Therion (VO) Interview / Spirit of Metal Webzine (es)

Therion (VO)

- Hi Kristian, nice to meet you, welcome to Hollywood, I guess you came a couple of years ago for the first time, how does it feel to be back in america?
I love this town and this country, of course it's really good to be back for me, I used to live here for two years back in 94 and 96, I studied at a musician institute...For me it's great, we came into town today and the first thing we did was going to IHOP to get pancakes! And had a walk around the Sunset Strip I love it!

- You've been on the road for a while now how's the tour going so far?
It's going very good, we started touring in January for the European tour, then we did a lot of separate dates in Greece and Russia, then some festivals and now we did South Amercia, Mexico, and this is actually the third show on the US tour. And tomorrow we are leaving to Japan, so it's gonna absolutely cool.

- To start off let's talk about the last album which was released ealier this year, what respond did you get from the fans?
It's been divided, it's been mixed. It's sort of new cause it's different from the last couple of records which were really big in terms of orchestrations and choirs and on this one we really wanted to use a totally different sound, we wanted to scale down the choir and only use the solists, so there is four singers on the record, two males two females, and therefore it doesn't have like choir on all the Therion songs, a lot of people tohught it was like ' Therion's songs are power metal' or ' it's progressive metal band' it's not Therion. But a lot of people thought it's the best record we ever made because they are leaving that stuff behind and going much more into the music. But I love it you know it's a good record though. So it's been very mixed, it hasn't been selling it's probably the worst selling record we've made so far, but it's fine you know, we can't really change what people think. We expected it to be very divided actually, so we are not surprised.

- You've been probably asked this question many times but why mixing this Kabbalah term with the word gothic, I still don't get the meaning of the two together...
It's actually a swedish term, I think it comes from 'Gotisk Kabbalh' it's not really translatable, you can translate it into 'gothic'. Christoffer did it only just because people would get like confused and pissed off like'gothic and Kabbalah they don't mix together', yes it's really strange and that was the whole trouble for it. But there is three translations to it. There is a meaning to it.

- Right on, so nothing to deal with the 'Madonna Kabbalah'

thing ?
(laughs) No nothing at all !

- Let's talk about the tour singers, I was at Wacken this summer and I've been really amazed by Lori Lewis she is definately an great performer, why doesn't she feature on the record besides Katarina Lilja?
Because at the time we didn't know her. The thing is that Katarina was doing the record and the tour. And we had another girl named Hannah who was also supposed to do the tour, but after she did the record there was some bullshit with the management and everything 'no she can't do the tour'... so we were like 'Fuck !!!' because we really wanted to use the exact same line up, because we had Matts Leven, we had Snowy Shaw, and then she couldn't do it, so we had to find a soprano and we sent out this 'Ok everybody send your tapes and records with a couple of songs'. And she was one of the last to send it, she was great, really great.

- That show in Germany was definately awesome, I truly enjoyed it all and loved the theatrical aspect of the show with all the decoration and costumes, Do you plan someday to play with orchestra on such venues?
We did some classical shows in Sweden and Norway, we did one in December and June. We played some classical parts on some of our shows but if you talk about doing it on venues like Wacken it would be very cool but it's very difficult, first of all it's open air and we would need so many people to get all the microphones in there, all the material, then there is no money for it, it is so much logistical. But of course it would be so great to play our stuff with a huge orchestra!

- What about Snowy Shaw, who used to sing in numerous bands along the years such as Merciful Fate, King Diamond, Notre Dame, Dream Evil how did it all happen?
Both Petter Karlsson and Mats Leven knew Snowy very well, they knew that he is a guy that does everything, he does design, he designs his own t-shirts, he does photography, videos, super creative guy! He used to sing in Notre Dame and stuff. And when we were doing the pre-production for Gothic Kabbalah we were thinking that on some parts that came out we really needed something different and that we should have tenors, and so they were 'hey why don't we use Snowy?' cause he wanted to do everything, he really loves to sing, he loves more singing than drumming. So we asked him and he said 'OK'. So he did the record and the tour with us. So it happened this way, it wasn't planned at all, it came out during the pre-production.

- Will he collaborate on the next album?
I hope so, it would be awesome, I love this guy he's fantastic. It depends on how the next

record is gonna sound, but i'd love to have him again as a member of the band of course!

- How do you manage to find always new singers and musicians that fit perfectly with what Therion is but still giving an evolution to the band?
I guess it has something to do with Christoffer's musical vision, he really has an idea, it's not that he plans stuff but he has his idea, it's just a matter of finding different people and auditioning a lot of people, and then we try to record something and if it's not exactly what he wanted then we erase it and find someone else and try to record again. We are very lucky to find so many people that fits in the band and also sociable persons because you have to be able to go on tour and get along with the others, we live very close to each other, and people that would drink too much and stuff wouldn't be good for the others! (laughs) It could work if you're like 20 years old, you when you just begin, but when you are in a band that's been around for a while you need patience you know, and if someone does something wrong beware! (smile)

- Our webzine is called Spirit Of Metal, what is for you the spirit of metal?
Hmmm though question! I guess it's an attitude, it's about intensity and something intense does not have to be fast, slow, heavy or whatever, it just has to be a sort of thing which grabs you and that's different for everybody. But to me it's definately an attitude and intensity. The spectre of metal is so big, it depends on if you count like early Iron Maiden and then up to Nile or The Dillinger Escape Plan and stuff like that they're all big bands and have that special language that no one else has.

- You will be touring till the end of the year what will be your plans for therion after coming home?
Next year we're not gonna do anything, a year off definately, no record, nothing. I mean if someone pays us a ridiculous amounts of money maybe we'll do some festivals or shows, but right now no plans. I'm gonna be a dad !(laughs)

- Congratulations!
Thank you ! That's my plan for now, I'm gonna very busy but that's cool ! We still have the tour in December it's gonna be the 10th anniversary of Theli but also the 20th anniversary of the band, so you should come if you are in Paris we'll be playing on the December 22nd at Elysee Montmartre.

- Thank you for your time, any last words for the fans?
Yes I just want to thank everybody for supporting us, for coming at the shows, buying records, without fans we cannot do it, I know everybody says that but THANK YOU!

Interview done by Metzly

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