By Greg Pratt

“I’m at Venice Beach, so I’m doing good,” says General Surgery guitarist Joacim Carlsson when we get him on the line for a bravewords.com update. “I’ve been out here for a week now and it’s really nice.”

Carlsson has another reason to be doing good: the Swedish band’s second disc, Corpus In Extremis: Analysing Necrocriticism, rules. Period. Somewhere between total no-fi underground noise and more polished melodic gore-grind (like, say, if Carcass’ Tools Of The Trade EP had come out about a year and eight months sooner than it did and your cassette copy of it was just a teeny bit warbled but you said, Fuck it, I don’t care, I’m keeping it), the album follows up their debut, 2006’s Left Hand Pathology, about as goretastically awesome as one would expect. And the band is hitting North America (sadly, no Canadian dates this time; they’re working on it for next year) to spread the grimy word.

“It’s not starting until tomorrow so it’s hard to tell how it’s going,” says Carlsson about the North American tour, “but we have a good feeling. We’ve never been out here. It’s our first time on the West Coast.”

And Carlsson’s good feelings extend beyond the tour, beyond California, right back to Necrocriticism. “It’s been kind of overwhelming; the first album got so many good reviews, so we thought it was going to be harder for the second one, with all the comparisons and everything,” he says. “But everybody seems to be liking this one even better. We’re really stoked about that because we think it’s the best one too. Happiness all around.”

Hmm, happy, happy, happy. Man, how happy can a guy in a gore-grind band be? “I’m in California, I have to be happy, man,” he says with a laugh. “I’m walking right on the beach now, watching the waves and the surfers (laughs).”

Let’s get serious: are these guys getting more serious about their band these days? After all, let’s look at the timeline: band forms in 1988, band splits up, spends a good dozen years apart, gets back together and cranks out two full-lengths in three years. Not bad.

“We try to make the most of our time that we have,” says Carlsson. “We put it to better use than we ever did before, because after the last album came out we had a lot of problems with the lineup. The guy who answered the phone when you called used to be our bass player and he left to move back to the US and we lost our singer… it takes a while to regroup and everything. After we did that we got our old bass player back and we got a new singer and we started playing shows and writing the new album and now it’s working out really good. It’s not a full-time thing because nobody has time for that, but the little time we have, we try to use it the best we can.”

And Carlsson says what many who listen to the new disc will quickly assume: that the band’s current lineup is their strongest yet. “Yes, definitely, I would say it’s the best one yet. It’s going well. Everybody gets along; it’s more of a unit now. It definitely makes it easier to work. So we’re happy - happy gore-grinders (laughs).”

What makes many gore-grinders happy is the thought of General Surgery on national Swedish TV. Something which, amazingly, recently happened. “Yeah, that was pretty interesting (laughs). I’m not entirely sure how it happened. The guy who talked about us, he also reviewed us for one of the major newspapers and he emailed us, saying, ‘I really like your album and I have this spot on this TV show; can you send me something? I want to talk about your album.’ So we said, ‘Sure. Why not?’ So he wanted us and he got it (laughs). It was funny. My mom was so proud.”

Did she tell all her friends?

“I hope not, no. We… that would be horrible,” laughs Carlsson.