Carcass still owe debt to Ken Owen

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By ( Metal Hammer ) published

Latest album full of departed drummer's influence, says Walker

Carcass frontman Jeff Walker says the band had the full blessing of former drummer Ken Owen when recording their comeback album.

Original drummer Owen was not able to be part of the Carcass reunion in 2007 as he had suffered a brain haemorrhage in 1999, leaving him unable to play the way he used to. The drum stool was filled by Daniel Erlandsson and later Daniel Wilding.

But rather than stand in the way of the Liverpool group’s comeback, Ken gave his approval to Walker and guitarist Bill Steer to continue and even played some part in the recording process of 2013’s Surgical Steel.

Walker tells Metal Underground: “We did rehearsals with Ken. Ken had come on stage and had done some drum solos. So there’s no real baggage about if Ken is no longer involved because from 2008 to 2010 we included him as much as we could in Carcass.

“Bill actually went to see Ken to tell him that we were in the process of doing an album and Ken’s response was ‘’I thought you guys would have done it sooner,’ so as you can see we got a Ken’s blessing to do this.

“We’ve included him as much as we could in the album. There’s still a Ken influence in this album even if Ken is not playing on it. It’s there in the drumming, it’s there in the lyrics, it’s there in the fact that he was a large part of Carcass and the fact that we managed to record an album after 17 years and it still sounds like Carcass.

“We were definitely aware of what makes Carcass tick and Ken was a large part of that, so we have done our best to pay homage to the spirit of Ken.”

Stef Lach

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.