inhale/Exhale
• Human 2.0
• Helvete
• Shift