Therion
Upward Spiral

21.06.2013

*** ARCHIVE ITEM - DATED 2004 *** One of the most original composers of our time, the self-proclaimed modern-day Stravinsky, is back with two new albums at the same time! The CDs, called "Lemuria" and "Sirius B", will be released both separately and in a double package, and seem to be a new step up in Therion's everlasting evolution. It's unbelievable how long a way Christofer Jonsson has covered since the release of his first album back in 1991, and how his music metamorphosed and developed from brutal death metal to symphonic metal with an unrivalled integration of classical instruments and choirs… Hey, this sounds like a press release, isn't it? Let's rather allow Christofer to do the talking.  

(EDITOR'S NOTE - THE YEAR 2013: Our first anniversary year is now over, but we keep on putting up archive items that our authors penned before starting to write for HeadBanger.ru. We polled the visitors of our Vkontakte page, and poll results clearly show that these old interviews are still of interest to the readers and they want these texts to be available again to the general public. As to ourselves, this is a good opportunity to re-live some of the great moments of our careers as journalists, and we are naturally eager to share them with you...)

You are about to release two albums simultaneously - "Lemuria" and "Sirius B". What is the format of this release? As far as I understand, they will come out separately and then again as a double CD. Is that correct?

It's the opposite. The double CD will come out first, and then they will be separated. The purpose is that the fans can buy them for a cheaper price when they first come out. These are two different records, but we thought that the loyal fans that we had over the years will always buy our albums as quick as possible, and we should give them something special back. In Russia there will be a special edition anyway, because it's licensed, and I don't know exactly how that's gonna look like, but I think that's gonna be the same as in Europe - a nice looking digipack with a different booklet and everything. (Actually it was the contrary, the two CDs have so far only been issued separately - ed.)

The first thing that surprised me on "Lemuria" is the return of growling vocals. Why did you decide to bring it back? Who is doing it? 

It's actually me doing it. I have never had anything in principle against doing it, before it just never fitted to any song. However the first track on the record, "Typhon", was written by Christian (Niemann, guitarist), and I was supposed to orchestrate it and write vocal melodies for his song. I didn't come up with any ideas for melodies in the chorus of that song, because it's not very melodic, the riff doesn't really incite any melodies, so I ended up having really cool ideas for rhythmics, but not really for the melodies. And I thought, "Why not use death metal vocals?" That very rhythm makes it possible to do a lot of catchy things with it, but at the same time, it lacks some melodies, so we just tried it, and I liked that song, it was a cool thing. We also have gruntings in "Three Ships Of Berik" because of the similar reason. I actually had melodies for that, but I wasn't happy with them, so I thought, "Well, why not try to do the same thing here?"

In an interview several years ago you said that in Therion you destroyed the concept of the lead singer. What was the purpose of doing it? Were you uncomfortable with the role of the lead singer? 

I never really saw myself as a singer, I always thought of myself as a singing guitar player. In many ways it was a relief to stop singing. It just developed naturally with my songwriting, I started to write songs that have opera choirs, opera soloists, etc. There was no space for my singing.

You have changed two drummers over the past couple of years. Who is drumming in the band at the moment?

He's called Petter Karlsson, and he didn't play in any famous bands before. The problem with the drummer that we had on the record was that he did a very good job on the record, and we would have been really happy to continue with him, but he's very impatient to go on tour and have different projects, and Therion is the band that is taking a real lot of time. When he joined the band, it was six months until we did one festival, and that was the only thing that we did in the entire summer. And then there were another six months until we started the album recording. The album recording was stretched over 11 months, and of course, the drums are recorded in the very beginning, so that meant he had nothing to do for over a year. We finished the mastering of the CDs in November, and now the records are coming out in May, so it's actually more than six months after the album is finished, and we won't go on tour before August, so there's another couple of months. It's just a really long time for him with nothing to do, and he wanted to do a lot of other things. He went on tour with Soilwork first, and then he joined this American band called Chimaira. I think that suits him much better, he wanted to be home very shortly, make a new record without stretching the recording over many months, and then just be on tour all the time. But Therion is the band that takes an enormous amount of time in between things. I think it was the best for everybody.  

You mentioned that the mastering of the new CDs took place in November. Why wait for so long before releasing them?

It's the record company's decision, they thought it would be a better time for the release, there were a lot of other releases at the same time, and there's always competition in the media, but only one band can have the front page. So they thought it would be the best time for the release.  

More about line-up changes - are you still in contact with Peter Hansson and Oskar Foss from the original Therion line-up? 

I haven't had any contact with Oskar for probably 10 years, but with Peter there's still a little contact. We meet once in a while, he's actually a pretty big fan of what Therion is doing today. He left the band in 1992, because he wanted to stop playing bass and play something else than death metal. He was just fed up with the whole thing, he wanted to do something different. Later he caught up with what the band was doing, I guess he got curious, but then he really started to like what we are doing, he's more like a fan of the band.

As far as I understand, most of the line-up problems that Therion had in the early 1990s were caused by the rock'n'roll lifestyle, alcohol and drugs. How did you managed to survive this rock'n'roll lifestyle and keep the band going? 

That's different, I've never had rock'n'roll lifestyle. For sure I've been drinking, but that never made it into a problem, I always regarded music as the main thing, as something superior over free beer and vodka. But other bandmembers thought that rock'n'roll lifestyle was more important than playing music, and that was the wrong way of approaching it. This especially goes for Lars (Rosenberg), the bass player. Going on tour, drinking beer and having big parties was his thing, and playing music seemed to be secondary. That was obviously very unserious. There was one tour when I was drinking really too much, we were supporting Annihilator in 1995. That was a very short tour, just two weeks, and I was completely drunk all the time. And then someone gave me a tape with one of the shows that we played, and I realized that this is not how I want to sound. We never drink alcohol before the show these days, it's been eight years since I had one beer before the show. If people want to drink, they can do it after the show. After all, you go on tour to play music and entertain the fans, not to get drunk.

Albums like "Vovin" (1998) and "Deggial" (2000) were more like your solo works, and now you have permanent bandmembers again. Why did you decide to recreate a permanent band? Weren't you satisfied with session musicians?

I always wanted to have a band. It was the solution that I had to choose, because we did "Theli" (1996), and basically everybody who played on "Theli" was out of the band when we had to go on tour, so I used friends who could play. I know a lot of musicians, and I hired some people for live shows. When we finished all the touring, I had all the songs ready for "Vovin", so it was like, "Shall I try to go and get a new line-up now? No!!!" I would have had to start looking for a drummer, then a bass player, and then a guitar player. So I thought, "OK, I will just rent the musicians, and they will record the album." That's why "Vovin" was more like my solo album. Therion was finally getting the success with the fifth record, and I really didn't want to waste half a year searching for members and trying to get the band together. I just wanted to get the record out, which was a very good decision, because it was released at the right time. For the tour for "Vovin" I also worked with hired musicians - the guitar player actually played a little bit on "Vovin", he's a friend of mine, the bass player was a friend of his, and while looking for the drummer I consulted my management, and they advised me to hire Sami Karpinnen. After that tour I felt like he was the right guy, and I offered him a permanent place in the band. Then I started to look for a permanent line-up for the "Deggial" album. And it was actually Sami who got me Christian and Johann (Niemann, bassist). There was a real line-up that recorded "Deggial", but I already brought in all the songs for it, so they didn't really have the chance to make any personal input, they just played my songs. Songwriting-wise you can say that "Deggial" was my solo album as well, but there was a real band on it.

Let's go back to the new albums. I really like the artwork for them. Who did the album covers?

It's a German guy called Thomas Ewerhard. Actually we worked quite close together. He sent me drafts, and I came up with suggestions, and we were exchanging ideas and sending various designs back and forth. The one that ended up on the cover is actually version 15.

You had more than 170 singers and musicians on the new albums… 

Actually I did a new calculation, and it turned out that there's only 164. (laughs) Some of the names appear more than once, like soloists, etc.

Are there any big names among the musicians on the CDs?

Well, we have Mats Leven singing some metal vocals, he's famous for his work with Yngwie Malmsteen and At Vance. He's doing all this heavy metal type of vocals. There are also names that are known in the Swedish opera scene, but probably unfamiliar to metal guys. (laughs) Piotr, who did the drums and sang some vocals on "Theli", was specially invited to do some vocals again. 

The recording of such an ambitious project must have cost you a fortune. How did you persuade Nuclear Blast to finance it?

That was no problem. If I have a good idea and I can motivate it, they will give me the money. We spent a little bit over 100,000 euros on the recording. But anyway, the money spent is the band's money. I get 100,000 euros, and it's my decision if I want to invest them all in the record or spend 10,000 and keep 90,000. We always spend all the money, we always have problems to make it big enough.

Let's now speak about the lyrical side of the CDs. Is there any general concept behind "Lemuria" and "Sirius B"? In general, what are the new songs about?

The lyrics have different themes. They range from "Uthark Runa", which is a Nordic theme, to classic Greek mythology in "Typhon" and "An Arrow From The Sun", to old Egyptian mystics in "Son Of The Sun", to Babylonian civilization in "Blood Of Kingu". And of course, there's a song with Russian influences called "The Voyage of Gurdijeff", and one more song called "The Khlysti Evangelist", which is about Rasputin, where the beginning of the lyrics is written in Russian.

How many languages do you and your main lyricist Thomas Karlsson know? I have lost count of the languages used in Therion's lyrics…

We don't speak Russian, we had a friend who translated this piece for us. Even if we speak the language, we sometimes ask someone to do the translation, as it happened with the song "Schwarzalbenheim". I speak German, so I can understand it, but I wouldn't make a good poetic translation. We have another friend in Argentina, who did the Spanish translation for "Quetzalcoatl". A lot of the languages that we have used in the lyrics are so-called dead languages, there are no living people who speak them anymore. There's actually some other interesting Russian influences on the records, speaking about that. We used balalaika and dombra, it was quite funny. It's the peculiarity of Therion - when you hear a song with Russian influences in the lyrics, such as "The Voyage of Gurdijeff", there's no balalaika on it, but we used balalaika in the song about ancient Aztec gods. It's typical Therion, all the influences are completely mixed, it's not like, "Oh, let's make a Russian song with balalaika." Everything is completely mixed, and it's natural. When balalaikas came to the songs, they just had to be there, no matter what the song is about. I think that's a wonderful thing, it mixes naturally, it doesn't sound strange even if you have a song about an old Mexican theme and balalaika is used there. The song couldn't have been without it, it's just supposed to be there.

A while ago you released a compilation of early tracks called "Bells Of Doom". But why did you limit it only to fanclub members? I think a lot of people outside the fanclub might also be interested in these songs…

There are several problems with it. If we had released it on Nuclear Blast, they would have tried to push it as much as possible, and this material is not always very good. This material is a sort of historical documentation, and if they had released it, a lot of people would have said, "Oh, a new Therion!" and buy it. And then they would say, "Oh, the new Therion sucks!" (everybody laughs) The album contains old rehearsals, unreleased or very rare versions that only real die-hards would be interested in hearing. It's just for the people who are very interested, and I would say that 95 percent of the fans would find it completely unnecessary. Second, there's a copyright problem. On the very old recordings, such as a rehearsal of Blitzkrieg, which was Therion's earlier name, there's a girl singing lead vocals, and I have no fucking idea where she is today. I cannot just release a record with somebody else's vocals, especially on Nuclear Blast, as it would generate money, and there could be legal problems. That is why we just did it in a very small quantity and limited it to the fanclub. This is not a typical Therion CD, it's more like I burn the CD and give it to the people, like between friends.

One more question about legal problems. In the booklet of "Live In Midgard" (2002) you say that you had to remove "O Fortuna" from the live recording due to copyright reasons. What actually happened? You did record this theme for "Deggial"…

Yeah, but we had to remove it from the new pressing. In rock'n'roll and metal it's not really a problem, you just make your own version, and everybody is just be happy that someone's covering their song, because it brings them money. In classical music it's different. You are not allowed to change the composition. In rock'n'roll the meaning of "change" is quite liberal, people change small things here and there, but nobody says they changed the song, they just made their own version of it. In classical music it has to be performed exactly as it is in the notes, which means that if you add drums, bass and the guitar, you change the composition. It's not a problem with most of the compositions, because the composer has been dead for more than 75 years, and you're free to do what you want with it. But if the composer has not been dead for more than 75 years, that means that someone is holding the rights, and you need a written permission to do all these changes. Actually I don't think we would normally have the problem, because we're Carl Orff fans, and we just did a tribute to the original composition, but there was this American black hip hop artist, I don't even know who he was, who actually stole a part of "Carmina Burana" and did his rap shit over it. The music publisher was suing him for like 10 million dollars, and the publisher won! And then he said, "Oh, 10 million - great! And here's another artist who did the cover, let's sue him!" So they were writing legal letters, and I was writing them back personally, not through managers. I said, "Look, I'm just a rock musician that has a big love for opera and classical music, we don't sell millions of copies, we don't have any millions to give you anyway, if you take us to court. Sure, there was a mistake of ours not to check this beforehand to get your permission, but the rock'n'roll industry doesn't work this way, you just make your tributes, and no one gives you any problems for it." I also told them that I'm bringing a lot of young people into the opera because of what I'm doing. So we did an agreement outside the courtroom, we paid them a small amount of money, about 3,000 euros, it's a big amount of money for nothing, but it's a small amount compared to 10 million dollars. (laughs) So we gave them 3,000 euros, and we were allowed to sell the rest of what we had in stock. But we had to remove the track from the next pressing. Playing live and recording something are two different things - we are allowed to perform "Carmina Burana" live, but we cannot sell the recording of it.

This is a big problem in Russia nowadays - if a band wants to record a cover version of Iron Maiden, the label demands a permission from the Iron Maiden management…

In the rock'n'roll business it's not a problem. Maybe the rules are little bit harder in Russia because of the country's past, it's been very recently when reliable business partners emerged in Russia, before that there were just pirate copies. Now labels are serious, they pay licensed money and get official copies on the market, but a lot of the music industry outside Russia are very hard at making sure that everything is sold there in strict compliance with the law. There is the same law in Europe - if you make a version and change something, theoretically they may suit you. But no bands will do that because of two reasons. First, if someone covers you, you make money. Why sue someone who makes money for you? Second, if a rock band does that, they will have a fucking bad image in the media, they would lose so much credibility! If Iron Maiden sues a band in Sweden that covered their song, every metal magazine would write that they are the biggest assholes, and they would lose so much goodwill. Anyway, why would they sue someone? Someone made a tribute to them and made them money. The only problem may be if someone makes a version where they try to make fun of you, if someone changes the lyrics, tries to make your song ridiculous, then you have the possibility to sue them. It may be good that the law is there, but in practice it's never used. The only example of its use that I'm aware of was when Nuclear Blast tried to make a tribute to The Doors. A lot of bands recorded songs for it, but then Electra, who releases albums by The Doors, stopped them. But I can somehow understand them, because there was a lot of death metal bands - remember, what bands were on Nuclear Blast 10 years ago. Imagine bands like Dismember or Benediction playing The Doors, I don't think it's very beautiful, and they didn't find it very flattering. Moreover, The Doors have been defunct for many years, they don't have an image to lose.

You have said that if you had had a chance to work on Metallica's orchestral album, you would have done it in a completely different way. Nevertheless, your version of "Fight Fire With Fire" is quite close to the original. Why is that?

It's because of different things. When we did that, we just wanted to take a brutal song and really show that we're not getting old, that we can be more brutal. But I had been asked to orchestrate them instead of Michael Kamen, I would have done it a million times better because of one reason - because I like Metallica, while Michael Kamen didn't have a fucking clue of Metallica, and Metallica didn't have a clue of classical music. They just paid someone who makes a service, it's like if you ask someone to paint your house, but he doesn't know your personal style. I think I would have done a much better job simply because I understand both classical music and Metallica, I would have played WITH Metallica songs, not on top of them, as he did. Sometimes you can hear that the band and the orchestra are playing two different songs at the same time, they don't play together. Michael Kamen was looking very theoretically what guitar chords they play, what harmonies are there, and then he wrote some orchestration that didn't clash with the song, there's no tone that sounds bad, they're all colliding, but on the other hand, they don't play together. The only song that's not completely fucked up, in my opinion, is "The Call Of Ktulu", but if he had managed to fuck up that song, than what can you do? (laughs) But that's quite typical for bands nowadays. When this trend started, everybody wanted to have an orchestra, but they are metal bands, they don't really listen to classical music, they don't really have a clue, they just pay someone who does a job for them. I would say everybody else succeeded better than Metallica, they achieved at least something, but when you listen to a band - Iced Earth or Dimmu Borgir or Cradle Of Filth or whoever that did it more recently - you can hear that there's someone out of the band who's doing the orchestration, because it doesn't sound like a natural part of the band's sound. It's always like that, when there's a trend that can help you sell more records, there are always bands who get caught by it, they just think, "Oh, that could be interesting, if they can do it, we can do it too." There are also bands who think, "Let's do it because everybody else is doing it, and maybe we can sell a copy or two more."

When Therion's first three CDs got re-released by Nuclear Blast, some people started speculating that you actually re-recorded or remixed parts of them to make the sound softer. Can you comment on these rumors?

Ah, there are so many stupid rumors, and it's just one of them. (laughs) It's very easy to check - take the original CD and listen to it and then listen to the re-release, and they will sound identical. Actually it's extra-ridiculous because the master tapes are lost for the two first records, and even if we wanted to remix it or do anything with it, we couldn't, because the information is lost. We actually used an old CD as a master for pressing the new one, so it's identical, it's just remastered a little bit, but it's a standard thing, and when it's remastered you don't hear any fucking difference.

You've played at Wacken Open Air in Germany three times, and each time you were dissatisfied with the organization of the festival…

That's true. The first time we played there, it was a very young festival, so it was very disorganized. But that is typical for every new festival, people don't have experience and stuff. I don't blame them, we had a really good time. But the second time was really bad because of this Danish piece of shit called D.A.D. They were not supposed to play, but Dee Snider of Twisted Sister was pulling out, and D.A.D. were filling in for them. They were playing before us, so we were the main act, but they still were behaving like rock stars, they didn't even remove their equipment from the stage in time, their roadies took all their time in the world. So we got delayed onstage, which wasn't our fault, because they didn't clear the stage in time, and no one did anything about that, the Wacken people should have told them, "Hey, you have five minutes to clean the shit from stage, or you're fired!" (laughs) When we went onstage, we were asked to shorten our set, which is quite annoying, but still we did that, we dropped a few songs. And when we were supposed to play the last song, they actually cut the power in the middle of the song. How unprofessional! And they didn't give a proper explanation to the audience, or they gave it in German, which is bad because it's an international festival and half of the audience are from other countries, so they didn't even know why. It was really frustrating for people, especially those who had been traveling really far, so we said, "OK, we're never gonna play this shitty festival anymore." Then they apologized and they paid us a really big amount of money to play at the next festival, and we played there the third time. Organization-wise it was fine, but there was another band fucking with us. (laughs) We were not the main act, Saxon were, and we played before them, but the contract said that we can use the stage as much as we want, that we can use all the lights and stuff, but there was some fucking idiot from Saxon who told the lighting engineer that he should lock part of our lights. When you're a support act, you may have part of the lights locked, so you would only use 10-15 percent of the lights and not look as good as the main act. But we're not a fucking support band, we're the second biggest band of the evening, and our contract says anyway that we have full access to everything. Anyway, they locked the lights, and this guy went away, and there was nobody responsible at Wacken who could unlock them. We still had a very good show, but with the light of a fucking support act. That is really unprofessional when they don't have someone there who has total access to everything. The stage manager was a really cool guy, he tried to do everything he could, and when he could do nothing, he went to the main office, took off his hat, threw it on the floor and said, "I quit, I can do nothing." He really did his best, but the whole Wacken organization… How can one person, who is just a fucking lights engineer, or one band, fuck it for us? Such things are not supposed to happen, and if they happen, there should be some guy available all the time with a mobile phone or whatever that you can always call and that can come and fix whatever the problem you have. Apart from that, it's a cool festival, they usually have cool bands, they have a good location and everything. I could actually consider playing there again, I'm not gonna sit for the rest of my life and be bitter at fucking Wacken. But if we play there again, we gotta be paid fucking shitloads of money and a contract as thick as a bible.

Is there any chance for Russian fans to see Therion live in Moscow?

There is quite a good chance. We're actually negotiating right now, and we are very optimistic about that, because I know that we're pretty popular in Russia, especially in Moscow, so it should be pretty cool to play there. The idea originally was that we should do it with an orchestra, but it seems a little bit over our hat for the first time. There are too many things to fix, and even though Russia is cheaper that other parts of Europe, it's still too expensive to do it. I hope that we can do a regular show first, have a big success, attract tons of people, and maybe come back some six months later and do it with an orchestra. Russia is actually one of the few countries where we can afford to do it big time, and of all these countries, Russia is the most cultivated one. Russian classical musicians are really good, their handcraft goes back to the Tsar times, when you had a lot of really good composers. It's really different than if we would make it South America, where we are really big, and where everything is much cheaper than in Europe. They are not in the near of the European standard, and Russian standard is European standard, it's even higher than the European one. That would be a perfect combination - we can afford it, and it can be on a high level, so that would be my dream. And we might film it for a DVD to get it released next year. Hopefully my plan will work out. In the worst case, we will just play there, and I will see Moscow, that would be not so bad, too.

Therion on the Internet: http://www.megatherion.com

Special thanks to Markus Wosgien (Nuclear Blast) for arranging this interview

Roman "Maniac" Patrashov
May 4, 2004
(c) HeadBanger.ru