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An Interview with Stephan Groth of Apoptygma Berzerk
Posted: Monday, February 08, 2010
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

Since forming the band in 1989, Stephan Groth has taken Apoptygma Berzerk to unprecedented heights in the musical underground. Beginning life as a mangled form of gothic electronica, Groth's experiments with dark songwriting and electronic music steadily moved from their humble Norwegian roots to become one of the biggest bands in the scene, beginning with 1993's Soli Deo Gloria. Traversing the styles of industrial and EBM, Apop's 7 album in 1996 became a linchpin in the genre as dance floor hits like "Non-Stop Violence" and "Mourn" took the clubs in Europe and the USA by storm. With the following two albums, Welcome to Earth and Harmonizer, Apop not only veered toward a more melodic synthpop-oriented sound, but also became one of the progenitors – along with Covenant and VNV Nation – of futurepop.

After three years and a slight respite with the Fairlight Children side project, Apop returned in 2005 with a brand new album that marked yet another transition in Groth's musical explorations. While the electronics remained fervently in place, the guitars that were ever present in live shows and only hinted at on record were now brought to the fore on You and Me Against the World, culminating in a sound unlike past Apop albums, something more akin to indie rock. Still, the band held onto the dance floors with songs like "Shine On," and while many fans and critics within the scene were alienated by the shift in sound, the album became Apop's highest selling yet. Four years later, Rocket Science emerged with an even rawer sound, removing some of the polish but continuing down the path set forth by the previous album. Those anxious to hear Apoptygma Berzerk return to their electro/goth roots were to be sent home crying, for it seemed that Stephan Groth had indeed sold his soul for rock & roll.

Having embarked on an autumn tour of the United States, the band's first in almost a decade, Groth took some time to address the present and future of Apoptygma Berzerk, relating his views on his music and the audience reaction to it, as well as his thoughts on the changing music industry and Apop's place in it.

What are your thoughts about the tour? Now that it has concluded, how satisfied are you with the outcome?

Groth: I'm extremely happy with the...I don't know if you are aware of it, but we haven't been in the USA in like five or six years or something. Now, I'm just trying to chill out after the tour. You know, it is way too much work, in a way. We were flying in and out of Canada and in and out of Mexico. It's probably the most stressful tour I've ever done. You know, touring the USA is quite hard because of all the distances. It's not like in Europe, you know. In Europe, you are like one hour away from everything. But yeah, it's been really, really good. I kind of felt bad for a while that we had been neglecting our U.S. fans. It wasn't really my decision. I mean, I've always enjoyed the USA, and we've always had a good fan-base over there, and it's alla very cool country to chill in because there is lots of stuff to see, and it's all very exciting, but it just ended up this way because we had a lot of success on our previous album in Europe. Usually when you put out an album, you'll go on tour, like a promotion tour first, then you go back and then you release a second single, then you go on a second tour, and then you go on a U.S. tour, and then you come back home and do a European tour and do all the summer festivals and stuff like that. But we ended up having two Top 10 singles in Europe with like half a year in between, so we ended up doing the promotion tour in Germany first and then 'In This Together' was a Top 20 single. Then we had to go back on tour, and then we did the rest of Europe and went home for a little while, and then we were on the way to book a U.S. tour, but then 'Shine On' became a Top 10 hit in Germany, so we ended up going back and touring Germany all over again. Unfortunately, that gap that we had where we had a possibility to go to the USA was spent in Germany, and then it happened again because of the success we had, because the record company demanded that we get back into the studio to make a new album because they wanted to put it out while the media had their sights on us and while we had airplay and all that. So, to answer your question, I'm very, very happy that we finally went to the USA again and did that tour. We also went to Mexico for the first time; we had never played there before. And we went back to Canada and did three gigs there, and we haven't been to Canada for eight years or nine years or something. So it was really cool, and we met a lot of old school fans, and it was really cool.

How much more or less difficult was it to conduct this tour versus the tours you've done in the past? What were the main differences?

Groth: If you look at other bands who have...like, say a band like VNV Nation. Both Apop and VNV kind of broke in the USA and the underground at the same time. We went on tour together on the Welcome to Earth tour, but we did half of the tour with them supporting us and they did the other half; it was like a split headliner tour. So, I mean, VNV are now in America because they kept on touring, and they in a way may be neglecting Europe, but they gave priority to America. So they did the exact opposite of we did. I won't say that we had to start over again, definitely not, but it probably would have been a good idea to keep touring over there. That's not the case; that's not what happened, so we just have to take it from here. Not all the way to the ground, because even though we are still playing to some really good crowds, you know, so…

You still have the name recognition.

Groth: Yeah, we have that. Even though our album is not out physically in the USA, there is always some attention thing going on there. Even though most of the time, especially in the American media, it has been negative feedback and negative attention, there is still something. You can look at Marilyn Manson, you know. After all that attention he gets that is extremely negative, you know, he is still always there. Even though we've been away, we've still been there, in a way, because people have still been taking about us, and people have still been hating us and all that stuff. People are still talking about us, so if you compare that to a lot of other bands who were touring in the USA back in the Welcome to Earth tour who are totally forgotten in America now because they haven't been there and there haven't been any scandals, and they haven't made any rock albums that people hate and all that, so there has been no talk about them, and they simply just died.

The music has change over the course, especially on the last two albums. It's still electronic, but the guitars are much more prevalent. You always had them before, but now they're much more upfront. What sparked that shift in sound? What made the band decide to have more guitar and go for this indie rock feel?

Groth: I don't think it is indie rock. The main reason is that I grew up with indie rock. As I usually say, I always have one leg in the electronic scene and one leg in the alternative rock scene. That's what I grew up with, so it's a part of me. It was at a point where when I heard bands like Ladytron and The Faint, when those bands came out, I was just like, 'Wow, this is what I really want to do!' It's still electronic, and it still has very obvious roots to the '80s, but it's more like traditional rock songs, you know, pop rock songs with a lot of '80s in there, a lot of underground, but still has focus on the pop songs. I was always a pop song writer, you know. I mean, a lot of people are mad at me now because I'm not doing the industrial music anymore, but the thing is that I was always, even if you listen to the old stuff when we were at our most underground-ish, they were still pop songs. That is always my main thing, that is, to write good pop songs. It's the same for a band like Front 242. When Front 242 were, say back in the late '80s, early '90s, there were like hundreds of bands doing the exact same thing Front 242 did, especially from Belgium and from Germany. But what the huge difference there was that Front 242 had the good songs. The other bands didn't have any good songs. And that's why I got into Front 242. I liked Klinik and that style. I still like that and I like that as well, but I always loved Front 242 a little bit more because they had the hit lines there and they had the cool melodies that you could hum along to, so that's what I've always been doing, in a way. My taste in music has changed over time, but I think that the most important thing is that. I've been doing it since I was 18 or something like that, and if you look at most other bands who were around when we started, there are not really that many of them left. I think one of the reasons is that people get bored after a while, and my personality is that I get bored with not only the music but with everything really, really quick. I don't know if it's like some ADD in there or whatever, but I constantly need to have fun and enjoy myself, or I get bored and I find something else to do. Music is the same. I just have to be really, really into something. When we did the whole futurepop thing and all that, at the time I totally loved it. It was new, and it was exciting, and it was fresh. It was like nobody was sounding like us. When we did that, there was like no one else doing it. You had a few other German bands, but it was a new and exciting place because we were inventing something that did not exist before. Even though industrial music already existed and trance and euro-pop still existed, the blend that we made was not in existence before we started doing it. We were like really, really early in mixing the dance beats with the more trance, rave and kind of techno sound with the electro/industrial. It was unheard of. So while we were doing all that stuff, I thought it was so fresh and so exciting, and after the Harmonizer album, I just got so extremely bored with clubbing, with the whole techno beats, and I just needed to go on with something else to make something different to keep it exciting and keep it fresh, because I knew that I could already tell that Harmonizer was less exciting than Welcome to Earth. So I already knew that, 'OK, I have to stop here or I'm going to really start to repeat myself, and that's going to be the end of Apoptygma. I'm just going to find something else to do.'

You ended up starting Fairlight Children around that time.

Groth: Exactly. That was how I really connected with it; I found back my love for electronic music through Fairlight Children. I was just so tired. Remember that Harmonizer and Welcome to Earth...it was like a blur of putting out records, putting out singles, playing festivals. It was constant touring and it was just a blur. I can't even remember. Sometimes when I meet people in the USA now and they are talking about stuff that happened on the Welcome to Earth tour, I'm like, 'Wasn't that on the Harmonizer tour?' And the other way around happens as well. I can't really remember what it was because it was so intense. So when I got home after the last European tour we did on the Harmonizer album, I was just so tired of clubbing. The thing is, also, when I wasn't out touring, I went to clubs in Norway. I was out clubbing once or twice every week plus on the weekend, since 2000, you know. It was just too much clubbing, too much partying, and I just had enough. But with Fairlight Children I was kind of like, 'OK, I have to start over again,' you know, and I got all like analog there and got my old equipment, got back in the studio and started over.

It was kind of over-saturated at that time.

Groth: It was so much, and most people, normal people, do it that way. They go out clubbing maybe once every week. I was out clubbing all the time and I was arranging concerts and I was promoting concerts. The only I never really did was Djing, because I didn't have the time to do it, because I was busy with everything else, but I was setting up concerts here in Norway and I was involved with our record company that we started here, and our distribution thing, and it was like electronic music overload, you know? So to answer your question, it was that I needed to do something else, but still had my love for music and my love for Apop and this mission to take it further. I knew that I would have to stop Apop and that Harmonizer would be the last album unless I changed things and continued making something that I felt was interesting and had a purpose.

Some people have not responded well to the change, while others have. What have you noticed about the audience's reaction to the changes? Having toured as extensively as you have in the USA and in Europe, what have you noticed in terms of the way the two different peoples have been receiving your new music?

Groth: Well, first of all, the feedback and response that I got on the last two albums have been extremely positive from everybody coming from outside the electronic scene. They were overwhelmingly positive. I know that a lot of people, if you read on MySpace or whatever, that so many ex-Apop fans are complaining and so on, but what I find to be the truth most of the time is that the people who are really complaining were never really Apop fans. They were fans of the whole scene, or they are in the scene, and they liked Apop because Apop was part of the scene. They didn't like Apop because Apop was Apop. Do you see the difference? So all the negative feedback that I've gotten from the scene I totally understand. Why would I listen to Apop if I'm a hardcore fan? If I listen to Combichrist 24/7, then Apop would have nothing to offer for me.

Ronan Harris made a point in the interview on the Pastperfect DVD that if you're listening to black metal all day, then Futureperfect is going to be a sugary sweet album.

Groth: Exactly. And it can even be the other way around with people who are listening to sugar-coated music all day, and when they hear Apop, it's a very rough thing. I hardly ever see any negative reviews or read anything that actually has a point. It is very emotional, very emotion-based. They never have any good argument. I suppose if they had written a review of Rocket Science that had any argument at all, then I couldn't question them, but there is no point. It's a fantastic album, and if people don't like the sound or my accent or my voice, that's totally fine. But it is the most bulletproof album that I've made, the best sounds that I made, the lyrics, the best artwork, and everything is quality-wise, extremely over the top good. I remember the review that your magazine had online. That was one of the first, actually. It was pretty early on when the album was released. When I read it I was just like, 'Wow, this guy is amazing. He is just totally proving my point of the whole album,' which is that our whole generation and that the world live in today is so extremely dumbed down and that review – one star or two stars or however many it was – proved the point of the whole album, that we are turning into incompatible stupid robots who cannot even appreciate and understand the quality of a good album. That's where we are. We don't understand anything. But, as I said, I am not out to please anybody. I know exactly what...I could make Welcome to Earth, Part 2 any day. That's not my job, you know? There are hundreds of bands that do great electro and who are filling the clubs every weekend, just like I did 10 years ago; it's just not my job anymore. That's not what I want to do with my life. I know there are lots of other bands who are still doing that and trying to. I'm not going to say any names here, but you probably know what I mean. You can only be the new cool thing for a certain amount of time, and if you continue trying to do the cool thing when your time is over, then it just turns into being extremely pathetic. So I chose to depart from turning pathetic. I just chose to do my thing. As you can probably tell, I'm very happy with the outcome of it and what I am doing, and that is the most important thing, because then I can pass this on to whoever wants to listen to it, and I'm totally 100 percent honest. I am having fun, and I'm having a great time, and I think that I'm doing the best music that I've ever done.

With regards to the lyrics on Rocket Science, what are you writing about these days? Tracks like on 'Asleep or Awake,' 'United States of Credit,' 'Shit End of the Deal' and 'Black vs. White,' almost sound political. Is there a unifying concept to the album?

Groth: Well, it's a little bit different, because I have always tried to be. I don't like when politics are being mixed with art. But Rocket Science is not a political album in any way that I look at it. There are a lot of things that are actually more important than music, and like in 'Asleep or Awake,' I actually mentioned that I'm trying to wake people up here, because there is a lot of strange stuff going on at the moment. The album has lots of so-called conspiracy theory elements in there, and I've been into all of this so-called conspiracy stuff for some years now. When I got into it, it was just because I thought it was interesting and exciting, but I didn't really believe in it until I really started to dig into the material and do my own research, where I found out that way too many of the so-called conspiracy theories are actually fact. So that's when a whole new world opened in front of me, and I am trying to pass some of this information on to listeners. I'm not in any way saying what other people should believe or think, absolutely not. I am not preaching, but in a subtle way, there is a lot of info there. If you go through the cover there and check out the cover artwork and look into the lyrics, there is a bunch of info in it. If you want to go further, you can do your own research if you're interested in these things. You can actually decipher the whole cover, because on the front page, every letter has a whole story to it. There is a whole path you can follow from each letter on the cover. It has its own little conspiracy theory to each letter, if you know what I mean. And that is only the front cover. Then you have the rest of the booklet. There are lots of clues, and I mention some names also here and there in the cover, and today with Google and the online search tools, you can study up on all these things and probably spend a whole year doing that. As I said, I am not preaching; I am just inviting the listener to check out what is going on, because there is just way too much stuff that doesn't make sense. I know that I'm not really that extreme when it comes to the whole conspiracy thing, because there is obviously a lot of it that is nonsense and that is bullshit.

It's a matter of filtering through and coming to grips with your own conclusions.

Groth: And that is very important to do these days and that is unfortunately what people don't do. Like with the review that we talked about a few minutes ago. A lot of people today, they just read that review and think, 'OK, that's a crappy album.' And, as we say in Norway, they howl with the wolves. They do like all the others and say, 'No, that's a crappy album,' 'Yes, we all hate it,' 'Blah blah blah,' you know? Now, in reality they are actually missing out on a very nice piece of art that could maybe even change your life. And it doesn't only go for me; that goes with every album, every movie, every whatever. And that's what's so important, that even though you read the reviews and you read the newspaper or whatever CNN or Fox News is telling you, it is so important to check things out on your own and to do your own research. Today, people, especially the generation after my generation, the kids today, they hardly read books anymore, and they don't have time to listen to a whole album even anymore. They download that one single or listen to that one song or whatever, but they don't sit down and really go through the artwork or enjoy an album the way it's supposed to be enjoyed. People don't have the time, and I don't blame them. I don't blame anybody, because there is a lot of stress going on.

On the album you have a guest appearance on 'Live on Your TV' by Benji Madden of Good Charlotte and Amanda Palmer on 'Black vs. White.' Both of their music is very different from Apop, but you have them featured on the tracks. How did their styles compliment yours?

Groth: First of all, I am very honored to have them on there. Dresden Dolls is one of my favorite bands, and it was a huge honor that she wanted to do it. Having her on the album didn't affect any of the songwriting or any of the musical part of it because the song was already written. She just did some vocals there. But it was just one of the things I felt the most excited about on the whole album, because I think that Amanda Palmer is a genius. But to have her on there is something I'm really, really proud of and really excited about. The same thing goes with Benji. We've become really good friends over the years, and a lot of people don't know this, but he actually used to belong to an electro/goth/whatever thing in DC when he was there. He used to go to the clubs, and he was there when we played there, and he's been to several of our shows over the years. I had a shock when I read an interview with him for something and he was wearing an Apop shirt, like with the 7 cover on the shirt, in like a huge magazine, like years ago. So we ended up hanging out a lot over the years and have become really good friends, and we actually played in Los Angeles the other day, and he joined us on stage and stuff like that. It was really exciting. Actually, he says that in many interviews when he is asked about his influences and what he's inspired by, he mentions Apop everywhere. He was doing some big interview for Rolling Stone or something huge like that, and he was talking about his three favorite bands of all time, and he said Nirvana, Apop and Oasis. So, that's pretty exciting to hear, of course, from the guy I'd consider a really good songwriter who has sold like 10,000,000 copies of something or whatever it is. So what happened is that I did a remix for them; they put out a remix album a while back, and I did a remix of one of their songs. So he was just returning the favor by joining me on that song and singing some backup vocals. So that's how that came about.

The band had a long association with GUN Records, which sadly closed its doors shortly after the release of Rocket Science.

Groth: One week after.

And you've said for U.S. distribution that you're not with Metropolis anymore. What is the next step for Apop in terms of label support, especially with so many bands these days starting their own labels? Is that something you guys have considered? What are you guys looking for now?

Groth: I have already started my own label, in 2003 or something. We put out all the Norwegian editions of our albums. We put out Computer Girl and some other Norwegian stuff. I've had this label for years and even today we have put out – I don't know if you have seen it – the whole back catalog, remastered. That is all on our own label. The thing is that I can't sit here in Norway, put out stuff on my own label, and get anything going in the USA or in Germany, because I am too far away. So I have to license the records and other stuff, and at the moment we are signed to Columbia Records in Berlin, Germany, so they are taking care of the whole of Europe for us. They picked us up from GUN Records. We didn't get dropped; they dropped. That was a disaster. It was one week after the release date, so all promotion and everything just went down the drain, so that was like the worst timing. I've never experienced anything like it. It was a total disaster. It was terrible, but I'm going to start working on a new album, and that is going to be on Columbia here. So we're still working on the situation in the USA. Since we've been away for so long, I don't know the American market anymore. I don't know what's going on over there, but that's one of the reasons we did this tour. I wanted to check out what's going on over there. I talked a bit to Ronan from VNV about it, and he's doing some interesting thing in the USA at the moment, so…

They did launch Anachron USA, and they released their album and had their tour in 2009 as well.

Groth: Yeah, but unfortunately, with the record industry going down the drain at the moment, it is so hard to sell albums, and we need to find some other ways to do it. I think that Ronan is definitely onto something here, and there is a good chance that I'm going to follow in his footprints, but let's see what happens.

You mentioned that you were going to be working on a new album soon. It was a three-year gap between Harmonizer and You and Me Against the World, and then four years between that and Rocket Science. Are we going to see that long a gap between this and the new album? And what can people expect from new Apop?

Groth: I don't know. Every time I go into the studio, I have some mission about how it's going to sound, and sometimes it's something totally different. What I'm working on now is I have written a few songs, but haven't really taken them to the studio yet. It is a little bit too early to say anything about it, but it is going to continue what I started. With You and Me Against the World, looking back now I feel like that album was a bit too polished, and a little bit too nice, and a little bit too mainstream-sounding. The mixes and everything were just a little bit too nice.

That was the thing about Rocket Science, that there was a little more of an electro/rock sound opposed to You and Me Against the World, which was almost a straight indie rock album.

Groth: Exactly. You live and you learn, and you have to do certain things, and there comes a reaction to that, and so on. I think that there is a bit more of a roughness to Rocket Science, and I think I'm definitely going to continue in that direction. I'm not in the mood for polished stuff, at least not at the moment right now. There's something about getting this live feel, you know, the life and the energy that we have when we play live; I'm trying to get that captured on a studio album, and that's extremely hard. That was actually the agenda when we made You and Me Against the World, because we always toured with guitars. We always had electronics, but we would rough that up with drums and guitars. Even on Welcome to Earth and even before that, we always toured with the sound and the energy of a traditional rock band. On the albums, though, they were always 100 percent electronic, because at the time, my concept was that when people have just bought an album, are they supposed to go and pay for a show and then listen to the exact same thing? I thought that was a bit unfair. When they went out and bought tickets to a concert, I wanted to present another version of the album. Therefore, we kept the album 100 percent electronic, and when we played live, it was really rock-based. So what we did on You and Me Against the World was that we tried to capture that energy and the rawness that we have live and put that on our album. It didn't really turn out that way, but we got the energy on there, but it was still too polished and too smooth, in a way. So now I have changed, because people are not really buying albums anymore, and since they don't pay for it, I don't feel like I'm ripping them off if they go to the concert now and it sounds like it does on CD. These days, I am trying to have the same energy both on the record and when we play live. I think I'm going to continue doing that, and one thing that I'm very sure about is that I'm not going to make more dance floor music, because as I said, I'm not clubbing anymore, and it would be fake if I should go to a studio and pretend to do something that I'm not into. So I'm trying to be real and true to my audience, but for some strange reason, people are still dancing to what I'm doing now. When I'm in Germany and go out to whatever clubs are there, I still hear them play 'Shine On,' for example, and people are dancing their asses off. They're not jumping up and down with glow sticks, but they're still dancing. I never considered that dance music, but that has changed, you know, with bands like The Killers and all that. When it's kind of like '80s-ish, in a way, you're supposed to dance to it, for some reason. I don't know, but that's what they do, so I don't have a problem with that.