On March 3rd, 2009 I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephen Groth, the man behind Apoptygma Berzerk—or as fans know them: Apop. Stephan was in his home in Norway recovering from the German leg of the Rocket Science Tour. I interviewed him using Skype, which provided an interesting experience dealing with the limits of technology, especially with a plug in for Skype called Pamela. Pamela kept shutting off occasionally. I found Stephan a very complex and sincere man. It was a pleasure to interview one of my favorite artists.

The great thing about Apoptygma Berzerk is that their music has evolved over the past sixteen years growing beyond the simple formula of electronic dance music or synthpop. APOP has been incorporating the musical influences of his past and moving towards something new. Even though he has been criticized by some fans and people in the electronic scene of selling out or going “rock” -- it doesn’t matter. APOP is still moving forward and making smart pop albums. Their new CD Rocket Science is a strong and compelling release with many great tracks on it.

So how was your new material received in Germany?
The album just came out one week before the tour started so we could with every show we did people got more and more into it. With a new album, it takes a while for people to get into it, to understand what is going on. The first show were kind of hard because we had never played the songs live ourselves, sort of practice makes perfect. After one week, we could tell half of the new songs like “Apollo” or “Shadow” fit in with the set but we were trying to figure out where some of the other new songs fit in. Some of the other songs we had to work a little bit more on and end of the last two weeks of the tour, it was perfect, and everything made much more sense. Style wise, it is very different from our older material, songs that we wrote in ’94 and songs that we did a year. It is kind of hard to make the older songs make sense. It all makes sense in a weird APOP way. Our show is a whole long mix of all of these themes at the end of the show we do an encore of our old stuff. We are getting ready to go to Russia for a week, then the UK and France. Then we will come back here and do some more work and hopefully we will get to North and South America.

We are looking forward to seeing you, too!
We are sorry we didn’t get to tour America. It was very sad we were neglecting America. On the previous album, You and Me Against the World, we really had a chance of a lifetime to make it in Europe; we had to go for it. Many bands on the scene are doing okay on both continents. You want to make it big time in either Europe or America; you really have to present there. Like with the band Good Charlotte, which is quite big in the US, whenever they come over her to Europe you see they could have been so much bigger here if they spent more time here. I live in Europe and Germany is one hour flight from Norway, so we really went for it. We had two top twenty hits that year and a hit album that really changed things for us. I regret that we lost the states. This whole thing being in a band and putting out a record is such a gamble.

I have seen a big change in the music industry where everything is still in flux. No one is sure where the industry will end up.
Nobody has a clue right now. We were signed to a label called Gun Records which was one of Sony’s Alternative labels in Germany and they went out of business a week after Rocket Science came out. After the hard work of learning the songs, getting ready for the tour, we got a phone call and they told us you don’t have a record company anymore. That was the first week of our tour! We had that hard week getting the show in shape and working the songs in and after that … The next day we got picked up by Columbia Records, Sony Records so that was good. It was pure luck. It was a step definite step up. It could have gone so badly. No one knows what is going to happen now. I would hate to be a young band now. Even though you have MySpace, Reverb Nation, Vampire Freaks and so on where you can post your song just after recording it — you still need the cash. You need money to print the ads, make the posters, the videos, need to pay your crew and go on tour — there’s not cash available.

So the record companies are less likely to gamble on new talent?
Yes. They don’t have that much cash to gamble. There’s money for groups like U2, Paul McCarthy, Iron Maiden and Metallica. For the big artists; they are more like institutions. But to back a new band, give them the financial support they need; I don’t see where they would get the money now. Their income is so limited now. There’s no income but the costs are the same.

Do you think that is because of file sharing and illegal downloading of music?
No, I don’t think that is the reason. That is the result of the record companies acting like morons for way too long and not understanding what’s going on. The concept of an album is so dated now. They still pretend it is some great new invention. They shot themselves in the leg with compilation albums and they spend so much time promoting one hit wonders. It is all about the hit single. They don’t nurture the artist or help feed good albums. It’s like that in everything, like the food industry or healthcare. It is just consume, consume, consume. There is no concern about quality.

I am fighting my own little war right now. This album, Rocket Science, it is not what the world wants today. This is a quality album like when you would buy a Depeche Mode album, or Kraftwerk or Smashing Pumpkins. The back in the day when the album culture — you didn’t expect one good song you expected a kick ass album with really solid material, maybe a little filler here and there. All over you had solid product with the songs, and the art work. It was like a piece of art you can hold in your hand, you can listen to. That is all gone now — that whole culture and understanding is destroyed.

My youngest brother has hard drives and hard drives of MP3s. He has more songs than I have and I have been collecting records for twenty years. He has thousands and thousands of songs. He has no clue on who made this track, who wrote it, who covered it — there is no story or connection. There is no death or history. There is no real love. I’m not 100% sure all kids are like this but it seems like it is happening a lot.

So it becomes a commodity to be consumed.
A quick little fix.

On Rocket Science, there is a theme of conspiracy theories, the Matrix, 1984, asking people to wake up and be aware.
It isn’t something I woke up a decided that after four years to suddenly wake up and do an album on just to cash in on the whole thing. When I saw The Matrix, I was blown away by it. It really made me think about how corporations are in control of us in many ways. I thought about how a lot of the Nazis were brought over to the United States and were relocated, given different names and how they we put to work to give us a lot of the technology we have today. Have you heard of ‘Operation Paperclip?’

No. I haven’t.
Look it up on Google. It was a project done by the CIA or as it was known then OSS. So much of it was about building rockets and that is how you got to the moon later and how we got the atomic bomb. These guys were Nazi rocket scientists.

I remember reading about the scientists and knew about that. World War II really changed the latter half of the 20th Century with an explosion of technology (literally) and it has changed the Western world so much.
Yes. I went to one of the concentration camps in Germany which is now like a museum and you can see all of the symbols they had for people, like the Star of David for the Jews, the pink triangle for gay people, they had symbols for the gypsies. For people who were non-conformists, for people who questioned things too much—they had the Black Triangle for anti-socials.

Like the thought criminals in “1984.”
Yes. I thought how the symbols had changed. Like in America, there is in Europe to some degree something like people not asking too many questions. There is this pressure to conform to be good consumers. I thought that there are still those kinds of people in the world who still want to control us so this album is talking about that.

How did you meet up with Benji Madden of Good Charlotte?
I was looking in a magazine and I happened to see a picture of this guy and he had an Apop shirt on and I thought wow, that’s cool. Later Benji had contacted my management and had asked for my email, he wanted to get in contact with me. My management forwarded his email to me and we began corresponding. We found that we had a lot of the same taste in music, a lot of the same albums, groups like Depeche Mode, New Order, and Joy Division — so we had a lot in common musically. We got together and met and later he worked on the song “Apollo (Live on Your TV)” with us. I know a lot of people in the scene, the electronic music scene might look down on him because he is a more mainstream artist but he is a really great person.

We are a gadget-obsessed society, what gadget could you not live without?
My laptop. I don’t know how I would live without it — if I had to, I could. It would be difficult. I could live without my Xbox, iPhone, or my television — but my laptop is my sidekick. I do everything on it. It is very disturbing in a way, you know, we have become so addicted to mobile phones and the internet. If the people in charge ever decide to pull the plug —it would be chaos. So many people wouldn’t be able to live their lives because we are so use to these devices. We had two or three days last year and we had no access to the internet and my mobile phone was down at the same time. I was having a hard time mentally, I felt like I was alone in the world. The whole Western world is like that now. It is such a scary thing that in such a few years. I think to when I didn’t have a cell phone and now I can’t live without one. I am in contact with so many people online, people even get married online now.

I found it ironic you make electronic music, which is made and controlled by machines, and many people feel that it is very cold and calculated. At the same time, you really bring a lot of human depth into your music, lyrically and you talk about people waking up mentally from control.
Are you familiar with Kraftwerk?

Yes.
The Kraftwerk concept was man and machine; two forces mixed together to create this new interesting thing. I have always had a fascination with this thought. When machine is in control, I do not like that. I love music; music can change lives, your mood, and your personality. It is such an amazing tool. It is so organic and it is so far away from machine which is cold, calculated, and impersonal. That whole mix has always fascinated me. I have taken that man-machine dynamic and trying to find the perfect mix of rock and electronic music to find that perfect balance.

I think you have achieved that. Rocket Science really grabbed me from the start where it didn’t feel like a connection of dance singles but a concept and it made me listen. There is a message of hope in there that comes through that humanity can pull through.
Thank you. I really wanted to try to make an album like Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall. I wanted to make an album, a whole piece. I wanted to make a whole piece of work, a theme throughout. When you have the cover and the booklet and you look at it and listen to the music, it has all kinds of symbols and clues running through it. When you look at it as a whole it is one piece of art. The cover took seven months to design. It isn’t the kind of album people necessarily want but what people need. Are you aware of the things going on between me and the electronic scene?

I had heard there were some riffs going on; especially that they hated how you had departed from a more traditional electronic-trance/party music into more of a rock territory.
On this album there has been twice as much of that! It isn’t like I am trying to raise the electro scene like they were my children. I am giving them what they need not what they want. Like a good parent tries to give his children their vegetables and not candy all the time. As an artist I have a responsibility if I give my fans candy all the time then it will eventually all go downhill. So on this album; I am giving them their vegetables.

You’re giving them their broccoli. (laughs)
Big time!

Well, I think people want the same thing all the time. They all want music and art to be mindless. Everyone just wants to party.
And I am not against partying! I am not against dance music. If the artist can only offer candy or party, then they are doing any good. I stepped out of the dance music thing because so many people are already doing that. I wanted to think what I can do that no one else can do. I want to think what is my purpose on this planet? I am making pop music but it doesn’t have to be brain dead. To add a little intellectual value and some thought, some criticism. To add that to pop music isn’t a bad thing. Music can either empty your head or fill your head. You need to empty your head sometimes, go out get drunk, party and when Monday comes you need your broccoli. (laughs.)

When can we expect to see you in North America and see you in Philly?
We are doing our tour of Russia, the UK and France. We will be working on getting some US dates later in the year. We got an American management who is dealing with that stuff. So we hope to see you in Philly soon!

Apoptygma Berserk Links
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