Interview с Elvenking : DARKSIDE.ru

You performed in Italy together with Gottahrd and it’s rather a strange choice. How did it happen that you performed together?

Yeah, it was a proposal that was made by our booking agency. The slots were available for Italian dated with Gotthard and they just proposed it to us and we think it was a good idea, because anyway we play in quite different genres so we thought it would be interesting for Gotthard fans to listen to someone like us. We accepted it and it was a good possibility to do some Italian date, because it is very difficult to perform here in Italy. Strange as it might seem I know (laughs), but for us it’s easier to play outside Italy. It’s difficult here to do some good gigs, so it was a good chance for us to do at least this little Italian mini-tour.

The new disk is not so happy I should say. There are some modern-metal elements in it. Why did you decide to make your music harder?

Yeah, that was quite a natural evolution for us. The first thing that we usually think about our music and our sound is that every album should be something, you know, different from the previous ones, but still keeping the personality of our band, so that while listening to it you could understand that you’re listening to Elvenking and nothing else (laughs). We think that it’s very important to evolve the style of the music and to carry on proposing something new and original. Yeah we’ve been always influenced by heavy-metal stuff, death metal, melodic metal. This time we just decided to let go this influence maybe a little more than in the past, we concentrated on groovy songs, catchy melodies.

It is a little bit surprising that your European release is earlier than the Japanese one, because usually it happens vise versa. What is it connected with?

The European version is a digipack and it’s limited, there’s a bonus track and a video for the song “The Divided Heart”, too. In Japan it will not have these bonus track, it will have another one, another song which was recorded into “Winter Wake” sessions. Yeah, usually for the Japanese market they always add some material for them to buy their own CDs and not the import, the CD usually costs less than you can find in their country (laughs), that’s why the put the new stuff, the new songs etc. Anyway the record company decoded to do this limited version this time for the European market and to do another version in Japan.

And what song is it? I mean this bonus track. Why didn’t you include it into your previous album (“Winter Wake”)

? Didn’t it fit it?

This song was meant to be a European bonus track for the “Winter Wake”. But since we had this cover version of Skyclad the record company decided to add that cover song to the European version. So that’s why that song was left off the album. And now we have a bonus track, so we decided to use that one for Japan.

And why did you cover Skyclad? Are you their fans?

Yeah, yeah. We’ve always been Skyclad fans. Especially the first album, where we were metal and fresh metal. Since we were listening the first things in metal, in rock – Skyclad it was a very original band at that moment in the period of the late 80-s and the early 90-s. We’ve been always fascinated by this mixture between this fleshy metal and this violin, these folk tunes. Yeah, we’ve always been fans of Skyclad. That’s why when we were recording our album we decided to do this cover version.

You mentioned that the new album will be a concept album. Could you say a bit more about its concept? What will it be about?

Well, it’s not the concept album in the way that people usually think of a concept album. I mean it’s not a full story, with a lot of long songs or something of the kind. It’s not our case. It’s more a theme based album. It’s an album based on one single theme, all the songs on it are on its own, but they’re all related to one single theme. This theme is death. If I say it like this it may sound an unoriginal thing. (laughs) But we wanted to do this album based on horror and gothic literature, and all the stuff that related to the medieval poetry. And all this imagery, all these little pictures of death are portrayed here in this album. Death with a violin or death with a scythe. So we were very interested by this and there was a lot of time we were thinking about doing the thing like this. So every dong on this album is like an isolated poetry or imagery with the things said in a different way, you know in a different mood and on a different point of view. So there may be songs talking about it in a very violent way, there may be songs which talk about it in a sweet way. So all these songs are related to death, but in a different way and they are always very personal in their views.

You just said that your new album is dedicated to the theme of death. But in the previous interview to our web-zine you said that you want your music to bring light to people, to make them a bit happier. When a person comes home after a working day and listens to your music you want him to distract himself from his problems and n

ot to listen about the dark sides of life. Did you change your mind?

Oh, this is a very good question. Yeah, we really think that our music should help our fans to distract themselves from the problems of life. It’s like seeing a horror movie for example. When I come home from work and I watch a good horror movie, I enjoy it. We don’t want people to be distressed and to think about that, about these sphere of this theme. We just wanted to do some kind of fictional work, so that people could read it like a book, like a poetry and enjoy it. Well, it’s ok if they want to think about it, we don’t want to give the dark feelings or some dark messages in our music. We just wanted to write some kind of poetry opera and let people enjoy it.

Once we began to talk about death - tell me, what is you personal attitude to death?

It’s different all the time you know. And I think you can see it reading my lyrics on the album. Of course there times when I’m afraid of it, there are times when I see it with fear or horror, there are times when I look at the bright parts of life and I forget about that. It’s a very strange relationship. Probably at the end there is respect and fear. But of course it depends on how I feel that day or what happens to me.

The cover artwork for your new album, “The Scythe” was made by the same guy (Gyula Havancsák) who worked at your previous albums, but before this you used for each new record a new artist and said that that was the best way of working for you. Why did you break that habit? What was there in this guy that attracted your attention?

Yeah, we usually wanted to use a different artist for every album. This was our first idea. And we still thought so when we were working at “Winter Wake” cover. But after seeing how great was the work he made for “Winter Wake” and especially on the booklet where he made a kind of a different cover for every song. And it was so great that we thought, “Why should we look for someone else?” We were so happy with the work he did for us, especially with the inner part of the booklet. I don’t know what will happen in the future, but if everything is o’k we’ll think of him when we need to make a cover-artwork for our album. For this album he made the booklet in a kind of ancient book, every page tells a new story. And it’s especially great, because it’s a kind of concept album telling about different things, but all of them are united by the same theme – the theme of death. Every song has a title and around this title there is a cover that reflects the lyrics.

On the cover artwork there is a girl with a bloody scythe, she is sitting somewhere near the water and there are hands reaching out for her. Who came up with such an idea for the cover artwork?

At first we just gave the general idea to Gyula. We told him what the album is going to talk about. And we told him that of course we wanted the cover which would reflect the concept. At first he was a little bit frustrated, because he thought about Elvenking just as you said (laughs), like a happy metal band. So he wasn’t so sure and he wasn’t so confident to make a dark cover. But in the end we told him that the cover should be dark, because the theme of the album itself is dark, death. So we told him that, and he painted, so basically it was his idea. And it was cool to work with him once again.

So this girl symbolizes death itself?

Yeah, I think so. But usually you can see it different ways. Everybody may have different ideas or opinions about it, but yeah, here as in our video the girl – she is beautiful and you will never think that she is something horrible, that she is… death. This cover shows this girl whom you’d never expect to be death, but in the end of the CD you understand that she IS. You know it’s like in life – it can be hidden in every corner, I don’t want to be so dark (laughs), but it’s always like this.

That’s exactly what I wanted you to ask about – about the video for the song “The Divided Heart”. Could you tell a bit more about the process of shooting? The scenery of the video is rather dark and cold. How much did this video meant for the band?

Actually we wanted to make a video also for the “Winter Wake” album. But in the end for many reasons – time and budget reasons we didn’t do it, so we had this idea of shooting this video clip for about a couple of years, and I think that for Elvenking it was very important this time, because it will be additional way to promote the band, it’s something new for u, because we’ve never made a video before. Also it was important, because nowadays all bands are shooting videos and it’s quite important, because it gives also the way to see how the band plays and what it looks like. We were shooting this video I think for three days – two days we were shooting the girl in this clip, we were shooting the plot of the clip so to say, and it took us one day to shoot the band playing. We worked with a very talented director here in Italy and it was very cool.

And who is this girl? How did you find her?

We discussed the video

with our director, and he began looking for a girl. He is in this area. There were some girls whom he invited and one of them actually occurred in this video.

And what did you mean by the plot of this clip. As far as I understood – the two people parted ways, and the man tries to commit suicide in different ways: he hangs himself, he cuts his veins, he shots himself… Do you mean that love can bring a person to death?

The plot was an idea by Ayden, the guitarist and me in a way. And the director in the end came up with different ideas, because of course he had to deal with the budget and all the stuff. And yeah, the idea was this – this girl in one way or another touches or deals with these 5 guys. And after she touches them these guys commit suicide. And in the end you see that there’s a shadow of the scythe.

Yeah, I was very impressed by this idea. Great decision!

(laughs)Yeah, I liked it, too. It was an idea of our director to make people understand in the end that this girl is death. And as in the lyrics of our songs here we don’t want to symbolize anything, we don’t want to give bad messages. We just wanted to tell a story and to make it maybe in a poetical and philosophical way, we wanted to show that this is the end of the story – but to make it as I told you – in a little fictional way.

And once again you sing about not so happy things. Even singing about love you don’t sing about its beauty and the great positive power of this feeling, you sing about the destructive power of love… Do you think it’s so destructive?

No, I mean it may be in some occasions. It depends on the situation of course. Like in the song "Romance & Wrath". Basically I’m telling a story here. Of course I’m speaking about death, but I’m telling a story about love and death. When pain of someone releases in others it’s really destructive. But here it’s destructive in a positive way, though it can be destructive in the negative way.

Your new album was mixed in Sonic Pump Studio in Helsinki, mastering was done in Finnvox studio, you also worked in studios in Germany and in Italy. Why did you need so many studious this time? I know that you recorded your previous album in your own private studio in Italy – you said you wanted to try something new. Were you dissatisfied with it?

Of course the reason for choosing so many different studious was to improve the production of our previous album. With the “Winter Wake” we tried something we were satisfied by some and we were not sati

sfied by others. Here in Italy we recorded in the studio of our friend, so we could record as much time as we wanted. We rented the studio for one month, but it was easier for us to work here - we all work and we don’t have much time, and here we could record and rehearse in the evenings, at the weekends and to spread the recording for as long as we wanted to make the best that was possible. The one thing we were not satisfied with during the recording of the previous album – is drum sound, that’s why this time we recorded the drum-sound in Germany in a very good studio. Then we came back here in Italy and it was quite different from the previous time – the producer Nino Laurenne came here from Finland and we recorded all bass and guitar sounds. And then he came back to Finland, we recorded everything here in Italy and then WE came to Finland where we mixed and mastered the album. In the end we used all this studious to get the best result possible with the budgets we had and with the possibilities of time that we had.

You just said that you all work. Is it impossible in Italy to survive only by playing music?

Yeah. It is, it is. If you do a different genre of music – pop-music for example – it’s possible. But with stuff like that (laughs) it’s problematic. We don’t have any support from the state, politicians and so on. We really live on our long legs and nowadays it’s very difficult to have good sales in metal. And the satisfactory, so to say, sales don’t give you the possibility to live, because you don’t earn so much money. We all have a permanent job and of course we don’t have so much free time and we have a lot of work with the band. It’s difficult of course to combine, but you could do nothing with it. It’s a pretty hard life! (everybody laughs)

This year it’s 10 years of Elvenking. And as far as I know you even planned a special concert for it. What will you perform at this concert and how are you going to celebrate such a date?

Well, we’ll make a gig, it will be also a release party of “The Scythe” and of course the 10th anniversary. We will do it in our home town where we usually do the release parties here in Italy. There’s a very good rock club here and we were thinking and still thinking about surprises which we can make during this show, we’ve thought about call our old members and play something. I don’t know if it will be possible or not, we’ll do something on stage (thinks) I don’t know, maybe some special effects or something like that. We haven’t decided what exactly will happen that night, but of course it will be something

special.

And what about a live DVD? Do you have plans to release it?

Yeah, this is the idea we really want to fulfill. Of course it’s always a problem of time and especially of money. Because to make a live DVD, to recruit cameras, to hire a good recording/mixing board – it demands lots of money. We don’t want to release something cheap, I mean I’d want to do a special thing for the fans when we come to this idea closer. We haven’t planned anything so far, I mean of course we have certain plans and ideas, but they are so vague… But we really want to do it and we hope to do it in the near future. We really want to do a DVD with a live gig. Unfortunately at the moment there’s nothing to add.

I visited your official web-site and I should say the interface is very impressive! Who worked it out? Do you think that nowadays it’s important for a band to look good in the Internet?

We think that it’s one of the most important things nowadays, because the Internet is such an important way to promote yourself. You know there are always lots of people roaming around, listening to your music. If you can make a really good presentation, if can to catch the eye of the people in the Internet, this is very cool, because there are so many things on the Internet, so much information, for a young guy in the Internet so much things to do and to see that if you can’t interest him, if you can’t catch the eye, he’ll skip the page and forget about it in a minute. So that’s why of course it’s important to have a good presentation. The guy who did our site actually is a fan from Poland. It’s the third version of the site he is making for us. He is a very talented guy and this new version is really amazing.

For the recording of your previous album you invited Shmier (Destruction), now you invited King Diamond guitarist Mike Wead. How did it happen that you collaborated with him?

The first thing that we thought about this album was that Ayden played all the guitars on this album, so we thought that to hear more than one solo in the song is really cool. We wanted to do a kind of battle of solos like in Iron Maiden. We thought that to have the second guitarist for the two songs, for the solos in two songs would be extremely important for us. And after this we thought, “Why don’t we invite some special guest and do this?” And we thought of Mike Wead immediately, because we are great fans of the music like King Diamond, Candlemass and all the other bands he played with. We sent him e-mail and he replayed immediately. And he said, “Well, let

me hear the songs and if I like them – I’ll play”. So we did, we sent him the demo versions of the two songs and he liked them. And we went to the studio and recorded all the parts there. He’s a very nice guy and a very talented musician. It was really cool to work with him.

What is your attitude to piracy? Does it affect somehow the sale figures of your CDs? What do you think of all these Internet downloadings?

Of course like other musician I can only think bad about this. It leads the band to… well to that the band can’t live only by playing music. Sale figures fall and it’s terrible. Because they sell a lot a lot less than they did before all this Internet affair. But of course it’s a great way to promote music, because when there are so many albums that come out in the same month that of course people cannot afford to buy them all every month and every year. It’s a very good way in one sense – you download the album and if you like it you go and buy the CD, and if you don’t like it - just don’t buy it and don’t listen to it. It would be a very good idea if people could keep in their minds that if they like the record – they should buy it. This would be a great thing. But of course a lot of people don’t care about buying, because they can download everything for free. Really why buying it? If you may have it for free… And it’s really bad, it’s really bad for musicians, for people who believe in what they did and all their work is destroyed by a couple of clicks and this is really bad.

The next question may seem a bit strange to you, but I thing it’ll be interesting for your fans to know what personalities you are in life – not on stage, not as musicians, but in private life. So could you in a few words characterize each band member?

Oh this is a god question! Let me think a little, a little bit (laughs). I can say one thing about all of us – in private life we are really quiet guys.

Are you?

Yeah. We are, we are! (everybody laughs). I think all of us have different behavior.
Our bass-player Gorlan is a very funny guy, he is full of funny stories and jokes and all the stuff. A crazy guy. (laughs) Our drummer Zender is the most quiet of us, he is silent most of the time, he says a couple of words if really needs to say something. Just a couple – never more! (laughs). Elyghen, our violin player, is the funniest guy, he likes the 70-s stuff, 70-s prog especially. What about Ayden, the guitarist, is a very talented guy, he always has a lot of ideas and he always think

s a lot before doing something. And what about me… Well, I’m quite calm and quite crazy at the same time (laughs)

And when can we expect to see Elvenking in Russia one day?

(laughs) That’s a good question! Another one! I really hope that Russian fans will have a chance to see us very soon. Of course we don’t have at the moment some concrete plans about Russian and European tour. The booking agency is working hard at it and is eager to organize a tour for us, maybe supporting some bigger band. We really want to come to your country, to play there and to chat with Russians. I’ve heard you are crazy, just like we are! (laughs)

Interview by Ksenia "Wolfin" Khorina
Questions also composed by Blindman
30 окт 2007 the End


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