Lake Of Tears
Give The New Record A Chance

13.05.2011

It was quiet in the Lake Of Tears for quite a long time. In the past two to three years this Swedish doom / gothic metal band was rarely seen outside their home country, but even when it was, gigs basically consisted of tried and tested material. But now we hear from them nearly every day – a new album called “Illwill” was released in April, the Russian tour is about to start in a few days, and the band’s mastermind Daniel Brennare was ready to answer any questions until late at night… It seems like a new interesting and productive era is beginning for the band. But let’s see what it brings!

It took you about four years to record “Illwill”. Why did you need so much time to do it?

Oh, what can I say? Actually there are a number of reasons. But I think one of the most important reasons is that we’d done a couple of records already and so we didn’t feel like it was necessary to put out the record very fast. We wanted to take our time and do it when we feel like doing it. And we had so many other things to do, from time to time there was some stuff going on and there were things we had to do… And music should be fun, you should do it on your own terms. So that’s one of the main reasons. We didn’t want to produce something just because we had to. We wanted to let it come when it was ready to come.

So it wasn’t a kind of crisis when you couldn’t write anything, neither was it because you had no time, but it was basically because you had no inspiration, right?

No, actually not. Not more than it used to be before. I mean we’ve always been kind of slow… So it wasn’t like a crisis. Just some other stuff going on in our lives was taking up time and pushing the album forward a bit. The main reason is that, as I mentioned, we wanted it to come when we were ready for it and felt like doing it.

As far as I understand you’re quite busy people and have other jobs apart from being musicians. Does your “normal job” take all your time and leave you nothing but nights and weekends to create music?

Yes, sometimes it’s really difficult to find time, because we have families and jobs and studies, so it’s difficult for as to be away and have other things to do. So of course we can’t always find time to make music. We live in different towns also, so sometimes it’s difficult just to get together and rehearse. And time goes by, and we get more and more stuff to do… And it becomes harder and harder to find time to play music.

Сan you say what you do apart from being a musician, or is it a top secret?

No, it’s not a secret. I was working in different jobs, I was working in the IT business, and nowadays my title is senior consultant, this sounds like I'm an old guy. (laughs) But I work mainly with project management and also do some programming and stuff. I have a lot of things to do there and a lot of travels also…

Isn’t it a problem for you to be a businessman on one side and a creative person, a musician on the other side?

Yes, I thought about this thing a lot… But I think these two sides are just different parts of my life. I mean, this programming, logical, mathematical side and this creative side can be combined. But of course sometimes there can be a contradiction between them, but sometimes it feels like they are almost the same things. It’s hard to explain it but there’s some connection between them as well, I think. At least for me, I don’t know how it is for other people.

Every time a musician is asked about his new album he says it’s the best one he’s recorded so far. So I’m sure that you consider “Illwill” to be your best album at this point. But can you say why it’s better than your previous albums?

(laughs) I guess, because this record is explaining what we feel like nowadays. I don’t know if a “monument” is a right word, but it’s a description of what we’ve been going through in our lives these last years before we recorded it. So that’s probably why we’re thinking that it’s our best album right now. It describes what we are right now. I mean back in 1995 we were different people and we had so many experiences since then, so now we feel other emotions and we want to describe them in another way.

I was a bit surprised to read that you consider your new album to have a vibe of punk music. You’ve been labeled doom metal, gothic metal, progressive metal and so on, but never “punk”. Does it mean that you have change your style and sound so much, and where does this vibe of punk actually come from?

Oh, where should I start… When we started, many years ago… I remember that when we started to listen to this kind of music like metal and rock music we also used to listen to punk and thrash and some heavier stuff. And we’ve been listening to this like 20 years, maybe more. So it’s a very natural part of us, all this punk and thrash and black metal music. But we never put so much of it into our own music before. These last years, three or four years, we started to listen to this kind of music a little bit more again. So in our rehearsing room nowadays we mostly listen to some punk bands and also to quite a lot of black metal and thrash. I don’t know why we started to listen to this style of music a little bit more again… But we felt like going it. And we wanted to do something like that with our music as well.

Punk music is often regarded as something for younger people. Didn’t you think that that kind of sound may attract a bit more new and younger fans to your music?

No, actually not. We didn’t think about getting any new fans or something like this. I think if we would have thought like that we’d probably tried to make it more commercial in some way. We did this record very much for our own tastes, because this is what we wanted to do. So I’m very happy if you like it, but if you don’t like it… what can I say? We like it. We’ve been playing music for so many years, we went through ups and downs, but if you’re still together, it has to be fun playing music together and there has to be a sort of chemistry, you have to enjoy it. We don’t want to feel any pressure from record companies or fans or whatever. You have to find this basic thing, it’s all about friendship you have – you know that you have it, because you started with someone and you’re still with them. And to have this is very important if you want to keep on doing it, because it’s fun and not because it’s some kind of business.

Sure… Okay, let’s talk now about the concept of the album. What is the story you want to tell your fans this time? Is it a kind of fantasy story or is it something from your real life you wanted to share with your fans?

Well, where should I start with this… Let me say that this is not a fantasy story. This is a very true and pure record both music-wise and lyric-wise. As I said before it describes what we’ve been going through last years. For me most of the songs are very much about frustration, about life and death and anger. Three years ago I got ill and I went to the hospital because it got worse and worse. They put me there and in a couple of days I was through some tests and the doctor came to me and said, “I’m sorry to say this but you have something called Hairy cell leukemia”. And this is something we’re telling about on this record. That’s why there’s a lot of frustration. When they told me this my whole life went by in my head, I thought I was probably going to die, then you go there and dream all kinds of shit. Now that the first rush you get when you hear this is really strange. Then I was in hospital for several weeks isolated in a small room, with very high fever reflecting about life and death. Sometimes I was in more “waken” moments and just feeling terrible and sometimes I was very feverish. So much of the frustration is coming from there. Though from the beginning we were not the happiest people in the world either…

Oh my… Well, I hope that everything is okay now…

Yeah, everything is okay, just a couple of really hard months. Today medicine can fight this, but they take all your immunity system down and to build it up again you have to be isolated in a small room… And I hate needles and stuff and they come with these needles all the time… That’s terrible stuff.

Oh, it’s really difficult to discuss your new album after a story like that…

I must say that I didn’t really want to talk about this stuff, these kind of private things, but I think it’s actually good to say this, because I’ve read and I’ve heard that people were wondering why I would change our style and why we have these strange lyrics, because they are more used to Lake of Tears writing some romantic and fantasy lyrics. And I feel like I have to explain it somehow, because as I mentioned before, it’s a really honest record.

I’m sure that now your fans will understand everything… Is it true that there’s gonna be a video for one of your songs?

Yeah, it’s true. I think it will be out next week. This video is from a guy who did a Swedish movie and he asked if he could have one of our songs in it, so there are some clips from that movie. The film is called “Jägare”, it means “the hunter”. It’s quite a weird story about a guy who is paid by the government to go out and kill people who live in the streets.

Some years ago you announced that Lake of Tears wouldn’t exist anymore, but after that you came together once again and released successful albums. Do you think that sometimes a band may need to have a break like that to get some fresh ideas and find a new direction?

Yes, I think it was really important for us. As I said before it’s really important to get back this feeling, this drive you had when you really enjoyed being with these people and playing music and creating things together. I mean back in 1999 when we decided to… I don’t know if “split up” is a right word, but we decided to take a break at least, it was so intense, it was like “you have to make a new record, you have to put out a new song, to play live”… And again there was a record company that was not doing us so much good anymore. And it was more pressure than enjoying these things. I guess then we were too inexperienced and we couldn’t cope with all that. So we went separate ways and tried to go on with our lives and find another enjoyment in life, to move in other towns, to find other jobs and so on. We needed something to give us more energy, because all this started to take too much energy from us… So we had a break for I guess four years. But you see, now with our latest record it also took us four years, but this time… We have learned, so we didn’t feel like we needed to split up and take a break, we could do the band and do it on our terms. Like do the shows that we can do without pressure and also rehearse and so on. You can handle all this if you want.

So it means that you won’t need this kind of break in future, right?

Well, probably we will, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll need to get inspiration from somewhere. I mean, the inspiration is probably there always… Mostly people can get inspiration from anything, you can watch a tree or you can watch people walk or watch a movie or you can go to other countries. You can do all this all the time, but probably you’re not in right mood to take it in all the time. Just to find this thing, just to be in the mood is difficult. It’s a tricky balance I guess. If you feel too much pressure you can’t do anything, but at the same time if you don’t feel any pressure, in our case it would take us ten years or something to do another record.

If you still wanted to create music after the split up with other members of Lake of Tears, why couldn’t you form another band and not bring this one back to life?

Oh, I don’t know… I actually tried to do some things with some other people from time to time… not too much but a little bit, when it felt right to do it. But somehow for me it’s still so comfortable – I don’t know actually if it’s a right thing or not – to tour with this consolation. We know each other… You know, when you meet some people that you really enjoy being with, you want to be with them. It’s like man-and-woman relationship. If you fall in love with someone, you can be… some people can be in love for the rest of their lives, if they find the right person. It’s some kind of good relationship with chemistry.

Being a songwriter haven’t you ever thought of not performing your music by yourself but to give your songs to somebody else to sing and play?

Actually we had some female vocals in some of our songs and did some songs with other people also, with other vocalists and with other people playing on our records… So I don’t think it’s really a problem for me to do it in that way. But still most of the music that I write, I want to put some part of me into it. Today in the music business with all this Idol stuff that you see on your TV, it’s like some songwriters or some producers write music for a known singer… But it probably depends on what you want to come out of it in the end. If you want some radio music – and the majority of people listen to it – it’s okay. But I think emotion-wise it should be not produced but created. But of course if I write a song and feel that it would sound better with another singer, than why not? If the right moment comes up… I can’t say “no” before a moment comes up.

Johan Oudhuis said in one of his interviews that in the beginning of your career you didn’t want to be a singer. Is it so and what made you accept this role in the band?

(laughs) Yes, it’s actually true. I remember that when we started we booked some time to record our demo and it was like three or four weeks before the recording time and we still couldn’t find a singer. We were asking around in our town, we asked singers from older bands, but nobody wanted to sing with us. So we decided that I should sing because I was probably the one who was not the best one in singing but the least bad. So I had to sing and it was actually a terrible experience there in the studio in front of the microphone. I had to do some lyrics also before going there and singing… That’s how it started.

But then you got into it, right?

No, I can’t say this. Actually every time we’re about to do a new record I’m a bit nervous about my singing, because when I hear other good singers I always believe that they know what they are doing, they can sing all these notes like A,B,C and so on. But it’s not my thing, I just go in there and try to put emotion into it. You know, when the guy behind the mixing board says “no-no, you have to go half a note up there” – “Oh, how do I do that?”  I ask him. I mean I’m not that “mathematical” singer, I just try to sing.

Are you still going to write a book you wanted to write some time ago?

Yeah, I had some plans. I’ve been thinking about it for many years and I actually started and wrote some phrases, but that was many years ago and I guess right now I’m not in the mood for this. But then in future, who knows… Probably I would like to write it, because I really respect those people who can write books. There’s something that you have to have inside you to be able to write a book. But when I think about it there’re so many questions… I don’t know how I should write a book, how I should start and what to do when I have page 1, and when I get to page 76, what I should do with the story then… But of course it would be quite impressive for myself if I could write a book.

What kind of book do you want to write?

Well, the book I started to write was more like a children’s book. Not for small children, but more into that direction. It was a kind of fantasy. I started with a guy sitting under a tree when he’s out from school in the summer and there’s a blackbird singing and he can understand the words and he gets rolled into this world, where this bird was from and there’re some strange creatures… I guess that kind of fantasy story has already been done, but I was quite into it.

Well, is it going to be a kind of “dark fantasy”? I think a book by a person like you should be morbid in a way…

(laughs) Oh, at first let’s see if there would ever be a book… But I’m quite sure that if there would be a book it will probably express what people would call the darker side. I mean for me this is how I am. I guess compared to other people I probably have a pessimistic view of life in some way. But some people listen to Britney Spears and that’s not what I’m enjoying.

As far as I know you’re quite into philosophy. Do you have any philosophy of your own life, a kind of credo? Or are you just interested in reading some other people’s philosophical books and not trying to form your own concepts?

It depends on how you define philosophy… When I heard for the first time a metal record it was like finding something that was a part of me, like coming home. I felt like, “Wow, this is for me, I enjoy it!” and nobody else among my friends liked it. And philosophy started for me in quite the same way. I got a book by Bryan Magee for Christmas, it was many years ago. I read it through and it was once again like coming home, because he was thinking and describing things in a way that I was thinking also. I felt like nobody shared my views and now I found a guy who was thinking in the same direction. And when I read the book I learned the word – because he called it “philosophy”. He also wrote about other philosophers like Schopenhauer and Kant. So I realized, “Oh, this is philosophy, this is what it’s called”. Then I bought some books and read some philosophers and I went to study philosophy at a university for a while. After a while I got really bored with it, because I felt like the philosophy that I started with was without these boundaries. When we studied it, it was like step one, step two and so on. And I felt like philosophy is out of these steps.

Can I ask you a personal question? Are you religious?

No, I’m not religious. Religion is not my thing, because if you’re religious you think, “my religion is the best and I’m good” and then you start the war with another guy who has another religion and who also wakes up in the morning thinking that he’s good because he does what his religion tells him to do. And if you want to escape from confronting another person you need no religion. I don’t know if I have something like a guideline, but when I think about myself and see my personality and how I’m reacting to the world and people, I would say that I would like to be a good person and do good things, but at the same time I have some negative attitude towards the world. But then at the same time sometimes I think too good about people. After a while you realize that you can not say that people are bad, because they think that they are good from their perspective, I guess they don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Oh, today I’m gonna do bad stuff”, but when you see them interact with other people, you see that other people are getting hurt in many ways by them. I think this person has no empathy, he can’t see that. I can’t call it “philosophy”, but I’ve been reflecting a lot about that.

I was really impressed when I read somewhere that when asked about your greatest fears you said “time and space”. What’s wrong with them? Why are you afraid of them?

Oh, you know, sometimes you can be afraid to live. You can be more afraid to live than to die, because when you live you know that you must do it some way – but how? I mean, you wake up and go outdoors and there’s a life you have to live. And you ask yourself, “How do I live it? What should I do? In which direction should I go? Where should I put my right foot and then my left foot?” And when you start to think about it, it gets a little bit frightening. That’s what I meant.

In the end of our interview I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about Russia, as far as you’re going to come over here just in few days. It seems like you’re really welcome here in Russia. Do you feel like there’s a special bond between your Russian fans and you?

I think it started way back in the 1990s when Russia was for us like a country… I mean, of course we heard about it and knew about it, but not many people had been there. It was far to the east and we didn’t know much of what was happening there and what kind of music you guys were listening to at the time… And then somewhere in the mid-1990s we started to receive fan-mails from over there and we felt like people in Russia liked us though they knew about us somehow, not through media. We could feel how strong this thing was when we got there – I don’t know if they were talking about us on the radio or something, but I got the impression that many things were going like from mouth to mouth. That was really special and of course we got really great experience when we were there. A lot of emotional people – not only for the music, but for the whole concept. So yes, Russian fans are special, though when it comes to people there are special people in every country.

Are you already planning set-lists for your upcoming shows in Russia? What is it you think your Russian fans should definitely hear live?

Of course we are. I think this weekend we’ll have our final rehearsals to go through the stuff. Of course we’d like to play some songs from the new record, because what we wanted to achieve with the new record is to have more new songs in our live shows as well. For so many years we’ve been playing something that we recorded long ago all the time. So of course we want to change something. But still we know that in Russia songs like “Forever Autumn” are well liked and of course we’ll play them as well. Every band that has been playing for so many years has some songs that they play all the time, because when you go on stage you play for your audience. When you do a record, you do it for yourself, but when you play live, you have to play for your audience.

You’re going to have a meet and greet with your fans here in Moscow. Are you looking forward to meet your fans and do you want to ask them then what they think about your new record?

Yes, of course! I like reading reviews on our new records and we’re very interested in reading or hearing what other people think, how they feel about our record. It’s very important! If you hear a lot of negative stuff you cannot think of it too much, because our music is coming from us and it’s for us. But it’s fantastic if it’s for other people as well. And if we’re talking about this meet and greet thing, I think that I could spend several weeks just meeting people and discussing our music. Because then I could have a real conversation. Actually it’s too bad that you have one hour and you have to meet a lot of people, so you can’t actually have a conversation with all of them. Otherwise I’d love to talk to them. And I think that people who really appreciate music that I write must be really interesting for me to discuss things with them, because they have to have something in common with me.

Well, it’s time to say that if you want tell your Russian fans something before you come here, you have a nice opportunity to do it right now…

(laughs) Oh, it’s always a kind of embarrassing… Well, I hope that you will listen to our record and show up at our shows and one thing that I want to say about the new record is: you have to listen to it more than once. I heard from several people that the first time they heard it they didn’t like it, because it’s totally different from all Lake of Tears records, but then they listened to it for the second and the third time and started to love it. So I’d like to say: listen to the record, give it a chance and then come to see us play live and I’m quite sure that we’ll do one of our best shows, because we have really great energy in the band now and also with our new guitarist Fredrik – though he’s not that new anymore… but he also gives us a lot of energy especially during live shows. So… And I think we should drink a bit of vodka all together!

Lake Of Tears on the Internet: http://www.lakeoftears.net

Special thanks to Eugene Silin (Alive Concerts) for arranging this interview

Ksenia Artamonova
May 5, 2011
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