Interview с Cryonic Temple : DARKSIDE.ru

Did you have a good day today? What did you do?

Yeah, it was a good day. In the morning I went to hospital with my son because he has some asthma problems. Well, it was a really good sunny day, with a light wind blowing. I met a couple of people from the festival there in Sweden. So it was like that.

Lately you played in Gothenburg. Did you play a lot of new songs?

Yes, we played four new songs.

Do you have a lot of fans in Sweden?

Yeah… the thing’s that it’s going more and more. There are a lot of people who get to know about us. Besides Sweden we’re getting letters from Russia, Mexico, Japan and Brazil and the most countries of Europe as well. I even got a couple of letters from South Africa, as well as from the Middle East. It’s very interesting to communicate to those people. I know in Russia there are a lot of good festivals in St. Petersburg and in Moscow. I think it’s a good sign that people are more and more into heavy metal.

Have you ever got an offer to play in Russia, maybe to do any festival?

Not yet. But we got offers from a couple of people in Latvia and Estonia. However I would like to come to play in St. Petersburg and in Moscow some day. I heard there are some good stages, so I’d like to hail Russia. I think it would be really cool to see it.

It sounds good, and time will show, I guess. But let’s speak about the new album. What’s the meaning of the title “In Thy Power”?

“In Thy Power” has a two-way meaning. First of all it means the power of the Holy One or God. It’s higher power. On the other side, it means unification among all metal heads or metal people. That regards to all metal people, no matter male or female, no matter what country they are living in, united together – that is “In Thy Power”.

Isn’t it a concept for this album?

(thinking over) Some of the songs are tied up together with today’s problems like how the media tries to corrupt some people. Other songs are enough aside from that concept, they are about some metal things like warriors, war and freedom. Our previous album “Blood, Guts and Glory” had a couple of songs tied up together with a concept story. But on this album we purposely decided not to do that but however some songs have a link to each other when it comes to a lyrical aspect. It’s not really a concept story.

One of the songs – “When Hell Freezes Over” – is devoted to the corrupt media. Have you ever had any problems with media?

Not our band, but I know other metal bands whose lyrics and thoughts were distorted by media. In certain countries it’s not allowed to play any kind of metal and that kind of music actually, if it’s not supported by the government. So the song is about how the media makes angry people torture each other when it comes to wars, conflicts, and that kind of things. If you look at all that talk-shows, for example in the USA, which the only purpose is to provoke people and make them angry, so they don’t see any point with the problems and just provoke each other, making each other more and more angry. A typical thing here in the West is that the most Russians are communists – this is the example. I’m trying to express through the lyrics how easy it is – to be media whores, or in another words, corrupt media that provoke insults all the time making the audience scared, making the audience react because some media know that by that they have new news to report about.

What’s your attitude to such a widespread thing as mp3? I heard that one day it helped you to sign the label.

Oh yes, it’s true. When we were an unsigned band we contacted that mp3.com site, which now is unfortunately not that good as it used to be. But it was really good because we were really high in some of metal charts and we were in the Top Ten on mp3.com with the song called “The Gatekeeper”. We were doing the “Warsong” demo at that time. It was quite interesting because we were suddenly at the same list as the signed bands like Manowar, Iced Earth, Linkin Park and so on. It was really surprising to know how many people were enjoying our music. At last several labels contacted us and offered us a record deal. We decided to sign a contract with Underground Symphony. We had an open agreement with the label that if we would like to progress as a band we were allowed to sign to another bigger label. So after the first album (“Chapter I”) was released we left Underground Symphony. We are always gonna be grateful to them for the help and for their believing in us because they gave us a good budget to record our first album, to work with a world-class producer to get a good sound, a good feeling in the album.

Well, how long did it take you to record “In Thy Power”?

“In Thy Power” is our third album and it was recorded in four weeks. But unfortunately we had some sort of technical problems – we had the guitar amp head burn up. (laughs) We had to solve a lot of technical problems with a computer – some recording were erased and we had to re-record the stuff as well. Usually when we plan to do

it in four week we have to do it in four weeks. In the end we did 55 minutes of music because we felt it was the best time to keep the audience listening to the whole album.

Some critics wrote that your music stays good but still the same. Do you agree with that?

Not really… (laughs) Some people think that music is to progress all time but I don’t really agree with that. I see the progression as doing something really good what you already know. We don’t really feel that we need to add any points to the music we play, to include death metal vocals, for example – we don’t feel it in our hearts. We try to do the music from our hearts, therefore we expand it. But for this album we included in a couple of tracks some more thrash elements taken from Slayer, some symphonic parts inspired by Wolfcry and so on, but still we try to stay what we are. We don’t really feel that we have to fake something new because it’s not in our hearts.

If it’s not a secret, how old are you?

Oh, I’m one of the oldest in the band – I’m 38. (laughs) Most of the guys in the band are just under 30, the drummer, Gert, is 24.

What music did you grow up with?

When I grew up my favorite music was the bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Accept as well as good bands like Pink Floyd. I also like one Russian rock band that is not so famous here in the West – it’s called Aria. I think they are really good. (laughs) I like the way they work – in some albums they sound like Iron Maiden, in other albums they sound more like Blind Guardian or something else, but still they’re really good. I like their approach to the music. I also like old heavy metal like Diamond Head. Speaking about Scandinavian music – it’s Stratovarius, progressive bands – Marillion, IQ and so on.

How many songs did you write for this album? What’s your favorite song from the new album?

I wrote four songs alone and together with our bass player JJC and singer Johan we wrote the rest of the songs. Sometimes our keyboard player gave ideas, sometimes our drummer was helping us as well. But on this album I had to carry a lot of weight myself. Our keyboard player had a boy newborn, so he had to take a break from the band. Also, our bass player became a dad last year and he didn’t have much time to work on the music for our album. So in the studio just me and the singer were working, I spent a lot of days working alone… Sometimes I felt that I would like to put some weight on someone else… From the new album I like the most probably “Travelers In Time” when it comes to a fast song, and if I want to be in some emotional mood, it’s “Wolfcry”. When we talk about the unification of the metal heads then it’s “Eternal Flames of Metal”. These things are close to my heart.

The cover-artwork was made by Jason Engle. Was there your ideas about how it would look or you left all the work to the artist?

Originally we had another concept that was based on the lyrics of the song “In Thy Power”, and that artist did a really great work, although unfortunately that album cover didn’t really suit the music, the mood of the album, and neither did it suit the taste of the label. They wanted to find another artist. So that’s why they had a contact to Jason Engle. He had pretty much done the concept for this cover already, but I had some suggestions, and he added some elements. We will hopefully work with him in the future. We have already been discussing some cool T-shirts and mottos as well. I feel that this cover is really good because it captures the feeling of the album very well.

What do you like about working with Limb Music?

I have never had any personal problems with Limb myself. For me, he works really good. I know that on the most labels there are always artists who think they are bigger than they are, so they have many problems with their attitude, but we have never had any problems with anyone who works there.

Will you record some more albums for them?

It looks like that we will… A couple of weeks ago… Yeah, actually on the Gothenburg festival we mentioned it. We recorded a couple of songs there that will be featured on a DVD also. We hope that some of the songs will be included as an extra feature, maybe for the next album or as a special version of this album in the near future. But we don’t know yet.

What do you think about image – is it important for a metal band?

In a certain way image is important but there has to be some kind of subsistence behind it. I mean, if some bands walk around and look like biker guys but they’re more like computer noddles, then they are not earnest and just cheat the audience.

OK. Will you play summer festivals this year? Which countries will you play supporting the new album?

At the moment we are discussing some Finnish festivals, one or two German festivals and maybe, as we’re hoping for, one in Denmark as well. Oh, sorry, not Denmark – it’s Norway. But it’s not even 1% settled yet. It’s kind of a freaky way. We have a company that does booking

in Germany, then we could go and check out countries like Latvia, Estonia and Russia as well. We just need to come there and play just to let people know who we are. It’s a kind of making an expensive traveling. Even if we don’t get any money from touring for ourselves it still costs to have our musical equipment, a tour bus, having engineers who work with our sound, lightening and so on. That cost must cover the tour, otherwise it would be very difficult to go on tour.

So it’s all really tough. Let’s talk about something pleasant then, about a concert you remember the best…

When it comes to my favorites I would say it’s our previous tour with Judas Priest with “Angel of Retribution” which we did in February. I also like Iron Maiden with their “Powerslave” tour, it was really awesome. We had a good time in Germany when we played there, we had great sound when we played Sweden Rock Festival and also in a couple of other places. Well, it’s hard to say… If you ask me today I have a certain answer, if you ask me tomorrow I may have another answer. It depends on how you remember the certain countries and the certain bands you played with.

You have two video clips – “King of Transylvania” and “Swords and Diamonds”. Are you going to shoot a new one?

Hopefully! “King of Transylvania” was made more as a stage thing when we played on a Swedish festival. A friend of mine had brought a camera and also our drummer’s girlfriend had a camera. So they recorded our concert, then our friend took the video stuff home and did a video clip. When we did the video for “Swords and Diamonds”, our purpose was to make a better video, but somehow it fell through. Some of the things that they filmed were not used in the video, like smoking, different lightening, which would make the video look more buoyant than it is actually. We were very much disappointed because a lot of people liked that song. We are discussing now a video for the new album but we don’t know yet. It might be a live version for “Beast Slayer” or “Travelers In Time”… It is not clear yet.

Do you have any TV channels/programs in Sweden where metal videos clips are running?

Yeah, we have a channel in Swedish called Zed TV which sometimes shows a lot of videos, but unfortunately it’s strictly controlled by their owners. They prefer to run only nu-metal bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park and stuff like that. But now they become more open and we can watch bands like Blind Guardian, Darkane, Edguy, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. It’s really good because they’re opening up for more metal people.

Well, you became quite popular with the very first album. Do you remember the first time when you realized that people really like your music and are ready to buy your CDs?

Oh, yes. Now we’re doing our homepage – first we had a really amateurish homepage which just had an opening page, the band members section and also a guestbook. And suddenly in the guestbook we began getting a lot of messages from people from all around the world who liked our music, especially songs like “The Gatekeeper”, “King of Transylvania”. It was really cool because that was when I began to realize that a lot of people like our music. When we tried to get a record deal here in Scandinavia, most labels didn’t believe in such music. They said: that music is dead. That’s why we decided to contact other labels. It’s quite entertaining because when Italian label Underground Symphony contacted us, first we quite misunderstood his e-mail because we thought it was more like a metal magazine was contacted us. But then the guy e-mailed again and it became clear that he liked us and wanted to sign us! We realized that they believed in us enough to make a real album and we got sighed. That’s from where it all started.

Cryonic Temple are sometimes compared to great bands like Iron Maiden, Manowar and stuff like that. What do you think of such comparisons?

It’s a kind of cool when you’re getting compared to all these groundbreaking bands like Manowar and Iron Maiden. But it feels a kind of rivalry when being compared to the bands like Hammerfall because we started at the same time. Moreover, our music in the beginning had more epic, gothic elements, had more Queensryche and Pink Floyd influences. But we had a different line-up then. Nothing against Hammerfall, they are a good band. It’s more weird when we’re getting compared to bands we have hardly ever heard about. It doesn’t really matter, it doesn’t ever hurt me. I find it really honoring when some journalists or fans compare us to those great bands because sometimes those comparisons could make fans want to buy our album and find that our music is really good. And it’s really good.

Your songs are all in English. Don’t you think of trying a couple of songs in Swedish like Falconer did, for example?

We tried a couple of songs in Swedish as a joke, but unfortunately we don’t really feel that it will be working any good. It would be cool if we were clever enough like Freddie Mercury who was learning a lot of different languages and could sing songs in different languages. But we can’t do the same. I think it would be real

ly insulting if we come, for example, to Russia and try to sing a song in Russian. It would seem stupid and we could insult an audience. So, that’s why we won’t do it because we don’t want to insult the audience. We want to listen up with them.

Well, Udo Dirkschneider had an experience of singing in Russian. Sure, it was a little bit funny, but I guess nobody felt insulted and just on the contrary – people seemed to be pleased.

(everybody laughs) Yeah, I heard that song. It seemed to be called “A Train To Russia”, didn’t it? (In fact, the title is “Trainride In Russia (Poezd Po Rossii)” – ed.) And I heard from a lot of Russians that they liked it because they liked the humor of that song. People like Udo made that song, but I don’t know if they would like it and if they would like and understand the humor if someone else did it instead of him. I mean if Immortal or Dark Funeral would do it people would be more insulted than enjoying it actually. But I must say it’s all personal. The thing is that how you bring the music. I personally like the way Udo did that song. (laughs) It was a bit weird when I heard it but I actually liked it.

Why do you have a nickname Freewheeler?

(laughs) Ten years ago I used to race with a mountain bike and was also enjoying motorcycles for many years, I was a big fan of Harley Davidson. So, that nickname probably came from people who were around me at that time… Racing shouldn’t be very fun, it’s for real fans taking too many risks. I didn’t break anything but I was close.

How did it happen that you changed a motorcycle for a guitar?

That’s a good question. I began playing guitar long ago. I have a couple of relatives who were hard rock musicians. When I was a kid I was really interested in how those people were feeling when they were playing live on stage. One of my uncles played a Stratocaster because he could afford it, he was living in Finland. I got a chance to try it, and then he gave it to me as a gift. I tried to play an electric guitar when I was about 14 then. I had played acoustic guitar a bit before that, and I was very inspired because it had some classic features. Of course, there were a lot of bands and music styles I was influenced by – Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and also folk music, Middle Eastern rhythms, progressive music and so on. That brought a lot of different things into my playing. I think it’s a good way to progress when you practice different music. It’s dangerous to play only one certain kind of music because it limits the way how to write music and how to connect to other people.

What do you need to compose a very good guitar solo?

Some special mood? Yes! I suppose it’s the first time I have ever been asked this question! (everybody laughs) Sometimes when I was recording “In Thy Power” it was really hard to get the calm feeling because so much music had already been recorded and so many amps had been blown up. And suddenly I realized that I am always in a good mood when I’m surrounded by the things which are my own – my own guitars, my own gear and so on. It’s so easy to work when you are among your own things. Usually to get in a good mood I listen to classical music like Sibelius or Stravinsky or Tchaikovsky.

How many guitars do you have now?

Not really a lot. I have only four guitars. Nothing really expensive but I like them. It’s OK for me, it’s great to work. Only one of them was used on the album.

What can you say about friendship among musicians?

I know a lot of people. Some of them are really good friend, some just acquaintances. Here in music business you meet a lot of people, some of them are on stage, others are behind the stage. This makes it really stressful. Sometimes you have just a few minutes to talk to them, sometimes you get a few hours with them backstage. It’s quite good because helps you to get new relationships and making progress. I like that.

Could you describe the main features of each member of Cryonic Temple?

Sure. Our singer is Glen Metal. He gets influenced the bands like Deep Purple and so on. Then we have Leif, our guitar player. His biggest influence is bands like Blind Guardian, Gamma Ray and like that. Speaking about me, playing guitar too, I like the styles of music I was speaking about earlier. The keyboard player, Jan, likes more keyboard-based music like Rhapsody. The bass player, J.J.C., is more into progressive music. And our drummer, Gert, is actually more in Deep Purple and Jazz. His father used to be a well-known drummer in this area, unfortunately he had a stroke a couple of years ago. He was also a very good drum teacher although he was paralyzed. I think Cryonic Temple is unique because everybody has different influences, and it’s really good that it comes together I guess.

By the way, are you all friends or it’s enough for you to be colleagues?

Err… we try to be friends but sometimes we become colleagues. (laughs) As you know spending day after day in a small tour-bus going from one place to another – it’s not very interesting, even sometimes when we argue about something stupid… But we try to be friends because we do the same work – we do our music. We haven’t had a line-up change since 2000.

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Interview by Anna Babicheva
Questions also composed by Ekaterina Fyodorova
June 27, 2005
19 авг 2005 the End

Cryonic Temple

Metalheads, unite!