Interview с Tiamat : DARKSIDE.ru

Your last album “Prey” was released in 2003. Why did it take you so long to record a new CD?

Johan Edlund: We’ve been doing a lot of the things and I personally have been moving from Germany to Greece a few times. So I didn’t get rest. (laughs)

Anders Iwers: And also the record deal expired.

J. E.: Then we toured, played some festivals, and also Anders had a child.

Congratulations! Your DVD entered Swedish charts at position 5. Do you think it’s a success? And in general are content with the final result of this DVD?

A. I.: It’s definitely a success. I can’t say that we expected it from the beginning, no. We just hoped for the better.

For shooting this DVD you chose Poland. Why did you make this choice? What is especial about this country?

A. I.: It’s very cheep to record in that country. (everybody laughs

) And moreover the auditorium treated us very warm, it was something special.

J.: We’ve played at that Polish festival 5 times already. The first time was in 1991 I think. (thinks) Yeah, it was 1991 and it was the first show so it made sense to record a DVD there.

And which show in your carrier do you remember best of all?

A. I.: It’s really hard to say. Every country is different. I mean when we are in Sweden it’s of course great, you are welcomed in your native language. But when we traveled to other places – for example in Mexico, it was something incredible, the crowd was crazy! I can’t say that this crowd was the best, but the show in Mexico was unbelievable! I can’t even compare the fans, they are all different – that’s why there’re so many countries and ationalities.

Not long ago you signed to Nuclear Blast Records. Why did you choose this company?

J. E.: They offered us a goo

d deal, and actually we didn’t have so many options back then. And they work really hard for us, they do a great job, really!

A. I.: They really want to release the record, and they do their best to achieve this and this is very important.

LUCYFIRE’s debut album, "This Dollar Saved My Life at Whitehorse", was released in 2001. And it was only this year that your recorded demos, which you sent to different labels. Why did you freeze the work for more than 5 years? Did you have any offers from labels?

J. E.: We’re working at it. I mean me and Lars – the drummer. Now it’s a bit late, cause this year we have to concentrate on Tiamat for sure. As for the style – I think it’s gonna be pretty much the same as in the first album. It’s all that LUCYFIRE is about, it’s not to re-invent music. It’s like making the stuff that I really very much in to. Really gothic English new wave music.

Why did you found such

band like LUCYFIRE? As far as I know there (according to your own words) you play music without deep thoughts and ideas, just funny side of rock music… Were you tired of seriousness?

J. E.: Maybe after “slumber”, it’s a very demanding album in a way. To create such an album you have to reveal much of yourself. And sometimes to have a rest you’d better play rock’n’roll.

On LUCYFIRE MySpace you wrote that “LucyFire will play for food”. Are the state of things with this project so bad? How did people accepr this project of yours?

J. E.: Yeah, yeah! It was really a very hard time. Sometimes it wasn’t even for food, food would be even a good start! (laughs) I was pretending that it would be a great success, but it’s not. The album didn’t sell very well and no one cares really (sighs) and live shows were not really very successful. I don’t know why. I don’t even think that it was the consequense of bad promotion or stuff like

this. People just didn’t accept it, but I happened to like it.

Don’t you think that the new LUCYFIRE material sounds like that of “Judas Christ” album and it could fit TIAMAT as well?

J. E.: Maybe partially. But there are differences also I think. The new LUCYFIRE material is a little bit political which is something I really wanted to do, but it doesn’t fit Tiamat. It would be wrong to refer it to Tiamat, I think. So the material went to LUCYFIRE.

And what exactly will be the lyrics about?

J. E.: There are so many things to write songs about. As for the new LUCYFIRE stuff – well I got influenced by watching the news. And for Tiamat I more get inspired by… (thinks)

A. I.: … not watching news!

J. E.: Yeah! Exactly. It’s basically the same thing – life. But on two different levels. The more deep thoughts about the same subjects.

Ho

w did almost trip-hop bonus tracks “However You Look At It You Loose” and “Sixshooter” appear on the album “Judas Christ”?

J. E.: The record company needed some bonus tracks.

A. I.: They’re not included into “Judas Christ”, they were included into limited edition, so they don’t even belong to the album. It’s something different. But I really like them, though they don’t belong to the album.

And what happens to the songs that don’t get into your records by this or that reason? I suppose you write more songs than you put on the record…

J. E.: Usually if the song is written, it is good and in’s properly recorded in the studio we include it to the record. But if we see that it sucks, we don’t even record the song. So I wouldn’t say that we have much bonus material.

A question about one of your most beautiful songs “Vote for Love”. What inspired you to write such lyrics? Is it connect

ed with the events in your personal life? Do you really think that life without love is impossible?

J. E.: I think we got bored of this gloominess in the scene. I mean we’re all human beings and we need to find somebody to love. Even when we’re dressed in black and play dark and monotonous songs. So we just felt that we had to stop pretending. We entered the studio on 13th of September for recording the album “Judas Christ”, so I think it affected us. I mean the tragedy that happened there…

You’ve been in Russia several times already but it’s the first time you take part in such festival in Russia. So what do you expect from the people that came here today – the auditorium is rather different…

J. E.: We had a great show in Russia two years ago, and we hope that they will show up here as well. The audience in Russia is the great audience. I really like it.

In your carrier you once changed your styl

e completely. Your music became more atmospheric and light. What made you do it?

J. E.: Well, we changed line-up many times, it came rally naturally. To tell you the truth, we didn’t even noticed it ourselves.

How much attention do you pay to the negative reviews to your albums?

A. I.: If people don’t like something it’s quite all right. I could say some kind of cliché, that we don’t read the reviews, of course we read them.

J. E.: I think you listen to some people, critics. If I speak for example with guys from Moonspell and they tell me that the show was great – their opinion will be really important for me and I’ll be very happy. If they say that it was a bad show – I listen to them. I trust them, I trust their judgment. These are people whose opinions are really important to me. As for the other people – I don’t really care if they like it or hate it. It doesn’t really matter to me. First they should gai

n some right – why we should care.

A. I.: Yeah, I agree. They should gain this right. Of course every person has the right for his private opinion, but if he or she says that the show was bad, cause he or she was in bad mood – I wonder why should we care?

J. E.: I read “Sweden Rock” (magazine) last week and we got pretty good reviews there. In one newspaper they gave us three out of five. And we thought, “Yeah. It’s a very fair review”. But he wrote what was bad, and it was true. And we thought, “Yeah, that’s right”. We wouldn’t give it the highest grade ourselves.

The next question touches upon you video “Brighter Than The Sun”. Who was the author of the plot? Whose idea was it to make a kind of competition between a car and a bullfighter?

J. E.: The idea was me fighting with Lincoln continental. But when the guy from the film company chose the place for the shootings, it was very dusty and dirty, so they refused

to rent it to us. But they managed to rent this monster car for the shooting. The area where we shot the video was an industrial area, so they had such cars there. (laughs) Really a monster! It was a good solution. By the way it was produced and directed by the same people who made many videos for Rammstein – “Sonne” for example.

At what stage is the work on the new Tiamat record? When can your fans expect a new CD?

J. E.: Early next year. As for the content of the CD, I think it’s still too early to talk about it, but it’ll be heavier for sure, and at the same time it will be diverse. We like to play with contrasts, the new lyrics and the new elements in music. That’s what we do, and I think we are quite successful in it. I mean “Wild Honey” was very successful due to this – because it goes from death metal to psychedelic hippy stuff.

Who works at the cover-artworks of your records? Is it the same person or d

o you turn to different artists? And how do you work with them? Do you leave it for them to decide what should be there on the cover?

J. E.: I’ve done the last ones, but it’s not really a rule. It depends on what options you have. Usually if we hire people to work for us, we don’t tell them much. Because we already have a reason why we’re hiring them. The cool thing doing it yourself is that you can do whatever you want. I mean you can sense for yourself, you don’t have to guess what kind of thing it’s gonna be. For our compellation album I just drew a lot of inverted crosses on the huge canvas, and maybe if I was to do a cover-artwork for another band I wouldn’t dare, because they would consider me insane. The same is about music – if we produce it, we’re always there to try out things that a professional producer wouldn’t do maybe.

What do you think about the piracy? Does it influence the band anyhow?

J. E.: It depends. Of cou

rse it affects the music industry very much and we are not the exception, but in Poland we wouldn’t be popular if people didn’t download music. So sometimes it helps. So this’s good and this’s bad.

But sometimes people say that they don’t have money to buy albums, so they download or in other words steal music…

J. E.: You know, music is not milk, you don’t need it as you need food. So if you don’t have money – just don’t buy it. You say, “I don’t have money for the car”, so you don’t buy it. It’s easy, it’s black and white answer.

Many musicians have to work somewhere else besides music, because you cannot survive only by music. Is it your case? Do you have to combine music with some other occupation?

A. I.: Yeah, I work. I have to as you said.

J. E.: No, I don’t work. I’m lucky, I moved to Greece. If I lived in Sweden I’d certainly have to find something else as well. Because in Sw

eden it’s extremely difficult to survive by music, no… it’s not even difficult. It’s impossible. Unless you are some titan of music. Bands with famous names certainly can afford not to work somewhere else.

What do you appreciate in a song more – the musical component or the lyrical?

J. E.: I think the best songs are written in a couple of minutes – lyrics and music, everything. Maybe sometimes when you read the lyrics you don’t understand the sense, but you may understand it later, in a few years. If you have to work a lot to produce a good song, I yhink it’s already a bad sign. It takes time to record it and to rehearse it, arrange the song, but the basic melody and the lyrics should come pretty quickly.

A. I.: As for me I wouldn’t separate the song into these components. It’s not music separately that is important, but it’s not the lyrics either. It’s the combination is good, it’s a good song. That’s the most important thing. All

the arrangements and producing of the song are of secondary importance if the song it not good enough.

Do you think it’s necessary to share your deep thoughts and ideas and feelings with the public that might not understand them? Do you think it’s possible to write without putting a part of yourself into the music?

J. E.: Actually you are free to do whatever you want. You can write about demons, science fiction. But it’s not mine to write about all this stuff. I want to have a reason to write the song before I do it. I want to live a life and to let somebody know about it, to write about it. Maybe that’s why it takes us so long to make an album, because we want to live the album through, to have experience to write about.

At what age did you feel that you’re gonna be a musician? Who influenced you?

(all together): Iron Maiden!

A. I.: Well actually not only Iron Maiden. Many bands – Merciful Fate in terms os lyrics, Scorpions, Venom and many other bands.

Many people say that musicians grow old and are not longer interested in such music Do you think it’s possible to become to old for metal?

J. E.: Ronnie James Dio played a great show a couple of weeks ago and he is more than 60!

A. I.: This morning I was really trying to make myself believe this! (laughs)

Do you have time in different countries to enjoy yourselves? To go somewhere out?

J. E.: We do, but we’d like more! Of course when we have time we take a taxi and go somewhere to see something especial of this or that country. But there is one place that we know pretty well in every country we visit – airport! (everybody laughs)

J. E.: And surely when we have rest or just on the road we have lots of funny stories happening to us, but we can’t even share t with anybody, cause when they happen we are usually to drunk to remember it. (laughs) It happens more often when we travel with people whom we haven’t seen for a long time, with some bands, these stories are very funny for us, but they are very internal. And if I told my brother he wouldn’t laugh maybe...

Interview by Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
Questions also composed by Blindman
27 авг 2007

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Tiamat

The game of contrasts