What about this Decadent disc? My impression was that it was released by Zizania as a celebrational thing.
Richard: It was released by the band. It was a celebrational thing. We had a lot of remixes and remasters that we just wanted to put out. Zizania did some distribution, but so did many others.
Well, our magazine never got a copy, so I got to wonder what kind of release it was.
Karl: We are not used to operating as a record label, so we don't know who to send it to. We are picking up contacts and gathering a list. Give us the details and we'll send you whatever comes out next.
How was your last album Clone received by the press and the public?
Karl: It was received in pretty much the way we expected it to be received. We considered it to be our best album since Wounded Land. Well, it was not really that it was the best one since Wounded Land, but I did feel it had a lot of similarities with that album. Both in the way that we started to write the music and the feel of the songs. It is the first album we have done since Wounded Land where the whole band were completely happy with the music and the way it should go. We had some conflicts on the in-between albums. When we finished this cd it felt right. And for the first time, the artwork matched the cd. It was a good package. So everything kind of came together at the right time with that time.
Richard: We've had twenty or so reviews of it and they're all good, which is brilliant. For the other albums we had good reviews, but some bad ones as well.
I happen to be a guy who likes Extinct Instinct better.
Karl: Well, the songs on Extinct Instinct I was very pleased with and some of the production moments were very good. But we were still fighting the battle with Damian at the time, so that took kind of the edge off of the situation. So we had problems there and they got even bigger on tour. That's too bad, because I think there were some of our best songs onthere and we had spent a lot of time on them and on the arrangements. But when something like that puts a cloud over the album, you forget what it was like, you forget about the quality, you only remember the hassle.
Richard: But we did actually realize that there's some pretty good stuff on there and we will be doing a few live songs from that tonight, although we haven't been playing things from there for ages. Not since '97.
I'm not sure myself why I like Extinct Instinct better. Maybe Clone is more of a progmetal record, and less progrock.
Karl: Well, maybe it is because of the production and the fact that there are less keyboards on there. When they do come out they are more obvious. But there are lesser layers and less parts and the whole is stripped down a bit more. So on the whole you get the kind of impression of the drums and the bass and the rhythm section coming through louder.
Richard: On the first song Mac's got a louder voice, but later on...
Yes you're right. The last few songs have a bit more of an epic quality to them.
Richard: That's it with the first song. Everybody thinks that that is the flavour of the album, but it isn't. It is just the first thing you hear. I remember somebody telling me how he picked up Extinct Instinct. He listened to it in the shops and it starts off with this sequency sound. After ten seconds he thought it was just a dance album. He bought it and took it home with him and found out it was different. But people get such a strange impression from the first song.
What is the story of Clone about exactly?
Richard: Well Jon (Jeary, the bass player) wrote most of the lyrics. Jon and me. We wanted to do a concept album and Jon had spent a lot of time thinking about what he wanted to do it about. He wanting something cloning and something science fiction. It is about someone who feels that he doesn't fit in. This guy ends up on Mars for whatever reasons and I tried to fit in a spiritual journey for someone trying to find his way to heaven. So we tied the two together and we came up with Clone. Everybody is saying that it is about the scientific issues of the day and the wrongs and right of cloning, but it is not really. It is just a story.
This idea of a planet such as Mars being a new frontier for people who do not feel they fit in on Earth anymore is to be an idea that arises a lot in science fiction.
Richard: I think this is what Jon wants to do. Haha.
Karl: Jon always bases the character on himself. He is superhuman and so intelligent that he doesn't fit in with anyone on Earth.
Richard: Jon's on the internet now, so he'll be reading your interview. He'll be reading this
(HI JON!)
Karl: What amuses me is how this label progressive metal started to develop. When we started playing there was no such category. But you see that people feel the need, because we started crossing styles of music. We liked Metallica and we like things like Genesis and Pink Floyd as well. And they feel the need to discover a category, so they can put you in this pigeonhole. So they coined the name progressive metal and they put all these bands that had already got going in this area.
I guess this has to do with the fact that reviewers and such have to put things on paper. One the ways to do this is to indicate a genre. It seems that bands do not like to be categorized under a genre. They are closer to the music so they probably know best about their influences and such.
Karl: Being categorized doesn't bother me. It was just amusing that the press created a new style of music without the bands knowing it. And then as a result of calling a few bands that were around at the time, putting them into this area, they have created a whole load of new bands playing this kind of music. So I think it is the responsibility of the press that there is a new style of music, instead of that of the bands.
I'm not sure about that. When you have a few bands doing something kind of new and having some success, such as Queensryche and Dream Theater, then there will be bands following them. You could of course say about all those bands that they are like Dream Theater or Queensryche, or you just say they make progmetal. Then I prefer the name progmetal, because you are not necessarily derivative. And if as a reviewer you want to write about things, it helps to put labels on bands. I can of course just say I like an album, but that only helps if people know what my tasted are.
Why did Damian leave?
Karl: After the first album he left about three days before the tour, because he left to play with this band called Lasalle. And there was this exclusive contract. The album has never been released. All sorts of rumours went around like it being the tax loss of somebody or something.
Richard: I've heard it and it all sounds a bit dated. The production is okay, but I don't think there are any good songs there. And they weren't really a band. They were just a package brought together with money and that is no way to make a band.
Karl: And the second time we just about started to record the vocals for Clone after recovering from the last tour and he rang up a few days before to tell us that he was sorry, but that he had to leave to play in Les Miserables. But it was never a marriage made in heaven anyway. We might never play in Spain again, after Damian throwing a monitor at the audience. This sort of antics was okay in the seventies, but it is probably not okay in the nineties.
I talked to Dave Wagstaffe of Landmarq a week ago and he told me that although they liked Damian and all, the first album to be recorded as a band was the fourth one, with Tracy Hitchings. So it seems they found he was not always involved enough.
Karl: Well Damian always used to write lyrics. But he wasn't really involved. He always felt with Landmarq and with Threshold that there was a band and someone at the front. And it is not so much that we don't like him, he just never wanted to commit himself to one thing in case he missed out on something else. So he was always moving on to the next thing and the best thing he has done in the end is his solo album, because it is what is in his heart and he actually believes in it. It comes through there and you can hear that straightaway. It is better on Wounded Land, but on Extinct Instinct you don't hear his passion for the music. And you don't hear that with Landmarq at all.
Richard: For Damian doing the progressive metal thing is something different, because he was always doing things acoustic. Some years ago when Karl and I were playing with Mercy Train, Damian and his brother played as support doing an acoustic set back in 1991. That's what he was, that was Damian.
Karl: The songs he played were in fact the songs that came on the album. He all wrote them when he had just left school. They were really good songs and they stand up really well.
Where did you find the new singer?
Karl: Well, the thing is I hate auditioning people. I can't bear it. So we didn't advertise, but contacted some bands and various people to ask them if they knew of any singers available. So we know this guy who had been in a band with Mac called Sergeant Fury and he put us in contact with him. So it was a case of asking around and he was the only one who came up we liked. I had heard the album he did and so we rang him up to see what he was like and we liked him. We didn't even bother meet, we just asked him to come over to do the album. We just started working on the album and from then on it went great ever since. He is the first singer of the band who is there because he likes the music and not because we had a deal or anything. Previous times, often people came along thinking that we were a band with a deal and then it feels like they're joining because they feel they can release a record. He may leave, he may stay, but this time it seems we have someone in the band who is in there for the right reasons.
Is this Sergeant Fury more an ordinary metal band.
Karl: Yeah, sort of LA pop metal.
Richard: Well we listened to it and the voice had the edge to it that we were looking for. An edge that Damian and Glynn (Morgan the second singer, JH) did not have.
He really has got a typical metal voice unlike Damian.
Karl: Yeah, Damian has got an almost operatic voice. There is no dirt in his voice. Now Glynn had this gravelly kind of tone in his voice which is very different.
Richard: And Mac can do both. Even the gentle ballad sections.
You, Richard, seem to be involved also with a project called Angel?
Richard: In the same way that Damian before joining Threshold did acoustic stuf, I was always doing pop and soul music and r&b. My wife is a good singer so I started rewriting the stuff I was writing before and so we decided to do an album with it and called ourselves Angel. Now there are seven bands in the world called Angel so we might change this. It is something we do at home in our studio. We are doing that until the next Threshold album. It's a lot of fun to do something very different. It's kind of pop, r&b, mostly keyboards with drum machine. The Janet Jackson kind of thing. It is not the old rhythm and blues of the fifties. The rhythm and blues of today has little rhythm and certainly no blues.
What about you Karl?
Karl: Well, I work in a studio, so I'm involved in a lot of things, but not as part of the band. Shadowland hasn't been doing anything for the last four years. LAst year and the year before I was told that there would be a tour. We went back to learn all the music and there wasn't any tour at all. There is supposed to be a tour in February (2000, it didn't come through yet again) which is supposed to be a tour in support of the last album, which came out four years ago. I can't even remember the name of the album.
I played it recently, but I didn't like it.
Karl: Well for me it is fun, because I don't have to write anything. Threshold is the band I've always been in as a writer and completely involved in. The other things I've done in the studio with friends such as Clive, I've always enjoyed doing, but he writes them. Maybe because Shadowland was a bit too neo, that put you off.
Well I did like the first two albums.
Richard: They are dark and moody.
Yes. But the last one is too poppy for me.
Karl: I guess the artwork also put you off. Pete Nicholls made it.
Yes it does.
Richard: It was too bad about the rereleases that you lost the old artwork.
Karl: Oh yes, the artwork on the SI releases was great, really summed up the album. Dark and moody.
And there was Strangers On A Train.
Karl: Yes we played it live here in 1991 once. It was the first release on the SI label, but it was later reissued. We recorded the original version in the south of Holland somewhere. We had only an eight track recorder and only seven of them worked. We had to use guitar effects for the vocals to sing through and we had hardly any equipment at all. We did remix it for the second version, but it contains all the original parts so it is not that much clearer.
And Mercy Train?
Karl: Well Mercy Train was never officially released. It was only available through mailorder. It sold quite well, a couple of thousand copies. Considering it was never really released.
Richard: It was on Pat. Pending a sublabel. But it was never released, it was just in the SI catalogue.
Karl: We were really pleased with it. We did lots of gigs, played some open air festivals in England. We probably played the most gigs we have ever played in England. Then we made the album afterwards and then it stopped. But it was not really suitable for the area of music we were interested in. But it was really fun for us to do. Peter Gee was in it from Pendragon playing bass and Nick Harradence. It was very easy to play and simply enjoyable, a lot of energy.
I guess the audience were also somewhat larger.
Richard: Yes, it was quite popular, but by putting it on SI I guess we made a wrong choice. To put it on a progressive label. But we knew we could get a release, so we just took the easy way. We reformed again around '95/'96. We rehearsed again and we had about ehm 12 songs? We recorded four of them for a demo, but it kind of disappeared.
Karl: Anyway SI went bankrupt and we had only contacts for progressive metal and progressive rock and we couldn't find anybody who was interested in this music. But it was the most popular thing we had ever done. The only thing people would listen to in England. Yes, come over here and it is completely different. Here nobody would want to hear something like Mercy Train. The only reason for keeping it going was that there was some success involved. So when that didn't happen... And I always put Threshold first and maybe it suffered because of that.
It seems Threshold started later. I mean Mercy Train came before Wounded Land didn't it?
Karl: Well it took us a long time to get a deal, but Threshold started around '89/'88. It started Nick and I and Jon playing around pubs at the time playing covers and starting to write our own music at times. We gradually filled out the set with our own stuff.
What about the next album?
Karl: I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about its sound. I can write songs years in advance of the album get out. But what happens usually, is that those songs are left behind, because they do not have the right flavour. Whatever Nick (Midson, guitar) does goes to Jon and he writes the lyrics. Richard kind of works more on his own and he writes both music and lyrics. And then we all kind of work them together. I can not write a song for an album a year before it comes out, because it won't feel part of the album. The most important thing for me in a Threshold album is that it runs through almost like a composition. Every song is related and so on. If you have songs that are only half matched, something we did somewhat on Psychedelicatessen, and something on the album is lost and Jons lyrics don't fit in well anymore, because he tries to write lyrics that all connect. We may collect ideas long before the album.
You collect ideas and then put together the album in the studio?
Karl: Well, not in the studio, we can not afford that. Just before. Working specifically together with other people and writing songs together is simply too frustrating for us. Everybody has got these great ideas in his head and he can never explain them to other people. We all have our facilities to record our little ideas and what we want. Maybe we'll arrange them together. But I guess this is how most bands do it.
Well yes, but what I meant is more that one comes up with a framework for a song and then the band takes over.
Karl: Well we do work on it together, but never as a band together. The last thing I'd want to do is stand in a rehearsal room and arrange the song. It is too loud. Working on a computer is the best way to arrange things, using modern technology. You can move the parts around a bit and with the keyboard sounds and a drum machine you can get the best possible arrangement. The most important thing in songwriting to make a good song a great song is in the arrangements. After you get the initial ideas, it is important for me to get the bits right.
To close down maybe, what are your influences musically.
Karl: Testament, Deep Purple originally and Genesis. The reason we crossed over to progressive metal, if you like, is that I loved the melody and passion of the music of Genesis, the amazing melodies that Tony Banks put in. The vision of a whole album, like A Trick Of The Tail, was a great influence on how I saw music. But I still have that metal side. When we started we thought people wouldn't think anything of it, but then everything started to take off. Queensryche and the Mindcrime album sort of opened the way for us, showing us that the music might be acceptable after all. And then later Dream Theater came along and everyone started saying we sounded like them, so I guess they opened the way for us as well.
Richard: The problem with progressive metal is that there are so many bands making it and the market is not that big. All these copying bands are ruining for the others.
Karl: A distinction between us and Dream Theater is that we are distinctly English and they sound very American. For that is a totally different kind of thing.
Somebody told me that on Extinct Instinct he heard a lot of Black Sabbath influences. Probably because of the dark rhythm guitar work.
Karl: Actually, I never really liked Black Sabbath, but I do like Candlemass, so I guess that is where that influence is coming from.
Richard: For me one of the life changing albums was And Then There Were Three which most Genesis fans tell me is their worst. But for me it was the first one I heard and it was so much more diverse than anything I had ever heard that it really affected the way I wrote songs. And Queen, I was crazy about Night At The Opera and played it over and over again.