Road rage

>> Danish metal merchants Mnemic
hate to do what they love to do best

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

The new record… pzzt… death metal… pzzzt… melodic… pzzt… click.” That’s Mircea Eftemie, guitarist in Danish metal band Mnemic, in our fourth attempt at an interview through a faulty cellphone connection.

Eftemie’s frustration at his cellular service provider can hardly hold a candle to his frustration with the current spin-cycle state of metal. Having spent the past two years constantly on the road or recording, Mnemic’s current tour has them tying up a two-month run through North America. Completely exhausted, mentally and physically, by the tour, Eftemie will have to face up to the cold hard facts that he will be out on the road for a while—their record Passenger has only been on shelves for two days at the time of our interview.

“There are just so many bands out there in metal right now,” he says, “and then you have all of these shitty metalcore bands out there just diluting the scene, and what you get is a spoiled North American audience, because there are literally metal shows happening every night in every city. It kind of makes you wonder why you do this.”

Eftemie may be temporarily winded by his breakneck schedule, but the fact is, he should at least feel lucky that they even got a record out at all, let alone a great one. Passenger merges Fear Factory’s anthem choruses with Meshuggah’s sense of stop-on-a-dime arrangements, and despite losing their original singer to road burn, the band actually outdid themselves when they brought French singer Guillaume Bideau into the fold.

“We were to fly to L.A. to record the album in two weeks, and despite having the record written, we still had no singer, so there was a bit of a panic. We auditioned about 20 singers, but when Bideau came along, it just worked perfectly. He’s not really a metal guy, so he really brings a great sense of power and melody to the band.”

When I mention to Eftemie that he should consider himself lucky to at least be able to tour in the glutted metal world, he says, “Sometimes kids come up to me and say how lucky I must be to travel and play music every night, but at this point, I just look at them now and say, ‘Stay in school’… pzzt… click.” n

With God Forbid, Goatwhore, Byzantine
and Arsis at Foufounes Électriques on
Wednesday, Feb. 21, 7 p.m., $22.50