Trail Of Tears
Here For Something Real

08.09.2007

Together with Tristania and Sirenia, Trail of Tears belongs to the movement of Norwegian bands that combine symphonic sounds with the roar of metal guitars, opera singing with mighty grunts. Among its fans are both gothic metal lovers and followers of more extreme styles, such as death metal. Over 10 years of its existence, Trail Of Tears have released five high-quality albums and lived through a multitude of line-up changes that changed their sound quite a lot, but singer and main songwriter Ronny Thorsen’s passion for music still remains the same. Now that the situation in the band has stabilized a bit, the only original member of Trail Of Tears has answered a few questions by Headbanger.ru.

What’s the current situation in the band? You have recently put new tour dates on your website but there’s still no news about the musicians who will play in Trail of Tears. As we know, 4 band members walked out in 2006…

The line-up is complete and things are great at the moment, in fact we just returned from The Netherlands after doing the first few shows with the new line-up. We had a blast and things are working out fine both musically as well as socially. The reason why we haven’t made the line-up official until now is simply because we wanted to make sure that this is solid enough and that the right people are on board. We are currently experiencing some problems with our official site trailoftears.no but for all the latest news and updates you can check our Myspace site at www.myspace.com/trailoftearsmetal
 
Did Cathrine Paulsen join the band on a permanent basis? How did it happen? Can it mean that Trail of Tears are still going to continue in 2008, after the American tour also?

Yes, Cathrine is back on a permanent basis! Just to make it perfectly clear right now: Trail of Tears will of course continue beyond the North American tour. I`m not working my ass off and putting together a new line-up for the sole purpose of doing a handful of shows, we are in this for the long run! We have a new offer from Napalm Records as well as several other labels and will sign a new deal shortly. I contacted Cathrine shortly after the departure of the former members and at first I only wanted to talk with her and check out the vibes. Turned out fast that they were really good and a co-operation became clear.    

Why did Cathrine leave the band in 2003? Were there her personal reasons or was it the band’s decision to switch mostly to male vocals?

It was a combination of a lot of things. First of all, Cathrine was very young when she joined the band the first time and thus she was a completely different person then what the case is now. It was hard for her to accept some of the things that come with the job if you can put it like that. A lot of pressure and so on combined with quite intense touring led to her departure. She is five years older now, more mature, grown-up and reflective. Looking back it was of course wrong of the band to ignore female vocals on the “Free Fall into Fear” album (2005) but it was kind of inevitable back then and as long as we can take lesson of it then it’s fine.    

What are your relationships now with former members – Terje, Frank, Kjetil, Runar, Kjell, Jonathan and Helena? Do you keep in touch?

Helena has been living in Holland for many years and it’s been ages since I met her. I see Kjetil from time to time as he is living in the same city as me and there is a friendly atmosphere between the two of us I would say. As for the rest there doesn’t exist any relationship anymore, sadly to say.

What is Helena doing after parting ways with Trail of Tears?

Well, like I mentioned I haven’t had so much contact with her after she was fired from Trail Of Tears. She moved to Holland not long after and has been working on music and different Dutch musicians, among others in Imperia and Angel.  

Do you keep any connection with fans in any way? What was their reaction to band’s split in 2006?

I do my very best to keep a good relationship with the fans as without them the band or myself wouldn’t be worth shit. I am active on MySpace and correspond with a lot of people there, I always answer messages and e-mails and during tours and shows I always try to meet people, hang out in the venues, talk with people at the merch stand, invite people for a beer or other things that can be meaningful.
   
You official website seems to be under construction, there are only news and discography pages working. When is it going to provide more information on the band?

Yeah, I already touched this and as I mentioned we have had, and still have some problems related to the site. All I can do is apologize for the lack of updates. We had server problems for a while, then a webmaster who completely disappeared for a long time, we were not provided with the necessary files and programs to make the updates ourselves and so on and so forth. We are working on it as good and as fast as possible and in the meantime our official MySpace site is a better source of information.

Let’s turn to the new album ‘Existentia’. Why did you name it so, and what are the main ideas the title bears?

“Existentia” is what you can call a summary of the lyrics. We are not talking about a concept album but like always with my lyrics there are subjects or topics that appear in more than one song. A lot of the lyrics deal with existential questions and matters, contrasts, the ups and downs, how people react differently to the same things and how everything that you encounter in your everyday life have some kind of effect on your continued existence. It is a very vast topic and one that can be interpreted in several ways.    

Who wrote music and lyrics for the record? What are your sources of inspiration?

When it comes to the music it is what you can call a band effort, namely that most of the members contributed in one way or another. Most of the songs are results of individual ideas recorded at home and worked upon collectively by the whole band. As for the lyrics and vocal related things like arrangements and melodies I would say that Kjetil wrote about 20 % of that while I did the rest.

Was it your first recording in Sound Suite Studio in Marseilles? What were the good points of recording there, so far from your homeland?

No, this was the second Trail of Tears album recorded in Sound Suite, we also did the “A New Dimension of Might” album (2002) at the same studio and personally I had my first session there in 2001 when I did the vocals for Tristania`s “World of Glass”. It is a great studio and I love working with Terje Refsns who always finds a way to get the best out of me. The best thing about recording in Sound Suite though is that you can forget about all other aspects of your life for as long as the recording takes, forget about your routines at home, disturbing factors and only concentrate 100% on doing the best album possible. It is also a very creative environment with beautiful scenery and great features.  

Do you always come to the studio fully ready to record, with absolutely finished songs? Or do you integrate new ideas appearing during the recordings, change songs while recording?

Both. I like to keep all possibilities open and if an idea comes up which will benefit the song and make it better that we will change it of course. Nothing is set in stone when we enter the studio but at the same time it is important to have most of the structures at least completed, we are not like Metallica who can go into the studio and actually make an album there. It costs money so we like to be prepared but somehow we always end up changing things while working with Terje Refsnes and that is some of the most fun things for me, just trying out things on impulse or random and to find out that it works out for the better!  

How did you get Emmanuelle Zoldan (Sirenia, Penumbra) to sing on the album?

Emmanuelle came into the process towards the end of the recordings. Originally we wanted to incorporate more choirs on the album but as the recordings developed we came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t benefit the result and made a decision to include more female vocals instead so our producer suggested Emmanuelle and I invited her to the studio to see what she could contribute with. I understood immediately that she was exactly what the songs needed and from there it all went really fast. I wrote her lyrics and she spent a couple of afternoons laying down the vocals.   

Are you friends with Carpathian Forest and Green Carnation musicians? They sometimes used to take part in your records.

Well, a lot of the members of those bands live in the same town as me so I see them often and some of them are good friends. However it is only Kjetil who has participated in recordings with the band, while Gøran Bomann (guitarist of Carpathian Forest and Green Carnation – ed.) was our session guitarist live for a short time. As for Bernt Moen (keyboards), I think he was involved with Green Carnation some years ago but not while recording the “Existentia” album.

At the beginning of your career you were called Natt and played covers of other bands? Which bands did you cover?

At the time when we took the Natt name we had already started writing our own material but we did start out playing covers before that time. It started out with Sepultura and Pantera songs and evolved into heavier stuff like Dismember, Morbid Angel and Edge of Sanity before starting to create our own stuff.

What music did you grow up on and how did you come to the point of being a musician?

I got into music at a very early age, probably around 6-7 years old and I can blame my father for that. (laughs) He is an old rocker and always played stuff like Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Thin Lizzy and so on. I moved on to Wasp, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne and stuff like that and eventually started listening to more extreme stuff like death and black metal. I owe a lot to people like David Vincent (singer and bassist of Morbid Angel – ed.) and especially Dan Swanø who really made me want to pursue a career of my own.

If you have side projects, please tell us about them briefly. Does music allow you to earn a living or do you have a day-job?

I don’t have any side-projects at the moment, simply because Trail Of Tears has taken up all my time for the last year or so. It has been a lot of work to get the band up and running again but I always keep the door open for potential projects in the future. I guess you could say that being a musician in this genre is more a matter of surviving that actually making a good living, it’s hard but not completely impossible. Bands nowadays make very little money from record sales so it’s very important to stay active on the live circuit. Playing live and selling merchandise are the two most important sources of income for metal musicians today.

Norway here seems to be known mostly for its black metal bands. But can you say what music is much in demand in Norway nowadays no matter if it’s brutal styles or something “lighter”?

To be honest I think that is a thing of the past. It is not only black metal bands who enjoy success nowadays but metal in general is still not a widely accepted style of music in Norway and again that is why VERY few Norwegian bands have a strong following in Norway. If you look at Finland for example, there are metal bands all over the place and in the charts which would never happen in Norway. Almost all Norwegian bands have the majority of followers and fans in other countries.

Well, what kind of future do you see now for Trail of Tears?

I`m very optimistic about the future at the moment. I have been working hard to make this work and we have a lot of things planned and confirmed already. There are several offers on the table from different record labels, we have a lot of shows coming up and more will be added soon. I`m very excited to finally work with people who are dedicated to playing live and to make this band much more active when it comes to touring. That is what I have wanted to do for a long time and now it is finally possible to accept the offers at hand. As I said, this is something that we are in for in the long run and I`m pleased and content looking at the future!   

If you’d like to add anything for the fans please do it here. Thanks a lot for your time.

Cheers and thanks for your support, it is much appreciated! Hopefully we will make it to Russia in the near future and in the meantime check out “Existentia” and continue to support quality music and metal!

Trail Of Tears on the Internet: http://www.trailoftears.no

Special thanks to Alexei “KIDd” Kuzovlev (Irond Records) for arranging this interview

Anna Babicheva
September 3, 2007
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