THERION
"If you want to create wide music, you need different singers"
(Interview with Petter Karlsson (Drums), February 2007)
"Gothic
Kabbalah“ again is different from your former albums. In the meantime you are
used to get flak for that. Why do you change the style with each album?
I'm
really new in the band so I can't speak for the past but Therion wants to
improve and we want to do something we really like. Some people think there are
a lot of differences to former albums but we just want to make good music. And
now we have more song writers in the band. We thought we should just gather a
lot of good songs and record them. Then we decided to focus more on rock vocals
on this album. On other albums we had maybe two or three songs with rock vocals,
the others were more operatic and classic voices. And we didn't use as much
orchestra in Gothic Kabbalah. The sound has changed maybe a little bit because
we used Stefan Laumann who is a great sound artist, so to speak. He is really,
really good! So there is a bunch of things to answer your question. It's not
that we were sitting down and decided we're gonna do something completely
different! It was more like - let's see what we can do. A new album should be a
little bit different and that's something good because then you'll never get
stuck in the same gown. And if you want to get new fans it's important to
improve and try other things. Probably some people who like Gothic Kabbalah
won't like the next album. Who knows...
Since
Madonna is into Kabbalah, everybody knows this term. But the combination of „Gothic“
and „Kabbalah“ sounds very unusual. What does it mean for you?
To
be totally honest I also didn't know what it means when I heard it first. As far
as I know now, the Kabbalah in general is a Jewish kind of mystical system. But
the Gothic Kabbalah has nothing to do with that or with Gothic music. It has to
do with a runic system which was created by a man called Johannes Bureus, a
Swedish Runic scholar and occultist. He invented his own runic system, which he
called the "Adalruna", and his most famous work is a booklet called
"Adalruna Rediviva". When you directly translate the Swedish name of
the runar system to English, it's Gothic Kabbalah but it has nothing to do with
the architectural style "Gothic" or in German Gotik, or with Gothic
music as I mentioned before. This whole thing is very complex.
Why
did Therion write a whole album which refers to Johannes Bureus?
When
we decided which songs we want to have on the new album, we didn't know the
theme of the album, I didn't know. The concept is something Christofer Johnsson
choose because he is very interested in those things. Therion always was in some
kind of mystic and mythologic stuff and that probably will never chance.
Do
you know the British black metal band Adalruna? Their name and the theme of
their first demo 'Rediviva' is also based on Bureus and his rune system.
I
never heard about them. But that's very interesting!
Christofer
is a member of the Order Dragon Rouge. Are you a member, too?
No, I'm not and I don't know anything about that. I'm not interested in that.
Therion
has been working with different singers for a long time, especially since
Christofer stopped being lead singer himself. Why don’t you engage a permanent
singer?
If
you want to create wide music, you need different singers. It's very uncommon
but it really works with Therion to not have a lead singer. There is no reason
for that. We are already four band members and all of us are writing the songs
and we don't feel that we need one.
There
are several guest singers on Gothic Kabbalah. Are you on tour with all of them?
At
the moment we have four lead singers and they can basically sing everything also
from the older albums. Of course it will sound a little bit different and
hopefully better. Everybody puts their own personal touch to the songs. It's the
same with me, I don't play the drums exactly the same way as Sammy, the former
drummer, did. When we play songs from Theli, for example, no one was in the band
besides Christofer. The only thing we decided to do on this tour was that we
shouldn't play any songs Christofer normally sings. Like the old Death Metal
songs.
Did
Therion ever think about something like a tour book, for example as Rammstein's
Völkerball?
We
don't plan something like that at the moment but everything is possible. We have
a lot of good ideas what we could do with the band but nothing's precise yet.
And we just released the box "Celebration Of Becoming"
including 4 DVDs and 2 CDs last year and Gothic Kabbalah now.
What
bands/singers do you personally like? What was the last album you bought?
I
know this sounds boring but I listen to everything and nothing! The bands which
affected me strong are Queen, and mostly progressive bands from the seventies.
But I was grown up with Heavy Metal and Hard Rock, and I listend a lot to Kiss,
Deep Purple, but also Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer, King Diamond and bands like
that. When I started being more interested in playing, I wanted to make the next
step. So I also listened to a lot of Jazz, Jazz Rock, Progressive Rock,
Symphonic Rock. Then I had a soul phase and listend to Stevie Wonder, followed
by the rock time when I listened to AC/DC. Today I'm happy when I hear a good
song, and I don't really care what band it is. But I'm not listening a lot to
new bands.
Is
there a country or place Therion would like to play?
Yes,
we'd like to go to Japan.
What
are Therion's future plans?
We're
going to play a couple of festival this spring and summer, then we'll go to
South America. In autumn we hopefully go to Japan. And maybe we'll do some gigs
in Canada and in the States. But we're going on tour as much as possible.
Thank you very much, Petter, and good luck for the future.
(Interview by Kassandra)
Questions/Thoughts? (or whatever):