Pain of Salvation – interview at The Rock, Copenhagen, March 10, 2007 (full transcript)

SRFM: Ok, so I have my intermistic recording device… DG: yeah… SRFM: … running. Well, er, is this your first job on the tour or have you been touring for a while now, or..? DG: This is the last, actually… SRFM: The last actually? DG: Yeah… Which I’m happy about because I’m sick now. [Laughter followed by a murmur of voice] Claudia (tourmanager): Who’s that guy? [Laughter from DG] SRFM: I’m Søren from heavymetal.dk Claudia: uh-huh! DG: [Laughs] Oh-oh… SRFM: Are you Claudia? Claudia: Yeah… SRFM: Hello… I’ve been trying to text you all through my… Claudia: Yeah, yeah… You’re the late one, right? SRFM: Yes… Claudia: Ok, so we have a cross-over interview, so you’re not allowed to start without him… [another interviewer enters] SRFM: Ok, I’m sorry… DG: [Laughs] Claudia: Who let you in? SRFM: Er, I got in through the back… Claudia: Uh-huh. SRFM: So er… DG: [Laughs] FH: Calm now… SRFM: I tried to phone you a while ago, but you didn’t take it… Claudia: No, I don’t want to talk anymore… Sit over here? So that’s Daniel and Fredrik… The thing is, we have to… his voice… MR (other interviewer): That’s cool.. Claudia: That’s why we’ll have to do…… SRFM: Two at a time… Claudia: a cross-over… MR: What do we do? Claudia: Ask questions SRFM: We have to share the interview. MR: That’s what I was wondering DG: Yeah, of course, come on… Claudia [directed at SRFM): You want something to drink? Coke, water… SRFM: Er, no I’m fine… Claudia: Good for you. You? [directed at MR] MR: No, I’m fine, I have my water… (?) Claudia: Yeah, good boy… DG: [laughs] MR: How do we do this? One for you, one for me? I don’t know… SFRM: Yeah, how much… [indistinct talk in the background] Fifteen minutes? Ok. Let’s just take turns then. DG: Pop them out, see what happens… MR: There are probably a lot of the same questions. DG: Ha ha, yeah, there usually is. MR: [Directed at SRFM] Did you already ask something or were you in the middle of anything? SRFM: I asked one question about touring, and then I was interrupted by the tour manager… [Laughter and noise] MR: I’m just going to ask what does it feel like, now that the new album is out, and how are the responses you’ve got so far? DG: Responses have been very good, surprisingly good, actually. Even in Sweden for the first time – if that counts for something. Had very good reviews… I mean, we’ve always had a lot of very good reviews, but now we have reviews in places that didn’t even review us previously. FH: Much more media coverage, than… DG: Yeah. So… We don’t know why that is, but we just think it’s good. MR: Yeah, definitely. DG: I guess that you feel that for every album you release those albums are forever released, you know. And I can feel that our first album, Entropia, didn’t get the appreciation and attention that it deserves. And we cannot change that – we cannot release that album again. So, for every album you release, you only have one chance for that album. So, even though we are getting more and more successful, you still feel sorry for the album that didn’t, you know, get there. SRFM: The music on the new album is slightly less complex than the previous two efforts… DG: You might think! [Looks pedagogical and laughs] SRFM: Yeah, well I mean it’s more song oriented than the last two… DG: Oh… SRFM: … Is that a deliberate move to make it more in tune with The Perfect Element pt. 1 or…? DG: Not so much that, but, I mean…. The album is at least as or maybe even more complicated and intricate than the previous albums, musicwise, but hopefully, when you listen to the album, that is not what you are going to notice… SRFM: Mm. DG: The first thing that’s going to meet you is hopefully kind of the surface of anger, frustration and energy… Kind of a raw, blunt energy, somehow. And the cause of… I have always been a fan of hiding the complex stuff away into the deeper structures, instead of having it flashing on the surface. But even more so on this album, since it is the kind of social and political album that it is, you want that to be in focus, instead of complexity. Then if you want to delve deeper, after a while, as a visionary [?], you have that possibility. You can… I mean, as soon as you start trying to play this stuff, then you’re going to notice that, “fuck…” [Laughter around the table.] MR: Well, actually, in a way that answers one of my questions, so er.. I would like to ask just a little bit more about the whole process of creating this album: When writing, when recording, when mixing, I mean how was the whole thing? I really love the sound of it, and I think it is the best produced Pain of Salvation album so far. DG: Oh, that’s pretty cool… MR: My passion is in music production and stuff like that, so… I really think it is the best on this album. DG: Erm… The thing is, we abandoned expensive studios and expensive guitar amplifiers, and I created a home studio – set up with a Logic system with a Macintosh computer, and we recorded with Line 6 amplifiers. [Imitates a drum roll and a cymbal crash] Don’t tell anyone! [Laughter around the table] I mean, the thing is, the most important thing, I think, when you’re creating an album and mixing and making the sounds, is the vision that you have. And with a home studio, you can still create exactly what you want to do, but it’s going to take much more time, you’re going to have to spend much more effort, because it’s not as easy as just plugging things in and it sounds good instantly. So you have to really work on everything. In a completely different way. So, we used Line 6 amplifiers, but it’s been a very tedious process of making the sound as I want them to sound… MR: Ok. DG: You can definitely not use the default sounds and you have to, you know, use cabinets and… it’s… Yeah. I have to say, it’s been a tedious process altogether, both writing it and recording it, and it’s been interrupted by a lot of other things happening, so it’s not been like…. Well that is one of the advantages you have when you go into an expensive studio – it can only take so much time, and then, you know, you don’t have anymore money! When you’re at home you can [do?] things exactly the way you want to, but you also have that possibility that you can be interrupted, and you can postpone things and say, you know, “let’s take a break for 3-4 weeks, and then get back to it” and stuff like that. And … [?] the pressure is still on you during that time. You will end up spending a lot of time with that same pressure on you all the time without actually reaching to the point where you can just let go of that. SRFM: You said before that the new album is very political in the lyrics. How important are the lyrics… in the music? Do you want people to only, so to speak, dwell in the lyrics, or are the lyrics a way of getting attention to the music or… which is more important in general? DG: Well, to me of course, I mean… If people only want to hear the music, uhm, it’s up to them. I wouldn’t say that they’re doing anything wrong. Er… Personally, I don’t understand how you could ever do that, how you could ignore, you know, such a big part of the full product. I could never do that myself. It’s not even an option for me. I tend to notice that the songs and the albums that I like the best always revolve around something that feels really close to whoever wrote it, and… you know. Something that grips me, or something that makes me think… SRFM: Something that is personal, so to speak. DG: Yeah, exactly, something that has blood and sweat inside. And I can’t see how anything can have blood and sweat inside, if you’re not writing about something that you care about. So, to me, I guess it’s just like… If you write a book, it’s a story but it’s also something that you want to say. There is some sort of message that you want to convey with writing that book, probably. And I guess you could read the book and only read what’s happening, and then “oh, that’s an interesting line of events”. But to me it’s impossible not to ask the question, so… what’s… what is the writer trying to tell me here? What’s… what’s his reason for writing this al… this book, or in our case, the album? So…. to answer your question very briefly [laughter], yes, the lyrics are very important. MR: Ok. Well, actually my next question is kind of… [addressed at SRFM] You know, it’s almost like we did these questions together [laughter]. I was wondering, the lyrics are little bit more aggressive this time around, a little bit more in your face – would you mind saying something about that, and being that I love the whole product, and I am a graphical designer and I love all that – something about the artwork and the cover [?]… How does that compare to the music? DG: I always want everything to kind of speak the same language – which is a problem, ‘cause it’s really hard to delegate things. Now I’ve found this photographer that helps us out and takes pictures, and he… I have full confidence in him. That’s so nice, because he thinks the same way, which is very good, so I mean… The photos are a big part of the artwork, I think, and are portraying very, very well, what I want to convey with the lyrics too. Erm… When it comes to aggressiveness, I mean, er… Compared to The Perfect Element pt. 1, you can say that that album is looking at the symptomology of the individual, in many ways – especially the kind of the two main characters that we follow. Whereas Scarsick, which is The Perfect Element pt. 2, focuses on the symptomology of society. And in a way you have a lot of recurring themes that are not so obvious at first sight, but when you start looking at the story you will see that the first halves of both albums are dealing with themes of abuse – one on the individual level and the other one on a social level. And, just as you follow the male main character’s struggle and being caught up with, er, with the truth about himself and his past and reaches kind of a mental point of no return in the following point, he now, on this album, reaches a physical boiling [?] point and a point of no return. And, through him and through television, we see a society that shares a lot of the symptoms that the individuals display in the first part. So, er, just as we have kind of an individual that is kind of empty inside and broken and damaged and try to fill the void with something like outside stimuli, you have a society that is doing that exact same thing, really, on Scarsick. And, in that sense, you could say that the main character is actually kind of leading the way, showing us what will happen to society if we let these things proceed. We have a society that is damned [?] at risk of being caught up with the truth about itself and its past, and if we don’t change our ways before that happens, we will also be at point of no return in the following point. [SRFM’s phone rings] SRFM: Sorry… DG: So in means of [?] aggressiveness, we’re having the main character, and he’s not in a balanced state of mind. He is not in a state of mind where you’d go around subtly about things. SRFM: Er… Yes, well, erm… I’d like to turn to the touring. How has the touring been so far? Has their been a good response to the new material, and er… how has it been playing live? DG: Now I can rest my voice for a while [?]… [turns to FH] [Laughter] FH: Ah, it’s been a great response. I mean, there’s been a lot of people showing up. And also too [?] the two first shows in Oslo and Gothenburg were sold out long before the …. Even if… Well it’s been almost sold out in every place, so it’s been very cool. DG: And especially the new songs have been very appreciated. SRFM: Ok? DG: Actually, for many of the gigs, right after the first song, people have been starting to shout “Disco Queen! Disco Queen!” MR: Ha ha… That must feel good, eh? Because often at the concerts, they shout the very old names on songs… [noise] DG: Many bands have been hearing that a lot… MR: [noise]… “Seek and Destroy”, you know… [noise, laughter]… “… to Black”… Well actually, I wanted to ask about “Disco Queen”. Because I think it’s such an interesting song. I listen to it on my headphones a lot, and I… just… it’s… there’s just so much happening that’s so… I really think it’s very interesting, I… Would you like to say a little bit more about that? SRFM: … Yeah, one of my favourites on the album too… [Laughter] DG: Erm… I think… I mean, on the whole, I instinctively, when we started to talk about the album, even before I presented material to the others, I said that I wanted the album to feel more direct, but also be more… focusing on sounds, so that, you know, instead of having the kind of typical sound, you would make sure to have the correct sound for every passage in every song.. Er… Kind of individual sounds all the time. And I think that’s what we’ve done, I mean… “Disco Queen” is a very good example of that. Well I think that of the sounds that we’re using on that song, I don’t think we’ve used any of those sounds [on any of our songs before? – Laughter] Everytime, it’s like, you know, let’s get the perfect sound for this passage. Then you’re working with it, you know, finding you know… MR: The greatest thing about it is that it actually feels as a whole – as one piece. That’s really impressive. DG: Yeah… SRFM: Well… The compulsory question of where will you go next, musically? Do you have any idea of what is going to happen to Pain of Salvation in the future? DG: We have a few ideas that we’re keeping to ourselves [laughter] I always like to say that the next album is going to be a country and western-album [laughter]. Three albums ago, people would instinctively just know that that was a joke, but today [laughter and noise] … “Is it… really?” [laughter] So, usually we don’t even know ourselves – well, we have ideas, but… When you start working on an album, things kind of start, you know, to solve themselves, somehow. So er… we’ll have to see. SRFM: So you work very intuitively, when you compose and record an album? DG: When I compose, I work very [discusses how to formulate this with FH] miniculously? MR: Yeah, ok, we’ll look it up. [Laughter] DG: … [very much in the?] details, but… I mean, there’s a long process in the mind as well. Even when you compose in your head, you’re still twisting and turning things and then you have the concept as well, which is also something that will turn up one thing that will trigger the other thing… and then… “well, maybe it’s better to use that one”… you know… you have these different folders too, with different music in different folders that go into… sometimes you just realise that.. “oh, wait a minute – I have something in that folder that would actually fit very well into this now…” So, you never really know what the full product is going to be like. Even though you’re working very, like detail ‘round on every single part and everything. FH: We did a lot of rehearsal before recording Scarsick. That helped out. DG: Yeah… You know, I got to say that one of the very best thing with that is also that when we actually came to the recording process, everyone, you know, knew the material. Just like when we recorded the Be-album as well, ‘cause we did the live shows first, everyone knew the music… Like when we came to The Perfect Element pt. 1 and Remedy Lane too actually, the other guys didn’t really know how the songs would sound – they would like see them more or less take form in the [studio?], which was probably a very interesting feeling [laughter, noise] I mean, also if you play the material together several times, it’s much easier when you want something to change in this or that direction, it’s much easier to explain that, because people actually know… SRFM: … what whole it’s suppose to fit into. DG: Yeah, they have some sort of grasp of, kind of like the full vision. Which I think helps really well, especially when I [?] get into the recording process. MR: Er… I was wondering about the bass player… Simon isn’t it? Er… His role in the band – is he a full member of the band or is he just a touring guy, or.. DG: We’ve decided not to decide until we get back home afterwards. I think we know what the decision is going to be, but [firmly, with a touch of irony] we won’t decide until we get home! MR: So you’ve decided on not deciding [?] DG: Yeah, we’ve decided on not deciding, exactly. [Laughter] Well, he’s er… he’s a very good guy, both musically and personally… MR: How did you meet him? Is it the first time or you knew him from before, or… DG: Fredrik, you [?] FH: Yeah, I met him first almost at 1995, I think. MR: Ok. FH: He was… Fifteen or so… and playing the guitar by then. And… I don’t know… we kept in contact through the years, but not close contact. DG: And er, he was actually one of the guys applying for the role of the guitar player back in ’98. MR: Ok. [Laughter] … A little history there DG: He’s been in the peri- [discusses with FH] peripherals? MR: Oh, I’m going to look that one up. [Laughter] DG: … Like peripheral vision? [makes a gesture on each side of his head] MR: Yeah [Laughs] DG: … He’s been in the outskirts of Pain of Salvation-land. MR: Ok. DG: … For a long time actually. So he said, when he came to audition for the bass, he was like, “oh don’t worry. If you don’t take me now, I’m just going to switch instruments and you know, I’ll be back when you’re applying for a drummer [? Drowns in the noise from laughter]. MR: Ok… Do you have anymore questions? SRFM: Well, we basically covered most of what was on my sheet… MR: Actually me too. SRFM: So er, we’ve talked for more than the fifteen minutes we’ve been granted, so we could actually just wrap it up… DG: You’re going to get beaten up now! [Laughter] MR: Well, I guess that’s all for now and… [continues to promote his website, hands out cards.] DG: Maybe I could try the new cardreader in my phone – see if it works out. Yeah, you should like take a picture, and then it gets in to the address book somehow… I think so. SRFM: Interesting. DG: It’s supposed to work that way, anyway. MR: So that’s basically it and er, yeah… Check out the website and er… SRFM: [With a slight wimper] You can also check out our website! [Laughter] DG: Do you have card for my phone? [Laughter] [Claudia arrives again, noise] DG: Oh, you’re going to get beaten up, now. SRFM: Thank you once again for this interview.