Draconian – על עונות מתחלפות והעתיד

Sweden's Draconian have already released 3 albums, but when it comes to gigs, they haven't been as lucky for these last few years. It's only after their fourth album, called "Turning Season Within", that the band started to appear live more than before, although they're far from being a hard-touring one. With this, Draconian still took the time to appear here in Israel some year and a half ago, along with their Swedish counterpart Therion, and now they're back again, for a solo gig. To better understand the reason for the band's rare live appearances, their last album and future plans, I spoke with vocalist Anders Jacobsson, who also explained to me why he doesn’t write about any strawberry ice creams, and why sorrow is the new happy. A unique person, but one might expect that when dealing with bands of this ilk, they're always so dark…

Hi Anders, it's been almost a year since "Turning Season Within" came out, what do you think of the album now days?

I actually like it even more now in comparison to when it came out… [Laughs]… Always when you involve yourself with a band, it takes some time to get used to what you are doing, at least for me. With this album, I enjoy listening to it by myself, and I still do that. So, yeah, I think it's a very good album.

How did the world respond to it since the album was released?

The reviews and critics have been great mostly, but this album is a little different in comparison to our earlier stuff because it's more up-tempo, more riff oriented and have faster songs, and so there have been some different opinions sometimes, because people are very conservative when it comes to this music and I can understand that since I am like that myself. I have read reviews that said they wanted the album to be more like before… But I think we gained a lot of new fans through this album and I think the more you listen to it, the more it gets appreciated. Ironically, this album is what got us the furthest in our so called carrier. We never had so many gigs like in the past year, and we never had so much interviews or press attention, so this album has been very important for us. When it comes to reviews and the critics, they still say "Arcane Rain Fell" is our best, but I don't have any favorites… I like all the albums [Laughs]…

On the album, Lisa has more parts to sing than on your previous releases, is that a direction you wanted to go to and will continue in your next releases?

I think she has as many singing parts as on the first album. Actually, if we had recorded "Turning Season Within" today, or a couple of months later, she would have even more space, because when we play the songs live, she sings more than what she does on the albums and we co-interact more with each other. It's always like that. Lisa is a very important piece in the band, and she won't have less in the future. We really don't know how it will be on our next album, because we just recently begun making ideas, we've been late with that, we planned to write songs for long time, but it didn't happen.

It's hard to know how much vocals would be in the songs before the idea of the songs had been created. Our plan of course is to include Lisa and to do more parts where we sing together. This is something that we have been talking about, to do more songs like "The Failure Epiphany" from the last album, where we're interacting with each other. That's something which is the most beautiful with this kind of music, when you have a Soprano and a Growler, and when they fit together. I wish we had done that more, but maybe we will start now [Laughs]…

What do you think makes the combination of female and male vocals in your music different than other bands of that sort?

I really don't know. When I listen to Draconian, I cannot listen to Draconian as you listen to the band, or as our fans listen to it. I always listen to our songs with a critical ear, even thou I am the artists, I'm the person that listens mostly to the Draconian because I love what we do [Laughs]… But It's hard to say what unique about us, I think it's better for others to decide, really. We're just doing what we love and we're playing the kind of music we love that connects with us as individuals and as human beings in our emotional world. This is just how we wanted it, we are not trying to be original or unique, we're just trying to do what we like.

I heard you were planning to work on a mini-album, with some covers to Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, among other songs. Is there a development in this department?

This was something we talked about maybe a year ago… We have these cover songs recorded already, for My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost, and some more stuff, but this is just something we've been doing for fun [Laughs]… We decided that maybe we should wait with that and just put them as bonus tracks on future albums. There were some talks when we released a single called "No Greater Sorrow" which was supposed to have some more songs with it, but we didn't have enough time to put it, so we wanted to do Mini-CD with 2 or 3 Draconian songs and a cover, but at the end we decided to drop it. We never really talked about it since then, so we let it pass… But these songs will come out eventually.

Are you still planning to make a tour in support of "Turning Season Within"?

Of course we want to tour, but the album was released in February / March last year, and it was a little too late to plan a tour for that year, according to our booking manager… I don't know if he speaks to truth or whatever [Laughs]… but he's been trying to push us to do shows. It's something very outrageous and crazy with us, because we've released 4 albums by now, but we haven't been on real tour, and this is something really-really bad. We are fighting for it, and hope it will happen maybe this year instead. Also, we need to write new songs, so we will concentrate on that at least for the first part of this year.

Was it just bad luck that kept you from performing?

Last year we've been out playing live more than ever, and we also got a booking agency, but we haven't had a real tour yet of 2-3 weeks, all we done are mini tours and some other gigs… We're still working on a real tour. I don't know really why it didn't happen yet, but we hope to push as much as we can for it.

How was it recording at the famous "Fascination Street Studio" in comparison to your previous studio work? Will you continue recording there in the future?

Yeah, at least with the producer Jens Bogre, we'll work with him in the future. I think the sound and the massive production we had on this new album, is more of what we were always looking for. Before, we didn't have the budget to record there, but then we grew a bit larger, bigger and more popular, and our budget was increased, so now we could afford it. We decided to put our money on that instead of going to a cheaper studio and record an album that we would not like so much.

The recording process was much more professional and comfortable experiences with Draconian. It's a great studio, and it was worth every penny of it. We just created music, did what we wanted, and we felt much more comfortable with the whole recording process. It made us concentrate on what is important, and it was very important for us as musicians, to do our best. At our previous studio, that was never an issue – the producers had their own way of doing things… Here we had more artistic freedom and I think that's what important when you're in a band. We would definitely stay with Jens, it was great working with him and we couldn't be happier about the result.

The lyrical theme on the album seems to be more direct and less abstract than before, why is that?

It's still very typically me when it comes to the lyrics and how I write it, but maybe it is more direct or down to earth, if that is the impression. When we first realized this album would sound very different than the previous ones, I wanted more than before to do something different with the lyrics, I wanted the lyrics to reach out to more people, but still with my own style, so it just happened that way.

I didn't plan on doing anything special and I just threw some lyrics that I've written and they all happen to deal with the same thing – with the sorrows, pains, hopelessness and solitude within the situations of a romantic life. It was good for me to do something with all this, of course it's a personal thing, but I never been scared of revealing myself like that, it's just a process for me. When I cried out the lyrics to the music, I thought it felt very well… The lyrics are more emotional in a way than earlier and the music is more violent, so there was a battle, and that's what I wanted.

Why do you prefer to dabble with melancholic and romantic subjects? Don't you want to write about happier stuff?

Happier stuff? [Laughs]… I don't think it could work with this kind of music, I can't write on strawberry ice cream, summer, the sun, puppets and happiness in this kind of music… it doesn't fit [Laughs]… it would just sound stupid. I think the sorrow and pain that we have to deal with in life, is very important for us to grow as individuals and to learn things about ourselves. Everyone are dealing with it in one way or the other, but lets say that a person doesn't experience sorrow, I don't think he or she will know much about themselves.

With sorrow, I try to manifest all these destructive and sad things into something constructive. This is the reason why I find it so beautiful and so personal to me, because I think the whole philosophy of sorrow is crucial in life in order to get to know yourself. It's only after a great lose or a great pain that we sit down and realize we have changed and we have new ideas and new view on our existence. I think this music we're playing, within the Gothic genre, is very good to handle these things, because the music is beautiful, it's dark, it's atmospheric and I think everything just fits.

How does the work process between you and Johan Ericson go? How do you combine his musical direction with your lyrical ideas?

Usually it's like this… Lets just say one day, Johan calls me and says "Hey I have new idea for a song". We go down to our studio (we have our own little recording studio here), we listen to it, and then I take it home with me. I write something, or I look up something I already written, and make up how we would do it, and then we go back to the studio and we arrange the song together – where we should put the vocals, if we should add something, or replace something in the music… Basically, Johan writes most of the song musically, and then we go down to studio and arrange it with the lyrics that I write. Most of the songs are done this way.

Besides Draconian, are you working on anything else right now you're willing to share details about?

Right now we're not really working on anything. Johan have a lot of different side projects that he's been working on a little bit. We haven't really had time to work on anything for Draconian up until now, but I think we'll begin writing new songs, we wanted to start back in December. Actually maybe this week we will go and brainstorm on ideas, and see what fits, just like we always do when there's an album in the process. Besides that, we have nothing going on… We will play this gig in Israel, and we will play a couple of festivals this year, maybe we will go to Italy, Spain and Portugal, but that's everything we have booked. We haven't booked much this year.

So you're coming to Israel once again, what can you tell us of your last visit in here? What do you remember?

The greatest impression I had personally, was… the people, the people of Israel, especially the fans, which we met after, before and during our gig. I have never been so amazed and positively surprised by an audience that belongs to a different culture and a different country… It was just amazing to me, because here, in the "west", we're so sheltered and misguided in a way with the media, especially when it comes to Israel, because of the civil war and everything.

I really didn't know what to expect from anyone, I just knew that we had a number of fans and that they were trying to get us play for years, and when we got there, everything seemed like… people, great metal fans, just like us… it was so great, and I can say it was one of the best audiences we ever had, people were even crying during the show, and we were holding a meet and greet with the fans afterwards for 2 hours… It was very sad to go home, I really didn't want to. We have been looking forward to come back ever since.

What do you plan for your upcoming visit here? Any sight seeing you haven't done?

If we had stayed for more extra days, we would have loved to go to Jerusalem and have more sight seeing of course, but we're only going to stay for the weekend, so will be only in Tel-Aviv. There would be no time for anything else. We will probably be at a lot of party's with fans and the production guys, and do some press meetings and interviews, so there would be no time for sight seeing, unfortunately.

Jerusalem is very nice just so you know, next time I will show you around…

Yeah… Now it's our second time in Israel, and a lot of the big bands haven't really been to Israel yet [Laughs]… So I hope it won't take too long before we return, because it's a beautiful country, I love the people and I would like to see so much more. Even though I've been there 2 times, I haven't seen anything… You know, I have a sister that lived there for a year and she told me everything, so I know there are a lot of things to see and experience. I will most definitely return, if not with Draconian, then by myself… I have a couple of friends over there.

Are you planning anything special for your upcoming show?

[Laughs]… Actually today is the day we're going to decide on the set-list, I have no idea really, so I can't answer the question… We'll play for almost 2 hours, and I'm sure the Israeli audience would be very happy. We will play a couple of songs that they really wanted to hear last time, just for them.

Last but not least, for those who have doubts, tell them why they should come and see your show.

My god, this is a hard question… I don't know why people should have doubts coming to the show if they like this kind of music. I see no reason for it. I learned there is some kind of "Shabbat" thing going on that day, and some people can't come, but maybe they should just re-evaluate their priorities or something… I just say, we're not coming very often to Israel, maybe we won't come there in many years, so this is very good opportunity to see Draconian. I think that people who have doubts should think about it… This is a good reason.