Threshold-interview, The Rock, Copenhagen, November 9, 2007 (full transcript)

SRFM: My sister was with me last night and she asked me to tell you that she’s not going to hear anything but Threshold for next two months…

Rick: Wow.. Thank you. That’s very cool.

SRFM: Have you been playing a lot of live gigs following the “Dead Reckoning” album?

Rick: Yeah, we did a few festivals over the summer, and then we had a European tour with three other bands. One of them was Machine Men who are playing here today… Also Communic from our label and a band called Serenity from Australia who is fantastic – I recommend them thoroughly, a very good band, and now…

SRFM: What sort of music do they play?

Rick: Progressive metal… They do it very nicely. Quite melodic… Erm, and then we’ve done a few more festivals: Progpower USA, a couple of shows in the UK and now here. And then next week we play with Within Temptation. They’re doing a homecoming show in Holland to 8.000 people. They asked us to support us so… And that will round up the year nicely. We’ll finish [playing] to 8.000. That’s nice.

SRFM: So do you consider yourselves a live band or does the studio work mean more to you, or..?

Rick: Both. I mean, personally I love doing both. It’s just… making your life from music is just so fun. And, yeah, writing is fantastic, producing is fantastic, touring is great, you know… it’s all fun. Erm, we… Really, this is the first time we’ve toured seriously since 2004. So until now we couldn’t really say we were a touring band – we did one show last year, one show the year before. But now, we’re back on the road. The band’s really tight, they’re really friendly. Really… There’s a real energy whenever we get together… And really.. I think it’s the best lineup we’ve ever had. So, right now, we’re a live band, and we’re enjoying it.

SRFM: And so did the audience last night…

Rick: Yeah, we were blown away – we haven’t been here for – I think twelve years, so… It’s great. We should come every year!

SRFM: I think so too! You should come to Odense also…

Rick: Yeah. Sounds good to me.

SRFM: I have some questions on the new lineup that you have. You’ve just replaced the singer, Mac. Could you tell us a bit about that – about the process…

Rick: Yeah. Erm, it’s funny… It’s been a few months now, I guess five months since he left. And we still haven’t heard from him. We had a one line in an e-mail to say he wasn’t coming, he had to go on with his life, and… we still don’t know what that means. This was his life. He said something on the Internet about, erm, not making enough money from it? Do you know, we did nothing for three years. So if he’s not making money, then he’s obviously not doing anything, you know. And we thought, the touring bit is where we make some money, so it’s kind of strange. I don’t really know what happened. But, you know, having Damian back, who sung on the first and third album, has been amazing. It’s just been really good timing, you know. I think, when Mac left, we spent 24 hours thinking “what do we do? This is freaky.” It was five days, I think, before our first show. Bad timing. But I’ve been recording Damian on a couple of other projects in England, so I knew him, been working with him, getting on very well. So it seemed obvious to ask him – and he said yes straight away. And, I mean, you saw yesterday – he’s done a really good job! He commands the stage, he commands the audience… he’s got a great voice… a great presence, yeah I’m happy I asked him. That worked out well.

SRFM: So he is the permanent replacement or is he just filling in for the moment, or..?

Rick: Ah… We’ve got no plans to do anything else. But we decided in the summer that we would just do the shows, and then next year we’ll think about it and see what to do next. We’re just touring this year. So we’re not deciding. It’s difficult, because, erm, all of the band have busy lives, especially Damian – and he’s in another band called Headspace with Adam Whiteman, the keyboard player, Rick Whiteman’s son. Now at the moment Adam is touring as Ozzy Osbourne’s keyboard player, so he’s busy, the other band members are busy, so there’s no problem for us to have Damian. But next year I think Headspace plan to make an album at release it and tour. And we said to Headspace: “Damian is yours, we’re just borrowing him,” you know, “we don’t want to steal him from you.” So we want to keep it friendly. Do the right thing. So it’s impossible to decide at the moment. We’ll just see what comes next year.

SRFM: So it’s up to Damian, then?

Rick: Yeah, yeah I guess so. But I can say he’s done a great job. You know, when Mac left, our other old singer, a guy called Glynn Morgan who sung on the second album, he contacted us and said he’d love to try out for the band… “You don’t need to try out, we know you’re fantastic.” So, you know, we have options, but we can’t decide yet. We’re just enjoying every show at the moment.

SRFM: I’d like to ask you a few questions about the new album, if that’s alright. It has a much heavier sound than some of the previous albums.

Rick: Yeah…

SRFM: How did that come about, that development?

Rick: It’s funny, when we did the first three albums, we finished the third one, “Extinct Instinct”, and we thought “either we go even more progressive, or we cut it back and go a bit more raw, a bit more on the guitars”. So we did that with “Clone”. And then we did three albums with [the] InsideOut label. And by the third one, it was getting quite bombastic – big epic sound, big epic strings, big epic vocals…

SRFM: The “Subsurface” album?

Rick: Yeah. And it was great, loved it. But we thought, “either we go even more epic, which is dangerous, or we just change direction a little”. So we’d thought we’d go a bit heavier, a bit more raw. Erm, there’s still lots of multi-vocals and lots of keyboards, but in a different way. They take up the space in different ways. So we tried to look at all the clichés we had on “Subsurface” – all the things we had been doing for three albums, and they became clichés without us realising. And we tried to destroy them and create some new clichés [laughs]. So it was a conscious attempt to be slightly different, to be a bit more modern, a bit heavier. But you know, we got in to the writing process, and I had this song, “Pilot in the Sky of Dreams”, which I had been working on, you know, and I thought, “this doesn’t fit. It’s piano, it’s soft, it’s melodic, it’s got major keys in it.” It’s very progressive. And so I wasn’t gonna put it on the album. And Karl was working on a ballad, which became “Safe to Fly”, and he had the same problem, he thought “no, this doesn’t fit.” But when we both listened to each other’s songs, we thought “wow. That’s so Threshold. That’s part of our sound.” And in the end “Pilot in the Sky of Dreams” became the single, you know, the one the label liked the most. So we can’t escape the prog to much. It’s part of what we do.

SRFM: I’d also like to ask you about the lyrics… the lyrical theme on the latest album. I noticed on the “Subsurface” album there was a lot of very political lyrics…

Rick: There were some, yeah. Two or three.

SRFM: … Is there any theme in the lyrics on the latest album, and what…?

Rick: Yeah, yeah… You know, “Subsurface” wasn’t just political, it was more just about modern life. So it’s looking at where the social area of the world is going, and the politics and the philosophy... all combined. So yes, some songs were poltics, but that wasn’t the main [theme?] Erm, with “Dead Reckoning”, it’s more just looking at life. Erm… more of a personal album. The subtitle of the album is “How to Navigate through the Storms of Life”. That’s really the idea. So “Pilot in the Sky of Dreams” was kind of in the theme that was going to be the album title. But it was too progressive, so we thought, “Dead Reckoning” that sounds heavier – and that’s a form of navigation, actually…. Lyrically, you know… personally… I write all the lyrics on this album, and personally I’ve made lots of mistakes in life, and I was just looking at them, working at how to get through them, how I could have done it better. And looking at some friends of mine who’ve had some problems and looking at what they told me and learning from that. So really, every song is a little story of diffent life areas. So it’s quite personal, you get… Someone was telling me last week, he said “how do you write big epic choruses on something that’s such a small personal theme?” I have no idea – we’re Threshold, that’s what we do. It seems to work. [grins]

SRFM: Well it does indeed. I have a question that just comes to my mind. You had a label change also. You’ve gone over to Nuclear Blast. How did that come about?

Rick: Well, we… Our contract with InsideOut was for three albums. And we did three albums. So at the end of that, obviously, we were deciding what to do next. And we knew with InsideOut, if we did another album, it would be the same sound and the same promotion and the same mechanism, everything would be the same.

SRFM: It would be marketed as a progressive album.

Rick: Yeah… Yeah, but I think we knew already that we would just fall into the same habit and do the same thing. We’d do the same number of albums, we’d tour the same countries… And we thought, if we want to carry on with Threshold, then we need to do something just to shake up the formula. Make it different. So we thought, well, let’s just change everything. You know, let’s try and get a bigger label, we’ll try and get a different sound, try and do more touring, you know… we’ll put out a single, try to have a video, let’s just do everything slightly better. So, Nuclear Blast heard we were out of our contract through a friend of a friend, and they contacted us. So we thought, well that’s perfect. That’s a good start for our new invention of Threshold. So it made sense. We talked to them, we got on really well. A couple of the guys in the label are big fans, which always helps, ‘cause you know they’re gonna support you. And so far, it’s been really good. Really positive [????]

SRFM: About composing. You mentioned, you liked working in the studio, but the whole process of composing, is that a collective process with Threshold or more individually…

Rick: No. Always individual. Always has been. For this album, Karl Groom, the guitarist, he writes music but never lyrics. So he’ll make a complete instrumental, full drums, bass, keyboard, guitars, but no lyrics, no melody. And in the old days he used to give them to Jon Jeary [?] the bass player. But now John’s gone, so he gives them to me. So, sometimes I’m given a 10 minute song with no vocal ideas at all. You suddenly have to make a big song. And for me that’s really strange, because I always start with the vocal first, with the lyric, the chorus… and then the music comes afterwards. But if I do it backwards, it’s really weird. For a 4 minute song it’s no problem, but for a 10 minute song, you think “I need a big theme, I need, you know, big choruses, big middle section,” everything. It’s a real challenge, but it’s fun. Takes a long time, though. Now, the other half of the album, I wrote everything myself. So again, start with the vocals, start with the lyrics. So they sound slightly different. You can tell, they’re more melodic-based with the riffs kind of written to sympathize with the melody. But it’s nice, because you get two [hearts?] of Threshold, then. We’ve always had that. It’s always been different combinations of writers. But I think, when you just have one combination of writers, the same all the way through, you don’t get so much diversity. So, it’s a nice way to work. It’s hard work. And it takes a lot of just sitting down, doing nothing else, locking the door, you know doing nothing but just thinking about lyrics or thinking about music. [But] it’s a fun process. It’s a bit like a really difficult crossword. You know there’s a perfect solution, and it’s going to come, it may come in a week, but you know you’re gonna get there. I do enjoy the process.

SRFM: How does the band react to the new material? Do they know the material before they go into the studio, or…?

Rick: Yeah. Yeah, they’re always very kind to us. They always say they like it. I think, because we’ve been working with everyone for so long – apart from the odd change – I know for example, when I write lyrics and melodies, I knew I was writing for Mac, and I’ve done, what, five albums now with Mac. I know his vocals and how they work. So every album, I’m trying to write better for Mac. So whenever I hear the melody, I know how he’s gonna sound. And I’ll know how to [kick the song in???] where to put the riffs, and I guess, every album, I’ve got more precise of it… So, for “Dead Reckoning”, I was really pleased. It was written perfectly for Mac. I’m so glad he stayed for the album. ‘Cause if Damian came in at the last minute, the album would be terrible, because it’s not written for him, and he ha[s] different strengths, different ranges… It takes a long time to get used to that. For Steve on bass, it’s quite different, because we’re used to writing bass lines that are quite mechanical. They’re just like the guitar riffs, but lower, or just simple lines, but played very… almost machine-like. ‘Cause that was how Jon Jeary [??] the old bass player used to play. Great playing, very precise. But with Steve, suddenly there’s just… this grooves comes in. And I love it. You give him a basic line, and he just plays it and… “whoa, it sounds like a bass player now.” It’s a real pleasure. Everytime, I get really excited you know. He takes the music a bit further on for us. And the same with Johanne on drums. You know we program all the drums on the [???] for the demo. So, when the demo’s complete, it’s got me singing, it’s got programmed drums, it’s got programmed bass, and then keyboards and guitars. So the band can hear exactly how the song sounds. But you need to have good ears, because you have to understand how it will sound with the real singer and the real drummer. But Johanne will take the basic idea of what we’ve programmed, and then he’ll make it his. Again, same as Steve, he’ll just bring it to life, and it’s really fun. It’s nice when… First you hear it in your head, you got this song, and now it takes you about a week to download it onto the computer from your head. You just need a USB-cable from your brain, it would be so much easier. And then you have this demo that sounds… you can hear what it’s gonna be like. And then the band come in and they play it, and the song starts breathing, and it’s a lovely feeling. Really good.

SRFM: [fumbles with his notes] Well, erm… What can we expect from Threshold in the future? – the old cliché question...

Rick: We really don’t know. Like I was saying, everyone is quite busy. Obviously, we plan to keep going, you know, more touring, more albums, but the time scale, and who… we don’t know. We’re looking to book a couple more shows in January. I think we’ve got a festival planned already for next May. So we’re already looking ahead. We’re hoping to do Live Reckoning-tour part 2. Possibly taking in more of the south of Europe, countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece… Countries we don’t really go to. But really, if I can get all 6 guys together at same time, and everything works, then we’ll do it. It’s quite difficult. And, yeah, we’d love to do another album, obviously. If that’s with Damian, fantastic. If it’s with Glynn, fantastic. If it’s with somebody else… You know, it’s just fun. I’m sure we’ll find the right people. And our fans have always been really kind to us whenever we’ve changed band members. You know we also [lost?] Nick Midson, our old second guitarist. He left at the end of 2005, I think. Well, not left, but more had a break. He sees Karl a lot, they go drinking, they’re always talking, well maybe he’ll come back, maybe not. But in the meantime we have Pete Morten, he’s the guitarist from Soliloquy [?], and he’s been filling in all year with the live shows. And he’s really part of the family. He fits in so well, does a great job. He brings a new youth and enthusiasm to the band, you know, we’re all getting old, but he’s half our age, so he keeps us on our toes. So… well, to answer your question, yeah, next year, we’ll do something. We just don’t know what it is yet.

SRFM: I hope you’ll come back to Denmark.

Rick: We’d love to. We were talking already. We know Pain of Salvation play here occasionally, and they do great shows here. We’ve played with them. We toured with them in 1999. We’ve played with them in [America?] as well. So we’re all friends. So we’d love to come back here and do a show with them. That would be fun. Fill the place, have a great night.

SRFM: Great! Well, thank you for the interview.

Rick: Pleasure. Hope it worked

SRFM: So do I.