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"Norwegian Prog Power on the Rise"
Interview with: Communic
(bk) After the big success the second Communic album, "Waves of Visual Decay" has had, mastermind, guitar player and vocalist Oddleif Stensland surely has more than one interview to give... all the same, he answered all our questions in a very friendly and talkative mood.
Q: First of all, congratulations to your new album, I think it's absolutely great...
Oddleif: ...that's cool to hear...
Q: My first question is, how did you get started? I think you used to play in another band before Communic, why did you leave that band, or do you still go on with that band as a project or something?
Oddleif: All the members in Communic these days are only focusing on this band, so there's no projects going on. What happened actually was that I was playing in this band in Norway called Scariot, and I was only the vocalist in that band, but I mainly consider myself a guitar player, and I like to write music. In this band there was no room for my own ideas, so I was playing along with this idea I had of my own band - I had the name for it, Communic, so I was searching for members, just to do it as a side project while I still was in this other band. I asked the drummer in this band if he wanted to join me, and play just for fun, play some music just as a side project, and he joined me. Then I called up this bass player that I had played with in some different bands going back to... well, me and the bass player, that goes back for over 10 years, we've played together in many different bands, so he was the first choice and I called him and he was ready to join us. Together we made a demo quite fast actually. After a few months we decided to book a studio and record a demo and amazingly it's that demo that got us signed to Nuclear Blast. One year actually after the band was formed we released the debut album "Conspiracy in Mind", that came out last year. When we got the deal with Nuclear Blast we decided that we wanted to focus 100% on Communic and we quit this other band, the other projects some of the members were involved in, focusing only on Communic, so it everything happened quite fast actually, one year after the first album was out, we're now ready with the follow-up. So the band is only in total just three years old and we have two albums out, that's pretty cool, I think.
Q: How did you get in contact with Nuclear Blast, or how did Nuclear Blast get hold of you?
Oddleif: I think it has something to do with that the demo that we did got a lot of good reviews in the underground, and we got elected "Demo of the Month" in Rock Hard Germany, and also some other of the big magazines were praising this demo really high. I think some of the record companies and record labels took notice of this. We also signed a management deal with a management in Denmark that took care of all this business talk and stuff like that, so none of it went through the band, so at least it looked like a serious band searching for a record deal - and sure we were serious about it, and wanted to show that in the most professional way. I think that had something to do with it, and also that we spared no expenses when we made the demo. We wanted to make a really professional demo with the best possible sound we could get and we spent quite some money on it to get it that way. I also think that was important to show the potential in the band, that you didn't release a demo with demo sound, but a demo with proper CD sound that should have been released on a CD.
Q: After the excellent reviews you got for "Conspiracy in Mind", was it difficult to write the follow-up album? Because expectations were very high I guess...
Oddleif: Yeah, there was a lot of expectations after the first album, because there was a lot of good media reponse, and we did a lot of interviews, and everyone seemed to talk about this album, so there was a little dark cloud hanging over us that we needed to do something really good. People expected something to follow it up or were sitting there waiting to see if we managed to follow it up or if was just one album and that was it... we decided to just focus on our own will of making music we liked, and I think that we managed to put those expectations behind us and focus on creating some cool songs and didn't worry to much about what people would think about it. As long as we could be happy with it, then we could stand for it, and hopefully people would enjoy it just as much as we do.
Q Are you satisfied with the promotion and the sales of the first album, I guess by now you must know more or less the sales numbers and things...
Oddleif: Yeah, we're really happy with the promotion and the sales as well, I also think that Nuclear Blast did a really good job in promoting us. We were a pretty new band, and they have a lot of bigger bands, that they could also push a lot, but they actually chose to put a lot of efforts into this small band, in Communic. I think that I did over 150 interviews, it was pretty amazing, that so many people actually wanted to talk to us! Also the sales have been going well, so I think the record company is happy and we're happy, and we're allowed to get a new album out... yeah, it couldn't be better!
Q: Do you think that this kind of metal, which is not so straight, not so black, not so commercial, but more progressive and varied, has a wide fan support? I mean, the critics always think it's great, but do you think the average metal fan likes this kind of music?
Oddleif: Well, it's hard to say. I think the music we make contains a lot of different things, it has some progressive elements, it has some straight metal things, some doomy parts and then these progressive and complex song structures, so I think there's a little bit of everything for every sort of metal fan, but it's hard to say what people are into these days. But we're not trying to make something that everyone should like, we're trying to fulfill our own dream of creating the music that we like, and be able to put it down on a CD. Then people have to choose for themselves if that is something they like, because there're so many bands these days, there're releases every day or almost, and so many different genres. People like so many different things... so it s hard to say, but I think there's a little bit for many metal fans in the music of Communic.
Q: What do you think personally of your new album, do you think it's an evolution compared to the first one, do you like it better personally, are you satisfied with it?
Oddleif: We're really pleased with the result of this new album, and I think the production is a little bit better, the band plays a little bit better. I also think the songs are a little bit more like they are conncected in some way, like all the songs on this album are more strongly tied together. But I still like the first album really, really a lot, and I think that the new album ir more or less in the same vein as the first one. It has some of the same style that we started with when we made the demo already, so we're not like we're looking for what kind of direction we're going to take. I think that we managed to find our way of doing it and for sure, I think that we've become a better band this time, we've become a little tighter, we've like grown together, because we've been on tour, and the members of the band have learned to know each other both personally and musicwise I think. Because when we released the first album, the band was only one year old, and now we have some more time behind us and we know better where we're going. And the main difference between the first album and this is that the overall sound is a little bit heavier and a little bit more aggressive, but still you have the same kind of emotions, atmosphere and melody.
Q: Are you going to get another musician for playing live, maybe a second guitar or something like that, as you're "only" three in the band?
Oddleif: We're planning to just do it the three of us. We will not bring like a second guitar player or something like that on tour. Last time we used a session keyboard player, when we played live, so maybe we'll do that, but most likely we'll do it just the three of us, because that's the core of how this music was created.
Q: Your vocals are often compared to Warrel Dane's, the vocalist from Sanctuary and Nevermore. Is that a compliment for you or does it annoy you?
Oddleif: Well, it doesn't annoy me. It's a compliment. But I've heard it for some time now, that they always try to compare us to Nevermore and even Sanctuary, but I don't actually think that's a bad thing, because we're a new band and the journalists that are reviewing this band need to try to explain what kind of music we're playing. I think it's better to compare us to Nevermore than to any other heavy metal band. I don't think it's easy to put a label on the kind of music Communic play, but I can understand why they compare us, because of the vocals... some kind of the same range - though I can't actually agree too much about it, but it doesn't annoy me.
Q: What inspires you to write music? Other music? Things in real life? Books, movies?
Oddleif: I think that I'm inspired by a lot of things. Especially this new album is inspired by everything that goes on in our daily life, also what we see through the media like on TV. That also reflects in the title of the album: "Waves of Visual Decay", because the waves are like all this media input that we get, right into our living room every day, and the decay is actually what we see - so it's like a theme of this modern world, and the communication in this modern world, that made up this album.
Q: So it's a concept album in a way...
Oddleif: Well, it's not a concept album, all the songs are their own small stories, but in some way they're all kind of connected to the title, like a part of the same inspiration, I think. I'm quite inspired by what I see through the media myself, and how people react to what they see, and if what we see it's the actual reality, who's actually deciding what we're able to see... and is that thing that we see the actual thruth? So, it's not a concept album, but all the songs are kind of raising some questions about how we are in the world today.
Q: What music do you like personally, or what music has inspired you during yourlife to write music yourself?
Oddleif: It's a lot of bands I think, for me it's more the early metal that was important to me, like in the late 80s and the beginning of the 90s, like early Megadeth, Metallica, Testament, even King Diamond and Candlemass. Also Fates Warning, Queensryche and lots more... but those are my most important influences. And then there's the drummer in the band, he's more inspired by more modern metal like death metal and stuff like that, and the bass player is inspired by Manowar, so when you combine all those influences you get something that sounds like Communic (laughter) !
Q: I think I read the new album has been produced again by Jacob Hansen, he was the producer of your first album too, are you satisfied with the way he works?
Oddleif: Yeah, we didn't see any reason for changing the studio this time. Everything went so well when we were down at Jacob Hansen's studio. He's a really good producer, and he managed to see where the band was to go and does whatever he needs to do to get what the band is searching for, so we were really pleased with the work he did on the first album. We knew that he could do even better on this one beacause he knew the band, and we knew the producer, and the studio is really great, with a nice atmosphere. Also the fact that we have to travel to Denmark to get there makes us focus only on recording the album and leave any daily worries behind at home. The album was recorded during three weeks.
Q: Very little time for such a complex album, really...
Most other bands I know from Norway are... black metal, of course. I only remember one progressive band from there now, Conception. I dont' know if they're still around? Is there something like a prog metal scene in Norway?
Oddleif: The progressive metal scene is coming stronger every day, and the band you mentioned, Conception, is one of my favourite Norwegian bands of all times. Late last year they had a reunion concert, so hopefully they can get back and make another album. Then you have other progressive bands like Spiral Architect, and another great progressive band from Norway that released an album last year, their name is Circus Maximus, they made a really great debut album. There's also a lot of cool bands upcoming, and there's a lot of things going on, but people tend to look to Norway when it comes to black metal, so we have to live with that.
Q: What plans do you have for touring, I think I've seen a few festival dates on your home page, but are you planning a full European tour? Or a U.S. tour or something like that?
Oddleif: Right now we're focusing on doing as many festivals in summer as possible, and then in Autumn we'll try to get a cool European tour going. First of all a European tour, we have to see what kind of offers we have. Right now we've got the Earthshaker festival in Germany, the Ragnarock Open Air Festival and the ProgPower Festival.
Q: Any last words for the fans in Spain?
Oddleif: Yeah, hopefully we can get down to Spain again. We've been to Spain, did three concerts there on the last tour, and those were some of the best concerts we had on the whhole tour! So hopefully we can go back to Spain and play again, that would be just amazing, and hopefully people take the chance to check out this new album!
Q: Thank you very much for the interview, I wish you very good luck with the new album, and see you some time on tour!
Photo: Nuclear Blast Press Photo |
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