Interview с Savage Circus : DARKSIDE.ru

Well, Piet, how are you doing? I guess you have had a lot of interviews today.

I’m OK. I mean, the weather is quite bad, but the day was OK. Actually not many interviews today. Just two – one with you and afterwards I have a radio show to do the live broadcasting for our album.

I had a chance to listen to those two songs from the Savage Circus debut CD – “Evil Eyes” and “Ghost Story”, and I must say they are above all my expectations. The singer is very good, too.

Well, thank you, it’s good to hear. The singer - I really like his voice. He’s a great vocalist. All the high featured stuff he sings very well; he’s a great guy. (laughs)

So, what is Savage Circus – a project or a normal band?

It’s a normal band. I mean it started out as a project; it started at the time when Thomen was with Blind Guardian. But things changed a lot since he decided to leave Blind Guardian. From that time Savage Circus became a true band. It’s very important for us, it is a top priority for me besides Iron Savior. Oh yes, we’re a band! (laughs)

Among all of you, Thomen is the only one who has no other permanent band except Savage Circus. What if there would be the same situation like Kai Hansen and Jan Eckert had in Iron Savior some years ago?

Of course, I thought about it, when Thom called me and asked if I would be interested in taking the job. I thought about it for a couple of days, but actually I don’t see too many problems with Iron Savior, because it’s my band and all the planning for Iron Savior is absolutely in my hands. So if we need a room to be created I can do that quite easily. It’s not like Savage Circus has more priority than Iron Savior, but I’m quite sure that it will work out just fine. The other thing is Persuader – a very good band! They made two records, but they are not that known by now. They need to play more often. And what we do with Persuader is not that time consuming by now. So I don’t see many problems coming from Jens and Emil either. So that’s the plan. Ask me in two years and I would know more about it. But so far we’re all very optimistic that there will be no such interferences. And in the end, to be honest, I’m quite sure that Savage Circus among all these three bands will be the most successful band. And if you like those two songs you won’t be disappointed by the whole record. I can promise that.

So much the better. But isn’t it a problem that the guys from Persuader live in Sweden? I mean, touring schedules and rehearsals…

Well, actually Sweden is not a contrary part of the world. (laughs) In the world of today there are very cheap flight connections. For example there are good flight connections between Stockholm and Hamburg, and Emil and Jens can come there whenever they’re needed. If we need to rehearse or tour or something, it’s no problem – they just fly here and we work. For the other part of being a band – songwriting and stuff like that – we have been using a lot the Inter

net. We’re just sending back and forth mp3s – we work like that.

What is your part in Savage Circus?

My part is that I’m a guitarist, one of the guitarists. The other guitar is performed by Emil. Also I produce the album.

What about songwriting? Did you write songs?

Yes. Actually all the songs have been written together as a team. But those two initial songs – “Evil Eyes” and the other one was “IT – The Gathering” – have been written by Thom. The entire rest of the material was written together by the band. I just mentioned that we use the Internet quite a lot. It referred to like we do the songwriting – we’re sitting at home and working on the songs, and sending the stuff back and forth via the Internet. Especially for me it was a very interesting, inspiring way of writing songs, because with my other band Iron Savior I used to just sit down and write a song, and when the song is ready I just present it to the rest of the band. Then we check it out and maybe do some changes here and there, but basically the song is ready when I say, “OK, I have something.” (laughs) With this band it was completely different, because we were basically writing parts and sending these parts back and forth, assembling and re-assembling them constantly. So the songs were changing constantly for weeks. It’s something that you usually do alone, but this time it’s great that we were able to do that as a team even though we were like hundreds of miles apart from each other. On the Internet it is no problem to work like that. I can say I tried to work like this with other people, and you have to meet the right people to work like this, to really do the team work. It was working well with Jens and Emil and Thom because we were heading for the same direction, we were not blocking each other having different ideas about the songs. Actually it was really inspiring us, constantly. If you write songs you sooner or later come to the point when you make no progress. You stuck, the song is not developing, and you start to dislike what you’re doing. It’s a normal crisis every songwriter sees every once in a while. Working like this was just great, you know, because when you came to this point having no idea on how to continue something that is just not working right, I open an e-mail and a harder part from Emil or Jens or Thomen comes. I load it down, put into the song and get inspiration because the song is working again, and I say, “Wow, cool!” As for the other guys, they had the same experiences. I think we had a great team work. At the end, it was one of the reasons why we had all these songs completed so fast. All the songwriting took about half a year. Half a year, of course, is a long time, but on the other hand, comparing to Blind Guardian it’s lightning fast. (laughs)

What about the lyrics of the songs? Are they more in realistic themes or maybe in a fantasy way?

Actually, no. I mean the lyrics don’t deal with a day, real things. They’re not in the way of classic fantasy like “Lord of the Rings” or something. It

’s hard to explain, they’re more or less dealing with your own fantasy, about what’s happening inside your head. Maybe it makes any sense to you. I’ll give you an example. We have the song called “IT – The Gathering”. You probably know this book “It” by Stephen King. Well, its lyrics are about this. We have another one – it’s “Hell Awaits”. You’ve probably seen the movie “The Village”. Then we have another song which is based on a Swedish fairytale written by Astrid Lindgren, have you heard her name? She’s a famous writer, and besides her funny stories like “Peppy the Longstocking” she also wrote a lot of fairytales. These fairytales had actually a very special approach to fantasy, and it’s very cool to work after you heard that stories. There’s another song called “Waltz Of The Demon”, which is about someone who is mentally deranged or having a solace or even cycles, in a very weird state of mind. On one hand it sounds very interesting, it’s fascinated by the world he sees instead, and on the other hand he’s frightened with what is happening to him. I hope you can make sense from what I was telling you now. (laughs) The general idea of the lyrics is not to talk about daily politics and stuff like this. Our things are remote, which are out of this world, and basically are happening inside your own head, in your own fantasy. So that’s how we work with the word ‘fantasy’.

Lately you visited Wacken and Bang Your Head festivals…

We didn’t play those festivals, we were doing a promotion for our album there.

I guess you are actively planning a tour schedule. How soon will you hit the road?

Yeah, there are a lot of talks with booking agencies, but to be honest we also have to wait a little bit to see how responses to the album will be. So far the responses are really great, but we need to wait a little bit to decide what we’re gonna do, how to make the touring… We might make a decision to make a small headlining tour, but we don’t know yet. Well, we have to get a clue (laughs) how well our fans will accept this! We have some origins by now, and I think touring will happen fast, so we’ll be able to play some shows already before Christmas, maybe in November. Later we’re gonna start touring in January the next year.

Well, if you have a small headlining tour, you will have to invite some bands to support you. Any ideas about which bands to choose?

No, actually we don’t have an idea about it. It’s a little bit early now to make up our mind about a supporting act.

Would you like to give a chance to a young unknown band as you did some years ago with Iron Savior?

Well, it’s not unlike it, but I guess if we decide to have a headlining tour the support will be like one band which is known but not that good, and we will also need one strong name. So I think if we have a headlining tour we will come as the three-package.

Well, let’s change the line for a while. As it’s known, many years ago you left Second Hell and didn’t

go on with Kai Hansen because you felt disappointed by the metal stage of those days.

That’s true.

What did you do in the next ten years? (everybody laughs)

Well, after I did that I had a pass, about three years long, because I really was fed up, I was disappointed with all that. We were working really hard, we had killer songs already. But they were out of time. People were still listening to AC/DC and stuff like that. Speed metal was not true appreciated. (laughs) It was really disappointing for me, and I was fed up, so for three years I didn’t do anything, just playing guitar at home and not more. After three years passed I felt that I have to do something again. I started to work in the studio more as an assistant of the engineer, but the good thing about this was that at night I had free access to the studio where I could work on my songs. That’s how I came back into music recording my own songs in the studio. I also started to record some demo tapes for local bands, together with Kai, and after doing this for a year or so I decided, "OK, maybe this is my thing in life". What was especially cool for me is that I became a professional sound engineer. Working in that field for a couple of years I did a lot of production. After a couple of years I found out that the musicians that were coming to the studio were good, but they were not necessarily better than we, and that gave me some trust in myself. I know that it’s never too late to start you career as an artist again, and that’s when I came up with Iron Savior. So that’s what happened. (laughs)

So, how do you like the modern metal stage?

Interesting would be the right word. I cannot say that I’m a big fan of nu metal. I can listen to it for a while, it’s OK, it’s an interesting approach to metal but it’s NOT too much my music. But actually there is some stuff that sounds interesting, I mean different music styles that work well into metal world but I must say that sometimes it’s quite annoying.

You’re a professional in producing. What do you especially like about producing other bands?

When I compare it to working with Iron Savior or Savage Circus it’s not my material I work on. There are songs from other people where I’m by head and my mind a little bit freer… I also don’t have to care about the songwriting because the songwriting is done, just maybe take a look here and there because there are some songs which need to be polished up a little bit if they don’t work that well. That’s what I like – a different approach than if you work on your own material. But I must say that if I would have to choose what I preferred to do in life I must say that I would prefer to be an artist with my own songs. (laughs)

Whom of the metal producers could you trust to produce your own album, except yourself?

It’s a hard question! Well, I would have a lot of trust in Charlie Bauerfeind, I know him quite a long time now. Also it’s Sacha Paeth, his work is quite cool.

Those names would be OK for me. On the other hand there are many more people that I could imagine.

You seem to be not a big fan of ballads, it is right?

Yes and no. I mean I hate standard ballads, regular album ballads – just to have a ballad on the album. A ballad is OK for me if it’s made different to an average ballad because usually ballads have the same scheme – they start with acoustic guitars, somebody sings, then drums coming, later on guitar solos, then everything is over again, and after a little solo the song is over. (laughs) More or less all are based on the same chords. I think not too great about ballads. I like energy. When I listen to music I want to feel energy. It’s very seldom when a ballad really catches me, and I can feel energy. We actually have a ballad on our album but it’s a semi-ballad. (laughs)

What do you think when people sometimes call you ‘one of the founders of melodic metal’?

Actually I don’t know if I reach a status of the founders of melodic metal. I mean the true founders of melodic metal are Iron Maiden. For me they were the first band with such melodic stuff. When Kai and I were working together on those initial songs, for Helloween also, we were inspired a lot by Iron Maiden. We liked that stuff; we liked the melodies of Iron Maiden. We liked Judas Priest, especially songs like “Exciter”. We were really fascinated by this energy. And what we did is just got it together.

I can’t keep from asking – did you ever feel sorry for not going on with Kai and Helloween?

Actually no. I never felt sorry about that. For me it makes no sense to feel sorry about it. It was my decision, and I didn’t regret it so far. It’s OK, I feel good with this.

Well, you’re not only a producer, a guitar player but also a singer. So was it ever an idea about you to sing on “Dreamland Manor”?

Oh no. This decision was made by me and not by the rest of the band from the very first minute that I won’t be a singer of the band, because my voice is actually unique, I’d say… and if I sing on the album we would sound like Iron Savior. So we think it won’t be a good idea if I do the lead vocals.

I know you’re not a big fan of keyboards. So do you see Savage Circus music only as a guitar orientated music, too?

No, actually I have to say that for Savage Circus keyboards play a different role than for Iron Savior. In Iron Savior the song structures are more or less simple or straightforward. Actually for Iron Savior we don’t need keyboards at all. I mean little keyboards here and there but more or less it’s just a playing effect. For Savage Circus it’s different because the music is completely different. The music itself is more orchestral, therefore the keyboards are quite important for Savage Circus. Keyboards in Savage Circus also is not a solo instrument or featured in a ways as in Stratovarius, for example, where keyboards besides guitar is one of the two main instruments. The keybo

ards are also used to back up the playing thing. But having Savage Circus playing without keyboards you feel that something would be missing. I don’t have that feeling with Iron Savior. So this is one big difference between the two bands. But we’ll definitely have keyboards on stage.

Who will play keyboards on stage with Savage Circus then? You don’t have a keyboard player as a constant member of the band.

Oh, we don’t need one more band member, I mean we don’t need to have a keyboarder in the band. If we play live there are a couple of options. There are some keyboard players that I know who can do a good job. On the other hand, right now I’d say that this job could be done by Mi (Michael Schüren), the keyboarder of Blind Guardian which they use live, and he also plays in Coldseed, the project of Thom and Björn, the singer of Soilwork. So at the moment this guy is the first choice.

Well, it seems to be logical to have him on stage with Savage Circus. Now, could you tell me about the label Dockyard 1?

The label is quite new. We started out with it at the beginning of this year. So far we have a couple of good bands signed, of course, Savage Circus is one of them. Iron Savior is another one, Persuader also got signed Dockyard 1. Then we have Vanishing Point, they are from Australia, a young German band called Abandon, they play thrash orientated music, maybe a little bit like Destruction. Besides that we have a couple of - as I call them - other bands, untypical, because they do different stuff. They came from a corporation deal we had with our friends from Belgium from Good Life Records. So far everything is looking quite well, the label is doing fine, and we have so good signings. We’re making progress.

Does it have much matter what style a metal band plays to get signed Dockyard 1?

Yes, of course. I mean the style itself might not be that important, it must be interesting, in a way a little bit extreme. We don’t really want to do the total average thing. There are enough labels except which do that, and we try to be a little bit different. So far it’s working out quite well. We don’t want to be a label which is doing only heavy metal bands, we want to do something else.

I know you have daughters. Have they ever seen your show live? Do they like your music?

Yeah, two of them. They are eight and ten. Actually they did. They saw me playing in Wacken two years ago, and once we played a show in Hamburg. The music was too loud for them at the show, so they were with protection, of course. (laughs) They like the music I play, but the day they started school they began polluting it with the other stuff. (laughs) They do like my music but they also like stuff like Britney Spears, Shakira and so on.

Are you a strict father?

I’d say I’m OK. I’m quite generous, but of course I have to be obeyed. (laughs)

OK. And the question to end up the interview: what can we expect from Iron Savior soon?

Well, the new album is supposed to be out in the stores around May next year, definitely before summer. I just started songwriting. Now I’m a little bit inspired of course by Savage Circus. I see the next album – I mean the songwriting – in the way of “Unification” again. I still like this album very much. So maybe I would add some more progressive elements again to Iron Savior.

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

Anna Babicheva
August 9, 2005
27 сен 2005 the End

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