Interview с Candlemass : DARKSIDE.ru

llo, this is Mats from Candlemass!

Hi, Mats, nice to hear you!

Yeah, the same! How is the weather in Russia today? Is it good or not?

Oh, not at all! It is raining, it’s gloomy, nasty, and all the way disgusting. And I’m sitting here waiting for you to call. The atmosphere is quite right for the interview with Candlemass!

Bad, bad!! And we actually have sun in Sweden, in Stockholm today, and it’s very unusual as mostly we don’t have such weather. So the weather is good actually!

Oh, you make me envy you!

Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah! (laughs) Is it a web-site or a magazine?

It is a web-site. Darkside.ru.

Oh, great, are you located in Moscow or outside Russia?

We are in Moscow (mostly), but we have journalists writing for us in some other cities and even countries, so we are a kind of international team (laughs)

Oh, I was in Moscow a couple of years ago, and it’s great that I’m here and call you there.

I would like to start with your upcoming album. How would you describe your new album for a person who has never heard your music? Why a person should buy your record and listen to it?

It is not like, “you must listen this album, because this or that, because it is good or something…”. Well, of course it Is good, but only in case you are into Candlemass and Candlemass music. If you are not into Candlemass, then I don’t think that people may like the alb

um. Maybe they will. Our new album is more like Black Sabbath style, than we had before. This album is much better than the last one, because from now we are a five piece band. When the previous singer quit we began to search for a new one, we composed all the stuff, then we found Robert. We sent him all the stuff for him to record his parts, and we only met Robert when the album was already recorded. Now with “death Magic Doom” we did everything together, not the songs, but in general, and we had a great time together – the five of us. So it is a really good Candlemass album and if you like Candlemass and its albums you should listen to this album as well. And I would say even more – even if you don’t like Candlemass, you may also like the new album, because this is a combination of all the good in hard-rock – there are fast songs, there are very slow songs, it’s like harmony in it. I don’t think you can say this is a bad album, even if you maybe don’t like Candlemass. Therefore I think that you must listen to this album as it is a good heavy metal/hard rock album.

Could you characterize some tracks off the new album? Which one is more close to you in terms of lyrics, music, in soul?

The whole album contains so many difficult styles on it. I think the song “Hammer of Doom” is very very much like Candlemass. If you see what old Candlemass sound was like and this is what I like personally as well, because I’ve been in Candlemass for about 20 years now. I would also say that “If I Ever Die” is a quite fast one and is also a song which from my point of view is a very good one and it has that spirit of

Candlemass. But still I would say this s a “Hammer of Doom”, probably because of its riffs – I like to play it, it IS actually the hammer of doom – so doom and so heavy (laughs) That is one it’s a song which I would personally call the best on this album, for me it’s my favorite one.

It seems to me that “If I Ever Die” is a great up-tempo song, something in the vein of “Lucifer Rising”, no?

Yeah, it’s a great song to start the record with. I suppose it’s a kind of a tradition for Candlemass to begin album with up-tempo tracks – look at “Mirror, Mirror” of “Ancient Dreams”, “Black Dwarf” of the “white album”, “Emperor of the Void’ of the “King of the Grey Islands”.

Lyrically wise your songs are again dedicated to eternal life, demons, vampires, funerals, almighty devil, which we all know very well (laughs). Why did you once again resort to these themes – only because they are usually associated with doom metal or these themes are close to you?

Yeah, it is actually. I think it is the way we worked for all the twenty years. Even if there is a small difference lyrics wise it is always about those kinds of the things – depression and all that you know (laughs). Not that we are depressed people, no. No way, but it is the way Candlemass are and it is what doom is – it is very low, very dark, the dark side of everything. The music is quite dark and the lyrics should be dark. I mean I don’t think it would fit in if we had lyrics of happy themes with the melody and the music very happy altogether, or it the music was dark and the lyrics – light. I mean th

at Leif is doing the lyrics, but I like it very much, because it is the way Candlemass are. We are not that satanic band or anything like that, but more the mystic and depression one funerals and you have all that graveyards and the stuff. But I wouldn’t say that everything is very depressive. It is more like the explanation of how things are these days.

Thus can we say that your music is a kind of a mirror that reflects everything it sees, all the events happening nowadays?

Yeah, yeah, that’s the point! For example, the song “Black Dwarf” which is the first song off the “white album” (“Candlemass” (2005)) speaks about all the newspapers we have in Sweden and that write all the shit about people and make a big scene over everything. And it was also like dark side, you know, but from another angle – less mystic, but more realistic. There is a dark side of almost everything, but in the dark side you can always find a little light as well. This is the way the things really are, and I would compare it with the doom metal, yeah.

You’ve said that you are not so dark and depressive as your songs are. So in your private life you are all jolly old blades?

Yeah, a kind of! I think it is everywhere like that. I can compare it with theater – if a guy makes Shakespeare on stage and then goes home, it doesn’t mean that he is Shakespeare at home! (laughs) I like, I really like to play a heavy stuff, even if it is depressive, but you are not depressed and I am not depressed when I am doing it on stage. We are quite happy people with our lives and we CAN laugh, rea

lly (laughs). It is just the image that we have created and the image that we all like, you know. So I see it more like a theatric thing to do.

You claimed that this title “Death Magic Doom” fits your album perfectly. I can understand “doom”, but why this combination “death” and “magic”?

“Death and magic” deals with funerals and depression. Actually originally we had another name from the very beginning, the album was to be titled “Hammer of Doom”. We had to change it, because some festival, or probably not a festival, but some magazine, that was supposed to have that name for an issue in May – the same month when we appointed the release of our new album. So we decided, why should we release this album with this title the same month when some other magazine releases an issue with such a title? It was just stupid. We didn’t know why they came up with this idea and the same name, but the thing was that way and not some other, so we decided to change the title. Then we said, “Well, what other variants do we have?” We did have some other variants when we were thinking about the title back then. And we really had good ideas, and I think it was Leif who came up with this “death Magic Doom”. There were some other names proposed, for instance “Death Angel”, but everybody voted for “Death Magic Doom”. Because it was a good combination of what the album is.

The cover artwork of “Death Magic Doom” continued a series of very simple covers of Candlemass. Why did you covers become so minimizingly simple after the reunion? Why not trying something more sophisticated?

Well, we did it on our earlier releases, I think in the 80-s. Those days there were LPs, and it is a much bigger format that you can look at. But when the CDs came, and it came to making artworks for the “white album” and the “King of the Grey Islands” (2007) we liked to do it very simple. We had some ideas for the cover as well and we considered ideas of everybody, we also considered some more complicated covers the people came up with. But when this one came, we said, “This is fantastic!”, because we immediately saw the way you can do the T-shirts, the way you can do digipack and the CD stuff. It is simple and it is very clear you know. It leaps to your eye when you see it in the record stores.

I know that the artwork for “King of the Grey Islands” (2007) was made by Tomas Arfert. Why did you continue your collaboration with this artist this time with “Death Magic Doom”? I know that a lot of bands for example like to change their cover artwork style and consequently the artists, as they suppose that the band with every new album must bring something new, the style should be different so as not to repeat oneself…

It’s a very good question, really. We’ve had Tomas for many many years now, he did the “white album” for us, “King of the Grey Islands” (2007) as well, and now this new album. We always were very satisfied with him, and we didn’t even have an idea to try somebody else. Actually we did try someone else at one point, but it didn’t turn out good, so decided to continue with Tomas. It’s also very good and helpful for us that we also come up with some ideas to Tomas and he comes togethe

r with us and shows us some ideas. And then we choose the one that is good. The “white album” came out very good as well, but the cover was the simplest one can imagine – the cross on the white background, Candlemass logo. And then he came up with the black one, which also turned out very well. So we said, “We’ll continue with him”.

There exists a very common practice that some bands make a kind of competition among their fans for the best cover artwork and then they choose the winner and use his picture as a cover. Didn’t you try working in such a way? I think it can be rather promotive sometimes…

No, but we had some different ideas from ourselves. There were cases when Leif and I had different ideas on the same concepts, and there were something like three or four different ideas. This was the simplest one so we just took this one. There was no competition to the other ideas, because everybody was like, “Oh, I like this cover very very much”. There are no little things, little elements on this cover and things like that. But I understand your question, as sometimes one should look at very many ideas to choose the best. But here there is the other side of the coin, because if you look at too many variants… (thinks for a while)

…you get lost.

Exactly! I was thinking for the right word. Yes, you really get lost, because we are five in the band and this guy likes these two covers, and that guys likes some other covers, and o’k – we already have ten variants in the end! So what the fuck we should do with them?! And how can we come to some consensus? S

o it is easier to have two or three ideas to pick out from, so that all guys could easily say, “Hey! THAT is the best one! We take it!”

But some bands are rather inventive in this regard – they release a lot of versions of their album with all the variety of covers, these might be a limited digipack version, LP-version, it can be a single and what not…

Oh yeah! We are into it also! For the digipack we gonna have a brown paper with … How do you call it when you can feel the logo on it?

Texturized?

Yes! So we’re not gonna have quite the same cover for the single and vinyl for instance. Of course we could have tried a lot of different covers, but everybody liked this one immediately and everyone said it was perfect.

Leif once said that each Candlemass cover artwork reflects very well the essence of this or that album. Thus the “Candlemass” album was rather light and its cover is all of a white shade. “King of the Grey Islands” (2007) on the contrary was rather dark, gloomy and depressive and the cover work is the same. Hence I can make a conclusion that your new album combines in itself darkness “King of the Grey Islands” and all the light of “Candlemass”. Am I right?

Yes, totally, absolutely, 100%! Moreover if you asked me this question, I would answer in the same way. Because the “light album” is absolutely light – both in the music and the cover. As for “King of the Grey Islands” it is a black album, even when we only thinking of creating it we said, “Let’s make a really dark album” – and here

you have a dark album and dark songs. And if you come to compare both albums with the new one, you will see that it is a mixture of both, and you understand everything quite right and it is great to speak to you! (laughs) The production of the new album is much better, because we worked in a different way right now, but the thing is that the songs are very harmonized, very very harmonized plus there is a really heavy stuff in the veins of real Candlemass.

Why did you change the band’s classical logo after the album “Tales of Creation”? You returned to it only at the compilation “Demon’s Gate”… Was this change caused by the Messiah’s departure from the band or were there some other reasons?

Yes, it is true that we changed our logo after this album, and it was the time when Messiah was out. Then we made a “Live” (1990) album and then we came up with the “Chapter VI (1992)” album with a new singer, Thomas Vikström was on the vocals. I can’t actually remember 100 % why we changed the logo, but it was the combination of the new chapter of Candlemass, we changed the singer and we wanted to do something new. But Tomas did that artwork as well. That’s why we wanted a new logo as well, because that was a new chapter for Candlemass. And the “Demon’s Gate” was not a proper Candlemass compilation, that’s a bootleg CD, so that cover was noting that we had anything to do with. It was just the record company or the bootleggers who released that CD. The reason the took back the old logo was that on the “white album” we had a reunion. It was like, “O’k, now Candlemass is back with the original members, so we t

ake back the original look”. So there was no doubt about was to do, it was like, “Of course, we must do that!” We still use the same logo and I think it is a good idea. I think it was Messiah at the beginning, it we wanted him back in the band, we must return the old logo. And none of us actually objected. We said, “Of course, we’ll get the old logo back!”

You said the world “chapter”. Do you chapter the history of Candlemass into two periods – with Messiah and without him?

I would say of course the Messiah period was the biggest period in Candlemass, because of all the albums we did. He was a real frontman, very profound. But still I would say that Candlemass has more periods, because Leif did a couple of albums by his own, after “Chapter VI” – there were just Leif and some other guys who were about to be crocked later. But still I have a lot of friends that say that “Chapter VI” is a brilliant album. But nevertheless I would say that the original Candlemass with Messiah and the Candlemass with Robert is my two Candlemass. Tomas on “Chapter VI” of course was also good, but we didn’t good any gigs at that time, we did two shows. And now we give concerts, we have two albums with Robert, and he is very much involved in a band.

Leif once said, that since Messiah left the band the atmosphere inside the group became better, it improved. What exactly changed in the band and is there anything new that Robert brought to your band?

Yes, of course, Robert brought very many things to the band, but the biggest difference was that before Messiah left or, as we

call it, before we put him out of the band, we were four against one actually. There were we – Leif (Edling, bass – ed.), me, Lars (Johansson, lead guitars – ed.) and Jan (Lindh, drums, percussion – ed.) and there was Messiah as the other camp. But there was always his opinion in the end, because he used to say, “O’k, if we don’t do it as I see it, as I want, then I am gonna quit the band”, “If you don’t do this, I’m gonna quit the band”... We heard it so many times, and the last quarrel with him ended like, “All right, you may quit if you wanna to, we’re not gonna listen to it anymore”. And we knew that this’s gonna be a problem for us, because he was a big part of Candlemass for the fans side, but for the friendly side he was not a big part of the band. I mean that the four of us have always been friends, and we had just to fight four against one at that time and we just said, “O’k, either you quit the band and we put Candlemass to the grave, or you quit and we continue.” We all decided to continue the band. Leif’s songs are very good, and that album was actually made for Messiah from the beginning. But when we found Robert, that was exactly the voice we wanted to continue Candlemass with. We didn’t want to compare him with Messiah on stage, or anything – we didn’t want a new Messiah. I mean when we were looking for a new singer everybody (about 90 %) was trying to be Messiah or to copy Messiah. And we didn’t want that. We wanted something new. And as it comes to the friendly side – Robert put so much into us – even taking into consideration that he lives in Texas and we live in Sweden, and we don’t talk to each other every day, but when we get ou

t and play he takes everything with fun, he is a easy-going person. We have five pieces in the band and he is one of us five – even if he lives in Texas and we – in Sweden. And every time we speak about plans and we talk about ideas – it’s no problem. He is into these things, he doesn’t argue, he doesn’t say “everything is stupid” and stuff like that. The thing is it is much easier for us to work in a band now, even if people think, “Oh, we miss Messiah, we miss Messiah”, yeah – this is true from the fans’ point of view, but they also must realize that we have to work in a band – five of us – and it’s much easier now. Of course he puts much into the friendly side of the band. We all have different lives – he lives in Texas and we live in Sweden, but we are closer with him, than we were with Messiah.

In what way did your work change after Robert came to your band. I mean you said that you almost recorded the previous album when you met Robert in person.

Robert has a wide range voice, and I assume that it’s easier for Leif to write songs for him as he can sing almost everything. Robert is very manifold and versatile. Moreover if we compare songs when they were just demos with the songs with Robert’s vocals, you’ll see that it makes a great difference as Robert contributes greatly to the vocal parts.

Sorry for asking, but not long ago you were accused of theft on a large scale. How did it happen that your name was involved into this dirty case?

First of all I have nothing to do with it. Hopefully this trial and investigation won’t interfere with our plans. The final trial is set on September, so everything will be decided then. And before this we have some plans about summer festivals.

I hear about “Candlemass Chronicles”. Whose idea was it and do you participate?

I haven’t got a part in it. It’s an initiative by some big Candlemass fans that want to do a newspaper / magazine-like thing about our albums. The first one these guys did is about ‘From the 13th Sun’ and they asked me about 60 questions about this album. It’s really a fanzine type of thing. You know back in the 70’s and 80’s you had loads of fanzines about bands and most of the time a band even wasn’t involved at all. It was just fans interviewing other fans about a particular band. Writing their own articles and stuff. You know, it’s on that level. It’s something that can be done, so if fans want to do some kind of magazine about Candlemass they should do it. I guess it’s a cool initiative.

Your words to your Russian fans…

I’m looking forward to seeing all of you at our concerts!! Thank you for your support!!

Interview by Ksenia “Wolfin” Khorina
6 апр 2009 the End


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LOR 6 апр 2009, 23:49	Да,классно.Но не понятно почему "первой работе, целиком записанной с новым вокалистом Robert’ом Lowe. " А как же "King..."? Или это опечатка?
Wolfin 7 апр 2009, 10:05	Нет, это не опечатка. “King of the Grey Islands” записывался дистанционно, И музыканты встретились с Робертом вживую уже после записи альбома. А новый записывался уже непосредственно с Робертом
LOR 7 апр 2009, 10:15	А, в этом смысле.Тогда понятно.
Memento_Mary 7 июн 2009, 02:39	"мы в итоге просто поставили его перед выбором, «либо ты объявляешь о распаде группы, и Candlemass отправляется в могилу, либо ты уходишь, а мы продолжаем играть». И все решили продолжить играть." - я бы сказала, что Мессия поступил более чем великодушно по отношению к коллегам и поклонникам, не позволив отправить Candlemass в могилу. Я глубоко уважаю Роберта Лоу и его работу в Solitude Aeturnus, но не могу не признать, что совместно с Candlemass они не сделали ничего, что хоть немного приближалось бы к классическим альбомам с Мессией. И, полагаю, тут проблема не только и не столько в Лоу. Просто Лейфу с чего-то захотелось играть нудный саббатоподобный стоунер, о чем его, собственно, никто не просил.
Ivan71 6 июн 2012, 00:57	Какой нафиг стоунер??? Стоунер был в 98-99 годах. Кендл 2005-2012 годов это чистая классика дума в новом исполнении. Да и хорошо что выгнали зажравшегося Мессию (тем более что голос уже был не очень на альбоме 2005 года). А Роберт как раз отлично подходит к группе, альбомы "Death Magic Doom" и "Psalms For The Dead" так вообще шедевры, жаль что он ушел, я бы хотел его увидеть на предстоящих концертах Candlemass.
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Candlemass

Light in the dark side

LOR

Wolfin

LOR

Memento_Mary

Ivan71