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.