Interview с Therion : DARKSIDE.ru

I know that the lyrics for “Gothic Kabbalah” were written by the head of the order “Red Dragon” – Thomas Karlsson. Could you tell a bit more about this part of your personality? I know that you are also a member of this organization.

It’s really a part of Therion, and one can easily find everything on their website. Speaking about Thomas Karlsson I can say that he is one of my best friends, and we’ve known each other for many years before he started to write for Therion.

I know that you also collaborated with Christian Rätsch who also worked with Stefan Hertrich at his project Spi-Ritual. I know that this author is from North of Germany and he lived about two or three years in the rain forest. What do you know about this person and what do you think about his point of view – I mean shamanism and things like that?

Oh, we have a lot of interests in common. Maybe he is a little bit more drug oriented, with all these natural drugs in the rain forest. He lives and works in the shamanistic way. He is like shamans in Siberia who eat mushrooms and things like that. I find it very fascinating and I have no objections to it, but I it’s not really the way I work myself. But he is a really good friend and I respect him a lot. He is very good in the German language and he speaks German, he thinks in German, he is very talented in using the German language, and I really appreciate working with him to translate some of our lyrics into German.

It’s no secret that you are a vegetarian. What is so fascinating for you in this way of eating?

Who said I find it fascinating (laughs) I wouldn’t say I’m fascinated about it. Are you fascinated about eating meat? It’s just the way of doing, the way of eating, right? I think it’s more healthy to be vegetarian. It gives more energy. And I know a lot of people, even from Moscow, who chose vegetarian way of eating for the same reason – because you have much more energy and it’s better for your body. People who eat, sometimes eat too much of it, and it’s recommended to eat meat not more than one time a week – maximum. Everything that you eat more – it’s extra meat. It’s too much. Such people are getting fat, slow, they are getting a lot of health problems like cancer – if they eat a lot of fried meat. But it is not that I’m a missioner and I think people can eat whatever they like, but I prefer to eat in a healthy way.

What age did you became a vegetarian and who influenced this decision of yours?

Oh this is a story! It was me, Thomas and a few other friends that used to go to Gothland – this one of the three old provinces of Sweden. We often went there – at least once a year, just to hang out there. Thomas had a house there and we used it, we drank a lot. And we asked ourselves, “What’s the point of going to this beautiful place, this beautiful island just to drink this shit of lots of beer, and to eat a lot of beastliness, we can do it at home.” We couldn’t get advantage of all this. So one year, I think it was 1997 (oh, God, how long!) we just decided, “Let’s do it differently. Let’s do it healthy. Let’s drink all this pure water, let’s eat vegetarian food, let’s do yoga, let’s sit by the fireplace and listen to the fire together”. So we did and we never had a nicer time than this time ever. We felt rea

lly really good about it. And everybody was shocked, “How you can it this? All this vegetarian food?” We were really shocked, all of us. Since then each of us independently, we never spoke about it, felt like, “Hey, I shouldn’t shock my body now eating all this meat.” I tried to eat meat again, but I don’t know. I tried it three months after, I thought maybe I should miss meat, but I didn’t. This is how I felt for about a year, I wanted to wait a year and see how I will feel. And I felt very comfortable without meat, because meat – it’s damaging to your body.

You recorded a full-length DVD “Live Gothic” and it was recorded in Poland on February, 14, in 2007. But you recorded it not in your home country Sweden. Do you think that Therion is more popular in Poland?

We are not very popular in Sweden, so we’d never record a live thing in Sweden. We would have not very many people if we had played in Sweden. So we would never record something there. We are popular in many places in the world and Poland is one of them, but the biggest place we played is in Latin America – the record that we had – we were the headline band with only Therion playing. So if we wanted to record a DVD in one of the countries where we are most popular it would be definitely one of the countries in Latin America – Bolivia, Mexico where we recorded before, but this time we wanted to record something in Europe. And we had only a few places to choose from, because we play sometimes clubs, sometimes big halls, so we wanted to record in one of the big halls. And there are a lot of different things, like … I can give you one good example. One of the places very good for recording is Paris, because it’s always a great crowd there, beautiful venue, and it’s always packed with very enthusiastic people, but there’re some minor things which are minor only on the face of it. For example there very small backstage room and if you wanna sit the band, the crew and also to film it the whole day, you would be careless, you would be in a very bad mood when you get recorded, and it’s very important. You must make sure that all such small things are all right. In Paris you cannot park above outside the concert hall, it’s forbidden. If you do it, the police will take the bus away. And you may say that, “Hey, we are rock stars and we came to make a DVD”, but it doesn’t matter for them at all, they would take your bus away anyhow. So you’ll have to take all the equipment in in the morning and leave all the people in the bus to park somewhere else, and this is very impractical, if you’re gonna do it with all film equipment. I guess you can get a sort of special permission for this sort of things, but it will take you months of paper work and it doesn’t worth it. So there are many places which are disqualifying themselves, because of these small issues. In the end the most realistic places to record in were Hungary in Budapest, in Warsaw, in Holland. There were three good places. But in Poland we have very good contacts. In Holland, everywhere we have very good crowd, but they’re not very expressive, and when you film something you should have people shouting, they should be loud. When you’re there, everything is different, you see how people like it, but to film a good DVD one should be more enthusiastic to show a good picture. If you live in Holland and see the DVD from the concert there, you’ll say, “Oh, the concert is great,

the crowd likes it!!” But if you’re not a Pole, you’ll say, “Oh, I see people didn’t like it that much…” Budapest is really good, and we could’ve recorded there, but we already did, to be exact at that time we were just planning to do this classical show which we filmed later in Hungary, so we decided that it would be better if we don’t do both DVDs from Hungary, and do this one in Poland.

This DVD will include two CDs, which would include as far as I remember 22 songs. What else will be there on this DVD?

Well, on the DVD there are no room for any bonuses. If you put some bonus there, you’ll have to increase the quality. If we had bonus to include, we would have to put it on another disc and we didn’t want to do this, because we only wanted to celebrate. We realized that we need a product that is less expensive, and that the fans would buy. I would say that “Celebration Of Becoming” has been one of the products that people were most happy with – people are really happy with the content, but other people didn’t buy it, because it’s quite a lot of money, young people don’t have that much money, because there a lot of new records coming out every time. So we felt we needed something that would be more affordable. And I don’t feel that we have o lot of really interesting bonus material. We had some extra material on our previous works, remember this drum battle on stage! We did it on “Celebration Of Becoming”, because it made sense, but seriously you have so many things on “Celebrating Of Becoming”, a lot of funny stuff that’s very fanny to watch. There were some photos of Therion drinking beer backstage – if you like such stuff, here it is! But every bonus stuff should be quality stuff and I don’t want to have bonus material only for the sake of having it. It should be something worth putting as well.

Let’s return several months ago. In your statement after the scandalous and notoriously famous Moscow concert together with Pain and Blind Guardian you said that you considered Russia as “almost normal country”. What did you mean by this “almost normal” and did your attitude to Russia change to the worst after this incident?

A lot of people in the countries with economic difficulties seem to take this fact as an excuse for not good work. But we work with people in very poor countries that do a very good job, so when we played in Chili, it was better than in Europe, those people rule, they know their job. When we played in Bolivia the ticket cost 7 dollars and 7 dollars is so much there that some fans cannot afford to save this money for months. To pay 7 dollars for people in Bolivia is the same as for you to buy a new TV or something. Would you pay so much many for one show? Maybe, if you are dedicated. And in countries with better economic situation there were people who said, “Oh, our people are very poor, we cannot do it” and blah blah blah. It’s fucking bullshit… There are people who are saving money for months to see the band. And I’m not just coming out on stage and play a crack show, because the promoters are bad, lazy or whatever, and then take money and leave – no. It’s not my style. If somebody is saving money for months to see Therion live, we should play a better show than in Germany that sees Therion every year. To see Therion in Germany costs 20 Euro, and you cannot even get drunk in Germany for 20 Euro! (laughs) It’

s bullshit money in Germany. I love Germany, I love the crowd, but why people who pay considerable little money in Europe have a better show than fans that save for three or four months to see us in Bolivia? In should be the other way around! Bolivia should have a better show. But I should say that in terms of organization Bolivia is not an outsider in any sense. Because the promoters there organize perfect shows. And this proves, that if somebody in Bolivia that is one of the poorest countries in the world can do a really better job than people can do it in countries like Russia. You know we had this first world, second world and third world and the second world was the easiest and the most common. I’ve played in all these countries – like Poland for instance. It was shit when we played there the first time. But now it’s really good and we even filmed a DVD there, and they are as professional as anywhere else. I’ve had a girlfriend from Hungary and I’ve seen how things developed there. There everything is like in Russia. Russia also had a very very bad starting point in the form of the Soviet Union and all that, but you cannot blame everyone for that forever. If you play in Volgograd it’s not the same as in Moscow, and if somebody cannot afford a ticket I can believe them, because they are very poor. Or in Novosibirsk…But speaking about Moscow – you are very close to where we are. And the promoters in your country have the same opportunities as in Germany for example. I can draw the parallel between Moscow and Stockholm. They are very alike. I mean the level of life. When I was in Moscow I saw a lot of people driving such cars that I cannot afford to buy. Why should they expect not to have the same quality, as in the rest of Europe? And my view is that Moscow is the part of Europe, so why should it be worse than in the other cities? Many counties started as shit, and now they are great countries. Why should the Russians complain? Maybe because your promoters are too lazy to do their work well? That’s very unfortunate and we will only work with people who know their work perfectly well and who really want to do the best possible concerts for the fans.

In 2007 Mats Leven left the band. And he explained it by the fact that he more played guitar than performed his duties as a lead vocalist. Then a year later three your band mates left the band. Don’t you think that Therion line up changes too often? Don’t you think it is a sign of some non-stable state of the group? What are the reasons for such often changes?

First of all you got something terribly wrong – Mats Leven has never been the part of the band. Therion never had this stable and permanent line-up. It was a concept of Therion not to have a permanent singer, Therion always had hired singers, who were hired for recording this or that album or for some live performances. So he also has never been the band member, he has never left Therion, we just decided not to work together. And the big difference is that he didn’t leave the band – we didn’t want to continue. Of course we didn’t just fire him, we had a discussion, and we understood what he said, but it was our decision. Nevertheless we all were happy that we worked together, but he didn’t leave. When it comes to the three people now – it was a mutual decision. I told them they had to give 100 % or it’s not suitable for them to be in the band, but I would never have fired

them. If I wouldn’t have told them this, they would never have left. I spoke about that motivation that should be in Therion. Only 100 %, I wouldn’t agree to even 90 %. I can give an example. We have a young band who is very enthusiastic, they get a record deal, and then there is a second album, they get better and have more tours and they continue, but you know there is no fire. Everything goes another way, it’s like, “Maybe we should relese another album… Maybe we should have another tour…” But they are not hungry anymore. There’s no big motivation, there is no fire. And this is what happened in our case. They joined the band and they were enthusiastic, but after 8 years – after 5 studio albums, after live albums, DVDs, after tours they began to lay back, they lost their enthusiasm. And when I looked at those people, who came into the band – they were coming from nowhere. I’ve never heard or seen any of them before Therion. Christian (Niemann – guitar – ed.) – he never recorded anything before Therion. He had one demo song and this was a compilation CD for young guitarists or whatever released in a thousand copies or something. And Johan (Niemann – bass guitar – ed.) was making one or two albums with a local progressive rock band and there was some local label - maybe one thousand or two thousand copies. So they were completely unknown people. So this has been a case. I always managed to find people who are super talented, extremely good musicians and who are not those they deserve to be. Niemanns were great musicians and still they never got anywhere before Therion. And Petter Karlsson (drums – ed.) who played drums on “Gothic Kabbalah” is a perfect example. He wrote 40 % of the album, he is a very good song writer, he is an amazing drummer, he is a really good singer. He is the most talented person I worked with in all my life. He never made a record deal. How can person who is so talented be totally unclaimed and never have made a record. So I seem o be a magnet who always get in contact with this sort of people, who have this incredible talent, but who never got anywhere or who have much less than they deserve. And when you have a person who can give so much like Petter Karlsson we get a vitamin, injection into the body of Therion, when you have somebody like that. This is a high motivation for people who never had any records And Petter never did anything big before Therion, nothing big. Richard Evensand (drums – ed.) who played on “Lemuria & Sirius B” (2004) didn’t do anything big before Therion either. Actually he did two albums with some death metal band, but nobody really heard it and it didn’t really get anywhere. There are a lot of people like that all the time. All these people help me to keep the fire burning, to have the same high ambition and motivation. For me every new recording is as thrilling as the first one. This is very important for me and this is what we lost on two albums and Niemanns – they started to get a lay back. Christian began to get bored, he got other interests. He wanted to spend more time with his girlfriend. No, he is not a young guy who has never had a girlfriend, he always had girls, but not serious relationship as long as I knew him. And now he found a perfect girl for him to move together and he got other interests. Before he was only playing, playing and now e got other interests which I respect. I have other interests too, but they started to lose the fire. When we began to spea

k about the next record, we were very personal. And we are still very good friends. Musically we had pretty the same ambitions too, we all want to do perfect job, but the attitude was different. For example Christian could say something like, “Oh, it would be good, if we can record in the evening after work!” Come on! You mean after work?! When you make a record you cannot go to work a a day time and then in the evening come to the studio. Then your brain would be only a half there – in the studio. It’s not enough to do a good job, it should be perfect. And after a working day you cannot work your 100 % in the studio. And I always wanted to make the things the best I can. I try to experiment, I try to work with different producers, in different locations and so on, so that every time there is a new environment, a new feeling every time we record. And we worked with the knife against the throat. And they were all thinking like, “Well, why do we do these complicated things? Let’s do it like we did last time”. So they wanted to feel more relaxed. They lost a little bit of this fire. That’s what happened. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that something was difficult for the Niemanns, we discussed everything with them. This is what happens with most bands and this is my biggest fear. I don’t want to please the society, I don’t want to feel lay back. I don’t want the things to be the safe way. I want to go this challenging way, the great way, the scary way, the way that can completely fuck everything else. Out of this scares you create something special, otherwise there may be just another o’k album. But that would be not enough for me. I have to say that I really admire them for what they did, because … I would never fire them, if they said, “No, we don’t want to leave the band”. I just told them that I think this is a loss, they should fire a new motivation otherwise maybe they should try something else. We had a meeting and they said, “O’k, we agree with you, you’re right. It wouldn’t be right for you, ourselves and fans, if we continue, because it’s no longer the same it used to be.” And there are so many musicians that would never have admitted this, because maybe you wouldn’t become very rich in Therion, but still it’s good money! And if you know that in perspective you may leave a successful band that travels all around the world and in which you can earn very good money, the majority of musicians would probably lie to me and themselves and say, “Oh, no, no! We work our 100 %!” And I really from the bottom of my heart admire them for being so honest. This is something that a lot of musicians wouldn’t have done.

And how do you manage to keep so hungry for music? To keep the flame burning all the time? What’s the secret of your enthusiasm?

Well, I think one thing is that I’m very lucky doing so many different things. From the beginning we were not a very successful band. When we were doing our first 4 albums, we were an underground band. And then finally we had a big fate with “Theli” (1996) album. Of course it was very tempting to copy it. But I continued to do something else again. And the fact that I was even more successful with the “Vovin” (1998) album speaks for itself, I went a different direction and this direction was even more successful. This is what kept the fire light for me, but I didn’t feel like trapped in something. I didn’t say that we should have these elements

from AC/DC or Iron Maiden and add some symphonic elements. I just did what I liked and people said, “oh, it’s a great album”. The sales went up, we had very good sales with the “Vovin” album and I don’t think we’re gonna have that much again. Speaking about the level of the albums and deviations musically wise – I have a very loyal fan base. We’ve been about 12 years at the same level. And not many bands can do it actually. They usually go up and then go down, it’s like waves. I can give examples of heavy metal bands of the 80-s when they played at the stadium, like Iron Maiden. Then in the 90-s they gathered smaller venues and now they are back and they again gather stadiums. But Therion more or less kept itself at the same level, and I could do whatever I wanted. And I think this has been a great privilege for me that I never had a pressure like “I must do an album now” or “I must sound this way”. I just could do whatever I liked and people understood. And the record label was always very kind to me. If I wanted some over budget, if I knew from the beginning that I want to do this, I want to do that, to do something with the orchestra, but I didn’t have enough money – if it had sense, they said, ”O’k, it makes sense, we’ll give you the extra money”. And they never pressured on me, they give me the budget, do the record, and when I finish I tell them. They never interfere, they don’t say they want this number of songs or whatever, they don’t say that I cannot do this or that. They never interfere. And it’s so amazing that I have this privilege. And this with combination with musicians which come from nowhere with this incredible energy and motivation – this is the combination that inspires me.

Now you are looking for a new line up for the band. Is it difficult to turn over a new leaf and begin everything from the zero point so to speak?

It’s not really the very beginning, because we still use the same singers, which is the hardest to find, but singers they are not permanent members of the band, but actually I never searched for musicians. They always came to me when I needed it. After a day after I posted the announcement that I need a new bass player and a new drummer, my friends began calling me saying, “Oh, I know this guy, I know this guy!” And then at the same day when I was going through it, I immediately felt, “Wow, this is the bass player I have in my mind!” And the situation with drummer was the same. With the guitar player it was a little bit mote tricky – people recommended really talented and skilled guitar players, but I’m not looking for somebody who only can play Christian’s solos very well. I look for somebody who can take the band to the next level. What Christian did was more than being just very technical. He composed new solos, and I don’t have such solos. And when I have it, I want it to be special so that you remembered it. If you want the band play live – the guitarist changes the solos, and we noticed that he changed it a little bit. And then it’s a good solo, because we can do a lot of variations and everybody notices it. Otherwise it’s just a solo. The solo may be something to show off and it may be the part of the song, and for me solo is a very important part of the song. I wouldn’t like to have solos just to have a solo. So I need to have somebody to have an overall musicality and specialism. And I want the new guitar player to have a taste. Othe

rwise he won’t be alive. And after about a month I managed to find one person in my head out of those I knew, and I was going over any guitar player I knew about, like “which one would suit?” And among people I knew there was one – and I said, “Yes!” And there was a second one whom I came across just by chance. I asked both, but unfortunately none of them could join permanently at this moment. He was also interested, but he already had other engagements, other commitments, so it was impossible at that time. And the second one had suddenly related this issues for the personal albums, that made it impossible to join at that time. But I really like those musicians. I decided not to find a permanent player somewhere else. After all there is no hurry. We have shows in September, but it’s not difficult to find a good guitar player for those shows. I decided for the next album to ask those two guitarists to record sessions, they can contribute as much as they have time. And I think this combination will be very good, because they are actually quite different guitarists, so it would be better to record it this way. And then the next world tour in 2010. So I suppose a lot of things can happen till 2010, that’s why let it be this way so far.

You promised that in the year 2009 Therion will record a new album. Did you begin working at this album? Can you share its concept with us?

The whole record is written musically already. We had these songs ready for a long time. The concept is rather complicated. Originally it’s a trilogy. Now this is a tetralogy – four albums connected. After “Deggial” (2000) I started to write material for the new album. I had about seven songs I think. But then I told myself, “I want something different!” So I put it aside and we released “Secret of the Runes” (2001) We were touring for that. And then, when I was doing back to work on that first album I have written so many songs (Kristian had some songs, Johan also had some songs) that we realized – this is not one album, this is not two albums, this is enough for three albums and there are still left overs. But we decided to release “Lemuria & Sirius B” at the same time, so we would catch up with it. And then we were supposed to make the third album after touring in promotion “Lemuria & Sirius B”, but the same thing happened again. I wrote a few songs in the different direction and I said, “No! Let’s make this first, so we did “Gothic Kabbalah” first instead”. But what makes “Gothic Kabbalah” connected with the first two parts of the concept is that we decided to take two songs out of the third album and put them on “Gothic Kabbalah”. So "Der Mitternachtlöwe" and "Adulruna Rediviva" were on this third album originally. So I had to write two more songs for the third album instead of those two, which I already did. And the album which we are supposed to release now is the four part of the concept which was originally the third. It contained very many old songs which were written after “Deggial”. So this is a very interesting situation to record songs which are nine years old. This is like a uniting line which helps you get back several years ago. I can imagine that I didn’t record them on “Theli” or “Vovin”, but I kept the songs for releasing them ten years later, how difficult will it be? Now we have more experience, more opportunities, more budget. I’m very thrilling about it. And now the material is r

eady, and I can enjoy the rest of the year doing only one festival. And the record.

“Gothic Kabbalah” differed dramatically from “Lemuria & Sirius B”, which turned out to be very controversial. Did you want to experiment with a new style or it came out by chance? Or is it just an expected development of the band? People even say the album is gothic to some extent…

I wouldn’t say it’s gothic only because it’s called “Gothic Kabbalah”. If the title had been different, nobody would have said it’s gothic. I would say it’s a rather progressive album. There is a lot of prog rock. There are various strains timing – in every gothic album you would have had only combinations 4-4, one two three four, one two three four. And we have five four, seven four, seven eight or nine eight! This is a lot of various strains stuff. But it’s arranged in a very interesting way. Most of the progressive bands, musicians are enthusiasts, their music is quite difficult. And I tried to make the album sound easy to perceive. Even your mother could listen to it. And this was quite an achievement. My idea was… I wrote the song "Three Treasures" and I realized that this s different song, that the third album we are working on would be different. I just had a wish, “Let’s explore it, let’s do it more progressive in a way, playing drums more.” And both Johan and Petter are really good prog musicians. Johan was the guy making more melodic stuff, like "The Perennial Sophia" – somebody can call it gothic ballad or something, but count in the verses. You’ll count “five five five…” These are neither symphonic no gothic elements. I think some people that didn’t like it – well they can like or dislike whatever. But I think many people miss the point of the album, they cannot see something genius, truly genius about it. Maybe this album is more for your mind, than for your heart. Take the song like “Lemuria” – it’s a very simple accord, you can play it in a campfire, anybody can play it. But it has its charm. It goes straightly to your heart, you want to sing it. It’s a different thing. If you listen to the song like "TOF – The Trinity" – it has a lot of really weird things going on in it. So it’s a more thinking album.

And now that you look back at that album, some time has passed, can you say that you are one hundred per cent content with the result?

Oh, of course I’m not.. I’m never 100 5 per cent happy. It’s such a long process, it took nine months to record and make “Gothic Kabbalah”. When you work a lot with the album you get a little bit blind, you hear it, but you don’t hear some details. But when the album is ready, and you rest your head for three or four weeks and then you listen again to it, then you begin to see that, “Aaah, that thing I should have done that way”, “Oh I know how to solve this problem”, “Oh, why didn’t we do this or that?!” It happened with every Therion album and it will happy with all our future albums. There is no such thing as a perfect album. You are 100 % happy when you leave the studio, and three or four weeks later you realize that I lot of things you should’ve done in a different way. With “Gothic Kabbalah” I would say that it’s more divided than other albums. On other albums there are some things which I’m happy with and some – which I’m not happy with. And here there are things that I realize I could have done much much bett

er then I did, and some thing I consider really brilliant and I’m very happy that we manage to do it really this way. And it’s good, because if you make an album and you are 100 % happy means that you cannot see deep into the record. When you go into the studio to record an album you should always have a feeling that something can be improved, that you can get somewhere further. When you have the songs and you go into the studio, you have your ideas about what songs are the best. And then during the process of recording it you usually change your mind, you get other favorites, because you record and realize, “Oh, we can improve this and that, we can do it this way – will be brilliant!” But in the studio it’s difficult to say which song will turn out to be a hit and which not. But when you begin to play them live, you’ll see the reaction of fans to each song. So this is the process of constant revaluing the stuff.

You shot a video clip for the song "Son of the Staves of Time". Who came up with the plot and where did you shoot it?

A lot of art men came up with come offers, they also worked with “To Mega Therion” video. Then one film student got in touch with me and told me the concept, and I said, “this is a good idea, I think you should do it”. We planned to do a video earlier, but we didn’t do it because of the time problems. The clip was shot after the album was released and the record label didn’t have that much money for it, because they wanted to promote the album first. We didn’t have much money to work with, but it turned out really nice. It’s good for them, because they wanted to work with a famous name, and it was cool for us, because we didn’t have many ideas about the clip and big budget, so everybody was really happy about the clip. It came out a cool video. It was a fantastic job. Especially if you take into consideration that it was done by a student who had just graduated.

Therion also has a song called “The Khlysti Evangelist” about Rasputin. Why such interest for Russian history?

Judging from my lyrics I’m interested in many mysterious persons from all of the world. And he is one of the most famous people in Russia. On the same album I also have another Russian personality Gurdjieff (the song "Voyage of Gurdjieff (The Fourth Way)" – “Sirius B” album – ed.) If I were you I would rather ask myself why I’d like to have balalaika on the record (laughs) So there are more Russian influences in the music than in the lyrics.

Lately you’ve written on your web-site a kind of condolence to Earl Root from dark wave project Aesma Daeva who passed away of cancer. Did you happen to be friends with him?

We were playing in the same band with Lori Lewis who one of the live members of Gothic Kabbalah world tour and the 20 Year Celebration Tour in 2007. Aesma Daeva also went on the US tour with Therion last year as direct support. He is a very nice guy, and typically cool people always die. I often ask myself, “Why these people die? Why can’t some asshole die instead?!” A lot of really interesting, kind and wonderful people and very nice personalities die, and it’s a great loss for all of us.
What words would you choose to characterize your own personality? Do you think it’s easy for people to work with you?
I suppose it’s pretty easy to work with me. I can’t imagi

ne that people think that I’m very complicated to work with. Actually it depends. If sometimes we have different opinions – if Hiemanns and Petter think one thing, and I thing another thing, I say, “O’k, you’re three, I’m one, let’s do it the way you want it.” We are really pretty democratic and there’s a lot of freedom, but in a certain way – so no one can do only what he likes. There have never been such situations when we had very many disagreements or something like that. We’ve always got along very well together. So I think it’s very easy to work with me. There were always other reasons for line up changes. We had a stable line up from 1987 to 1992 in the beginning. And then after that there were a lot of line up changes and it was my mistake, because I brought really different types of people. The drummer left the band because of the second child, and he wanted to be with children, the bass player did the same, the guitar player (Peter Hansson – ed.) wanted to play different music. So they left only because of this sort of things. Then I tried to reform the band, and my mistake was that I brought people into the band who were good friends, which was not maybe musically right. They could play perfect live shows, and it was nice to drink beer with them, but musically wise they were different. That’s why we had some line up changes. Exept for Piotr Wawrzeniuk – he was playing with me from 1992 to 1996. He left because of the “Theli” album, because nobody wanted to buy the records, nobody wanted to book us on tours, because we were too strange, strange music – we were an underground band. And we thought that “Theli” was even worse – if nobody bought the album “Lepaca Kliffoth” (1995), which was strange, why should people buy “Theli” – that’s what we thought. “How can we play this live? Nobody wants it. It’s the end of the band.” We were pretty much planning to end the band and then Piotr Wawrzeniuk began to do other things, and then the record company called me and said, “hey! Your record is selling well, we want you on tour!” And it was one of the best tour of that time, we toured together with Amorphis, and I wanted just to recreate the band. And Piotr already had other plans, he already made up his mind. There are always situations like this, and when we toured with “Theli” it wasn’t really a band, it was a group of hired people. Because the other band members disappeared. For instance, there was a guitar player who played on “Theli” album, he was alcoholic, he was fired after the studio records. Bass player was so alkalized that we couldn’t work with him anymore. He couldn’t even stand properly on stage. When we did two more tours with “Theli”, we just hired people. Even when we did “Vovin” there was no band. Everybody who played on “Vovin” except me was hired. And for the whole tour after that I just hired people. And after that I wanted to recreate the real band line up. And then the drummer Sami Karppinen who was hired for the tour, was made a permanent member. And then I found Niemanns, and we had a new real line up. It was never difficult for me to work with hired people. Only two guys were fired only because they were too alkalized, everybody left because of different reasons. I remember that the time before “Theli” people left, there was a lot of work, but never much money. But when you continue, you get a little bit older, you get a job and so on. Then there is a lot of fun to take two weeks off from the job whe

re you are paid, and go on tour where you have to carry things yourself, drive yourself, sell the T-shirts yourself before and after the show, otherwise you won’t have enough money for the band to drive home. I remember the first tour we did like that we made 20 Euro profit per head, for the whole tour! (laughs) But you really get into the music, and people in the band are like friends, when it comes to making a record or playing a couple of shows in Stockholm. But when it comes to the point when they are to make up their mind about what way to choose – the safe way that’s their job, or the tricky way and to be with the band – they chose the safe way. I didn’t want to advertise the band, I just wanted to find people who would really like to do this kind of music.

Now the whole world is crazy about world football championship. Do you follow these events? Did you watch match with select teams from Sweden?

At that point I’m not a part of the world (laughs) I have no idea of what team is there, or who plays in this team. If Sweden wins some championship, I will probably find it out because of some people shouting in the street (everybody laughs) or if they write about it in the newspapers. Otherwise I would have no idea and to be really honest I don’t care. I don’t like sports.

After the Moscow fest you promised that one day you’ll bring to Moscow the whole scenery which you couldn’t set on stage that day. When can we expect to see Therion in Moscow again with better performing, better show, with scenery?

Yeah, next time we’ll go with the promoter and we’ll write it all in the contract – we’ll bring this, we’ll do that. And if it’s not fulfilled we’re not gonna up on stage. Only for the sake of the fans, who traveled so far to see us we performed that time. If not them, I would’ve just gone to the hotel, because it feels so shitty when you prepare the really good show and all preparations have been smashed down. And we spent so much money flying with this stuff and then you stay on several meters on stage in a very bad acoustic hall, with a very stressed crew, with fans who have been staying outside the whole day… The whole atmosphere was so shitty, I was giving my body and I always made myself dress and go up on stage and do this show. I think that this is one of the three shows in 20 years when I said to myself, “What the fuck I must be doing here?!” Next time we play it’s gonna be a show of quality. If I have bad songs, I would never put them on the record only because I have to release them. I wait till I have good songs and then I release a CD. We did two good shows in Moscow and things worked well, and now this really big disappointment. So we really need to take aboard what we did before. We must find not only the the promoter with very good reputation, who can fulfill his promises and organize a good show. We develop, we do much more things on stage than we did originally. And we need someone who can artistically understand it, support it and say, “Yes! Great! Bring the whole stuff! We’re gonna make a great show for Russian fans!”. The first show we did in Moscow was voted as one of the best shows of the year in one of the Magazines – Metalhammer or Darkside… I think it was Darkside. I mean a wide range of people voted for us, because we showed a real show – that’s what we should deliver. And people should expect great shows from us, and now we need to live up to the shows we did before and even better. And that’s what that Russian promoter should have understood. It’s not only about pocketing more money or something, it’s about living up to fans’ expectations, it’s about doing a good job in organization. And seriously there are not many bands that are interested in playing live again and again, even if they came to the country recently. There are not many bands which I’ve seen three times and whom I would see again and again. And Therion is for many people such a band, because we play often, but we are interesting for people, because every time we bring something new, unique for that tour, that will never come again or maybe in twenty years. We play songs that we never played before, change the stage show, change the whole musical concept. There are always a lot of unique changes for every tour, so we actually give our fans the reason to see us again and again instead of just taking the money and playing the same songs and in the same costumes anyway. And that’s why we need to be very picky. We don’t play only for money.

Interview by Ksenia "Wolfin" Khorina
17 сен 2008 the End