LINKS:

horsetheband.com

myspace.com/horsetheband

JODI MICHAEL: In the press release for A Natural Death, you said that the album is about "the futility and arrogance of creation and destruction, the overwhelming scale of space and time and the brutal majesty of nature, the horror of birth and the beauty of death." Were you serious when you said that, and do you care to elaborate on that at all?

ERIK ENGSTROM: Yeah, I was serious, but I think it's not that good of a quote. Most people just skim over it and they're like, "Oh, whatever," and don't really think about it. Basically, all I was trying to say was if you have an accurate picture of what you are in the grand scheme of things, you realize that nothing that you do will last or matter to hardly anyone. And even if it does, they'll all be dead really soon anyway. Starting to think that your life is super-important is just stupid [laughs]. You can still take things seriously, because that's all we have to do with our lives, but just understand your place and don't get carried away. Try to keep a sense of humor about everything. Nothing matters.

JM: So do you consider A Natural Death to be a concept album?

EE: I don't know; I don't know what the criteria is for a concept album. I would say no. It definitely has unifying themes, but we weren't trying to make a concept album. There's no point in that; nothing matters. (laughs)

JM: (Laughs) So is that your philosophy on life, nothing matters?

EE: In a nutshell, but most people would hear that and think that I'm a negative person. I'm actually pretty positive. Well, sometimes.

JM: Do you think that your listeners will get that out of the album?

EE: No, not at all. They'll all think the songs are about Nintendo games and that they're all jokes. We tried to do something serious this time to see what would happen, to see if people would pick up on that we were serious, even though it had a couple of tongue-in-cheek moments, to see what reviewers would think, and no one even picked up on it [laughs]. They all thought it was still a joke album, even though it's completely serious content, and we're using metaphors. Everyone's like, "Oh, HORSE the band, joke band. Okay. Another joke album from HORSE the band; I don't get it." Plus, the jokes on our albums—they're supposed to be funny—I don't even find them to be as funny as a lot of the serious material on serious bands' albums. It's funny to me that they think that's serious and good and worthwhile. It's a much more elaborate joke that they're pulling than we are.

JM: Such as black metal, stuff like that?

EE: Not even them. I mean, yeah, sure. Pretty much every band that doesn't have a sense of humor about what they're doing, you look at them on the stage and you're like, "Do you know how funny you are, and you're acting so serious and no one really cares about you? (laughs) All your concepts have been done 48 times by other bands and writers." You have to take everything that you're doing with a grain of salt, because it's not like it's original or worthwhile. It just passes the time.

JM: Since you say that, do you guys take your music seriously at all, and do you take yourselves seriously as musicians?

EE: Yeah, but there's a duality to it. After saying all that, we try to write the best music that we can, and we take it seriously. We don't write joke riffs or anything. Sometimes we'll write a song that's supposed to be funny, because we try to keep it balanced and humor is definitely a part of all of our lives. Yeah, we're trying to be a band that produces good music, but I'm not gonna toot my own horn about it to anyone. "Oh, look at this thing that we did, it's great." Take it for whatever it is to you, and then that's good enough for me.

JM: How does HORSE the band go about writing an album? Does everything focus around the keyboards, or does everybody do their parts separately?

EE: Usually—I play keyboards, Dave [Isen] plays guitar—we'll write a structure of a song, like all the keyboard riffs or all the guitar riffs, and then we take it to each other and make up all the other parts to it at practice and teach the riffs to our drummer. If adjustments have to be made, we'll add and take out things. I guess that's basically it. Then when we're done, we record it for Nathan [Winneke], and he takes it home and comes up with all the phrasings and lyrics based on the music and what it makes him think of, hopefully. Except when we force him to write songs about stuff like pizza. (laughs) That was a complete joke too, Pizza. You don't have to mention that in the interview.

JM: (Laughs) I think it's interesting that A Natural Death is kind of all over the place, but it is really well-composed. It doesn't make sense, but at the same time it does make sense; it all comes together. I think it's interesting how you've got what essentially could be sort of a covers album without the keyboards on top, because each song seems to have its own theme, its own style of music. Do you consider the band's sound to be a matter of collaboration?

EE: Yeah, definitely. I think if any of us did a solo album, it would be really horrible compared to HORSE the band, because we all have our specific things [that we like]. If I wrote a solo album, it would be poppy, horrible, new wave rip-off, and Dave would just write rhythmic guitar riffs in 9/7 time signature [laughs]. It would be weird. Hold on a sec.

(There is a considerable pause where nothing at all can be heard on the other end of the phone, and I've just begun to wonder if Erik has put me on hold when he returns.)

EE: Sorry, I was driving by a cop and I didn't want to get pulled over [laughs]. All of us fight a lot when we're writing songs. It probably makes them better. I hope. Kind of like At the Drive-In...when they broke up, they formed two horrible bands that I don't even want to listen to. But when they were all together and they hated each other, that was my favorite band ever.