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Het afgelopen jaar was niet de makkelijkste, maar wel de vruchtbaarste in de geschiedenis van het Zweedse metalcollectief Pain Of Salvation. Niet de makkelijkste aangezien ze in het begin van dat jaar na veel dubben, wikken en wegen hebben besloten bassist Kristoffer Gildenlöw uit de band te zetten. Dat het de broer is van zanger/bandleider Daniel zal de beslissing niet hebben vergemakkelijkt, maar doordat Kris al een aantal jaren in Nederland woonachtig is met zijn vrouw en kind en i.t.t. eerdere plannen niet meer weg lijkt te slaan uit ons kikkerlandje, werd de afstand tussen hem en de band een onoverkomelijk bezwaar. Dat 2006 ook een vruchtbaar jaar was, bewijst niet alleen het pas verworven vaderschap van Daniel (afgelopen zomer werd zijn zoon Sandrian Silver Khan geboren), maar ook het nieuwe album ’Scarsick’ dat weer op ingenieuze en conceptuele wijze in elkaar is gebreid.
Text: Evil Dr. Smith
BODY VERSUS SOUL
Another album, another interview. That’s how life goes for a professional musician. Also for Pain Of Salvation, that made a five-day trip through Europe for long-day interview sessions in early January. In the past sixteen years of Pain Of Salvation’s existence you could have probably read about a thousand interviews with Daniel Gildenlöw, but close to zero interviews with any of the other band members. That’s not really a surprise, because Daniel is the face, the soul and the mind of the band. He founded the band (under the moniker of Reality already back in the eighties), he sings, plays the guitar, composes the music, writes the lyrics and on this new album also plays the bass. Everybody wants to talk with Daniel, the other band members seem to be “just the band members”. But is that really so? Are they only the body of the band, or do they have a saying in the compositions, style and development of the band? Therefore I thought it was an interesting idea to talk with someone else instead of Daniel. The guitarist of the band, Johan Hallgren, accompanied Daniel on this interview-tour, so he was the ideal object to counter the thesis that he’s only part of the body of Pain Of Salvation. A body that is very tight and muscular, by the way. The little guitarist looks very fit in his muscle shirt (yes, it was still January). “Yeah, I work out, or at least I’m trying”, he says with a very friendly tone, “and it’s not any problem for my guitar skills. In fact, it helped me a lot when I had some kind of strain injury in my hand.”
We are sitting in the guest room of the Amsterdam Park Hotel, nearby Leidse Square. In the back of that room I see Daniel sitting, surrounded by a couple of journalists and clearly didn’t shave his hair and beard in a long time. It’s common that you may speak with a musician for like half an hour. A female colleague from another e-zine was after me, so I thought it would be tactful to have an interview with Johan together with her. Not only we would then have an hour with Johan together, but also I was accompanied by a young, female journalist; always handy to let inexperienced people talk, isn’t it? And Johan wasn’t an experienced talker. In fact, I had the strong idea this interview day was his first official one. “Well, as a matter of fact I’m experienced and I have doing a lot of interviews in the past, but Daniel talks so much. I think there’s something wrong with his mouth; it just never stops, hahaha.” Does Daniel do that all the time, also when you’re discussing music, or any other topic? Because I have the idea that Daniel has an opinion about almost anything and everything. Johan continues: “Yeah, he is a big talker, but it’s interesting what he has to say, so I don’t mind listening. I don’t really dislike anything he has to say; we grew up with the same background, in the same area, and he chooses his words very careful. We have the same ideas about humanistic thoughts and so, so I generally agree with his opinions.” Daniel had very intimate, extremely personal things to say on ’Remedy Lane’, but on this new album it’s about the superficiality of Western society and the influence of the American government in the world. You have to play all these songs over again and over again. “I don’t disagree, so basically I don’t have any problems with the songs and the lyrics Daniel writes. Sometimes I thought about things in the way he’s going with the lyrics, but normally when I read his lyrics I think they’re really good. He’s a very good writer. Sometimes I get a bit shocked, but when you eventually understand what he means with it, I don’t have any problems with it. This new album he had in his mind already since the creation of our previous album ‘Be’, and he had another album in his mind too.” But do you have any kind of influence in the music that’s written, or is it Daniel the great Dictator? “Oh no, absolutely not. We always reflect his ideas and thoughts. If he introduces us a lyrical or musical idea, we definitely have our saying in it. But most of the times we are pretty fine with it, he always dresses his words and putting out his ideas in a good way. Thereby, he also reflects our thoughts. We brought in ideas on this album as well.” Johan’s eager to point out the band member’s compositor influence on the album, but as far as I can understand him it’s mostly in a indirect way which you will not see in the credits. To the question if we may see this album as finally the follow-up for ‘The Perfect Element Part 1’, he laughs amusingly: “No comment, you should figure that out yourself, I don’t want to ruin it, hahaha!” Well, with a song like ‘Kingdom Of Loss’ (which is a name very closely to ‘King Of Loss’ from ‘The Perfect Element Part 1’) and another source that told me that Daniel already had this album in mind shortly after the ‘The Perfect Element Part 1’, I do have my thoughts about it. ‘Maybe these are pieces of the puzzle,” Johan grins.
WAR TO END ALL WARS
Let’s try it differently; what is the underlying idea of this new album ‘Scarsick’? Johan thinks it’s a statement against the high-consumption society: “It’s starting to get too fast. People are mirrors now. Ask people what they think of something and they’ll say this or they say that. But they never tell WHY. Cause they don’t know. It’s because ‘they said so… everyone says this…’. And when you ask them ‘What do you think?’, they reply ‘I haven’t really thought about it.’ I think the human being is kinda lost right now. Not all of us, but as a collective. Individually we’re pretty much the same as we were 2,000 years ago. I don’t know how this comes. Maybe it’s the people who are in the positions that have the power. That’s how I feel about it. I feel sorry for people sometimes, because they’re only complaining and complaining, but they do nothing about it.” But now you’re complaining about their complaining, Johan. He smiles: “Yeah, of course. There are a lot of people in this world that don’t have anything, except for their life. I don’t think they are more happy or unhappy than anyone of us. The human species is adaptable, we can adapt to our situations. We are like chameleons; we’re twisting and turning ourselves in any situation. But now… [he thinks] You are not what you own.” Johan explains that happiness can’t be found in rich and fame; a man like Justin Timberlake can be the happiest man around the globe, but that’s not because of his wealth and luxury. “Happiness can’t be bought. The more you buy, the more you have, the more you have to drag. People buy things now, and they don’t even know why. Maybe they need a new girlfriend instead of buying a new TV. A TV is hard to hug. I think there’s someone for everyone, there was even one for me. Yeah, I did find my happiness. I was looking and I was looking, and when I stopped looking for it; there she was. And it’s just two weeks ago that I met my Marie on Christmas day, hehe.”
Congratulations Johan, but why is this point of view on the album taken with an American perspective? Isn’t this a big cliché to point out the negative effects of ‘The (Evil) American Way’? I’ll guess a lot of people have heard this a thousand times before. Aren’t there other countries or environments to criticise? Why not taking Iran, North Korea or Israel as a subject for an album. Johan’s answer is as simple as it can get: “It’s easier. We know more about America then we know about North Korea. And I think America is a very good example, because when you go travel around the world, almost everyone you meet is a nice person, and is having good ideas and is happy with their lives, etc. But as a collective, we do a lot of stupid things. As for instance The United Stated with all their wars. I don’t think all those 18 to 20-year old boys really want to go to those wars, even though they volunteered. They just don’t have any alternative. Justin Timberlake however… And the people at home will shout: ‘We going to give them hell!’, while they’re sitting behind their desks. They don’t kill people, they don’t know how that feels. I met a guy in Budapest a couple of years ago, who deserted from the army. He thought he had killed too many Palestinians. The last one he killed stood only a few meters away from him. He was looking in his eyes when he died. He just crashed. He phoned his mother back in Budapest and said ‘I’m coming, I don’t wanna be here anymore’. Now he’s living in the underworld of Budapest - he can’t be visible anymore, because otherwise they will pick him up and put him for prison because of his desertion. He told me that he hasn’t slept the last four or five years, he even isn’t sure about that. Only a few minutes of sleep here and a few minutes there. Now he’s a pimp and a drugs dealer.”
Playing the devil’s advocate: What would you do when you were sent out to Iraq, for instance? Would you fight, Johan? “Speaking for myself, I didn’t have to do time in the civil army. I was studying back then, and after my study we didn’t have a Civil Service in Sweden anymore. When I was asked to send out for Iraq, I think it depends on the situation. People should fight sometimes, because they have to. But it’s not about that anymore. It’s about wealth, money, oil, whatever.” So George W. Bush shouldn’t have went to Iraq and hunted for Saddam Hussein? “In one sense it was a good thing, but I think that if they wanted to put him out of the way, they could have done this with a certain precision-bombing or whatever. I’m sure they could have found out where he was hiding.” What about Osama Bin Laden then; why didn’t have they caught him yet? “Because he lives in caves and no one doesn’t really know how he looks like anymore,” Johan smiles. “But I wasn’t pro-invading Iraq then. I wanted the Iraqi people to be free, but not in that way. And they’re still not free. This will go on for a long time. It’s all about money and weapons. America produces a lot of weapons, and they have to sell ‘em, they have to use ‘em; just to make new ones…” To conclude our sudden political discussion, I asked him his opinion about Hussein’s conviction and sentenced to death by the Iraqi High Tribunal. Johan is very decisive at this. “I don’t like death penalties, at all. If a man kills someone else, you can’t show it that it’s wrong to kill another man by killing another. That’s a circle. But it’s hard to make these kinds of decisions, especially for these kinds of men. I’m sure that every man is capable of killing, if you have to. Luckily I haven’t been in that position. I only have had a couple of pub fights, that’s it. One time I got a bottle on my head. It appears that I wasn’t the right person that the guy wanted to hit. But I hit him pretty bad, hehe.”
SCARS AND CARSICK
“The album is recorded last year, and it all went pretty well. Johan Langell recorded the drums in April, and I recorded the guitar parts in, I think, October. It took such a long time, because in the meantime Daniel became a father. The music on the album is a little different than our previous albums. I think this album is freer, there’s more room to play, especially live. There aren’t those really fit structures you have to play exactly the same every time. You can play around a little bit. That is very satisfying to play, and it makes you smile. So musically, it’s more diverse, like that disco song [‘Disco Queen’]. We just started to play [Johan hums the beat], and all of a sudden there was this song.” This song, which is a mix of seventies disco and atmospheric progmetal, is an extremely unusual song which will certainly cause a stir amongst metal fans. I played this song in a record store and besides the obvious influences as the Bee Gees and the Scissor Sisters, a customer also thought it sounds like Frank Zappa. Johan’s visibly pleased. “Nice, although the disco part of the song purely came out of a jam session. The metal part of the song is obviously more arranged and was created by Daniel.” The last guitar part of that song is in the exact same tune as Mike Oldfield’s guitar sound. Johan is surprised: “Oh really? When we recorded it, we thought more that it was a Queen thing.” That makes me glad that I didn’t bet with my friends who said the same…
There’s another pretty unusual song on the album, ‘America’. It reminds me a lot of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘West Side Story’. Johan agrees. “Yes, some of the themes in that song are pretty like the song ‘America’ from ‘The West Side Story’. I don’t know if Daniel did it on purpose, and meant it to be a quote or something, just because it has the same title, but probably.” [Johan hums the Bernstein song] The album has a particular artwork, if I say it very politely. “It’s about suffering. I think it’s interesting artwork. People will react on it, usually; is it a boy, is it a girl, is it a human being, is it fixed? The exact meaning of the head with bricks is something Daniel can tell in an ultra long explanation. I don’t really know where he got it from, but he likes it. Maybe I like it too, because it’s so damn ugly, hehehe.” I certainly hope for Daniel it’s not his kid. Speaking about his son, just when the band thought there was only one Gildenlöw left in the band, suddenly a new one pops up… “Yeah,” smiles Johan, “that’s his son you can hear in the song ‘Cribcaged’. We gonna drill him to be our next bass player, when he’s six years old or so. At the moment, we have found a new bass player for our upcoming tour in Europe, next March. Simon Andersson is a fun guy. When Pain Of Salvation was searching for a new guitarist back in 1998, he applied also for that job. A job that I got, by the way. And now, nine years later, he eventually came into the band, but as a bass player. He’s just very much into our music, and he’s also a very good friend with our keyboard player Fredrik Hermansson (Simon also played/plays with Fredrik in the band Defaced, EDS). Simon’s very energetic and he puts a good vibe in the band. We’ll see if Simon will be our fulltime bass player. At this moment we have three candidates for the bass job, so we’ll see if Simon will stick around with us. Eh…[Johan hesitates] I don’t think I can tell you who are the other candidates are. But if this tour works out, Simon will make a pretty good chance. As for now, he’s only helping us out with the tour.”
GETTING OLD COWS OUT OF THE DITCH IS A DUTCH SAYING FOR THAT’S ANCIENT HISTORY.
People already wrote too much about it, but I simply can’t ignore the loss of your bass player. It’s obviously out of the question asking Kristoffer if he wanted to help out the band during the tour, but what was it like to have Kristoffer in the band the last couple of years, when he was living in The Netherlands? “You’re right, that’s not an option. It wouldn’t feel right. I’m sorry how things turned out, but we waited and we waited. Years gone by and we simply missed a bass player in the rehearsing room. It all stagnated a bit. It’s hard to write music and checking ideas when we’re not all around, so it was pretty heavy for all of us. When he came up, we had to rehearse all the time before tours.” I’ve understand that he already asked the band in early 2005 if it’s not better for the band that he should give up his bass duties. “I think it would have happen a lot earlier if he wasn’t Daniel’s brother, of course. The deal from the start was that he was moving to Holland for a short period of time, and then he was supposed to move back to Sweden. But that didn’t happen; his wife would miss her family and he got a job in the meantime. Obviously it has its effect on us, but there are no heart feelings; I like him a lot and we’re still friends. I hope the best for him. I know he making music with his new band DIAL right now (together with his wife Liselotte (ex-Cirrha Niva)), but I haven’t heard it yet. I’m sure we’ll meet each other a lot of times in the future and maybe we’ll collaborate with something else, maybe even with Daniel again. But for the band, we just had to parted ways with Kristoffer. We couldn’t wait any longer.” What about your family life, Johan? Do you have brothers or sisters? “I have a half-brother. No, he’s not our biggest fan, hehehe. He’s not really into our kind of music, but he’s very proud of me.” What kind of music do you like yourself, Johan? “Oh, I’m into all kinds of music. At the moment, I play a lot of Robbie Williams. But don’t tell anybody! It’s not just the music; it’s the whole personality. He can show his ass on stage in front of 10,000 people and laughs about it; that proves strength.” On an old version of the official Pain Of Salvation Internet site you once mentioned a couple of your favourite guitarists. One of them was Al DiMeola and the other one was… Miles Davis. Miles Davis, a guitar player? “Oh, well… that must be a little mistake. But I do like Miles a lot. He was a genius. He could play one note that was filled with so much emotion, that people started to cry. He was a real genius… living a hard life.”
http://www.painofsalvation.com
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