THE NASUM VAULT - 1998-2004: THE ALBUM YEARS
Liner notes to "Helvete" (from the LP reissue 2014)
Although all four Nasum albums have individual values for me, I usually answer ”Helvete” when someone asks me which one is my favourite. It was the album where each and every piece fell into its right place. We might have found our sound on its predecessor but on ”Helvete” we finally got the right production.
Mieszko had done numerous recordings with other bands in the ”new” Soundlab Studios and knew his stuff inside and out and could afford to spend some extra time on our sound checks. I had recently bought a brand new DW kit that sounded awesome and being a guitar sound nerd, Mieszko tried every possible way he could think of to get the right crunchiness from the guitars.
The song-writing process was disturbed by both internal and external problems. Relapse’s release plan was very busy and our desired time frame was way to early. At the same time, both Mieszko and Jesper announced that they needed a break from Nasum. I wasn’t happy with this decision and I feared that the band would end. But when the break was over, we got creative again and wrote a bunch of killer songs and made a strong album – so strong that we got two awards for it.
The album recording lasted two months and I remember it as a good time. One of the highlights was to invite Shane Embury from Napalm Death to play on a song. We had done a few tours together and had become friends so all we had to do was to ask. Mieszko had written the song “Whip” especially for our guest. It was a very Napalm Death-ish song and it was no match for Shane to learn the riffs and nail the recording. I was quite impressed. As it happened we hadn’t finished all the bass takes for the album so Shane learned two more songs and recorded them as well.
He wasn’t the only guest on the album. I had gradually cut down on my vocal contributions, as Mieszko had become the main singer when we started to play live, and my few attempts to sing on “Helvete” sounded like crap so that part of my musical career was finished. Jesper did some of the darker vocals but we managed to get some really good voices as Jörgen Sandström (the original singer of Grave) and Rickard Alriksson (the original singer of Nasum) sung a few excellent lines on the album.
The title was the result of some wild and slightly angry debates regarding what we would call the album. “Helvete” is the Swedish word for “hell”, but it’s also a common Swedish swear word... Never the less it summed up the lyrical themes on the album, which were very much inspired by the state of the world post 9/11. Former president George W. Bush wouldn’t appreciate them much. We also commented on the rise of fascism in our neighbour country Denmark (“Living Next Door to Malice”) and managed to write some happy lyrics (“Go!”) for a change.
The marvellous artist Paul Romano did the artwork. He got a wide variety of requests from us, but Mieszko’s particular suggestion “The artwork should look like our guitar sound” will forever bring a giggle to me. Good thing he spent such long time getting it right!
- Anders Jakobson, September 2014
HELP ME FUND THE VAULT AND THE RARE NASUM
I have a lot of Nasum "vaults". There are the digital vaults, harddrives, CD-R's and whatever that contains some stuff. And then there are the analog vaults. Boxes filled with documents and notes and boxes filled with tapes containing rehearsals and rare stuff. I'd be more than happy to share this with the fans, but I need some funds to take time of from work to really do all that boring excavating that's needed to find and document everything.
I have put together a GoFundMe page for this: gofundme.com/the-rare-nasum and any donation is appreciated. You can also support this cause by buying The Rare Nasum stuff at Bandcamp. Or you can make a donation without going through GoFundMe or Bandcamp - just contact me at nasum@nasum.com. Everything that comes in via these channels are ear marked for a future massive excavation.
I really hope you can help me to preserve The Nasum Vault for the world. Thanks!
- Anders Jakobson.
ABOUT THE VAULT
THE NASUM VAULT is the "umbrella" for a number of projects collecting information and items from the Nasum history.
• The Vault Blog shares "interesting, semi-interesting or uninteresting things" from the Nasum Vault.
• The Rare Nasum publishes audio goodies on Bandcamp.
• The Official Nasum YouTube Channel is the home for video oddities.
• The Nasum Vault Homepage is the portal for the whole project.
HELVETE VAULT EXCAVATION
Selected Helvete goodies from the Nasum archives.
• Rehearsal 2002 with comments• Liner notes from the 2014 LP reissue
• Helvete working titels
• The recording of... (diary written by Anders)
• The making of... (written by Mieszko)
• "Making of" Preview of Hell (mp3)
• Discography page
• Track by track commentariers
• Lyrics
© NASUM. Design and programming by Anders Jakobson based on Halcyonic from 
