Interview с Europe : DARKSIDE.ru

On the 17th of September of last year you released your concert album “Almost Unplugged”, in which you included songs from your previous album “Secret Society”. And not long ago you mentioned that probably you are going to do the same thing with our upcoming album. Shall we expect a live-album after “Last Look At Eden” is out?

Yeah, we have been talking about it, because Europe has never done live albums, except for this “Almost Unplugged”, which is half acoustic and half electric. We also put some cover songs on it, which we haven’t done before. So we have been talking about it, but we’ll see what happens, but my persona; opinion is that we should do one more studio album before a new live album. So that’s how I feel. It is something that we should discuss.

Do other members of the band share your opinion regarding this point?

Yeah, I think they pretty much do! The only thing we are confident

of right now is that we’re doing summer festivals, just having excitement of the new album “Last Look At Eden” and then putting together a tour on our own with that [album]. Still we have a European tour that we’re gonna do, and hopefully we’ll get to America as well. At the beginning of the next year we go to Japan, we feel like touring like maniacs! (laughs) So the new live album is still very far away as I see it right now. So we haven’t talked about it that much at the moment.

Originally you planned to call your new album “More Is More”, at least it was said to be just a working title. Why did you finally change it into “Last Look At Eden”? Do you think it reflects better the message of the album, its main idea?

The “More Is More” thing was really just a joke. It was a joke from my side, because sometimes guitar players when some people play too much – they say “less is more”. Eric Clapton was saying it, for example.

And I said it as a joke one night, “I don’t understand it – “less is more”. No. I don’t agree with this. More is more!” You play more, you get more, and then it’s more in the end! (laughs) Why not just call the album “More Is More”? It makes sense, at least! And then we just used it like a working title. But everybody knew from the beginning that we wouldn’t call our album “More Is More”. We just had to call it something while we were recording it. It was a fun title at the beginning, but later on we chose a more serious one.

I know that this time you worked with an owner of the Swedish Grammy award, a producer Tobias Lindell. What was it like to work with such a personality and do you think that he managed to incorporate some new sound, some new elements into the sound of the band?

Yes, definitely. Tobias Lindell is great. I mean he is foremost an engineer and only secondly a producer. He is an incredible engineer, and by far t

his is the best sound we’ve ever had on our albums. He is very much into all this technical stuff in the studio, all this sound. We liked it a lot. It was fun and a good thing to try.

You claimed that the new album will be smoother and less raw than the previous one. Is it due to him that it sounds like this?

No. I don’t think so, because the album is co-produces by us, by Europe, so when we started rehearsing we just got a lot of songs, we agreed upon the ones we are going to record, then we pretty much put all the ideas together in the studio, we agreed upon all the arrangements and things like that. So it was very much a team effort. We didn’t have anything like a master plan of how the album is gonna be like, we just chose the songs that we thought there was much fun to play. Then we mixed the album with a very modern mixing console, and this the best mixing console I’ve ever heard. It is a very modern sound. But we recorded

with an old board, with the sound of the seventies, but with new technologies. We didn’t have like a big master plan of how it is gonna sound, like a concept album. It just ended up in being a rock album, with some blues rocking thins which I like.

During your work at “Secret Society” album you worked simultaneously at four studious and the working process itself was very strain and tense. Was the work at the upcoming album so tense as well?

No, no. I don’t think so. But I didn’t have this feeling of tension on “Secret Society” either. I thought it was a quite easy album to record. We were in several studious at the same time, but I don’t think it was very hard. It was very smooth, the whole thing. And as for the new album – we approached to it more as we actually would play it live. We didn’t rehearse that much, we rehearsed for one week before the recording. There were a lot of like over dubs put afterwards. But this album ha

s less instruments and less over dubs on it. It is more of a live feeling, it’s like playing together at the same time in the studio – pretty much the same as we do live, and we haven’t done that for a long time. We rehearsed for about a month before the recording. And Jan "Ian" Haugland put all the drum parts for 14 songs within two days, it is VERY quick! And there was no problem at all with it. I mean it is always good when the material is well rehearsed, but this time we tried to do it as much as a live album sounding as much as possible.

Let us now turn to the cover artwork, which looks VERY ambiguous. Or am I spoiled? On the face of it this is apple – an apple from Eden, a symbol of falling from grace of the whole mankind. But if you give a second look at it, it is not apple at all…

It IS a little spiritual in a whole thing. We have a guy, his name is Dimmi, and just came up with the idea. It was one of the songs that we ha

d – called “Last Look At Eden”. And then he just came up with this idea – with the apple and the stuff. We felt that the idea was really cool and he was sending us a lot of apples (laughs), and we took the apple tat we liked the best. It was a very simple process you know, we chose it very quickly.

What do these thorns around this apple symbolize?

I never asked him, what it is supposed to be. It looks like someone naked, though it is an apple. And yes, you are right this does have some sexual content. You know when you look at the middle of this… apple… (laughs)

Was it made on purpose?

Yes, we wanted to make a sexual album. The first draws that Dimmi came up with were such that I didn’t want to show them to my mom! (laughs), because it was a little too much. It was a girl stretching her legs, you know (laughs) But you have to think a little bit abou

t it. First when you see it. You don’t think about it, but then it looks very much like a… (thinks) a naked woman. And it makes you think a little bit. As there is a sexual content in it. It is just a fun!

Some parts of a woman I would say (everybody laughs)

I know that you already performed some of the new songs live. For example you performed “Last Look At Eden” at a French Hellfest Conquest festival, and in Chili yopu played "Mojito Girl". What was the reaction of the public – especially in Chili where you were last time almost 20 years ago?

The show in South America – Chili was incredible! I’ve never been to places like Chili. The crowd was wholly crazy! We didn’t know what to expect, because as you said we hadn’t been there for a long time. All the band was there I think in 1990 or in 1991. I wasn’t in the band at that time, so this was my first time in Chili. We didn’t know if they had forgotten

our band. And when we got to the airport, we got wholly shocked. We had fans everywhere, we had to run and hide , because they were chasing us – so crazy! They were following our bus everywhere. It was very exciting and all the shows that we did were so hot. I never heard the audience scream so loud!

Hot blooded guys!

Yeah! They are die heart fans, you know. They were very loyal to us, and we hadn’t been there for a long time. They were very excited and the reaction to the new songs was great! That was when they slowed down a little bit with more attention, “hey, this is new stuff!“, but they were screaming most of the time (laughs) It was great. And then we’ve been doi8ng a lot of European festivals, now we are going to Portugal and we just came from Czechia, Prague – Masters Of Rock festival. It was really really good. Everybody was very positive and we got a good response to the new songs. The biggest hat we’ve done so far i

s Sweden festival, in our home country. We had about 35 thousand people, and when we performed “Gonna Get Ready”. We try to mix them up a little bit. We can’t sing a lot of new songs, because the new album is not out yet. The single is out now, but not the album, so we’ll play much more from the new album when it is out.

So the first reaction is rather promising.

Yeah! Very very promising. I think you’re gonna like it! I mean now that the single is out and we open up the shows with “Last Look At Eden”, we see our fans singling along and knowing the words and everything.

Could you describe the new album is a couple of words. Probably you could single out the songs which you liked the most? Maybe there is something extraordinary or some interesting elements present?

Well, it changes now from week to week, so I don’t know. I don’t have any favorites, because I think that the album

is very even and straight, too. I mean all the songs have charm for me. “Last Look At Eden” is definitely one of the top songs out there. It is on my top this week, but everything might change next week. But it has a lot of variations on it, you have some blues rock, hard rock style, and at the same time you have a couple of ballads there, which are very slow and calm. Another song, our next single, by the way, - “New Love in Town” – is a very beautiful song. Then we have another slow song, which is more, you know (thinks), of a bluesy style. I cannot explain it, but it’s a very good song, it the last song on the album. And it might surprise people when they hear it, because it is very far away from… It is called “In My Time”. And then we have everything in between, we have great melodies, great singing from Joey – it is the best singing he has ever done on our albums, I think.

Any catchy guitar solos from you?

Oh yes! T

his is the bluesiest stuff I’ve done on Europe albums. Which is perfect for me, because I’m very much into blues rock type of music. That’s actually what I listen to at home – Rush, Leslie West's I like old school stuff, but I listen to the new stuff as well, but less. I just play whatever fits the song. Sometimes it’s slow and melodic and sometimes it’s just solo burning, shredding. I try to do the best of everything.

You already shot the video for “Last Look At Eden”. You collaborated with the director Patric Ullaeus (DIMMU BORGIR, LACUNA COIL, IN FLAMES) из Revolver Film Company. Did the result live up to your expectations?

Oh, man! He is really good, he is one of the best directors we’ve ever worked with. I mean I didn’t know who he was, until the band mentioned him. I haven’t really seen what he has done before, or maybe I saw, but didn’t know it was him. The only thing that I know is that he’s done a hundred videos! That’s not really what I do, I’m not familiar with those people, I sit and play guitar the whole day and take care of my son, he is only four years old. I’m not really familiar with many names in this kind of business, you know, but he’s been said to work with another Swedish band called In Flames. I saw their videos, and they are really good! It came along with him in the end, and he is a nice guy, and he did a great job.

Joe said that the lyrics of the album will reflect what is around you in this world. You said there will be a lot of irony and humour...

It’s Joey’s part, and what I like about it is that he doesn’t write the typical heavy metal lyrics – the fire and the sky, but he always like to be in the moment, he likes to write about the things that are going on in the world. He takes lyrics very seriously. And I think he did a great job on this album, you know. Because I don’t write lyrics… (here the conversation was abrupted by the manager, even without any notification, so we can only guess what were his following words)

Interview by Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
© Russian DarkSide E-Zine
11 сен 2009 the End


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