Therion
Twinmusix Interview With Christofer Johnsson From Therion To Talk About There New Album And More
what can fans expect from your new album?
it's not exactly an album, if I said Jesus Christ Superstar you wouldn't refer to it as an album, it's more of a rock musical with opera vocals, it's supposed to be stage in a theatrical forum, the same way as Jesus Christ Superstar or Rock of Ages or something like that, it's a little bit misleading to released the album first it's like releasing the soundtrack of a movie first, we metal bands with an audience and we needed to record company to send the recording of it, so we had to record the album for financial reasons, in February we are going on the tour where we are going to perform pieces of our songs, and in the Autumn we are going to figure out how to stage this the way it was written.
what can fans expect from your European tour?
play some new songs your place on the classic songs that people enjoy, we'll try and play some old songs songs that we haven't played live in a very long time, when you been around for so long you need to give people a Reason on why they should go and see your band again.
why did you change your style of music from death metal to symphonic metal and how did your fans respond to your change?
we made our first album we were considered an original death metal band, then we made our second album and has keyboards and female clean vocals we were regarded as a very odd death metal band, by the third album be regarded as a crazy death metal band, mixing death metal with 80s hair metal and symphonic metal, so by the third album we were out of death metal, so we experimented and the end there wasn't much death metal left, on the fourth album it was brutal but not death metal anymore the music has evolved a lot so on the fifth album was our breakthrough album started his choirs and we were full on symphonic metal it was a long progression.
you hired a choir and 29 other people to help with the vocals on your album what was it like working with so meny other people?
you need those people to tell a story they are all characters in your story, if you make a movie you have to have one actor for each character, we actually have 29 characters performed by 15 singers, in the Opera it's common if you have some smaller rolls that have a similar voice to character, in different acts you can have the same person playing a different character which can change.
how did you come up with your newest album cover?
well it's difficult to make a cover for beloved Antichrist, so we thought we would try and capture one of the images from the scene, it's really difficult to do it from one specific steam that will be representing the whole opera, we thought we would do something of what it would look like after the story had finished, the Ruins of the rebuilt Temple of Jerusalem that is rebuilt in the Opera.
how did you pick The Final Cut of songs for your album?
the first night shows we do in February will be prior to the release date of our album, it's partly my fault because I have made so many changes but the lady had to push the album, we are going to have four Internet singles released and it's natural that we are going to play those songs because the fans will know the songs.
who writes the music in your band?
i write about 80% of the music and the other 20 percent was written by other people, Natalie wrote one scene and we originally wrote 4 hours worth of music and cut it down to three and a half hours, when we mixed it we realised that three and a half hour bus was way too long, we had to cut it down to around 3 hours, so the only seen that Natalie wrote had to go, it's great help to have other people help you right because when you write this music it's like writing music for a movie you need to write something that reflects what's happening on stage and somthing that reflects that mood.
you are playing hellfest in June are you excited for that?
we have a very special relationship with hellfest, we played it the first time we played crashed our bus under bridge on the way to the airport, the second biggest airport in Europe we were blocking the entire exit being nailed under a bridge we couldn't get anywhere with pur tour bus couple of thousand very angry people beeping there horns. Then we played hellfest a second and third and now we're playing a fourth time and it is a very good festival, it's always good when you get asked to play there because you always have a lot of good memories.
Anything else you want to announce to your fans?
we hope to come to Australia sometime to play.
Buy Tickets Link Below - http://www.megatherion.com/
Pre Order Album Link Here - http://www.nuclearblast.de/en/label/music/band/discography/details/5215319.70937.beloved-antichrist.html
