Interview with Milosz of Morne 2010

By Bradley Smith

Your debut album Untold Wait has seen the bleak light of day and it contains 6 of the 7 songs from your demo. Can you describe the progress/refinement of music from the demo to the album? How do they differ and how did Morne grow and mature as a band in between the two recordings?

 

Milosz: we recorded the demo just to have something to work with on developing our songs, we just wanted to see how everything sounds together.  we didn't want to go to some expensive studio to record these songs and find out that we wanna change something.  We didn't even have a plan to release it but Will from No Options records kinda talked us into it.  We decided that some songs need some adjustments and tweaking, we dropped the tuning down after the demo. The demo was released in super limited quantity because from the very beginning we knew that we would re-record everything. I think the demo showed us few things that we have to change and taught us how to be better with playing together.

Prior to Untold Wait you had a Split with Warprayer. What material did you release on that and why did you decide to release something with Warprayer? Do you feel that along with musical similarities you also share philosophical parallels?

 

Milosz:  Right after recording our demo, we decided that we wanted to do a 7" ep just to put out something small, introduce the band to people.  I had one song ready and we took one from the demo but we needed something more for a main song.  I started to write TO RUST.  The song was getting longer and longer specially when Jeff and Max added their parts to it.  It was too long for the EP.  We weren’t sure if anyone would release a 12" ep with three songs from an unknown band so our drummer at that time, Kevin, brought up this idea to do a split.  I asked around and Jim from Warprayer contacted me.  I really like bands he was in(Napalm Death, Ripcord) and I liked raw sound of Warprayer, so we decided that we would do it.  Both bands come from the same scene so that made it easier...


What sort of touring have you done with Morne?  How does the music translate to a live environment as compared to the studio recordings? What sort of energy and mood do you try to convey when playing live?

 

Milosz:  After we released the demo we went on a short mid west tour.  It was cool but nobody really knew who we were but we booked it through our friends so it wasn't as bad as it could be.  After that we played some random shows here and there and in the summer of 2009 we went to Europe for 5 weeks and it went very well.  Much better than we were expecting.

When we play live we try to sound as loud and as good as possible, we care about what gear we use and try to make everything work so we sound close to our recordings.  Recently we added a permanent keyboard player so the live sound is much closer to the albums than it used to be when we played as four piece band.


One thing about your style is the music is so desolate, like the aural embodiment of a Nuclear Winter. What do you think makes this style have such an apocalyptic feel to it? Are we as humans doomed to destroy ourselves?

 

Milosz:  We are trying to express our feelings and emotions about the world surrounding us but i think the music that we listen to has something to do with how we play too.  I listen to a lot of moody stuff like Joy Division or Pink Floyd that i guess makes my feelings about world around me even stronger.  I don't think we are a bunch of moody people I think that humanity is slowly flushing itself down the toilet and that makes us who we are...


The next series of questions will deal with topics inspired by your lyrics. I was wondering what a person would be when they had no feeling at all? What sort of events within your life would it take to rob you of your emotions, your compassion?


Milosz: Sometimes I feel like many people are lacking in their basic human emotions...People turn in to mindless blind forms that just close their doors behind them.  Maybe the times we live in make us be like that.

I have to say that the death of a few of my friends and my mother's stripped me down to nothing, made me completely numb to everything.  It slowly came back to me but sometimes it comes out and I guess I express it in some of my lyrics.


You mention a storm coming that will change everything? What storm are you referring to and what will be changed? How will it be changed?

 

Milosz:  This song is about my experiences of life and all the little things that make it interesting or not.  By storm I meant a change, something that changes my view of life something that I think won't affect me but it does.  death, sickness, happiness, love or lack of it.  All those things effect us in one way or another and everyone sees it differently...


How does one avoid becoming part of the machine, living life as a cliché, a stereotype? Is there a way to fight the machine? And if we succeed in defeating it, what will remain?

 

Milosz:  hmm, I guess we can avoid being part of this rat race by being open minded and use our own minds and not just blindly follow others, no matter how good or how bad they are.  Being good to one another.  I think many people surrendered their independence for comfort which makes them not be interested in discovering alternatives, different options to their lives.

Who or what is the Invincible Force? Why must it be destroyed and how can they be defeated? In a world such as this, where do you find faith? Is it in any institutions or do you only find it in that rare individual?

 

Milosz: Invincible Force is outside our doors, ignorance, selfishness.  It's all within us, everyone is little bit ignorant, selfish, we all wanna be comfortable and agree to all new technologies that we think make our existence better but in the end of the day are not as good for us as they say.  I try to not be sucked in by these aspects of our life.  The faith comes from everyday of my life, mistakes I make, people I meet...

 

There is so much suffering in this world. From wars like Afghanistan to the earthquakes in Haiti. Is this the human condition? To suffer perpetually? Or can we break this cycle? If so how? If not, why are we condemned to this fate? Is there a god looking out for us with a plan or is he laughing at our demise?

 

Milosz:  War is with humanity since its beginning it's just part of our history, I don't know what would have to happen to stop it.  I wish I did... Earthquakes ..I don't know ..Maybe our planet is just super pissed off about the exploitation human race does to it.  I wish I had better answers to this question

Many people point to the obvious musical similarities between Morne and Amebix and Discharge. But what do you feel are overlooked bands within this subgenre that deserve attention? Of course my favorite is Axegrinder. What musical and ideological qualities form the boundaries of the crust subgenre? What makes this style possess such an immediate impact?

 

Milosz:  ah, Axegrinder, many people compare us to them and I said that many times ,none of us in MORNE listen to them, I think they are not as good and not as ground breaking as people say.  My all time favorites are AMEBIX and MISERY, awesome bands.  Sacrilege from the UK is great too.  I think this style kinda connected fans of metal and punk.  It was kinda bridge between one and another.  It has punk ideals and metal sound.  You can't really go wrong with that...

 

Now that the dust has settled surrounding Untold Wait what are the future plans for Morne? Any new Recordings or tours? Any musical projects the members have active outside of Morne?

 

Milosz:  We are gonna tour the west coast in end of May and beginning of June.  We are starting at the Chaos in Tejas fest and then go west.  We'll see how it goes.  Other than that we will write new material.  Erik, our drummer plays in few other bands so he will be super busy, other members don't have any other projects right now.  We try to focus on Morne as much as we can.

 

I will leave any words to be scrawled in the dusty ashes of the nuclear winter to you.

 

Milosz:  Cheers for the questions and supporting us.  It means a lot. 

For More info check out http://www.morneband.com