Nation (Swe) - Without Remorse [Japan] (1995)

Heavy Metal / Melodic Metal / Neoclassical / Power Metal / Progressive Metal

Japanese issue by Victor Entertainment Inc. including bonus track "Just Before"
Comes with OBI, booklet with lyrics in English and Japanese.

A video was recorded for the song "See Them Fall".

"Waterloo" is a cover of ABBA (written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus & Stickan Andersson)

Other Issues
CD: Without Remose, 1995 [Septima Records #SEP 1951003]
Cassette: Without Remorse, 1995 [Solar Entertainment Co. Ltd. #VICP 5672-4]
CD: Without Remorse, 1997 [Now & Then #NTHEN 38]

"The Long awaited second album from the Nordic metal rising star Nation has finally been released!. Following the previous work, the thoroughly crafted music stands out. This is the epitome of neo-classical music!!!."

All songs (except "Waterloo") Published by MDC Music Group. "Waterloo" Published by Polygram Music Publishing.

All music written by Johnny Öhlin except "Waterloo" by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Stickan Andersson.
All lyrics written by Isaac Isacson except "You'll See", "Nation", "Just Before", "Don't Need To Come" by Isaac Isaacson, Johnny Öhlin. "Waterloo" by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Stickan Anderssson.

Translation from Booklet
Hello! This is Johnny from Nation. It's been over a year since we last met, but how's everyone? We've been doing gigs all over Sweden since we released our first album "Chased by Time" in August last year. Well, it's not easy to do a gig in Sweden, so we didn't go as far as touring, but we've done about 20 gigs. It's popular in Sweden to do cover songs and unplugged performances at restaurants, but we're neither of those. We're an original rock band. But when we play at discos, people come to dance, so it's hard to get people to listen to our music. But we should be grateful that we were able to do a gig at all!

Well, here's something that will blow away all that gloom! It's our new album, "Without Remorse." We started writing songs right after we finished our first album. I'm always writing songs, I never stop. It's not like, "Let's write a song!", I write whenever and wherever. We're always rehearsing. We write songs and try them out together. Depending on the song, I might just bring an idea and the band will turn it into a song. A lot of the new songs on this album were written that way.

I have a lot of songs. There were 13 songs in total, but I chose 9 of them to put on the album. The remaining one is a cover song. It's "Waterloo" by ABBA. Do you know this song? It was a big hit all over the world a long time ago. ABBA was the biggest pop star in Sweden. We've been playing this song live for a long time, and it was well received, so everyone said it would be good to put it on the album. So we decided to put it on this time. At first, we thought we would only do original songs, but when we tried "Waterloo" during pre-production, it sounded good, so we changed our minds later. It's a good song. I remember them winning a contest with this song when I was 8 years old. But we're doing it in our own style.

We started recording in late July. It took about five weeks. It's not finished yet, we're in the middle of mixing now. The studio is the same as the first album, although the name is different. We produced it ourselves this time. We initially wanted to have a producer come and give us advice for a few days. He had worked with Roxette, but due to schedule conflicts, he could only be there for two or three hours. So we essentially produced it.

The album title "Without Remorse" is a direct copy of the song title.

It's because there's a common message in two or three songs, including "Without Remorse." The message is about heartless people who do bad things and don't feel anything, but it's wrong to do that. The nuclear tests in France are a good example. You can find many other things in the newspapers. Well, that's the message, but it's not the theme of the whole album. Some of the songs were written quite recently, and some are quite old. But "without remorse" is definitely the keyword.

There are some changes in the music compared to the previous album. It's heavier and harder. There are influences from Dream Theater, Metallica, Pantera, etc., but it's also melodic and sensitive, so it's still Nation music. I think this is the music we were aiming for. It's rougher and more live-like than the previous album. "Chased by Time" ended up being a little too clean, so this time I wanted to make it more live-feeling.

So I'll give you a quick rundown of each song. Enjoy the album while you read this!

"Live in a Lie" is my favorite song. It's a pretty long song. This is one of the songs related to the album title "Without Remorse". The world today is not good in any way, socially, politically, or economically, and this song describes that situation. The fact is that we are all living in a lie, and no one knows what will happen in the future. This song is about such issues.

"See Them Fall" is another one of my favorite songs. It's fast and long. All the songs on this album are long. They're typical Nation style songs. They have various parts, from soft to violent. This song is about Mother Nature. It's about how humans are nothing compared to her and can't do anything against her. Take earthquakes for example. There was a terrible earthquake in Japan this year. This song itself is like an earthquake.

"Nation" is an old song, so the style is a bit old. You can tell by listening to it and comparing it with the new songs. It's a good song though. It's about a smart person using his brain for bad things. It's about Oppenheimer, who invented the atomic bomb. It's also related to the album title.

"You'll See" is an emotional song. I wrote it a couple of years ago. It's about our drummer's heartbreak!

"Don't Need To Come" is a fast song. It was written very quickly too. We rehearsed it quickly.

But "Just Before" is something that is unusual for us. It's about a girl who has no remorse. It's a mix of real events and fiction. "Just Before" is an original song that we first rehearsed with our singer Isaac. We all had a lot of discussions about whether to put it on the album or not. Personally, I didn't want to put it on because it's an old song, but well, everyone has their own opinion. In the end, we decided to put it on. This song also deals with problems in private life. It seems like we have a lot of problems! But it's not as dark as it sounds.

"Goin' Insane" is a new song. It's a very rhythmic song. It's about a situation where people with a lot of power are overusing their power. I'm talking about politicians, leaders, people in power. It can be men or women. The world is full of these people. It's full of pretense, they abuse their power. And it's the weakest people in the community who get hurt. The weaker they are, the more they get hurt. This song is about a world gone wrong. There are too many weirdos in the world. And people are being manipulated like puppets.

"Love Will Return" is a slow song. It's the most unusual song on the album. I think the idea for this song has been in the works for a long time. I had been working on this song, but I didn't include it in the previous album because I thought it didn't fit the band's style. But I thought it would be a bad idea to ignore a good song just because it's different, so I decided to include it. It's full of harmonies, a bit like Toto or Chicago, but I like that kind of thing. I think it's a good balance even if it's a song with a slightly different feel. When we were recording this song, there was a boy who is a fan in the studio, and he really liked it. It's a love song, of course. "Without Remorse" is the most recent song. It's the core of the message. I think you can hear the influences from various styles of music, but it's still very melodic. I like it, but if you're listening to it for the first time, you might think, "What happened to Nation?" But I want you to think of it as an album, not just the song. I think it's full of Nation-ness. It's a mix of Nation's musicality and the music that was popular in the 90s. It's melodic, but heavy.

Thanklist: Annica, Marika, Paola, Andrea - For your patience, The Wallberg family + Nena, The Iscasson family, The Carlsson family, The Noberg family, Per Ekström, Torsten the studiospider, Our very specialfan Takatoshi "Taka" Hirakawa, Bob Fläsk, Hene D-D, Bassie, Perra Wallberg, Reine Wikström, Kent Lund, Billy Andersson, Micke and Calle at Lyssna & Njut, Perti Koskinen, Carl Hoffman for keeping me on the right track (Johnny), Micke Hoffman, Per-Åke Tärnell, Robban and Micke at "Stallet", The rescue team at Septima Records, Victor Entertainment, The "Hang Him High" video crew, Inkan Areshough, Vina Del Mar, Mats Berggren at Nord Art, The guys at Stones, Johan and Bosse at EBS, Slagverket, Alar Surna, Staffan Linde for all your good advices, Gunnar at Studio G, Alex Luna, DM Audio, Masao Fujiki.