Interview with Grave Pleasures vocalist Mat McNerney | By Nicholas Senior
Finland’s Grave Pleasures – who arose from the ashes of Beastmilk – have returned in all their apocalyptic glory to take the world by storm – or at least dance their cares away before an orange buffoon finds the nuclear codes.
Their sophomore record, Motherblood – out via Century Media on Sept. 29 – is a triumphant record that hints at the power of adversity. The band have dealt with a publicize name change and member turnover, and Beastmilk’s landmark debut, 2013’s Climax, has weighed on the remaining members like an albatross ‘round their necks. Thankfully, they have come out the other side stronger and more determined. Their brand of post-punk has a certain magic, making it impossible not to hum along and dance to it. Motherblood just may be the perfect album to listen to during our impending destruction—or any time you’re craving fantastic rock songs.
Vocalist Mat McNerney feels exuberant about Grave Pleasures after everything they’ve gone through, and for good reason. “I am very happy about this new album,” he says. “I think we’re finally—after all the small dramas—in a place with this band that I always wanted to be in. The lineup is solid, the songs are there, and the record is indeed a joyous one. It’s a record brimming with elation. We can see cracks of light in the darkness and a rope out of the abyss. The music reflects where we are at as a band too. It’s on fire. We’re desperate, and there’s rage in what we do again. In a way, though, what we went through as a band—with all the heartaches of name changes and lineup changes—has made the band what it is. It’s all been very apt, and I am very much of that Tibetan mind that everything happens for a reason.”
Motherblood exudes a certain macabre enjoyment of our imminent doom, evident in the great line from “Joy Through Death”: “Death is the meaning of life.” What was McNerney’s mindset when writing these songs? “The core of this album has been about what inspired the band from the beginning,” he explains. “When I wanted to make post-punk music, it was always the contradictions and the clashes in the sound and themes that attracted me to the roots of the music. It’s made in sad times about sad and dark times, but there’s this shameless jubilation about the songs. You dance away your pain. That’s something we wanted to amplify within the songs. We wanted it to be about catharsis. Everything is going to hell, but isn’t it beautiful? I mean, people talk about ‘Well, that’s a nice way to go’ about certain forms of death. I think death itself is a beautiful way to go.”
“The Buddhists have this saying,” he continues, “which is about the certainty of death: when faced with such an immovable truth, why find sadness in it? When something is so concrete, I believe that getting to enjoy it would be a more suitable way to interact and deal with it. Death used to be a celebration—it still is in a lot of cultures. I think we’d do well to go back to that way of thinking, because I think it gives us peace and the ability to survive. If death is something to be feared and avoided, I believe we attempt to subvert our nature. The order of things is disrupted.”
McNerney expands, “That’s what Motherblood is about: the mother represented by Kali sitting over the life and death cycle. We should worship that, because it’s the cycle we’re in. We are born and born to die in her womb. When we forget that, we are sacrificing our mother and destroying ourselves. It’s a very Tibetan thing, you know, that death gives us meaning. When you let death in, you are at one and at peace. I think that’s the answer. It’s behind nearly everything I do as an artist.”
McNerney’s embracing of death led to a very cathartic writing and recording experience. “The album isn’t really about a hypothetical World War III. It’s more a sense that we’re post-apocalyptic,” he reveals. “We have to come to terms with our extinction being inevitable for us to be able to understand how to deal with it. For me, making a record that is so very accepting of death and reveling in the beauty of that wonderful destructive nature we have a species, it made the songs and recording process of those songs go very deep. We all opened up and went to a very personal place where we were able to go back through our past and some of the issues we hold onto, the things that make us who we are.”
“The album process was able to give us a sense of spiritual healing,” he elaborates. “I think, for us, this was a clear sign that something was happening with these songs. The music and the intent behind Motherblood is like a purification ritual. It’s a cleansing that brings peace and catharsis. It’s a positive message rather than one about war. War is an inevitable truth, but if we accept that, I think we can concentrate on the parts of our humanity that are able to shine through and live on. We brought the music up and out from a personal place, but I think the message is communal. Let’s dance while this whole shithouse goes up in flames.”
Regardless, this mindful view of humanity’s darkness doesn’t take the sting out of current events. “Current events, for me, also have that smell of the surreal,” McNerney acknowledges. “Trump is a bad dream. How many people refer to their governments that way? It’s like a nightmare, and hopefully soon, we’ll wake up? Well, history is full of these dreamlike scenarios, and we see how they play out. They are our ancient YouTube videos, but nobody is listening to those. It’s hard to see how a video capturing the brutal beating of a teenager by a corrupt policeman, for example, is going to significantly change the pattern of human behavior to avoid there being the kinds of genocides that wipe out populations. It’s simply a sad sign of a bigger picture of how destructive and hateful we can be.”
“Those lessons are in history books and have been for years, but I am not sure we have listened to them properly,” he explains further. “I think our greatest fear, as perpetuated by fiction—movies, books, games, etc.—is that we simply continue as a species, but that we haven’t evolved from our defining nature at all. Sometimes, we think on such small personal levels about things that are far too large to change from a subjective angle, and we imagine that we’re evolving. We’re capable of more, but only theoretically. Practically speaking, we should judge ourselves by our actions. I think about that with song titles and the lyrics. That’s why we have songs that equate mass murder or genocide with lust or love. The personal and the collective experience is often very blurred—especially today with social media, where one person’s opinion becomes 100, and 100 people’s opinion influences one person’s opinion at the click of a button.”
However, McNerney hints that all of this could have a simpler meaning. “Perhaps all we’re doing [in Grave Pleasures] is using the concept of nuclear destruction as a way to explore the idea of love,” he muses. “It might just be a metaphor, albeit a very dark one. It’s about love, fear, sex, and death—like all good rock ‘n’ roll should be.”
Photo by Anton Coene
