Therion
Moment Of Clarity

13.10.2008

A colleague of ours once said, “When you have an interview appointment with Christofer Johnsson of Therion, you just need to prepare four questions, and the man will talk for 30 minutes.” But the reason we liked this interview so much is not that we didn’t have to work hard on it. It’s because it really explained a lot of things about Christofer to us. Looking at the things he did over the past couple of years (throwing together a monstrous 4-DVD set, releasing an extremely controversial album “Gothic Kabbalah”, nearly canceling a Moscow gig due to a conflict over a drum riser, promising a new album as quickly as in 2010 and finally letting all his bandmates go due to “creative differences”), one can get an impression of a megalomaniac in the making. But when we talked to the man, he explained to us everything so clearly and in so much detail, that we became really convinced that for Chris it was the only right way to go. Let them say talk is cheap, this is the piece of a conversation that really turned our views upside down, and if you read this, we hope it will do the same to yours…  

Just two years ago you released a 4-DVD set called “Celebrators Of Becoming”, which many people called “a definitive Therion video collection”, and now you’re coming up with another DVD called “Live Gothic”. What will it add to the visual legacy of Therion, apart from some new songs from the latest studio album “Gothic Kabbalah”?

Oh, it really adds a lot. We’ve always made a little update and changed every time we made a new world tour, but this time we made a really drastic change. We swapped towards a much more theatrical approach, the whole stage scenery was built up in a completely different way. Normally we did it very naked onstage, we didn’t have any backdrop, and if we had a support band that had a backdrop, we just removed that, and sometimes had nothing behind or just had black curtains. We focused very much on just being active on stage.

This time we did it completely differently. We built up a very strong stage show with a lot of things. The stage clothes were designed to match with this, and we did a lot of changes in the singing format. Normally we’d have two soloists and a choir, but this time we had four soloists with different characters. Since it’s harder on stage for four people with mics, we did a lot of choreography for the singers so that everybody knew where to be at what time, what to do, and so on. We did a lot of thinking about the stage show, and it’s something we really felt we had to document for the future.

When it comes to bands like Iron Maiden or Guns N’Roses, they record their shows all the time, so if they need it some years in the future, they have it at home already. But if we record something, we have to release it as well, it has to pay off the money we spent on the recordings. For us 30,000-40,000 euros is a lot of money, so we thought if it’s meant to be available, we’d better release it now, even though it wasn’t so long ago when we had a DVD.

Anyway, they make a very good completion with each other. “Celebrators Of Becoming” was a very expensive release, and many fans were forced to save money for buying it. Those who were able to afford it, really loved it, they got great value for money, and it was so entertaining and all these different things. But there were a lot of young people who could not afford buying it or didn’t want to spend that amount of money on a single product – I guess you can get two or three CDs or DVDs instead of that. I knew from the record company that they wanted something more affordable in their catalogue as well, and I think it’s important that we can offer a DVD that is affordable to everybody. “Celebrators Of Becoming” was 4 DVDs plus 2 CDs, it was quite a package, so we needed something slimmer.

On this DVD you have both Mats Leven and Thomas Vikstrom singing alongside with Snowy Shaw. How did it happen? As far as we remember, at that moment Mats didn’t announce his departure yet…

I don’t know what you’re talking about, but Thomas is not singing on the DVD.

Well, it’s all over the Internet that he is!

Don’t believe all the crap you read on the Internet! We recorded another show in December 2007 on the anniversary tour, and that was the one with Thomas Viktsrom, but that was a completely different tour. It’s going to be released in the future, I haven’t yet started the editing so far. “Live Gothic” is the last recording with Mats.

Thank you for clarification!

As for clarification, you said that Mats left the band, but it’s not really the case. It’s rather that he was asked to leave. I wouldn’t say we fired him, because we had worked for a long time together, and we have a lot of respect for each other. But we felt that his motivation wasn’t 100 percent anymore, we had a talk with him, and he agreed. He really loved the concerts that we did with four singers and all this, but he didn’t feel comfortable with it. He’s too much of a… you know, lead singers have the ego to be in front of the stage. On the tour we did before, we had this “beauty and the beast” concept, with him being the rock’n’roll beast and Karin Fjellander doing the beautiful soprano singing. That was the thing he really liked – being the frontman, announcing songs, doing all the male singing, and now he was reduced to being one of four very good singers. He really stressed the fact that he thought this was the best line-up ever, as a fan he would say this was really the best thing. He just didn’t feel that was him - he did some guitar playing, he was standing behind this church when he was singing some of the stuff. He’s too much of a frontman. He always did a very good job, no doubt about that, he would never let down the audience, and nobody in the audience would notice the difference. But at the stage we did feel that he wasn’t feeling entirely comfortable. I wouldn’t say there was a bad atmosphere, but he wasn’t as happy as he used to be. I decided that I didn’t want to do the second part of the world tour like that, so we talked about it, and he agreed, he said, “Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s not my thing anymore.” We decided that we should get a replacement, though we still had some shows to do, and we finished it in a nice way. But it’s still quite a different saying that he left, because that was not the case.

During the past couple of tours you have frequently had guests on stage, and at the same time, you said that Therion as a band only rehearse several times before the tour. How do you make sure then that everything goes right during the performances?

You work with professionals, that’s the answer. If you work with professional people, you’re getting it straight. If I wasn’t sure it would work, then I’m working with the wrong people. Now when we have a new line-up again, the people that I’m working with, I already decided that they should do the show we have booked for Poland – we only do one festival this year. I gave them the job without playing together with them, because when they played stuff with their bands before, I knew that they’re on the required level of playing, they’re so high up that you don’t need to ask this question. If somebody’s a world champion in Formula One, you needn’t see his driving license before he can drive you to a pub. (everybody laughs) When people are on such a high level, you just need to agree on things, you don’t get such a reputation, like some people have, for nothing. You know that they can do their job, they make their living out of it, and if you have seen them at work before, you don’t need to go into details, you just make a general rehearsal. Everybody practices their parts at home, then you get together and just make sure it all sounds good, that it rocks. When I hire a new bass player, I’m not gonna get the band together in a rehearsal room and show him how the song is. I send him home and say, “Look, here are the songs you’re supposed to learn”, and when he comes back, he can play them.

It’s very difficult for the audience to predict the future course of your music, and “Gothic Kabbalah” was totally unexpected for most of your fans after they heard “Sirius B” and “Lemuria”. How much do you personally pre-plan things? Do you know how the album will sound like already when you start working on it?

When I start writing songs, I have no idea. When it comes to recording, that’s a different thing, we make a pre-production before the recording so we have a complete demo version. I really wish I could control my songwriting (laughs), but I have absolutely no control whatsoever on it. It’s really hard for me to say, “Oh, now I’m starting to write a new record,” it’s not really like that, I just write music once in a while, and sooner or later I have enough songs to make a record.

But sometimes it’s even not that easy, sometimes I have a lot of songs, but then I start writing in a completely different direction, and that will be another album. That happened with “Gothc Kabbalah” for instance – the next album that will be recorded in 2009 was the album that was supposed to be out this time. Those songs were finished years ago, but I just woke up one day and I wrote a couple of songs that went in a different direction, so I took the decision to wait with the other record and record “Gothic Kabbalah” first. The songwriting is very surprising to me as well - I think I know where I’m going, and all of a sudden I get other ideas. I’m a very spontaneous person – most people would say, “OK, let’s do what we have planned first and let’s do the new stuff later,” but I already said two times, “Let’s postpone this record and do another album first.” This happened with “Secret Of The Runes”, and then with “Gothic Kabbalah”.

With “Gothic Kabbalah” you can see that I only wrote a few songs on the album, while before I was writing most of the songs. It’s because I wrote a couple of songs that were in a different direction, and then the other guys… you see, they work different than me, they can write in a given direction, and I can’t do that. If somebody told me, “We’ll give you a million euros if you write a very good ballad that would be a hit,” I wouldn’t be able to write a ballad, even if my life was depending on it. On another occasion, when I don’t need a ballad, I could maybe write ten ballads. That’s also the reason why the albums have been varying that much over the years – I just get different tastes and different romances, whatever happens…

It’s both the strength and the weakness of the band. In one way, you’re always losing your fans when you make drastic changes over the years, but at the same time, but you keep being a very attractive band. How many bands do you know that have released 13 studio albums, and which are still on top of their career more or less? Usually they have their golden age, they release a couple of classic albums, but then they get down to a second level, producing the stuff that is close to classic, but not exactly that. I always use the same examples when this question comes up – Saxon and Motorhead. They made some classic albums, two or three of them, but in the past 15 years their albums are totally OK, maybe there’s one killer song on it, and the rest is OK stuff, nobody would say it’s the best stuff they did. And then they go out on tour again and again, playing the old classics. That is the situation I would never be comfortable with, if Therion were anywhere near it, I would rather stop playing.

With Therion, fans are always very interested in a new record, they’re not only like, “Well, cool, they’ve done another record, so they will go on tour and play classics again.” They are really interested in a record as such. If people talk about a new record, even if some people hate it, it’s fine, because people have an opinion, it’s not just another Therion album for them. This is one of the lucky benefits about the unpredictability of my songwriting – there’s always a reaction.

Would it be correct to say that the musical difference between “Lemuria / Sirius B” and “Gothic Kabbalah” is one of the reasons why you and the rest of the band decided to go separate ways?

There are a lot of different things in this, but I would actually say you’re right, though to a small extent. It’s true that the other guys in the band really enjoyed playing what we did on “Gothic Kabbalah”, but so did I. I really think it’s the best album we did up to now. But when we go beyond this, I think they would probably like to explore the direction of “Gothic Kabbalah” even more, while I’d rather go in a completely different direction again. It’s like “I did this already, so let’s now do something different.”

“Gothic Kabbalah” is technically the most advanced Therion album, it’s very progressive. You don’t even think about it, if you take a song like “The Perennial Sophia”, it sound like a soft ballad, your mother can listen to it. But if you analyze that composition, it’s quite odd, it’s 5/4. I’m talking about time signature - instead of counting to four you count to five. There’s a lot of things like that, we have 7/8 time signature, we have 9/8, there’s a lot of odd things that you find only in progressive bands. And we wanted to do it in such a listener-friendly way that when you think about it, you just enjoy the record. It’s not very often when you have that – either you’re progressive and make something for musicians and artists, or it’s something that ordinary people can listen to. There are very few bands that have managed to do both.

The other guys in the bands are real instrumentalists. Sure I enjoy playing guitar, but more like a hobby. For me, writing songs is more like being a musical visionary, to have big musical visions and fulfill them, it’s like an inventor who has an idea for a machine and then sees the final product getting out of the factory and making other people’s lives easier. They’re more of instrumentalists and they really enjoy playing this kind of songs with more focus and more thinking, and I’m more into rock’n’roll – I just wanna kick ass on stage and run around. (laughs) Sure it’s fun sometimes to stop and focus on playing something, but I usually tend to enjoy the kick-ass songs more as compared to very difficult on ones. You’re right, they definitely would have preferred to go more in that direction, but that was not the big thing.

I was facing the need to tell the guys to contribute to the band more, because I noticed that they didn’t have the same spark anymore. When it comes to playing, to have a band, once again – how it is when a band gets signed? They’re full of energy, they’re very curious to explore, they have this feeling that they want to prove something – “Finally we get the chance to make a record!” Then they make the record, they get a bit successful, they do a few more records, get a big career and become a very creative hard working band. But after a while most bands get very relaxed and laid back  - they enjoy what they do, they get money out of it, and everything’s fine. However, they usually have this period of golden years, and after that they go down. Sometimes they go up again - bands like Iron Maiden or Judas Priest got back to being very creative with the last few records after they had some downgoing years making pretty crappy album.

In the old line-up, we did have this laid-back feeling. As to me, I always tried to preserve the feeling of the first album in myself, to preserve the fire I had when I had dreams of a young musician getting signed. Every album of ours was recorded at different spots, with different producers, in different studios to create a new environment all the time. We built studios and sold them, we recorded in mobile studios, we did all sorts of things, so that we always start with blank paper when we’re making a record. Something that really helped us to keep this fire going was the fact that I usually worked with the musicians that, before they had been brought into the band, were extremely talented but never got the chance to put themselves where they deserved to be. Did you ever hear about Kristian Niemann, Johan Niemann, Petter Karlsson, Sami Karpinen, Richard Evensand before they joined Therion? Very few people did. I don’t know why, but I have the capability to attract people that have enormous amount of talent but who never managed to get where they deserve to be.

Take Petter Karlsson, for instance, who played drums on the last record. He wrote almost 40 percent of the album, he’s a very talented songwriter, he’s a fucking amazing drummer and probably the most multi-talented person I’ve ever met. He’s a very good bass player, he’s an excellent singer, a good keyboard player and a damn good guitar player, way better than I am. And this guy, who can do all this, had never made a record before he was in Therion. Can you imagine that when you get a person like that, what sort of vibe he gives to the band? When somebody with this amount of motivation, energy and talent finally gets a chance to manifest himself in a band? The fact is that I was working with a lot of people like that. Kristian Niemann is a fucking world class guitar player and excellent songwriter, but he never made a record before Therion. Johan Niemann, the bass player, played with Mind’s Eye before Therion, but they were a local prog band, they made one or two albums on a small label and sold 1,000-2,000 copies worldwide. All these people whom I worked with, their first major experience in the music business was Therion, so I always had a great help in keeping the fire burning.

What happened with the Niemanns who joined the band in 1999 is the thing that happened to everybody else, as I told you with the example of bands being born and making the first record. They made five studio albums with Therion, a live album, DVDs and all that, they made a couple of world tours, and played at stadiums of thousands of people. In the end, they appreciated it, they’re all very humble people, they never got big-headed or anything. But then Kristian got a child, and this brought a different prospective into his life. Therion got into the positions where most of the bands end up after they have their golden age. Life of the band became a little bit of routine.

I can give you a good example. I would call them and say, “I have suggestions for the next record,” and they would go, “You know, we could record after work” – it’s like you work in the daytime and record in the evening. I was like, “Hello?” (laughs) This band is unlike most bands, who don’t get any money out of album recording. Such bands take time off from their jobs, work for three or four weeks on the album without getting paid for it, just for the sake of the album. But these people are well-paid, no doubt about that, and they make good money. You don’t get rich, but you get paid for what you do. But they were still like, “You know, we can make a little bit more by working in the daytime and recording in the evening.” I’m sure it would be good, but is it good enough for Therion? No – that’s what I’m saying, it’s not good enough. You cannot be 90% involved, when you’re with Therion, you have to give it your 100%.

I didn’t fire anybody, it was nothing like that, but I told them, “You really should think this over and see if this is what you wanna do.” And I admire them for being such great people to actually admit it and say, “Yes, you’re right, we don’t have the same level of motivation anymore and it wouldn’t be right to beguile ourselves and the fans.” I’m sure we could make another really good album together and do another tour together, but it would be the way down, and that’s not how it should be.

These guys have a great amount of respect for what Therion is after these years, and they really think it’s better if somebody else take their place and they do something on their own. Be sure that they’re gonna create wonderful music on their own. I don’t think they will have the success of Therion, but the music is still going to be good. Kristian always kept his dayjob, he has been giving guitar lessons, and now that he’s out of Therion, he’s gonna increase the amount of guitar lessons. He will do another Demonoid album with Johan, maybe they will do some other musical projects, and if he’s happy with that, then I really am. If he would change his mind some years later, he could always get a job with another band, he’s a fucking world class guitar player.

Johan was always a full-time musician, he likes playing in cover bands, and if you’re a really good cover band, you’ll always have work in Sweden. They always pay you money under the table, and you don’t have any costs – you can just take a car, take your guitar cabinet or bass cabinet with you and go play. He has always been engaged in that, so he just needs to do a little bit more touring, and he’ll be fine.

Petter is engaged in a few other projects, for instance, one with female singers, and I really look forward to what he’s gonna do. He can play all instruments himself, so it’s gonna be a great album, probably very progressive and not very well-selling, but for people like me, for musicians, it will be a really cool album. We’ve always listened to the same kind of bands, the 1970s prog bands, we really share many tastes, and I will be among the first people to buy that record, that’s for sure.

There were no bad feelings, everybody got what they wanted. I think it’s really cool to be able to do this while we’re at the top instead of going down and then feeling like, “Oh, damn, we’ve lost it, maybe we should stop!” We stopped with a smile, and everybody’s happy.

One more question about “Gothic Kabbalah”. You had Ken Hensley from Uriah Heep as a guest player on this album. After the recording Ken said quite a few times that he was not very happy with the result, and that he didn’t feel he succeeded in contributing anything to this kind of music. What was the purpose for bringing him in, if it turns out that he didn’t have a clear idea of what he was playing?

I think it was in a little different style from what he expected. I can understand what he felt about it – he’s one of the biggest guys in rock’n’roll, and we just sent him a few files, so he didn’t know how the end result of his work would be like. I just sent him some scores to let him know what to play, and then I said, “You have free hands with these scores, do something with them.” It wasn’t like in the old days, when people just jammed together to come up with songs, we work in a more mathematical way these days. Maybe it was a bit of a mistake, we should have recorded everything first and sent him a rough mix with everything, so he could get the whole picture.

They worked in a very different way in the 1970s, and probably that’s a better way, because the 1970s bands are so much better than the bands of today, in my opinion. We were very happy with what he did, I’ve never heard anybody complain, but he might think he could do an even better job if he could do it this way. I’m not sure if he’s gonna do something with us in the future, but we would be more than honored if he did it on the next record. I think the next album is even more suitable for his playing, and then we will probably finish everything and just give him the amount of time he needs or even fly him over to my studio again and again. We’ll give him more time to experiment instead of just saying, “This is the score, this is how it goes”. Maybe he can work how they used to work those days when they created those fantastic Uriah Heep albums. Uriah Heep is one of my favorite bands.

We don’t think it makes any sense to ask you about the latest Therion show in Moscow in May last year, as you explained everything about this in great detail in your online postings. But don’t you think that by responding to the promoter’s accusations and to making public all these details, you become an even bigger target for speculations in the public eye than before you said a word? After all, Blind Guardian never commented in the press about this situation…

Well, what should they say? (laughs) What would you say if you were Blind Guardian? Either somebody has to say, “I’m lying” or “I’m telling the truth.” I didn’t try to anger them at Therion, I just said how things were. If they said something back, this would mean a stupid media war about it, this would become bigger and put them in a lot worse situation. I think the smartest thing they could do was not to comment. That’s what I would have done in their place as well.

I don’t care how people see it, I just want the truth to be said, and that’s it. Do people have a problem with it? Well, it’s their problem really. Am I the bad guy or the good guy – it’s up to everybody to believe it or not. My whole thing was that I never really accept this whole idea of people trying to excuse themselves because they live in a country with economic problems. The Russian promoter always said, “Oh, we can’t do this, because it’s Russia, this is not possible here and blah blah blah.” We never accepted that in countries that are really poor. Moscow is doing really well economically, but there’s a lot of people that travel to some other parts of Russia where they don’t have that much welfare. For them saving up to travel to Moscow and see the show means a lot, and I just can’t afford to do a fucking crappy show and then say nothing, just take the money and go. It’s not my style.

We had shitloads of gear lying behind the stage, a full European show that we couldn’t use. We were playing on a one-meter strip in front of the drum riser like some sort of support act. Fans had seen us in Russia earlier headlining, and putting up quite decent shows, so I think an explanation was required. If I had been a fan, I would have gone like, “What the fuck is this?!” (laughs) I’m just trying to have an open channel with the fans, I don’t know how it looks like from the outside, but we really like to speak to the fans, speak our opinion out.

I know that many other bands, no names given, but they are of an even higher level, agree with the organizers in many countries, especially in Latin America, and say, “Well, we’ll sign 200 autographs”, when 200 people are expected. And suddenly when 500 people show up, they say, “We’ve been sitting here for 1.5 hours, we’ve signed 200 autographs, and that’s it.” This has happened a lot of times. When we were put in this situation, every bloody time we were sitting there until everybody had their bloody CD or whatever they brought signed. That’s how we do things. We have never stopped remembering where we came from, we were an underground act for many years, and while we were doing our first four albums, we were still kind of an underground band. We will never forget the fans giving us their support back in those times, and thanks to this we always do interviews with small ‘zines, we have a close contact with fans, and we really care about every single fan that has traveled far with his record collection and wants it to be signed.

You can take Michael Schenker’s behavior as an example. OK, he was drunk, totally intoxicated, but is this an excuse for the guy who was a huge Michael Schenker fan, who brought a lot of his albums to a signing session, and Michael Schenker refused to sign any of them, because he was only signing the autographed cards he was selling on that evening. He wouldn’t sign his own records, only the autograph cards people had to pay money for. Yngwie Malmsteen is another story, he would only sign his latest record, there were fans coming with his complete collection, and Yngwie would only sign his last album. I remember when I was standing backstage at a Judas Priest show in 1986 waiting for Judas Priest to give me an autograph, and they just went straight into the bathroom. There were only about 10-12 people waiting, so it would probably take them a minute to sign our stuff. But that’s how many people are.

Unlike that, we always try to be really ordinary people, and for me it’s very important to tell the fans what’s going on. Since I know that there will always be shitloads of people being disappointed when things go wrong, and it’s very hard for many fans to understand how this business works, and why these things happen, I posted this very easy explanation on my webpage, and there you go. If some people are not adult enough in their head to understand what’s written there or they draw some strange conclusions, there’s nothing I can do about that, but I believe there’s there are fans who need our explanation of things gone wrong. I wish more bands would do it like that.

In December last year you did a special tour dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the band. Why and how did you get Ferdy Doernberg (Rough Silk, Axel Rudi Pell and many other bands) to play keyboards on that tour? It’s been years since you have a keyboard player in the band…

It was a special thing we did for the 20th anniversary tour. We wanted to have a keyboard player, because we decided to play the whole “Theli” (1996) album, and we used keyboards on that album a lot. It’s fair enough if we play most of the songs with a real orchestra coming from backing tracks, and if some of the songs have keyboards as backing tracks as well, that’s fine. But now more or less half of the set was supposed to have keyboards, and it could be worth spending some cash bringing a live keyboarder. It was supposed to be something special, a part of the show. Me and the guys were going to a Uli Jon Roth show in Sweden, Ferdy was playing with Uli, and I just realized what energy this guy had, he was totally crazy on stage. We talked a bit after the show, he said he was a Therion fan, and when we came to the point on deciding on a keyboard player, I just remembered Ferdy and thought, “This could be the guy doing it!” Especially because he wanted to build a huge organ onstage, and we wanted to have somebody like Uncle Fester from “Addams Family”. (everybody laughs) We wanted to have a little Alice Cooper-inspired show, not much horror-like Alice Cooper, but a little bit creepy. Alice Cooper always had this theater, it’s not like those black metal bands cutting their arms and pretending it’s all for real – it’s just misplaced youth. (laughs) We tried to do it like Therion was in the 1970s. We are all huge Alice Cooper fans, we all love Alice Cooper when he were a band, and when the singer with the same name made a solo career, it was OK in the beginning, “Welcome To My Nightmare” was a very good album, but after that it kind of went down. Actually “Welcome To My Nightmare” would be a good example of what we tried to do, and what you will soon see on one of our next DVDs. Ferdy just matched very good to that.

I don’t think we’re gonna use keyboard players in the future, the ultimate idea was to perform the whole “Theli” album, and there would be so many songs with keyboards that it was really worth bringing in a keyboard player. Also we wanted to do things a little bit different. It was supposed to be a 20th anniversary tour, and we already had done a tour that year in support of the “Gothic Kabbalah” album. If we did another tour that year, it had to be drastically different. You can’t imagine what the competition is in Central Europe. In Germany, every weekend the fans can choose from a number of decent shows, so you really have to offer something special if you’re gonna do something like that. It’s not enough to say, “Oh, yeah, come on, let’s celebrate our 20 years, we’ll play you some songs.” We really needed something extraordinary, that’s why we played a very long set with a pause in the middle, we had a keyboard player, and a lot of cool guests, then we decided that fans could vote on what songs we should play, and most of the set was comprised of the songs we hadn’t played in years or never played live before. It really was something absolutely different.

You mentioned that you have already put together a new Therion line-up that will do one festival show this year. Is it not too early yet to ask you about the people who are in this line-up?

I don’t like to announce things in advance, but I could brief you a little bit on that. We don’t have a permanent guitar player at this point, and as to the bass player and the drummer, I actually managed to get them the day after I posted the announcement on the latest line-up’s breakup on the webpage. I never seem to be able to search for members. When I have a need for replacement for some reason, it just drops out of the sky onto my head. I had a lot of mails and phone calls, and a lot of people were like, “Oh well, have you thought of this guy?” Out of this, all of a sudden I go, “Wow, that’s the guy! That’s the bass player! That’s the drummer!” It struck me that they even played together in a project, so I have a finished rhythm section at the moment.

Guitar players are a different thing. There’s no hurry, because the festival is in September, that’s the only thing planned for this year, and the album recording will start in 2009. I just thought, “Why do I stress myself in search for a guitar player?” But I was still going through stuff in my head, thinking what guitar players I know that I could be interested in. At the same time I was by pure coincidence bumping into an extraordinary talent that was unknown as usual. Then there was another guy, a more famous one, who turned out to be familiar to Christian, who said, “This is the perfect replacement! If you ask me – out of anybody on the entire planet, this would be the best replacement for me in Therion!” It’s not only that Christian knows me so well, he also has a very strong opinion on all things in Therion, and most Therion fans would agree with him.

Unluckily none of these two guitar players was available at this point. The more famous one already had long-term commitments, and he couldn’t get out of them very easily. He was still very interested in the idea of playing with Therion, but it wouldn’t work at this moment. The other one would have liked to join, but there were some personal problems in his family that stood in his way. I really have a big understanding for that, but unfortunately it meant that it was impossible for him to join Therion at the time. So I decided, “If I could get one of these two great people, why search for other people? I’d rather keep the door open for them and get a temporary replacement for the Poland show.” If I could with both of these excellent talented people on the next album that will be recorded in 2009, it will be excellent, they will be doing as much work as they can, each of them, and I’m playing guitar myself, so I will record the rest myself. That will be even better for the actual recording, because I will have two very decent guitar players contributing. And when the time comes to do the next world tour, which will be in 2010, we’ll see how the situation is, because a lot of things can happen until 2010. Hopefully one of these guys will find the possibility to join us on a permanent basis. If not, I’ll just have to settle it in another way, but I’m willing to take the chance, because it’s really a great idea to record with both of these guys on this album. You will understand it when you know what guys I’m talking about.

As to the show in Poland, I simply went with Magnus Barthelson, the guy who was in Therion in 1993-1994, he played on the third album. It’s quite interesting, because we played together in our death metal days, and Therion has evolved ever since, and Magnus has also evolved in his way. He was calling me when he got to know about our situation, we always had contact through the years anyway, and he said, “I’d really like to do it, and if you don’t have somebody else, it will be really cool to fill in for this show.” I heard some of his playing, and it’s a good job, so it will be fun to do a show with him again. And will also be cool for the audience to see a one-off thing.

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

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

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov, Natalie “Snakeheart” Patrashova
June 30, 2008
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