Gadget put out The Funeral March in 2006; it was the Swedish grindcore band's second full-length, and it followed up their excellent Remote debut from only two years prior. The band were set to be one of the great new hopes in grindcore.

Then it took them ten years to put out another album.

“Okay, I'll make a long and not so interesting story short,” begins guitarist Rikard Olsson when we wrangle him up to talk about the band's new album, The Great Destroyer, and what the hell took so long. “First off, I left our hometown seven-something years ago so we stopped rehearsing regularly, and shortly after William [Blackmon, drums/guitars] left Sweden to live in England for a year. And after the last album William also lost interest in playing the guitar and pursued other interests instead. He did the majority of songwriting in the past, so with just me and Fredrik [Nygren, bass] handling the songwriting on our own it took a little longer to gather enough material. And with us being spread out and not doing much, the few times we met was for gearing up and getting in shape for gigs rather than having writing sessions. But eventually we managed to stop that irresponsible behaviour and dedicated our precious time for finalizing the album instead.”

Now that the band has managed to get a new album together, the end result is exactly as grind fans who enjoyed their first two would hope: The Great Destroyer definitely fits in well with the band's previous releases, which makes sense considering how old some of the parts of the songs on here are.

“I actually wrote the first batch of songs for this album about six or seven years ago,” says Olsson, “and some songs even have riffs that are older than our first album. So, mentally and emotionally, for me, some parts of this album aren't as far from the last album as you'd think. But, sound-wise, sure, it might be a bit more intense and old-school sounding, but at the same time it has all these diverse elements that we've always embraced; the modern elements that the old-school grindcore puritan despises (laughs). With the Phobia split 12" that we did a few years ago as a bridge, I think this album is tied together with The Funeral March pretty nicely.”

Sonic continuity aside, another steady in Gadget's world is their choice of record labels, the band still on Relapse Records even after the decade-long break between albums. Olsson says they'd have it no other way.

“We're still signed to Relapse and they've always been cool with us taking our time,” he says. “And cool with everything really, how to record, album art, and all. Going with anyone else was never a topic.”

As for what's next, Olsson reveals that fans of the band might have a rarities collection to look forward to at some point in the future.

“I'm currently trying to collect a bunch of old recordings like all the demos, pre-production recordings, and such for a compilation. Firstly only on tape, I believe—I'm doing it on my own label, starting out small—but if there's enough interest it might be a vinyl release as well later on. We'll see. And then there's a bunch of shows being planned, and hopefully a short US tour this fall.”

(Photo - Erik Larsson)