Can you tell me about the way you hooked up with Alexis for this project?

Asphodel: I already worked for his former band Wormfood on a Type O Negative cover Christian Woman and a track intro, so he knew my voice a little bit. He only invited me to make some voices on the first Pin-Up Went Down album which was nearly finished by the time I got involved. I didn’t want to make operatic vocals this time because I was fed up with it, so I asked him the liberty to make the voices I wanted. He invited me to make a try on the song Intrusion. I imagined the little scary story of a little ghost girl and did my vocals. When he heard the result he asked me to become a real member of the project. First, he asked me only to do a few voices here and there and then wanted me to be the lead singer. That’s how it happened.

The project was originally called Esthete Piggie. Why did you change it?

Asphodel: First of all it was difficult to pronounce, and also because we had a precise idea of the meaning, but it didn’t really mean what we thought it would. (Laughs) We were thinking of a female pig, an esthete female pig. We had a decadent idea of it…

It somewhat reminds me of Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Asphodel: (Laughs) That’s not decadent at all!

So why Pin-up Went Down?

Asphodel: Why not?

Somehow you had to come up with that, right?

Asphodel: Yes. We wanted that vision of decadence but I wanted to focus on the tragedy aspect of things. The Greek meaning of tragedy, the kind of hero that finds a terrible end. And I remembered those pin-ups, like Marilyn Monroe and others before her, that were very famous and glamorous, and that died in horrible condition… or died in oblivion.

Okay, so you said Alexis already had most of the music written. What was your initial reaction when you heard it?

Asphodel: The first thing I thought was “Shit, I WANT to sing with that guy.” When I heard it I told myself that I had finally found my so desired project.

So I assume you liked what you heard.

Asphodel: (Laughs) Yes but it was very strange… for the first time of my life I was completely emphatic and I felt like as if one mind finally understood mine. I was extremely happy.

Did Alexis give you free hand with your vocals for the entire album?

Asphodel: Oh yes, he gave me complete “carte blanche”, free hand, as we say in France.

So how did you decide on what part what type of voice to use?

Asphodel: I don’t know, to be honest… I always see cinematographic scenes in my head with characters and I need to incarnate these characters so the voices and the characters become one entity. And they easily find their place in the part of the story where I want to make them live. It’s a very natural process and with every part of the songs there’s a scene or feeling that appears. I choose to use the “movement” of the scene to play with the voice or I decide to make the definite contrary of what is played behind. I love to sing something horrible for a funny and joyful part.

Speaking of cinematography, is there any director whose movies influence you in your “own cinematography”?

Asphodel: Guy Maddin… definitely! Guy, THE guy from Winnipeg. He worked with Isabella Rossellini in the Saddest Music In The World.

What did Alexis think about the vocals you delivered for the songs?

Asphodel: Well, he was pretty surprised because he didn’t know that I really loved to sing like this, with many facets. When he heard Intrusion, he was completely amazed and I was completely red because I didn’t think that such a way of singing could be liked by someone. I just wanted to try and to explore and I wanted to make my characters alive.

So you never sung like that before in your previous bands, only in the bathroom?

Asphodel: No, in the kitchen! No, actually I had a small band called Nowonmai. We made a 3-track demo a few years ago… in 2003 or 2004. I started to sing a bit like this there but only a bit. I’ve never tried pig squeals and death metal singing before. I also had a band called Arew where I used to sing a little bit like this but I really explored my voice with Pin-Up Went Down. We composed a few songs and recorded it with Arew but we didn’t release anything.

Will you ever plan to do that or that belongs to the past?

Asphodel: No, it belongs to a so distant past. Things are much more professional with Pin-Up Went Down. I grew up.

Other than singing in the kitchen, what kind of vocal training you took?

Asphodel: None. I took 8 lessons of classical singing 6 or 7 years ago but I was a student and it was too expensive, so I stopped.

Tell me about your biggest influences along the way. Who did you grow up with and how did that change over the years?

Asphodel: I started to sing when I was 7 with Edith Piaf. I think I wanted to sing everything that one could sing. I grew up with Queen, Mike Oldfield but I don’t exactly know who my influences are. I’m so greedy of music that I can listen to Impaled Nazarene, which was my favourite band when I was 14, and after I can go for Anthony and the Johnsons. It’s weird but even though I’m a metalhead I love discovering every kinds of music. But I can’t precisely tell you my influences because I don’t know them. I used to listen to 14 hours of metal every day when I was in university.

Okay, so you don’t remember your influences but tell me singers you like.

Asphodel: Daniel Gildenlöw, Tom S. Englund, Andy Schmidt, Serj Tankian, Devin Townsend and Lady Gaga. I only like few songs of her but she has a great voice.

Btw, I showed your music to a musician friend of mine and he said that your vocals are paedophile’s dream in some songs. (Laughs)

Asphodel: Your friend is deviant. (Laughs)

But seriously, how on earth can you do that “student girl” and all those other types of vocals?

Asphodel: Well, I love that way of singing. It’s a parody of woman and it’s easy for me to sing like this, but obviously it’s not my real voice. It’s mine but I have to play with my larynx to make it perfect.

You sing many styles in Pin-Up Went Down… which one is your favourite?

Asphodel: I don’t know… maybe the pig squeals. I like them all because each one of them is a way of being, a character, a feeling, but I love pig squeals because that’s an inhaling challenge to me. I love bluesy ones because of the groove they bring and the “old woman one” because it makes me feel as I’m incarnating a dead.

How do you know how it feels to incarnate a dead?

Asphodel: (Laughs) That’s how I feel. I feel dead since I was 5 years old. So when I sing like this I find some kind of a peace… It’s difficult to explain, even in French. I’m a very anxious and oppressed woman and always been like this since I was 5. When I sing that kind of voice I feel like I’m perfectly empty and this emptiness makes me feel peaceful because otherwise I’m always thinking, even when I sleep.

What happened to you when you were 5?

Asphodel: Well, first of all I’m gifted but they only discovered this last year. When I was a little girl the teacher told about it but in the 80s nobody was conscious of that notion. When you’re gifted you’re always thinking and you feel very tired everyday. But when I was 5 and a half two catastrophes occurred to me. The first one was the death of my 7-year-old cousin who has been killed in a car accident. I understood the meaning of death perfectly very early and it followed me throughout the years. The other one was a very personal experience and those two things made me learn many things that I was too young to understand, I think. But when you learn things that way you have a different vision of life and you grow up with other values. I don’t say they are better but they destroy your way of bringing up with people. And when you are gifted you never feel home anywhere you go and it’s very difficult to live that way. You always feel too old, too different, inferior and you’re always questioning, questioning and questioning everything.

Back to Pin-Up Went Down… did Alexis already have a record deal when you joined him?

Asphodel: No. When the album was finished I sent it by mail to Ascendance Records and we received an answer the day after. I think Alexis tried three or four other labels before I sent it to them though. I thought they might be interested as they were specialized in female voices. But actually I wasn’t able to have a precise idea of the album’s quality as I was not able to have an objective opinion on our own work.

Did you know any of their other releases by then?

Asphodel: No, I just heard of Stolen Babies at that point.

Guess now you’re also familiar with Diablo Swing Orchestra that play somewhat similar music to you.

Asphodel: Yes! They like what we do and we like what they do. But in spite of the similarities Pin-Up Went Down and Diablo Swing Orchestra are very different. We don’t have the same atmospheres. But for me, they are one of the best female fronted bands in the world. Their female singer is a REAL operatic singer not a so-called one.

Your debut album got some really good reviews. Did you expect anything like that? I mean no one expects bad reviews but still…

Asphodel: No, we didn’t expect anything like that because we didn’t have any opinion about our own work. We were anxious so when we read the positive reviews we were really surprised.

What was the best and the worst thing that reviewers told about your music?

Asphodel: My biggest fear was not to be understood and that’s what happened a few times. The best thing… once someone said that I was the female Patton and that Pin-Up Went Down is the most surprising band the reviewer had heard for 10 years. And the worst… it was a German reviewer. The guy said that we probably spent 2 days in a home studio, pushed a button to make an effect and that’s how we made this shitty album.

Who did turn out to be the first Pin-Up Went Down fans? Did you have people following from your previous bands?

Asphodel: The first fans were French but yes, some people followed us from our previous bands as well even though our Mexican fans still seem to prefer Penumbra. (Laughs) But you know, I’m very surprised to see that we have fans all over the world. Not a lot but we have some in Italy, England, the United States and many other places. It’s weird.

Yeah, but that’s how things are in the Internet age. People get to hear it even if the album is not distributed there…

Asphodel: Yes, that’s the great thing about the Internet. It’s one of the best promotional tools for every underground band, Pin-Up Went Down included.

And there’s the other side of the Internet too…

Asphodel: Yeah, people downloading music… That’s true but we all do that, I think and it’s part of today’s culture. But remember when we were younger we had the possibility to copy tapes and that’s what we all did.

For the second album the band has been expanded to three members.

Asphodel: Yes, we have Nicolas who is Alexis’ brother. He already gave his opinion and advices on the first album and Alexis felt that sharing his music with his brother would be a beautiful way to make their links stronger, so he decided to make Nicolas join the band for the 2nd album. He contributes to the writing and he plays the piano and they worked together for harmonies and arrangements.

After the success of the debut album, did you have any pressure on you writing the second one?

Asphodel: Alexis was less anxious than I am still today but we were anxious anyway. Alexis had many ideas and many plans for the second album. He’s a really good musician but I’m just a singer. I was very afraid of making the same things and I was afraid of inventing gimmicks without wanting to.

I think your vocals improved from the first album, you show more of its strength on the new one…

Asphodel: Thank you! I tried other things for the second album and I think also evolved since the debut but I’m already afraid of the third album! (Laughs) I can see the evolution in my performance but I don’t know if that evolution is significant enough.

But you know what… you don’t have to evolve significantly on all albums, most singers sound the same all their lives. (Laughs)

Asphodel: (Laughs) That’s true. Alexis has also evolved since the debut album. He worked his sounds in a different way and he tried to focus on more organic feelings this time.

I think the first album was more eclectic; it was pretty crazy while the songs on the new one are more or less in a similar vein. How do YOU see the difference?

Asphodel: The first album was more funky, gothic, electro while the second one focuses on organic sounds, it’s more human and touchable and it’s less cold and also a little bit more rock and progressive. The first one was a little bit mad and the second one more technical and mature, I think. And to be honest, we don’t know what the third one will sound like.

How would you describe and recommend the music of Pin-Up Went Down to someone that never heard it?

Asphodel: Take a blender, put in a strawberry, a hamburger, some vinegar and a colorectal cancer, then blend it and drink it. (Laughs)

Okay, that was the description… and how would you recommend it? (Laughs)

Asphodel: I wouldn’t recommend it. (Laughs) I think I would tell the person going to a disco that dressing up like Regan MacNeil wouldn’t be a good idea. Pin-Up Went Down is an experience. Even if you won’t like it at all, it can be a good thing to try. I would tell: “If you want be on drugs without taking any pills, have an ear!” But I never make my promotion, I hate it. I’m a shy girl when it comes to my own singing.

Can you imagine any musical boundaries for Pin-Up Went Down?

Asphodel: No, I think we’re interested in everything that can be done but it has to be justified. It must have a link with the story that’s being told. For example if Alexis makes some rap music I must think of a way to make it blossom.

Like singing gospel in a song?

Asphodel: Yes, it has already been done in the song Pussy Worship. I used gospel vocals because it’s a religious genre and the gospel part in this song is asking God to let a woman become a guy for a day in order to fuck another woman and to dominate her. So it’s kind of a heretic way of using gospel in that song. And when I told you it has to be justified I think my gospel part is a good example to explain that theory. We don’t want to use classical things in a classical way. In Khabod Of My Aba the intro is a religious choir, typical catholic one and I sing there in Hebrew. I sing a Jewish prayer to king Solomon.

I’m glad you mentioned Pussy Worship as I wanted to ask about that song anyway… the lyrics of that one is quite vulgar. Did you choose that way of talking to shock listeners?

Asphodel: No, it was not to shock people. I’m just sick of the way girls are considered even today. People still consider us as princesses and have a stereotypical vision of what women want to do. We are human beings and not sexual objects. That song is for the sexual freedom of women and a big “fuck you all” to the “bienséance” and the rules of education that force woman to incarnate and not only to be. I’m sick of this. This song is dedicated to every woman. Every woman I know secretly would like to have sex with another woman but the taboo is so strong that they don’t dare to say it like if it was an abnormal fantasy. And the domination of man is a real mystery to me, so the lyrics deal with that mystery.

It’s an interesting subject, both the human and the sexual aspect of it. And I agree with the human aspect 100% but I can’t comment on how much women want to have sex with each other as I never was a woman… considering a sex surgery though. (Laughs)

Asphodel: (Laughs) It’s weird. The vision of women and men are really different. The fact that men have such an important place in society make them less interested in homosexual experiences than women. Lesbianism gives an idea of grace and esthetism. But men have a stereotypical way of being, and these experiences mean weakness and treason of their condition of men. It’s really weird and a pity too because they miss out on exploring their own self because of those stereotypes.

Pussy Worship

What other things do inspire your lyrics writing?

Asphodel: Psychiatry, cinema and experience of life. Not very original things but life is a gift to write lyrics. Existentialism.

Are these mostly dark thoughts?

Asphodel: Yes, they’re dark. Sometimes there’s a bit of hope… but I always conclude with the same point. It’s more ironical than sad but irony means anger, and scorn. I don’t really see the light in the dark. I only hope that there is somewhere.

If you take all Pin-Up Went Down songs, which one would be your favourite either music or lyrics-wise?

Asphodel: It’s so hard to answer to this. I prefer talking about the way human spirit can be tortured and musically I love things like what we did on Cadavre Exquis. I love abnormality and I love when music is powerful and mad, a little bit dark and ironic too, and when it’s completely out of subject.

Do you have favourite lyricists, poets and authors?

Asphodel: I love French chanson. I love Jaques Brel and Juliette. They are French artists. In metal… I really don’t know. As for poets… Dino Campana, William Peter Blatty (he wrote The Exorcist). I read a lot of books. I love Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Manu Larcenet, Joann Sfar, Riad Sattouf (they make French bandes dessinées – comics). I also like Joe Matt, Victor Hugo and some Emile Zola’s books too and my favourite one is Kafka.

Do any of them influence your writing in any way?

Asphodel: No, I don’t think they influenced me. I just love their work. I think the only influence I have is the everyday experience of disillusions. (Laughs) And I’m more influenced by treason and diseases than by fictions.

Is it easy for you to come up with your lyrics in English?

Asphodel: When I write lyrics I always think in English so it’s not a problem for me. When I write poetry I always think in French or Italian. I’m a vocal and Italian teacher and my grandpa is Italian, so it’s in my blood. He still lives over there.

So, how about singing in French and Italian?

Asphodel: I use few words in Paradoxical Sarabanda but I don’t know if it would be interesting for me to sing a full song like that. I don’t really know yet as I haven’t tried. I only tried Hebrew and German… German for Andy in Vaginaal Nathrakh.

Btw, Vaginaal Nathrakh is one of the best word games I’ve heard in a long time…

Asphodel: (Laughs) Thanks! It’s my homage to Anaal Nathrakh and it was my idea to name the song Vaginaal Nathrakh. And actually I composed the song as well. I composed only two songs for Pin-Up Went Down, this one and Escargot. I showed Alexis the idea for Vaginaal and he built the intro and arranged it to make it sound better.

What does Anaal Nathrakh mean to you?

Asphodel: I love their madness and I love the way they can make extreme parts sound so clear and they have wonderful choruses!

So you have Andy from Disillusion singing on this song…

Asphodel: Yes, I am a big fan of him and I wanted to make him appear on a track I composed and it was a good idea because this song deals with my vision of women and the vision of society. I just sent him the song, then he recorded his part and mailed it back to me. We were about to meet in person but unfortunately we couldn’t in the end.

Was Andy the only guest that you considered having on the album?

Asphodel: No, I also wanted to have Daniel from Pain of Salvation and I invited him and he even agreed to do it but then he was not available because of touring. I wanted to compose something special for him, but hopefully he can sing on our third album.

Another song title… Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds…

Asphodel: (Laughs) Murphy in the Sky with Daemons. It deals with Murphy’s Law and beliefs as if a superior entity was controlling your life in a bad way, in a way that you can’t stand and you don’t think you deserve. It’s about your beliefs when life looks like shit. (Laughs) The example in the song is a guy who experiences a lot of shit starting with his breakfast to the discovery of his wife in his own bed with his best friend.

Nice pun at The Beatles song…

Asphodel: Well, I don’t like The Beatles at all but it was in the back of my mind and I figured it would be a nice title.

Why is the album called 342?

Asphodel: Because we were two persons on the first album and now we’re three with Nicolas. Three for two. That’s just this simple.

How about your other bands? Are Alexis and you still involved in other bands/projects?

Asphodel: Yes, he has another band but that is not metal at all. They play jazz. I don’t have any other bands at the moment but I’m looking for a jazz/trip-hop project.

So you’re out of Penumbra or it’s no more?

Asphodel: It’s no more. We decided to split the band silently. But actually I didn’t make any albums with them. We only did 3 tracks together and a few gigs in Belgium and Holland with The Old Dead Tree. I have nice memories though, they’re kind people.

Did you play any live shows as Pin-Up Went Down yet?

Asphodel: Only one. We played last year in Villeurbanne, which is a place close to Lyon. It was a festival only for female fronted bands. We had a pretty good audience there. People were dancing and playing with balloons in the pit. (Laughs)

And how did the show go? Wasn’t it hard to transform your complex music to a stage environment?

Asphodel: It was more rock’n'roll and catchy than on the album and it was also more organic. We sang with the crowd and I made them sing the gospel part of Pussy Worship as well. (Laughs) It was so lovely. We have never rehearsed together so I was a little bit worried but things went well. I was also nervous because most of the other bands were symphonic/gothic metal bands so I was afraid of the crowd’s reaction but luckily everything went away at the moment I started to make some soap bubbles just before singing “Intrusion”.

Do you plan doing more gigs?

Asphodel: Not for the moment. We are a studio project in the first place and we’d like to focus on the album’s release now by doing interviews and seeing about the reaction of the press and the fans. Touring is a difficult question anyway because Alexis lives 700 kms away from me. That’s why we never had any rehearsals and that’s why it’s so hard!

Congratulations once again on being a father for the second time.

Daniel: Yep, it’s cool! (Laughs) It was actually more of a change having two than getting the first one. When you only have one child you can follow his routines and his waking and sleeping hours but as soon as you have two they’re just never in sync. (Laughs) It’s time to get in sync now but the first two months were pretty hard when it came to sleep. (Laughs)

Naming your first child Sandrian made people scratching their heads. This time you went even further…

Daniel: I guess so, yeah. (Laughs) Both times we had a very hard time with this. It feels like that you have all these ideas and then you have a child coming out and all of these ideas just seem inappropriate. This individual comes out and has got certain features and individual characteristics that demand almost a different kind of name than all the ones you put to the table already. I think for the second time we thought that we had figured everything out beforehand… but nope. The same thing happened as the first time and we had to start all over again. (Laughs) A name is almost like a tattoo, it’s something that’s gonna stay with you for all your life. Okay, you can change it but still it kind of influences who you are, so it’s like a big responsibility.

Yeah, and you also have to make sure that they’d feel comfortable with their names in kindergarten and school…

Daniel: Yeah, that’s true. We tried to imagine all these different situations and it’s just impossible. (Laughs) I guess I’m kind of name damaged to start with because my name is Daniel and in Sweden it’s really a common name. It wasn’t so much before I was born but then half the population all of a sudden thought that they have an original idea and all of them started naming their children Daniel thinking they are the first in the world to do so. So then you had a whole generation with Daniels. I always felt a bit weird that I shared names with a lot of people I had nothing in common with. At least I’m happy enough to have a family name that’s not very common, or actually very uncommon. (Laughs) But it would be hard in Sweden to be named like Daniel Andersson. It’d be just like that I’m one of the two million Anderssons. So it’s always like that you want to find that special name for your kid that’s him and no one else without going to the extremes because trust me, we feel that we haven’t gone to the extremes. (Laughs)

But now with all Pain of Salvation fanboys and fangirls reading this you bet there’s gonna be more Sandrians and Nimhs.

Daniel: Well, there’s already one more Sandrian in Sweden. There’s this page called svenskanamn.se and when we checked this name at that point it was unique and we got zero hits when we searched the Internet for that name as well. But already there’s someone else in Sweden that has named their son Sandrian. In the Gothenburg area.

Bummer! (Laughs)

Daniel: Yep. Well, that’s how it is. What can you do? (Laughs)

If you lived in America you could probably have copyrighted the name.

Daniel: Yeah, I guess if you live in America maybe you could just search the patent for the name so no one can use it. (Laughs) I’m not sure you can do that though. Maybe you can if you pay. And then of course you have to have the R symbol afterwards. (Laughs) Or TM maybe. So every time you present yourself you say “Daniel TM” or you should say TM a little bit more silent as they are smaller letters, “What’s your name?” “I’m Daniel… TM” (whispering) Anyway, we should probably move on to more interesting questions that people are actually gonna care about. (Laughs)

Okay, so let’s change the subject. Do you often sing lullabies to your children? (Laughs)

Daniel: (Laughs) We’ve been reading lots and lots of fairytales. More fairytales than lullabies I would say. I was singing quite a lot of lullabies to the belly when Sandrian was in the belly. Unfortunately for Nimh we didn’t have the same routines when it came to that. I don’t know if it’s always like that when you have the first child and then the other one or it was just a matter of what was happening in life but I never got to sing to the belly as much as I did with Sandrian. But I think Nimh caught up very quickly. He came out and he seemed to have this deep and genuine interest for music already from the start. (Laughs)

Which would be the most lullaby friendly Pain of Salvation song?

Daniel: Hmm… I guess I would probably have to say This Heart of Mine. I have to admit though that I haven’t been singing Pain of Salvation songs, not as lullabies anyway. (Laughs) But Sandrian has sort of a thing with especially Mortar Grind. He probably heard certain parts of the EP during the recording but he’s been heavily into KISS for a while. You could only play KISS and you should play it all the time and everywhere. But all of a sudden when I was driving him to kindergarten one morning he said, “I want to listen to when daddy sings.” I was like, “Oh, okay?!” so I put the EP on because that was what he heard at that point. All of a sudden during Mortar Grind I heard it dubbed for the whole chorus “Now she’s mine, all broken inside”. There was this high-pitched beautiful sort of extra dub on that. I was like, “What’s that? It’s weird.” So I looked back and he was sitting and singing in the backseat. It was really cool and of course my heart just broke with love and warmth. And as soon as I looked back of course he just laughed and stopped singing and looked at me like, “Daddy, concentrate on driving!” And when we stopped the car he said, “You sing very high, Daddy.” (Laughs) “Well, yeah, I guess so.” He said, “Very nice.” It was pretty cool. I was like floating on clouds for the rest of the day.

I would say it’s the compliment you need.

Daniel: Absolutely. Then we can take any sort of reviews. If I can just have that once a week I’ll be fine.

Having your second child was surely the highlight for you but for the band this year didn’t seem to offer much starting with the issues of SPV, InsideOut’s owner and distributor.

Daniel: Yeah, the summer part was really heavy. I mean looking at it in retrospective I’m kind of happy that the American tour didn’t happen because Nimh was two weeks late and that would have meant after he had been born I would have just had three days to get to know him before I have to take off for America. So I’m really happy that it didn’t happen after all but still when that happened it was really taking its toll for the whole band mentally. It was just a very heavy blow because we were all looking forward a lot to that tour. I’ve made this comparison before and it’s like you have an engine with, like in this case, 4 or 5 cylinders. (Laughs) There were a lot of negative feelings, first we had to deal with Kristoffer and then we had Simon and that didn’t really work out either. But we managed to turn all the negative things around and we felt a very positive vibe and we really had all the energy on top and it was like having those cylinders really in sync. And the tour cancellation just happened exactly in the wrong period of time. It was kind of heavy for all of us but maybe especially for me since I’ve been doing this for quite some time, and then of course for Léo who was just coming to the band. So my feeling was that it was probably the hardest blow for Léo and me. But you never know for sure because we’re Scandinavians so it’s hard to tell what we feel. (Laughs) But then again of course it was very nice to have our second son and kind of focus on that which was necessary in all sort of ways anyway.

I’m not sure it would have made it anyway but originally Road Salt was scheduled to be released in time for the American tour…

Daniel: That’s actually, again in retrospective, something that I’m kind of happy about because I had basically three weeks left to spend on the album at that point and there were about six songs without lyrics or vocals and there were also two songs that I would have wanted to record for the album but then I skipped because I felt that we needed to get the album done. So from that point of view I’m kind of happy that it didn’t happen because that meant that I could actually get much more back to Road Salt and try to make it more like I wanted it to be made and really take the time to let it rest and get back to it with fresh ears and fresh mind. Of course it’s probably annoying for the fans to wait for a longer period of time but I was doing a discography the other month for something else and the thing is that I always walk around feelings that I don’t do enough, that I could be doing more, I could have more albums coming out. Even though I work so much I always have the feeling that I’m wasting time spending it on living when I could spend it on making stuff. (Laughs) But as soon as you start making a discography it kind of makes you feel a little bit more relaxed because we actually have quite a high amount of output compared to a lot of other bands if you consider the type and kind of band that we are. I vividly recall spending four years waiting for the next Queensryche album when I was into Queensryche and that was kind of normal procedure. And I can imagine being a die-hard Guns N’Roses fan with waiting for a new album for 13 years. (Laughs) So, I mean from that perspective I think we’re doing fine. (Laughs)

This comparison might scare a few Pain of Salvation fans…

Daniel: (Laughs) Yeah, I think from this point on we’re gonna spend 13 years on every album. I think then we’re gonna be happy and we’re gonna make perfect albums because I’m sure that the Guns N’Roses album is perfect. (Laughs)

Well… no!

Daniel: No! Well, you said it, not me. (Laughs)

But at least they don’t release a lot of them.

Daniel: (Laughs) No. For their part it’s actually one of the benefits that they only have one every 13th year. Imagine what the world would be like if there was one Guns N’Roses album every year. Knock on wood. (Laughs) Normally I’m thinking that I’m probably gonna piss off a lot of fans by saying stuff like that but with Guns N’Roses I’m not so sure.

Who cares anyway?

Daniel: Well, actually I think Léo likes them, so… (Laughs) If actually one guy in the band likes them that should be a sign that probably at least some fans would have the same music taste. So, I was only kidding of course, I love Guns N’Roses, I think they’re marvellous.

And you still have all those posters in the rehearsal room, so I guess it’s just fine.

Daniel: Oh yeah, lots of them! (Laughs)

Okay, so let’s talk about this tour that didn’t happen. First time it was you kind of denying America, now you can say it was fate… Will it work out for the third time?

Daniel: Who knows? (Laughs) We’ll see what happens but we have a standing offer from Mike Portnoy that we can definitely join them on tour but we have no idea when that’s gonna happen and what their plans are gonna be like. It’s kind of odd actually that we’ve spent all those years not going there and then we finally decided to change our stand on that thing and then just like a letter in the mail all of a sudden you get this offer for the US tour. So everything seems to be like synchronized, the wheels are in motion, the universe is playing its cards and everything seems to be just happening for some reason. And then all of a sudden the universe was just kidding and it says, “Well, I think you were right the first time, let’s stick to that.” (Laughs) So it was kind of odd and I don’t know what’s right but guess we’ll see in the future. I think if we’re deciding to go once more and for any reason we can’t go because something happens then probably I should take that as the final sign that we should not go there. (Laughs) Ok, something is fighting really hard for us not to go there, so maybe if we go there something really bad is gonna happen, who knows? I don’t know. I don’t think I really believe in fate but still… signs are always interesting though. (Laughs)

The cancellation of the tour and the delay of the album resulted an EP, which is kind of unique from Pain of Salvation…

Daniel: Yeah. But the thing is that I always liked smaller formats. I tended to like singles when I was a kid. All the albums that I’ve listened to on vinyl at that point were LPs but then Mom and Dad, they had a stash of singles and I just liked the whole idea. It’s like just shedding a light on this one or two different songs and I kind of liked that whole vibe. I’ve always wanted to make singles and EPs but today it’s not something that is highly appreciated probably by any record label. They released Ashes back in 2000 and now the EP and I’m pretty happy that that situation made it possible. Maybe a lot of our fans believe that a proper Pain of Salvation product should be 79 minutes long and completely packed with stuff but believe it or not I always had the intention of shorting things down, I was just not as good at it as I would have needed to be. (Laughs) When we made the first albums they were not that long because I really wanted them to be long, it was just because I failed to make them shorter than that. Anyway, when we came to the situation of cancelling the tour and delaying the album it was pretty much anything goes because InsideOut wanted to have some product out just for Pain of Salvation to kind of tell the world that we’re still around and things are still happening. (Laughs) For me that was just great and I actually asked for one or two singles as well, but that I think was a bit too much. (Laughs) Still I think that the EP is almost too long because it’s like 30 minutes and a few of my favourite full length albums in my CD shelves are actually 35 minutes, so this is almost as long as a lot of my favourite full lengths and those would be like some of the old Beatles albums. I mean I guess you’d have to say the newer Beatles albums even though they’re quite old. (Laughs) I think people will say that it’s too short for an EP and I think they have no idea what they’re talking about or they just too prog. (Laughs)

I already heard people complaining about the EP having only one unique song…

Daniel: Well, they could possibly not know that yet because we don’t know that yet either. We have a bunch of songs that are gonna go into the Road Salt concept. Nothing is really 100% sure yet when it comes to what songs are gonna make the Road Salt album and it’s highly likely that even if those songs are gonna end up in the concept they might be prolonged or shortened or have a different mix or mastering, so I wouldn’t know whether it’s unique or not.

How can you say that the fans don’t know?! They even know that it’s gonna be The Perfect Element Part 2½.

Daniel: Wow! (Laughs) I’ve read so many interesting news about the band that I didn’t even know and I was like, “Oh, really?” (Laughs) I wonder if I should make them happy and follow their lead or if I should just break their whole illusion. I can understand that you would see a lot of references to The Perfect Element because I can see lots of references myself. I guess what happened is that for Road Salt I’ve broken down basically every sort of creative borders because I think it’s easy to look at the previous albums and divide them into fictional and autobiographical for instance. And you can sort them into more chronological concepts and more idea based concepts. But the thing is that there are cross-references between basically all of the albums that we made and all of them play some sort of a role in the huge concept that is the world of Pain of Salvation where they all kind of interact with each other. There are lyrical and also musical cross-references between the albums. There’s no such thing as fictional and there’s no such thing as autobiographical because when it comes to fictional every act of creation that you do contains parts of yourself and that’s something that I really state on the Be album. Any sort of creation is the creators need to understand him or herself, and you have to bring yourself into what you’re doing if you want to succeed. So even the fictional carries a lot of autobiographical markers in many ways. And the same thing goes for the autobiographical because as soon as you make a selection of what you want to use for something autobiographical it becomes fictional in the sense that it’s not a true image of anything because you just use certain colours of the palette. And that means you have painted objectivity with subjectivity or subjectivity with objectivity or however you want to phrase it. I guess any kind of creator is usually fighting to achieve the one or the other and I have just given up. For once I just completely torn down all the borders between fictional and autobiographical for this album using aspects of both worlds to try to tell the story that Road Salt needs to tell in a way. And that means in a way it is a continuation of The Perfect Element just as much as it is a continuation of Remedy Lane and probably all of the different albums that we’ve made maybe with the exception of Be because that’s such a large scale concept. But probably in ten years time I’m gonna see those references too. (Laughs)

Yeah, even to Abbey Road.

Daniel: Of course. (Laughs)

My favourite song on the EP is Linoleum, which is obviously the closest one to me as I was in the rehearsal room when it was born and recorded. It seemed to me like it was a band jam from scratch but the booklet says music and lyrics by Daniel Gildenlöw.

Daniel: What I usually do, and especially for the Road Salt album what I’ve done is that I have these ideas that I bring to the rehearsal room and I start playing them and I wait for people to tag along in the way that they feel most comfortable. And then play that feel around until you get something that feels right. This is the most natural way for every musician to do it and then you can kind of bring it closer to whatever vision you have in the back of your head. But usually we play that part and then I change and start playing the next kind of thing that I want to try to connect. Sometimes that just doesn’t work but usually if it works in my head it works in a rehearsing room situation too. And then let everyone get into the groove of that part and passage and once you’ve gone through the different passages you can start shaping kind of a structure rather than having everyone learn the structure first and then learning the vibes on every different part, which is much more what we did on the previous albums. We had a different situation then though. I think Léo as a drummer is a much more intuitive drummer in many ways than Johan is when it comes to the personality to start with. I mean Johan was intuitive because we had played together for such a long time that if I played something he knew exactly what kind of drums I would want to have on that. With Léo it feels like that he’s much more intuitive to start with and instead of kicking his butt to play more I guess you have to kick his butt to play less. (Laughs) And that’s a nice change I have to say. And the last thing you do when you have all the parts is to record it a few different times so you can actually pick out kind of the different parts where you feel that it was the closest to what it was supposed to be like. And then of course still there’s a lot of work after that. The funny thing is that for all of those ideas I had no vocals at all so the vocal melodies actually came afterwards when I had the music already, which isn’t really usual. It has happened a few times before but for this album it’s been a lot of that where I put together the music first. Usually I have a rough idea of what I want but I spend a lot of time on it, especially in the car, playing the instrumental version over and over again and trying different versions and just trying to find that magical moment where you connect and something happens, which is not so common for me because usually I don’t start with riffs. But I’ve tried to do that much more on this album just to get more of a jammy loose feeling to everything. I have to say that probably Linoleum and If You Wait are the most true jammy songs of the whole album. And when it came to Linoleum I’ve never played it before, it was basically just kind of ideas in my head at the moment and that’s why it’s in A minor. (Laughs) That’s the problem when you have ideas in your head. You tend to use the simplest way. I guess for the new album all the ideas that I had in my head and had not come up with with any sort of instruments close at hand have ended up usually in the key of A minor because that’s what you first start trying out. (Laughs) With the exception of Whole New Alone which I actually transcribed because I felt that it didn’t work out in A minor, it just felt a lot better having it in B flat because it just feels right that way. It’s just a B flat song. (Laughs)

That’s my other favourite Mother and Child (working title), right?

Daniel: Yeah, exactly! I still have two lyrics on that one and I still don’t know which one to continue on. It’s really annoying. It’s one of those songs that have been haunting me. On the other hand it’s been after we kind of failed to finish the album before the tour that didn’t happen and then I went into daddy-mode. I had a few months where I was really trying as much as I could to take a break from the album and just focus on being daddy, do the dishes and make the flowerbed outside and spend time in the garden, which was really nice. (Laughs) I’ve really reinvented garden work and I realized how good it is for your soul. (Laughs) It’s a pity that I usually don’t have time for it. But anyway, after that I really didn’t get back to working on the music again until months later in the year and then we started with the EP and then of course you have the artwork, the mastering and there’s a lot of work to be done. And then all of a sudden you have the EP release party coming up and you have the Australian tour and you have the Russian gigs and you have a week long European tour and then it’s Christmas! The second half of this year has just passed really quickly, so I haven’t really had a lot of time except for to record some string sections for a few of the songs. I haven’t really had time to get back 100% and really dive into the album. I think in the back of my head I’m still working on lyrics and stuff and Whole New Alone has been one of the songs that kind of haunted me for quite some time along with 3-4 other songs. As far as I can tell I just can’t find the really 100% correct opening. I’ve made big chunks of lyrics with different approaches and still I feel unsatisfied and when I feel that feeling of unsatisfaction it’s usually a sign that there’s something better in there that’s just teasing me until one day it just clicks. Hopefully. (Laughs)

I think you should listen to more Manowar for lyrical inspiration.

Daniel: Manowar? Yes, that’s the thing! I think we have too few swords and stuff like that lyric-wise. Any day now, we’re gonna sort everything out! That’s the one thing that is lacking Pain of Salvation’s music. And I think at that point Léo has to do some of the singing. He’s got a very nice Manowar fake vocal thing happening. (Laughs)

What went through your mind when you learned about SPV filing for bankruptcy?

Daniel: Ah… at that point I think all different scenarios were going through our heads. These were the last three weeks when I was supposed to be working on the album and that of course I spent desperately trying to solve any sort of situations. First to salvage the tour and the album but then I realized that we have to focus on one thing so we dropped the album and focused on making the tour happen but then that just fell through as well and then you ended up having spent three weeks just feeling bad about stuff and not having anything to show for it. At that point I think we tried all different scenarios with the label and also just within the band to see what we can do but in the end we didn’t have any sort of options because the distribution was going down and basically at that point they weren’t bankrupt. They were filing for bankruptcy which meant that we couldn’t get any money and InsideOut couldn’t get any money either but it also wasn’t like that SPV was gone, so we couldn’t really move on either. We had to wait for the bankruptcy or to see if the possible bankruptcy would go through or not, so everyone was just in limbo, just waiting for anything to happen. I hate that. I really want something to happen rather than that. I’d rather have a really bad message than just nothing and waiting… I can’t stand that. After those three weeks of fighting to try to solve things and end up with what I, at that point, felt was a failure was really hard for me because I’m pretty used to making things work one day or another. As long as it comes to myself and it’s up to me if I have a vision or a need or something I really really want, I’ll do anything, I’ll find a solution and I’ll just make it work somehow. If I have to twist myself inside out and backwards then I’d do that but when you’re dealing with corporate levels it’s really hard and you get to a point where it doesn’t matter how much you talk, how much you think and how much you try to find a solution. In the end you end up with having not what you wanted to have and that was a really weird feeling for me. (Laughs) Probably I haven’t experienced it as many times as I probably thought I had.

In the end Century Media bought up InsideOut, which can be a good move as they are distributed by EMI. On the other hand they are not experienced in promoting InsideOut type of bands, I would say…

Daniel: Yeah, that’s true but I’m pretty happy with the solution. To me it still feels rather fresh. I mean it’s been a few months but everything happens pretty slow when it comes to the music industry so I think we’re still sorting things out. With all shifts of these kinds you have your old working procedures that need to be replaced with new sort of working procedures and that is still in the process of happening. I think it’s very promising for the structural point of view and I’ve noticed already that like for example in Sweden we have a different situation now. No one really knew SPV in Sweden in the past but everyone knows what EMI is and that makes a whole lot of difference because there’s a very well organized structure already on location here in Sweden. Probably you’ll get to ask about Melodifestivalen, which is kind of the Eurovision Song Contest here in Sweden. So when you come to that you can notice a big difference. I mean both InsideOut and Century Media is a great label but when I mentioned to Thomas (Thomas Waber) that we had qualified for Melodifestivalen he had no idea what that means for a Swedish band. Because that is like the biggest thing that could possibly happen to you as a musician. It’s bigger than a Grammy Award by far. (Laughs) In Germany they were like, “Okay, but… that’s good… I guess?” When we told the same thing to the Swedish Century Media office who work door to door with EMI they were like, “Really?! You have to be kidding. I’m just waiting for candid camera to come out and say that everything is just a joke.” I think that at that point we were in a much more comfortable situation having Century Media and EMI that have a much more stronger position here in Sweden than InsideOut and SPV.

Speaking of Melodifestivalen I’m a bit surprised about the entry song as Road Salt is more like a singer/songwriter one not a typical band song.

Daniel: Yeah. I sent in three songs and I really like the song Road Salt. You’ve heard it so you know how it is, but yeah, it’s weird that they picked that one. They called me to tell me that the song Road Salt has qualified for Melodifestival and the reaction they probably meet 99,9% of the time is like a big “Yaaaaaay” and I was just like, “THAT song? That’s weird. I’ve sent in three songs and that was the one I least expected to be chosen.” (Laughs) The guy on the phone sounded very confused saying, “Well, I don’t know what other two songs you’ve sent in…” so I told him, “No, it’s okay, I understand and I’m happy but surprised.” But again I think Road Salt is a great song and it’s a song that touches me deeply and it’ll be a pleasure to perform it. I’m just surprised in a way. Still I’m really happy and it’s gonna be very interesting. I mean here in Sweden half the population is watching the contest and that’s just weird. That’s usually not happening with any sort of TV shows these days. What has been very annoying for me is that, especially here in Sweden, the last 5-10 years has been very product oriented and empty. The music that qualifies and the music that they pick out and the music we have to choose from feels empty, like no one really bled for it. So from that point of view I’m really happy that we have at least one song that I know of this year’s edition that will be true. There will be a song that will be honest and real and then if people pick the other stuff then okay, that’s their choice. Well, of course I’m gonna be annoyed at that point but right now I feel that I wouldn’t have a problem with that. So I think it’s gonna be highly interesting because it’s a huge machinery. I’ve been at the first meeting and we’ve had some contact and it’s very obvious that it’s a huge and extremely expensive machinery that is starting to build up at this point already and we’re gonna be kind of in the midst of that machinery which will be very interesting I think. We’ve already talked about the kind of dry spell 2009 and it was a sort of surprising end to that dry spell because all of a sudden we had the EP, the Russian gigs, the Australian tour and the one-week Europe tour, we’re getting home the day before Christmas, and we’ve also qualified for this. So all of a sudden 2009, which I had started to refer to myself as the year that nothing happened, turned out to be a year when a lot of things happened but very very late. (Laughs) That’s sort of interesting for me and I really like that because I tend to appreciate life a lot when lots of things are happening as long as it’s not things that are forced upon you and things you don’t wanna do of course, then it’s not fun at all. I don’t have a problem with having lots of things to focus on as long as I like the things.

Multitasking.

Daniel: Exactly. I kind of feel alive when I do that. (Laughs) So I really look forward to see what’s gonna happen. We’re still in the dark a little bit as to knowing when and where we’re gonna have our part of the contest so there’s a lot of huge question marks I guess. I think that’s also one of the things that we have gotten very used to working in this industry. I noticed that people that are not used to the music industry and that are kind of dragged into it for different reasons – for instance when we have help with people doing merchandise and of course girlfriends of the members of the band that come in – I think are a little bit shocked when they notice how things are when you’re in the music industry. When you go to a gig you really don’t know exactly when you’re gonna get food for instance. There’s just so much things that you really don’t know and you can’t really schedule or plan anything. If there’s a schedule the only thing you can be certain of is that’s what’s not gonna happen. Anything else but that’s not gonna happen. (Laughs)

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All rights reserved (c) 2009 by Zoltán Koncsok
All photos were taken at DK Gorbunova, Moscow on the 27th of November 2009

Some might question the timing of this DVD two years after a gig that even had a different line-up of the band.

Daniel: Yeah, that’s a little bit weird. The thing is that during the 2007 tour we already knew that Johan was gonna leave the band. We decided beforehand, because Johan wanted it that way, that we wouldn’t tell anyone that this would be his last tour. We knew that this was gonna be the last trip we make together with Johan and we had Simon as a stand-in bass player so it was kind of weird to start with. Also my personal life was really weird at that point because I was still living with having to tell my own brother to leave the band. I had that with me and then of course knowing that it would be Johan’s last tour… I mean we’ve been playing together since I was 16 and he was 14. And then having a stand-in member of the band that you don’t really know of who is he and how does he work out with the rest of the members. On top of that of course it was my first tour away from my kid. I was a father for the first time on tour. And also just before we left I found out that my mother had serious cancer. I offered actually to stay and cancel the whole tour but she said that I had to go on tour. So all of those feelings were with me on that tour and the weird thing is that somehow I get the feeling that all those different emotions and those different energies came through in some sort of way on stage. After that tour it was really difficult for me to get back to that material because as soon as I was getting back to the material I got back to all those different feelings and emotions that I was kind of submerged in in that tour situation. And of course when it comes to the line-up it didn’t really make a difference because it changed directly after the last show. (Laughs) So there was no way we could have made a DVD with the same line-up as of the DVD actually. For me it took some time as it was like when you have that kind of a mental block with every time you start working on it, it feels heavy and you feel like you want to do something else. And it wasn’t really until Per (Per Hillblom) came to me and said, “I’m sorting out the material from the tour back in 2005 and I have an idea for a documentary that I think would be nice to do.” When he showed me the first copy I really liked what I saw. I mean it was painful of course. It’s not a documentary that pictures the biggest band on earth but all the spinal tap moments are there and that’s what I liked and that’s what I told him when he came on the tour that he had free hands, he could film whatever he wanted and he could make whatever documentary he wanted without us controlling anything because I think that’s usually better than when the band kind of shows how they want to be perceived. And when I saw that it all of a sudden made sense, you had sort of the last chapter in the 2005 tour with Kristoffer and then you had the last chapter with Johan in the second season as I chose to call it. And then I got the energy to get back and actually start working on the product containing the documentary and the live show from 2007. When it was released it ended up number two on the Swedish DVD charts and the funny thing is that number one was one of Sweden’s biggest artists that just released a DVD from his show back in 2003. (Laughs) So I thought that, “Okay, actually we’re kind of up to date.”

You lazy Swedish asses!

Daniel: (Laughs) Yeah! I hope that anyone, especially anyone getting the limited edition, will understand why it took some time to finish the product. I always want anything we do to be more than just a CD or a DVD. I think it’s another world for people to kind of dive into and live with for quite some time, hopefully. If you should have one the limited edition is the one I would recommend to everyone because to me it’s the real product. I don’t want to add stuff that wasn’t intentionally there from the start. I’d start with the director’s cut and then you can do the cinema version as sort of a stripped down version. (Laughs)

After checking the concert DVD I was kind of disappointed. I mean there’s nothing wrong with the performance but the lights at that gig were pretty bad.

Daniel: Well, I’m not in control of that. (Laughs) Well, first of all it’s always difficult to record a DVD. The thing is: if you want to have a lighting that looks good for the DVD it looks like crap for the audience and the other way around. If you make it look good for the audience it looks crap on DVD because then it’s way too dark. Basically you have to have lots of white light to make a DVD look good. What we were trying to do was to find some sort of compromise when the audience is not suffering too much and the DVD is still watchable. You’re referring to that it’s kind of dark or do you think the timing and the lighting design?

There’s too much white light and the whole band is in darkness during most of the show…

Daniel: Oh yeah, that’s a typical DVD problem. It’s always a little bit tricky. Also the recording of this whole show was really a last minute project. Originally I wanted to record the 2005 tour because I thought that it was a better tour for a DVD because it was more of a big production in many ways. For the Scarsick album I wanted to get back to much more back to basic sort of gigs, basically just playing music from start to finish and not having projectors and no fancy light shows, just a rock’n’roll band on stage playing music. And of course the two things that happened, first of all it’s not as cinematic as some sort of stage productions where lots of impressive things are happening and secondly I think that is the gig that fits better in this sort of club environment. Initially we were gonna record it in La Loco in Paris which I think would have been a good venue from that point of view, it’s more rock’n’roll, instead just a few days before the recording it turned out that we’re gonna record it at The Paradiso, which is a great venue but I had the feeling as we were getting into the venue that its setting is very cinematic and it almost demands a nice big production. So it was a little bit like putting Rolling Stones in a church. (Laughs) But in the end I was satisfied with what we got out of it anyway. I have to say that it was not one of the better shows of the tour and I was surprised when I heard the result that it was actually that good… but I’m really really picky. Basically I mean I’ve been satisfied with three gigs in my whole career and I still think that we kick basically everyone else’s ass but that’s just because they are even worse than we are. We’re not the best, it’s just that everyone else is worse. (Laughs)

Did you run into a lot of problems during the recording of that gig?

Daniel: I don’t think so. Not that I can recall. Basically it was a very standard setup. We didn’t have any problematic things to deal with. It feels kind of odd because everyone else is fixing their vocals and everything and I feel kind of naked with having the lead vocals unfixed but it would just feel very very strange for me to re-record stuff in the studio for an album that is supposed to sound live.

So how much afterwork, how much patching had to be done in the studio?

Daniel: The other guys had to redo the vocals mainly because especially on that sort of live situation you have so much leakage into the microphones. I refused to redo my lead vocals so that was basically as much leakage as we can take so that meant that we had to re-record the other microphones. If you want to do a perfect DVD recording and not think of the audience I would have chosen other microphones and other equipment, more fitting for recordings and for live performances. But then the live performance would really have sucked. It’s always that balance with pleasing the live audience and get the best for the actual product.

Maybe next time you should just record behind closed doors. (Laughs)

Daniel: Yeah, but that would just feel weird too. I don’t know, it’s just not the same thing. (Laughs) What we did for Be was kind of a nice thing to do. We recorded two shows entirely. One with audience and one without audience so for the tricky part you could always go for the non-audience version. And the same thing for the non-audience version that we could have more lights so at least then you have something to choose between. I think in the end basically it was the live performance that we used like 90% anyway. But for that live version we didn’t do any patching after all.

Speaking of the microphones Johan’s performance in the bonus clip is priceless.

Daniel: (Laughs) It’s so fantastic. And of course I asked him if it was okay for him to use it and he doesn’t have a problem at all with that. He was laughing his ass off when he heard it. He said, “Yeah, of course. It’s divine.” (Laughs) Anyone else, if they can’t hear what they do, they’d go silent but he just keeps going. (Laughs) I’m a very experienced singer and even if I don’t hear what I’m doing I can feel in my throat what note I’m singing… but apparently he can’t. (Laughs) I think it’s wonderful. I think that’s nice with that note as it really shows a whole full palette of different vocal styles. (Laughs) It’s just true art. I’ve never heard anything as funny as that, so of course we had to put it on there.

Do you still see yourself listening to this concert recording or you’re rather happy to put that behind?

Daniel: The thing is that I’ve never been a live recording person. The few live recordings I have I have mostly for professional reasons. For example I have the Led Zeppelin live DVD because Mike were really nagging me to do the vocals and I tried to tell him that I don’t know Led Zeppelin. (Laughs) Apart from that… I was a KISS fan for a lot of years and you were supposed to just love Alive! I and II. I hated them. I could not find any reason whatsoever to listen to them. I was like, “Okay, so it’s like the studio album with worse tempos and lots of audience that has nothing to do with music.” (Laughs) I never really got it. Not until so many people have contacted me, fans, who say that, “You’re never gonna get to my country and play, when are you gonna release a live CD or DVD so I have an idea of what it would be like to see you live.” From that point of view I can understand the whole purpose. I think I’ve listened to the live version of Be maybe once after it was released and I think it’s gonna be the same thing with this record. I’m just not a live person. I can listen to my own music… there were a few years when basically that was all I was listening to but now… nah, I don’t think so. Maybe if I watch the DVD but I think I’m more likely to watch the documentary more times in the future than the live show.

The Scarsick tour brought a nice surprise to the fans in form of the song Hallelujah and you are one that wasn’t influenced by the original but Jeff Buckley’s rendition…

Daniel: Yeah. Well, I think the original is nice too but the Buckley version was the first one I’ve heard. I think that’s a great song. Me and Fredrik were playing that song at a Baptism… one of my old school friends was baptising his kid and asked me if we could sing Hallelujah because he saw us doing a charity gig at the centre square of Eskilstuna and we played Hallelujah there in a softer version. The version we do on the DVD is kind of hardrockified. (Laughs) But when we made the Hallelujah version at the Baptism where we just had an acoustic guitar and a piano and I did the vocal style much softer, more like the Buckley version. To me that is the way that song comes across as the strongest.

It seems that’s one of the most covered song ever…

Daniel: Yeah and it really disturbs me that it’s, especially in the last years, been covered a lot. When I heard the Buckley version I’ve never heard any other cover of it apart from the Rufus Wainwright cover in Shrek. Maybe it was Shrek that kind of brought it to the public. The last 2-3 years it’s covered so many times that I really have to do all I can to block out the different covers because they are always bad. They always miss out on the fact that it’s supposed to be painful. I’ve seen Christian people covering it and they really think that the song is about the Hallelujah part. (Laughs) You have to listen to the lyrics goddamit, it’s about sex and broken heartedness.

Guess they never really paid attention to the lyrics.

Daniel: How can you sing something and not understand it? “Wait a minute! Hmm… That’s interesting. What does he mean with this: ‘Remember when I moved in you’. What does that mean? It has top do something with God, yeah.” (Laughs)

Let God come inside you.

Daniel: Yeah, that’s it. (Laughs)

It’s not the only cover song that you used to play on charity gigs. You also do Working Class Hero, Yellow Raven… How do you pick these songs?

Daniel: You have to have these songs that you’ve listened to that do something with you, that touch you in a way, that make you want to experience them in a different way than listening to them. Especially as a singer I think that singing the lines and the lyrics does something to you and does something to the song too of course. We’ve been playing around many different songs and with some of the songs you feel like that you want to share it with people, especially if you have your own interpretation of that song. It’s kind of funny, because when I started playing music I never covered other people’s songs. I started writing my own music from the scratch, I never started to learn other people’s songs only if there was a song that I really couldn’t leave behind. I know that when I was 15 we actually played Fade To Black by Metallica because I really liked that song. And when I was 16 we played The Mission by Queensryche but that was basically it. As I get older I really appreciate playing other people’s music. It’s just the matter of going into the music, kind of having the possibility of singing it and doing it with full instrumentation which is a different thing than singing along with the car stereo when you’re going from one city to another. (Laughs)

What could be the next song you would cover?

Daniel: I always wanted to do Winter by Tori Amos. It’s on my Top 3 list of nice songs. I would like to sing Gethsemane but the problem is that you would have to have an orchestra to make a nice song because the structure is so simple that it kind of fall to the ground a little bit without the orchestra. And then you have to really stay clear of doing the nice polished version. You really have to go dirty with that song to make it really work. And with Winter… it’s just perfect and that’s the problem. Any way you would like to try to make it it would be worse. It’s a little bit like something with The Beatles. It’s one of those songs that really found its perfect expression. Sometimes I think that every song has a soul and it is laid upon whoever composes and arranges everything to try to make that song get to its final destination and normally you don’t succeed because it’s impossible. But then every once in a while someone manages to make a song that becomes exactly the song it was meant to be. And that’s when covers can actually be helpful because I think for instance that the Jeff Buckley version of Hallelujah was the potential of the song. Cohen made a great version but the song aimed for something else and it hit home with the Jeff Buckley version, except for the little guitar solo part, which is good but it wasn’t part of the soul of the song I think. As for Winter I fail to see how that song could be any better in any other shape or form so that’s maybe one reason to stay clear of that song. (Laughs)

The Scarsick tour was basically the only one that you did together with Simon. I don’t think you expected his participation in the band to be that short lived…

Daniel: No, that was badly spent time. (Laughs) I mean for the tour he was not actually part of the band. He became member officially after the tour. It’s just obvious that we made a hasty decision. We should have waited. We’ve had those problems ever since the first album was recorded. It’s like having the band being an engine and you have five cylinders and they just have to pump in rhythm to make it work out. And we’ve always had problems that for one reason or another it was always kind of gone on four cylinders and the one was out of synch. It’s been through different times and different people who have been that kind of out of synch cylinder. (Laughs) Now when we are just four I really have the feeling that all cylinders are in synch and the engine is running very smoothly. And now we’re gonna be much more careful with bringing a fifth cylinder into the band and make sure that he really works out. I don’t have the energy of having to go down to base camp again and find another guy for the mountaineering team.

I think having someone that isn’t working out is more of a setback than not having anyone.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly. It was just not possible to make it work. I wish that we’d come to that point much sooner actually but it’s what it is now and hopefully we came out as a stronger band.

What was the best thing about having Simon in the band?

Daniel: His playing. He could pick up things very fast. He didn’t take a long time to learn stuff and he executed it very well. I think that was his best feature.

Last year you had Per Schelander from Royal Hunt helping out for two shows and now he’s been announced to do the live shows for 2009. Would you consider him as a permanent replacement if he works out in the long run?

Daniel: He’s definitely one of the guys that we see as an interesting candidate, absolutely. We haven’t really had the possibility of playing a lot together. We’ve been focusing on the new album and when we’ve done gigs they were kind of straight gigs and we haven’t really had a lot of time to see how well it functions from a musical point of view. Also he’s a guy with a family. I mean you need to know that the new guy is someone who can really give all the time and energy that is needed to the band. That’s what we had with Johan for a long period of time and we knew that so it was nothing that we could do anything about. Maybe he didn’t want to go out on tour that much and he’s always been a very family oriented person, which I respect completely. I think you can be a family person and still be able to go on tour but that’s very hard to combine and this combination is kind of crucial for a band. And we knew this and we talked about it a lot with Johan and it was how it was for a few years. But we don’t feel like going back to that situation where you can only go out for three weeks in a year because it’s very hard to come to the next step as a band. You need to go out and present yourself to the fans.

Well, Léo is not a new member by any means but still he’s the newest addition compared to the Scarcisk line-up. How do you see him got used to Sweden?

Daniel: He fits very well to the band. I was warning him a lot (laughs) about moving to Sweden because I think coming from south of France and moving to Sweden, especially in the winter when it’s dark and cold all the time, it’s kind of depressing. (Laughs) I think he’s had a few times of feeling a bit down but I have to say that he’s fit in remarkably well and he’s picking up the Swedish very well too. He’s skilled in languages. I don’t want to stay on the Simon issue at all but we were kind of locked by having Simon in the band that we couldn’t do that much and that felt a bit frustrating when you have imported someone from another country to come here and then basically you can’t go out and play gigs as much as you would want to as Léo undoubtedly wanted to as well. I think he’s gotten through the worst part now with all the turbulence that we had in the band when he came in. All of that time I could just imagine that it must have been a kind of turbulence for him too in other ways maybe than for the rest of us. But now things are starting to lighten up and that’s very good.

You’ve been offered to take part in the upcoming ProgNation line-up so you’re about to go back to America after a long absence. Do you think you still have some fans there?

Daniel: I know we do. The question that I’m asking myself is that do we have lots of enemies there? (Laughs) One guy throwing a tomato is gonna be much more obvious to us than ten guys cheering. I know that some of our strongest support from a political point of view was actually coming from the US. We’ve had some scary political support from European countries too like people who go out, “Yeah, that’s right. I hate America too.” What? That’s not what we’re saying, calm down. (Laughs) For the American fans the whole embargo that we’ve gone through, then the song America of course has been even more dividing for the fanbase in America than for other countries. It’s really a “love or hate” kind of vibe when it comes to America so I don’t know… I know we have fans and I just hope that they’re gonna be there first. (Laughs)

But you’re definitely not gonna play America.

Daniel: Well, I don’t have a problem with playing that. Mike doesn’t have a problem with that either. (Laughs)

Yeah, but you just said that you don’t like tomato.

Daniel: Nah, that’s true! But maybe I can just sing it very blurry and only sing America clearly. Then people would like it. (Laughs) As long as they don’t know the lyrics of course.

It’s like with Rammstein’s America that was a hit even in America since most people didn’t understand the lyrics.

Daniel: Ah okay… so we should sing it in Swedish then. (Laughs) I think it was kind of brave for InsideOut America, may them rest in peace, one day they were giving me a call saying, “It’s my duty as the head of the record company to tell you that it might and will effect the sales in a negative way but if you really want to have it on the album then we’re gonna back you up all the way. So it’s all up to you but it’s my duty to tell you about the consequences otherwise I wouldn’t have done my job.” We said, “Oh, of course it’s gonna be there.” (Laughs) And in the end that was the song they chose to promote the album with. They put it up for download and they said that they never had so many downloads on their homepage ever. There’s one guy who told us that he was gonna burn all of our CDs. I wrote him back and said, “Well, just because you don’t like the lyrics that doesn’t mean that the music has changed for the other albums.” (Laughs) I see it as a support song for America. For me it was just a way of saying that actually the American people are the ones suffering most from the kind of government they had. They’ve really made the America hate all over the world grow and it’s not good for anyone. Bush is not good for anyone. (Laughs)

Maybe for the wife though…

Daniel: I just have a hard time seeing that even, but okay. (Laughs)

Nah, I don’t want to visualize that!

Daniel: No! Oh my god, my eyes! I can’t see. It burns! (Laughs)

ProgNation will keep you occupied for a long time but how about good old Europe then?

Daniel: We have some ideas for doing some headline tours. I think basically at this point we could tour pretty much as much as we want to but we also have the fact that I’m gonna be a father for the second time in July which is nice but also makes going away for the PN09 tour kind of hard. We’ve talked lots and lots and lots about that to make that worked out. It’s gonna really take its toll I think so we’ll have to see how much we can tour. But both me and Johanna are kind of fed up with the situation and we want this to happen. I think no one else in any sane sort of mind would go on tour with one 3 old and one 2 week old baby at home and go away for six weeks to another continent. To me that’s kind of the price you have to pay. It comes to the territory you like it or not. That is what the music work is about in many ways or I’d have to say that this is kind of as bad as it gets when it comes to that. We wanted to get back to the States and I think it’s a very nice package with Zappa and Beardfish as well, apart from Dream Theater. If it hasn’t been for that offer I would never have gone away at that point. It’s gonna feel terrible in many ways but that’s life. Then I’ll get back home.

I’ve been able to hear 5-6 songs off the new album while I was over there in the studio and I can safely say that it’ll surprise quite a lot of Pain of Salvation fans.

Daniel: Oh yeah. It’s really earthy and organic in many ways I think. It’s back to a raw and direct sound… and I think the songs are very direct too. Still diverse as always but they’re held together by a power that I think we haven’t had since the first album. I tested the material on some old fans that I know and they were all being very very positive about the music because it’s going forward but also going back to lots of different things from the previous, early albums too. I don’t know… I hope that everyone will take it that way.

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All rights reserved (c) 2009 by Zoltán Koncsok
All photos were taken at Eskilstuna 350 år on the 5th of June 2009.

The Dark Third took the progressive rock community by storm generating lots of great reviews. Did you expect anything like that?

Jon: For us things went slow from the actual finish of the recording. We then ended up doing Cautionary Tales For The Brave which was taken some of The Dark Third songs and then adding a couple of new ones. It was quite a while between finishing the recording and the actual release. With regards to reviews I don’t know…
Chloë: I was pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction we had and when I look back on it it’s not what we took it for granted, like Jon said it did burn up very very slowly so by the time reviews came in we were so used to the album so it wasn’t like a dealbreaker or anything like that. Perhaps we realize a bit more how much people kind of hold it in high regard when we come out and do these shows and people talk about that it’s one of their favourite records. That’s really flattering.

You’ve been through some member changes since the release of that album. How did that affect the band?

Chloë: I would say that in a positive way, really. I mean it’s a shame about Andrew, Jon’s brother, but he got married and left the band. His successor Paul is a great drummer and a really good guy and the change was making things better for us and now we’re a really good unit.
Jon: I mean either way it wasn’t the songwriting or the lyrics so it wasn’t anything sort of a drastic change. It didn’t change the sound and the dynamic of how the band works.

Do you feel comfortable being a four piece?

Chloë: It’s nice actually, especially on a stage like tonight. (Laughs) There’s hardly room to move around.
Jon: Yeah, it’s pretty damn tight!

How did you hook up with Paul?

Chloë: Well, we held some auditions and obviously he had to be as good as Andrew, so… The auditions went on quite well and Paul was the most impressive. He was very good to play with and he’s a very good guy and he just fits right in.
Jon: It’s painful really to have these auditions because you have a lot of guys and you are like “Here we go again, playing the same three songs”. And you meet some really nice people… they are really nice guys but they kind suck.
Chloë: That’s when I realized we really suffered from guilt because I felt that some of them might come in like with crutches or like one armed. We felt we had to go through the whole process with them playing the whole three songs.

It’s obvious that he had to be a good player but what kind of guy were you looking for as far as his personality?

Chloë: I think you just know it really, it can’t be described what that feels like when someone gets it, who you can picture spending 7-8 hours in a bus.
Jon: Paul is really into it, he probably practises more than the rest of us. He even keeps a practise diary! (Laughs) He’s a real drummer enthusiast, he’s really focused on the drums and he’s dedicated.

Your new album has a lot of electronic elements which we can say is a significant change in your music. Was it intentional or it just came through the writing?

Jon: The manifesto at the beginning of Pure Reason Revolution was that we could use any instrumental sections where we use guitar, piano, synthesizers, programmed drums, live drums, strings, acoustic guitar, I mean anything really. Some of our earliest demos were just sort of keyboardry or whatever. I don’t know, this wasn’t a conscious decision to do this album differently, it just felt like a natural progression and we pick up new influences as we grow up.
Chloë: Yeah, it was just an organic process really. And it’s been a while since The Dark Third was released so I think it’s normal because we have a label and a manifesto that allows us to do whatever we feel like. There are no boundaries and it’s really just the product of that.
Jon: I think perhaps in the back of my mind we were aware that to some people it might be a bit of an extreme change but to us it didn’t really feel that extreme. The thing is that the vocal harmonies are always gonna be prevalent but anything else goes. The new album just shows this kind of natural progression really.
Chloë: It has our trademark, the vocal harmonies.

Was it a concern that you might end up losing fans because of the change?

Jon: Not really. I mean it’s basically just that we have to create what we’re excited about creating and we can’t do it to please a fanbase. We have to create what we want to create…
Chloë: and what feels right, yeah! I mean we were aware that some people weren’t gonna like it but we also picked up a lot of new fans that wouldn’t listen to The Dark Third. It’s pros and cons really.

So how is the initial feedback?

Chloë: From fans it’s pretty much what we thought. A lot of real positives and a few falling outs saying this isn’t their cup of tea and we also picked up some new fans with this album. And from the press what we’ve seen was really good so far and once again we’re just happily surprised by the positive press. I mean it’s our second album and we couldn’t have wished for any better.

Personally I really like AVO. I think having more electronica really added to your music. And at gigs you play from both albums anyway…

Jon: Exactly. We were aware of this coming to and especially coming back to mainland Europe and the set is a real mix of the old and the new stuff. We still love playing the old stuff.
Chloë: Also the songs of the two albums work well together, the set isn’t divided into old and new because it all has the PRR trademarks both old and new stuff.

The album has a Latin title, translated as Love Conquers All. What was the idea behind that?

Jon: My old school blazer is Veritas Vincit Omnia which was Truth Conquers All and I always liked that moniker so the title was kind of re-worked from there. Lots of the songs were going on with a love theme. It sounds really cheesy but love songs are going from being excited of love ’til the actual fallings-out. Yeah, it seemed appropriate to put Amor on the beginning. It’s sort of part of the concept. With the heavier and dirty sides of the record we wanted to reflect on the fallings-out.

And the cover artwork, which was done by Chloë, fits very well as well. Did you do it with the album’s title in mind?

Chloë: I started the artwork quite early on but it was a gradual process as Jon would send me bits of songs so I could hear what was going on in the songs and he also sent me some lyrics so I would work with that in mind.
Jon: It was a really organic process because most of it happened in the studio in London where I was working on the songs and Chloë would come in to do some vocals and hear some new material and we talk about the ideas and then Chloë would go away and come back a few days later with new images and to do more vocals. It was a nice way of working this way.
Chloë: Yeah, and we really wanted to make this album ourselves. We knew we could do that because that’s how we made the first record. We could do the artwork ourselves and Jon produced the record himself and it’s great to be able to do that. I think it’s necessary as you grow older that you do things that are actually meaningful and really represent what you’re playing.

Are you doing these image arts outside of the band as well?

Chloë: Yeah. I work mostly with images using programs like Photoshop to make these kind of collage images and stuff. I might move on, who knows, but at the moment that’s kind of where I am and I enjoy doing it. I’m thinking about putting on an exhibition at some point. That’s kind of what I do when I’m not doing the band. It’s nice to tie them together. (Laughs)

Ever thought about offering your artworks to other bands to use as album covers?

Chloë: Well, I don’t know. I did that once with Gavin Harrison from Porcupine Tree and it was nice and I like doing it but I’d rather just do images that people buy as opposed to making them just to be used by others unless it’s for PRR which is obviously close to my heart so it has more meaning. I think it’s hard to make up an image for someone else’s music that you are not connected with.

On this current tour you’re playing most of the songs off Amor Vincit Omnia. How did you pick the ones that you don’t play?

Chloë: Yeah, there’s only a few we’re not playing. I suppose we think about what would translate best live because live it can’t be perfect as it is on the record so we have to think about what we can put across in the best way and the songs that would translate the best live. Having said that we’ll get to play them all live at some point so it’s really about having the most pre-production time that we can and trying to make them sound as good as possible. It’s not easy to decide but we try to come up with the best for the gigs.

Imagine having 5-6 albums then…

Chloë: (Laughs) Oh my god, yeah!
Jon: It’s gonna be a little bit tense!

So what song is coming through the best with the audience?

Chloë: Hmm, I don’t know… people seem to really love Deus.
Jon: Yeah, that was Deus Ex Machina on this tour. I mean Ambassador still goes down well.

The old classic… (laughs)

Jon: Yeah, yeah, that almost feels like that. (Laughs) Trembling Willows always goes down well, AVO is going down really well.

You’re doing a headliner tour just two years after the release of your debut album and it’s quite an achievement. How is it going?

Jon: It’s been quite a long… six weeks by the time we finish it. And yeah, it’s the first time we’re touring with our own shows outside the UK I suppose.
Chloë: We were quite nervous about it and we didn’t think anyone was gonna turn up but it’s been really good so far. (Laughs) I think we’ve got more fans than we thought we had in Europe and that’s a really nice surprise.

Is there any difference between European and UK fans?

Chloë: I don’t know… I can notice when we play in Europe that sometimes the crowds are warmer.
Jon: We’ve had very enthusiastic Polish fans.
Chloë: Oh yeah. (Laughs) The Poles go nuts and it’s great.
Jon: Yeah, they become nuts. We generally would go to the merch stand and do some signing after the show and they were like singing to us our own songs. That’s so overwhelming.
Chloë: This is quite real actually. For some reason it’s really clicked in Poland. The gig was really good there as well. Having said that some of the UK fans are really really good as well. I think it depends on where you go. We also played in Southern Europe and the crowd was just amazing. It’d be nice to go back there.
Jon: I think we’ll have a few summer festivals there.

You did a support tour with Porcupine Tree in 2007. How much did it help your band to gain attention?

Jon: If you support a big band you’re about to play in front of a thousand people a night and you can nick a bit of their fanbase. The similarities between us and them, it’s like a media exposure, isn’t it, to a possible fanbase.
Chloë: I think without a doubt it has serious pros for a band like us that is fairly unknown, it’s a great way to get their music heard by playing with a band that has quite a following.
Jon: The cons are that you obviously only have a 40 minute set to play and you don’t get to use visuals and you get a brief soundcheck. That’s the flip side of a tour like that but it’s definitely beneficial at our level. It was perfect for us to support Porcupine Tree on that tour.

Were they treating you nicely?

Chloë: Oh yeah, they were really nice. We’ve been a few times with them and also with Blackfield so we are no strangers to each other. They are really good guys.
Jon: It’s also good picking up like tips for the inside working of the band and to see how they actually do their visuals that we can’t really do on the scale we’re on now but in the future if the budget comes along now we now how to do things. It’s an invaluable time to pick up things from them and talk to the crew and learn how things work so we can improve on what we do.
Chloë: It’s also inspiring to spend time with people like that as they are such great musicians.

All rights reserved (c) 2009 by Zoltán Koncsok
All pictures by Nina Voronova

Arjen Anthony Lucassen (Ayreon)

Your involvement with Stream of Passion is over. What happened?

Arjen: Basically the whole Stream of Passion thing was set up as a solo project for Marcela because she did such a great job on “The Human Equation”. Somehow that morphed into a band that became Stream of Passion. From the beginning I always said, “Listen, I don’t want to be in a band. Ayreon is my main project and I always go back to Ayreon.” But then they were like, “No, no, you have to be in it, at least on the tour so we can play Ayreon songs.” So I did and I played on the album and took part in the tours but at a certain point I told them, ”Okay, time to go back to Ayreon now.” And they understood. Lori left as well, but they got two new guitar players and a new keyboard player and they’re writing songs. They’ve been here a couple of times to play their songs. They’re negotiating with record companies so soon you’ll hear about them again. Basically all things were planned this way.

Will they continue with the same musical style?

Arjen: No, it’s different. The first album was kind of dark with a lot of ballads but what I heard the new one is a bit more commercial, more like Within Temptation maybe, that direction.

How do you remember back the tours you did together?

Arjen: Fantastic. Because I had a lot of shit in the past with other bands with all the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll thing. Of course sex wasn’t a problem but the drugs and shit… All tours I’ve been involved in there were always problems and always shit going on and the tour with Stream of Passion was the first time where there were no egos except of course that tall hippie dude from Holland. (Laughs) So yeah it was really enjoyable.

While preparing the new Ayreon album you had some personal shit to go through. How much of that is public?

Arjen: It’s pretty public I think because I’ve no secrets for anyone. Basically my wife divorced me because being with a musician is not easy. Even when I was there my head was somewhere up there with music and I could not give her what she needed so we went separate ways but luckily we’re still the best of friends. Maybe we even have more contact than we used to have when we were together so that’s okay. But then I went back to my old lifestyle with partying and all that and that’s nice when you’re 20 but it kinda hits you when you are 47 so I got sick and I lost my sense of taste and smell. It’s no fun, life gets really boring if you don’t taste things, you get your food and it all tastes the same. All in all that got me into a really deep depression, the first in my life really. That was horrible. Luckily I got some pills, which helped me in the first place. And in second place and maybe it’s the most important, music is always the best healer. When the ideas started coming I started feeling better.

Did these negative things influence your new album in any way?

Arjen: Yeah, I think so. All the first tracks I came up with were pretty dark. I even thought that it would be like a pretty dark album. I even called the record company and told them that it’d be a pretty dark album on one CD with just a couple of singers. But then I went to the studio and worked on the songs and somehow all fell into place and the happier ideas started coming and suddenly there was a balance in the material.

Did everything go as planned from there?

Arjen: Yeah. The beginning is always hard, especially with a dark period. I had no ideas whatsoever because I have to feel good to get inspiration. So in the beginning it was hard but once I got going everything was smooth. I can’t think of any problems… well, the usual ones like getting the singers, that’s always hard.

You always try to evolve and change from album to album. How do you feel about the new things on the new one?

Arjen: Mostly I always look to the album before, which in this case is “The Human Equation”. That had a really clear storyline. A man in a coma haunted by emotions that were portrayed by singers. It was a simple story. And also the music was quite accessible. This time I wanted to make a darker album and I wanted the lyrics to be more cryptic so people would really have to search. But I’ve done seven albums now with Ayreon and of course I developed my own sound, so obviously there’ll be a lot of references not only lyrically but also musically to previous albums.

Btw, where would you put this album musically in the Ayreon catalogue?

Arjen: To early to say for me because I can’t be objective about it. To me it really sounds really dark and really heavy and really modern but then other people tell me that they think it sounds like “Electric Castle”, other people tell me it sounds like “Actual Fantasy” so I have no idea. I think I could tell you in a year or maybe in two years.

The weirdest thing about the album is the title. What does it stand for?

Arjen: It stands for the letter “Y”. It’s a binary code for letter “Y” and Y is the planet of the being “Forever” that was introduced on “Electric Castle”. And Planet Y was introduced on “Flight of the Migrator”. Actually it was Anneke that gave me the idea. She made her own melodies for one of the tracks and she sang like fake words. She sang “January, February, March, April, May…” I was like, “Shit, what am I gonna do with that?” And suddenly I came up with this binary code, “zero, one, one” because I thought that binary could be a nice universal thing. And then we put that sample on the Internet with Anneke singing in binary and the reactions were so great. People seemed to really love it. The original idea was to call the album “The Sixth Extinction”, which is of course a tongue breaker. So suddenly I got the idea to why not give it that title and people all said I was crazy. When I made it public there was a lot of talk on the message board. People said it was stupid and nerdy and people can’t pronounce it and can’t get it in the record shop. But then they wrote like 20 pages about it, so it’s something you talk about. I like that.

“January, February, March” would have been a better idea but you couldn’t do that because it was already taken by the Boney M.

Arjen: (Laughs) Yeah. Are you sure it was Boney M?

Yeah, it was called the “Calendar Song”.

Arjen: That was a horrible song.

It’s an impossible task but could you give me an insight of the story?

Arjen: I told you about “Forever” which was this alien on “Electric Castle” that did these experiments with humans to test their emotions because he lost his own emotions. This time I wanted to have a look at his planet and find out why did he lose his emotions and we find out that. His planet is actually a water planet. There are all these machines coming out of the water and these beings had become completely dependant on technology. The machines keeping them alive but there’s no more struggle to survive, no more emotions, so what’s the use in living? So they decide to create a new race by sending their DNA out into outer space and this DNA lands on planet Earth and it mixes with the beings there creating humans, so in a way I’m explaining the missing link here. So now you know, it’s “Forever”.

The lyrics of “Web of Lies” is kind of lame and it sounds pretty tongue-in-cheek to me.

Arjen: Yeah, that lyrics is definitely tongue-in-cheek. It’s about Internet dating and how utterly stupid it is. A friend of mine is addicted to it. Internet dating is like a candy store, he keeps finding these women, he bangs them but it doesn’t make him happy at all. It’s about people becoming very superficial and that’s what the song is about. It’s like a parallel to what’s happening on that planet too. There are stupid people all over and that’s what is really happening. There’s another ironic song on the album called “The Truth is in here”, which is really tongue-in-cheek too. It’s about this hippie dude. (Laughs)

You played almost every instruments on the album as you usually do. Your only help is Ed on drums. Never thought about getting a bass player too?

Arjen: No, not really. People often ask me to produce their albums but I can only produce an album if I use exactly all the sounds that I like. For the bass it’s just have to have this sound that fits to the drums and that fits to the guitars and I need to have the keyboard sounds that fit together. This is the only way I can work. If there would be another bass player the whole sound would be gone, at least it would be different. I’m a horrible control freak, a horrible egomaniac, I gave up trying to work with other people, I’m not annoying them anymore.

Isn’t there any player that you’d love to play together with?

Arjen: Well, I would love to have a couple of solos of people like David Gilmour, Steve Vai. I wouldn’t mind if they played a little solo on my album.

And Lemmy from Motörhead of course.

Arjen: Yeah, and Lemmy singing the whole album. I mean if you got Lemmy who needs other singers. I mean all these different emotions in his voice. That’s scary. (Laughs)

Let’s see the instrumentalists of the album. The names of Lori, Joost and Mike are given on any Ayreon album but how about Derek Sherinian and Tomas Bodin?

Arjen: I saw The Flower Kings live and was really impressed by his playing and his sounds. It’s one of my favourite solos on the album because it’s so organic, so real. It’s such a dark solo and it’s both atmospheric and virtuoso. I’m really glad I chose him for that part. And on the other part I needed a wild and crazy fast solo and the guy I thought of was Derek Sherinian because this is typically the style and sound he’s known for. You can always recognise his style and that’s the kind of player I like.

Can we go through the singers?

Arjen: Sure!

Ehm… Arjen Lucassen.

Arjen: I thought you wanted to talk about singers. (Laughs)

Okay, Tom Englund from Evergrey.

Arjen: The first contact with him was five years ago when he contacted me if I would have produced Evergrey. That got me listening to Evergrey and I heard his voice and it’s huge. It’s very emotional so I sent him a mail back that I don’t produce other bands but I would love to work with him one day.

Steve Lee.

Arjen: I’ve known him for a long time because we played with Vengeance in Italy and he was supporting us with his band. Then he gave me a demo of his band and I played it at home. He was the drummer in that band but sang on one of the tracks and he was very good. When our singer left in Vengeance we auditioned him and 20 years ago he stayed at my place for a couple of days to work on songs but it never materialised. So he was always on my list but he was always too busy because Gotthard is huge. They sell like platinum in Switzerland and Germany. But this time luckily he had time so he came over. I think he’s one of the best in the world.

Daniel Gildenlöw who I told you about and recommended you 7 years ago…

Arjen: (Laughs) Yeah, I know. And with you countless fans asked for him. He was the most wanted name together with Hansi Kürsch. Obviously I checked him out and Pain of Salvation is not easy to get into but once you did you discover his genius. It was funny because he’s like a joker. I really expected a really dark and serious person but I think he opened the door with a Darth Vader helmet on. (Laughs)

Hansi Kürsch.

Arjen: He was, as I said, together with Daniel Gildenlöw the most requested singer so I checked him out and his voice is unique. It’s like this medieval metal bard and I worked with him and besides being the talent he is, I think he’s the nicest guy that I met. He’s a guy who really deserves the success he has.

Jonas Renkse.

Arjen: His last album “The Great Cold Distance” was my favourite album of the year when it was released. From that moment on I loved his voice and his melodies. He was the first guy I asked for this record. He heard about me, he called Mikael Åkerfeldt and he was like, “What about it?” but Mikael told him, “No, this is great. You should do it.” I like it also because it’s an odd choice you wouldn’t expect him on a rock opera.

I also recommended Jørn Lande to you ages ago when he wasn’t that overused as he is today. He’s still a good choice though…

Arjen: Yeah, he’s a great singer. He’s probably the best in the world with Russell (Russell Allen, Symphony X) and Steve (Steve Lee, Gotthard). The reason I didn’t ask him was because he did so many things and also because he sounded so much like David Coverdale. But then the time came when I suddenly realised that he had a style on his own and then I decided to get him for the album. He just had to be there. I had these parts that were screaming for his name.

The first girl, Magali…

Arjen: She sent me a CD like 8 years ago and I never had the time to listen to it. When I finally got to it I contacted her and she told me that in the meantime she did Beautiful Sin, a project she did with Uli Kusch. I listened to it and I was completely blown away. She’s just a tiny little Belgian girl with enormous talent.

Bob Catley, the legend.

Arjen: Bob Catley is the legend. Of course as a kid I listened to the Magnum stuff like the Storyteller’s Night. I already was in contact with him for the previous album. His manager offered his services but I was full of singers for The Human Equation so he was an obvious choice for this album.

How about Ty Tabor of King’s X?

Arjen: I love King’s X and I love his songs always more than the songs with Doug because he’s got that Beatles touch. He’s a huge Beatles fan. So I sent him this track and immediately he said, “Yeah, that’s something I’d like to do.” And I love his solo stuff as well.

Liselotte Hegt.

Arjen: I’ve known her for years because she’s a reviewer for Aardshock magazine and I always met here everywhere and I liked her vocals in the band she had at that time. But then she did this Dial thing together with Kristoffer Gildenlöw and I loved their debut album. I heard it and immediately wanted to have that voice on my album.

And what should we know about Phideaux Xavier, Wudstik and Marjan Welman? Honestly I never heard about them before…

Arjen: Phideaux is an American guy who does stuff like me. He does these huge concept albums and I’m a big big fan of his music. He’s in my top ten of all time and you should give it a listen. It’s very prog. His last album is the best. It’s called “Doomsday Afternoon”. He was actually on the Ayreon mailing list, he was a fan. Now I did something on his album and he did something on my own. Wudstik… it was a funny story. It was this Dutch hip hop guy on MySpace wanting to be a friend and I was like, “WTF?!” I went to his site and heard all these hip hop songs but there was also one track where he sang and he sang great. So I contacted him and he was like, “Oh, let me sing a fucking scream on your album, please please!” Actually he’s a big talent and it’s funny. A hip hop dude that loves Pain of Salvation and Dream Theater and Ayreon. Marjan was one of the four girls who ended up on the list for “The Human Equation”. Eventually I chose Marcela but she was one of the girls as well. Later on I saw her again singing in an Ayreon cover band and she has great charisma and a great voice so I wanted to give her this chance.

While Floor and Simone seem like obvious choices for Ayreon I bet you were pretty happy to hear that Anneke left The Gathering…

Arjen: (Laughs) Absolutely. Otherwise she wouldn’t have done it. But I didn’t know when I asked her. I had these parts where I really needed her voice so I just asked her and she said yes and a week later I heard that she left The Gathering. And Floor… I needed someone who could have a fight with Jørn and the only singer I could think of was Floor. And it’s also nice that she’s a big Jørn Lande fan. That makes it extra special.

Now you should also say something about Simone.

Arjen: Simone? Besides from being one of most beautiful creatures on our planet she has the charisma and not only on stage but also in her voice. She just has a beautiful voice. I used her a little bit differently than on the Epica albums. She’s not as operatic on Ayreon as she is in her own music.

Did you fly in most of the singers?

Arjen: Actually I flew them all in except for Phideaux and Ty Tabor because they were only doing one song or half a song. And to fly them in all the way from the US for that wasn’t necessary. I explained clearly what I needed and that’s what I got. I flew to Daniel’s studio in Eskilstuna to record him but basically all the other singers came here.

Were there any singers that you asked but they couldn’t do it?

Arjen: Yeah, as always. I tried to get Ian Gillan and it came very close. At a certain point I always have to decide on the singers because I have to write the lyrics. I can’t wait forever. Ian Gillan was interested but it didn’t work out. Steve Walsh didn’t have time. I think I contacted a few more singers and it’s always impossible to get singers outside the prog and metal world because unfortunately for a lot of people prog and metal are still dirty words.

How about Alice Cooper?

Arjen: Well, he was on Avantasia, the bastard. I hate him for that. He’s second hand now. I don’t want him. (Laughs) Of course I do. I got very close. I got to his personal manager Brian Renfield Nelson and offered loads of money but somehow it didn’t work out.

You’ve been enjoying some great live stuff with Stream of Passion. You have some fans out there. How about putting together some sort of a band to play Ayreon songs?

Arjen: Well, Ayreon was never set up to be a live band. Logistically and financially impossible. People ask me to do it at least once but what they forget that you have to rehearse a couple of months before doing any gigs and tours. And you need those singers for a couple of months to rehearse with them and that’s the problem because you’re gonna have to pay them per day and they have to be available for a couple of months. If you rehearse for a month it would cost you a fortune. The Star One thing cost me a lot of money because it was only 7-8 shows and there was a lot of investment there. So that’s really the problem. It would be a lot of work and a lot of money and basically not the thing I wanna do. It would be possible to set it up with unknown singers. You just hire a couple of singers for half a year, then you can do it like a theatre production but I guess that wouldn’t be the same. Also if you take a song like “Age of Shadows”, there’s nine singers in that. I mean how are you gonna do that live? That’s the problem. As an example I always say that imagine doing Jesus Christ Superstar with three people. It’s like, “You are Jesus and Judas and Maria and you are…” (Laughs) It’s just so hard.

But I mean give me Ian Gillan alone and let him sing the entire rock opera or the phonebook or whatever and I’d be happy. You can call it Jesus Christ Phonebook if you like.

Arjen: (Laughs) Yeah, sure. That’s the main reason I like Ian Gillan. That was his best performance. Definitely. Out of all versions of Jesus Christ Superstar that’s the best one with him and the guy that had the role of Pilate, Barry Dennen. But he was also in the movie. That’s quality.

What’s next from Arjen Lucassen?

Arjen: No idea. I never plan ahead and I always empty after an Ayreon album. I’ll just have to wait for inspirations.

What is that you won’t do for sure?

Arjen: Another Ayreon. There won’t be another Ayreon now.

And there won’t be a new Ambeon either.

Arjen: I would love to but Astrid isn’t doing very well. She has some personal problems. I wanted to have her on this album but she said she wasn’t ready. Any time she wanna do it I’ll be there.

And what about Star One? Is it dead and buried?

Arjen: No, but it was so magic to get these people together and to do that tour that I’m a bit afraid that I won’t be able to recreate that magic. And I would love to do with the same people but I’m not sure if that would work out. It’s just scary. I would love to do another one but I wouldn’t know in which format.

You can always do a Star Two.

Arjen: Yeah, it would be Star Two. Definitely. (Laughs)