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Interview With Finn Zierler - Beyond Twilight
A while back I voted Beyond Twilight's sophomore album called Section X as album of the month, so when the opportunity arose to ask my fellow countryman and Beyond Twilight mastermind Finn Zierler some questions, I had to go for it, now it's finally been written down.
When Finn called me up he was in a good mood and enjoying his vacation, here's what followed.
Q: First off, congratulations with your new album, did it live up to your expectations?
Thank you very much. Yes indeed, I think it was kind of a surprise for us, I don't think that we would ever expect anything like the reactions we got from the release this time, so I think that we are all just very pleased and feel very thankful, so yeah it's been very good.
Q: I saw that it has gotten some fantastic reviews, that has to boost your spirit?
Oh yes definitely, I mean all good reactions that are coming is definitely boosting our spirits but I think most and for all it's really important that our fans are still with us because we have been away for four years, there is four years between the two releases so we were a little bit anxious to see whether they were still there, but luckily they are still hanging on and within one and a half month our fan base have grown with over 250 people, so we are just very thankful.
Q: Jacob Hansen has contributed on Section X with both additional guitars and the mixing duties, how was it having him involved in the process?
It has been very good I think, we have always been a big admire of Jacob's guitar playing and also the productions he has been working with and I think that Jacob definitely added some edge to it, and his own personal style as well and I'm just very happy with that. So it has just been great, it's actually been very easy working with him because were we are kind on the same musical level, we haven't had one single fight so it has been very very easy and very good.
Q: You got a new singer this time around and just like Jorn Lande before him he did a tremendous job, how would you describe the performance of Kelly on the new album?
Well I think he shows kind of what I was looking for when I was looking for a singer, and it was a tremendous job to actually find a replacement for Jorn, for obviously Jorn is a very good singer.
The arrangements that had been written for the vocal parts were kind of demanding, so I was kind of looking for a singer with a wide spectrum of his voice and I think Kelly got that, he is not a typical high pitch or low pitch singer, he has the whole range, he is also a mid range singer and apart from that he can also act, and there is a lot of acting parts on the CD and a lot of different vocal styles, so if I should describe him I would really describe him as a very unique talent and properly one of the most interesting vocalist I have ever worked with.
Q: I very much agree, he really surprised me a lot, I haven't really heard anything like him and he really expanded the album in my opinion. Now tell me a bit about where you find the inspiration for the music you create?
Well there is a lot of inspiration sources but basically I think it actually comes from my passion for music, you can say so much with music and so many things that you can't say with words. If you know a little bit about music theory you will be able to analyse it a lot, there is a lot of theoretical stuff that has symbolic meanings in the compositions and apart from that I find a lot of inspiration in actually writing about different kind of emotions.
I work in kind of extreme ways because I'm always drawn to that point where I get deeply involved in the writing sessions, I actually always start out by isolating myself and I start writing either the compositions or a storybook, and then those two things kind of inspire me to move on with the project and that happened this time also.
I started out with being looked up in a dark room where I live, I rebuild the attic of my house and then I actually just started writing compositions and some parts of the story book, and then I could see the whole concept taking shape and of course you get in a kind of weird state of mind after some time, and I think there is a lot of paranoia, schizophrenia and a lot of darkness involved in what I was writing, so I decided to actually take it to the limit and try to outlive that. So I travelled to London where I lived in the streets and actually tried to experience what that was like, I thought that it would be very easy, you could always go into some alley and sleep and stuff like that, but you just don't do that, cause there is so many people in London and some many weirdo's so it was more than an adrenaline ticket, it was really scary and maybe I had a kind of naive look on how hard it could really be living in the streets and I think I learned a lot, actually I was only there for three days, but I think I learned my lesson, it's tough life.
And then I had a last stage of writing where I was inspired by some free divers who told me that if you dive into water and stay there for like 30 minutes, it's like you enter a new subconscious layer of your mind, so it's almost like taking drugs and it's just something out of the ordinary and I would really like to try that, again push it a little further and actually do it at night time in a forest lake and that was a very crazy project. The first time I did it, it didn't give me anything, it was in the spring time in Denmark and the only think I got was a blue body and blue balls ha ha. I felt pretty stupid when I got up the first time, because I had to take a cold shower to actually be able to get working again, but then when I sat down and got the blood back in the body and the heat back, I thought well that is something to it that was interesting so I had to do it again and I did it a couple of months later and that was a blast. I was diving free without oxygen with a torch on my helmet so I could see, and then I had this writing block where I could write in water, so I was diving down to the bottom and you can't see shit, maybe a meter in front of you, something like that, so it's not something you should do if you are claustrophobic or too paranoid I guess. Diving down to the bottom staying there for as long as I could and trying to grasp the feeling of the beauty of diving and also this pretty scary shit when it's night and you are under water, I was getting oxygen down and up and down, and I wrote an instrumental track called Portrait F In Dark Waters when I was doing that, so I think it really gave me a lot and I'm really happy about that song.
Q: The wonderful Shadowland form the first Beyond Twilight release is one of my favourite cuts from that album, can you tell me a bit more about how that came to be?
Yeah, Shadowland is kind of a special song on that album, it's a very doomy track but it's also very melodic, I had a different writing session when I was writing The Devil's Hall Of Fame, I was actually travelling to Sahara and the Atlas mountains and I think that a lot of the inspiration for that track actually came from the trips I had there, and then I think Jorn also must be credited a little because the vocals that he added to the compositions were someway out of the ordinary, the compositions are very good but the vocals are at least half of it. The lyrics are kind of combining the subjects that you will find on Section X also, I'm not saying that Section X is part two because it isn't, but it falls into the same kind of lyrical universe.
There are a lot of people that have reacted to that song actually and I think it's because the song has its own soul somehow, all of the songs that I write has a soul but this one has obviously been huge among the fans somehow.
Q: The lyrical sphere of the two Beyond Twilight albums is quite dark but also very personal at some level, and quite emotional also, how important are the lyrics for you?
Oh they are very very important, I don't know if I can put it on a scale. You can write a piece of instrumental music and that's very good, so if you have a vocal idea for it and want to add vocals that's good too, you just need to write the right vocal melodies. If you add the wrong lyrics to the right melodies or if you just write wrong lyrics to music it will ruin everything. I think it is of the outmost important that the lyrics are fitting, because if you write the wrong lyrics it just doesn't make sense.
But it's kind of hard because music is also something the human brain reflect in some kind of subconscious lair and if you listen to music you will kind of create pictures in your head, now when you add lyrics too it and haven't written the right ones you will get a different picture, and I think that a lot of times you can ruin your picture with lyrics, so I think it is very important.
Q: Is it a prime goal of Beyond Twilight to sound quite unique and innovative, or is it just something that comes naturally to you?
I think it has been a goal for many years, I don't think so much about it nowadays. What I think happens first for some songwriters, is that you try to be original and it takes some time to actually build your own style and your won personality, it takes some time to develop that kind of skill. It's the same thing as with the technical things that you need to develop as a musician, you know you use a lot of years playing as fast as you can, and then a lot of years playing different techniques, as slow as possible and with this and that emotion, and I think it's the same as being a songwriter, I think it takes time to develop your own style and once you succeeded that you don't think about it any more. I think for me personally it has always been a goal to kind of write with my own touch as a song writer, because I think that there is so many clones and so many bands sounding the same and I think that is very boring, so personally it has been a goal for years.
Q: Tell me, what lay behind the transition from the band Twilight to Beyond Twilight, I'm not really familiar with that story?
Yeah sure, back in the Twilight days we were very young, I think I was 18 years old when we did our debut album and we were two songwriters back then and we had a different line-up.
Even though it was my band and I formed it, I wanted to take into a new direction, musically and also with new members so I brought the drummer from Twilight, that was the only member, and then I build a new band and more or less to indicate that, OK we are changing line-up now and also musical direction and we were kind of going beyond what we did before, which were an early indication of Beyond Twilight, but it was much more like normal Power Metal and not as unique.
So adding Beyond was an indication of two aspects, new members and new musical direction.
Q: Do you have any live plans right now?
Not right now but we are working on it, actually building a base for getting out on the road. We had been offered different kinds of festivals, and this is really something we have been struggling with for many many years and I guess we will for a little while more. It's very easily explained, partly we live in three different countries on two sides of the Atlantis so obviously we don't meet every week and practice for rehearsals or anything like that, apart from that when we go out and play we need to get our transportation cost covered and obviously it's not that cheap to get us out to play, actually I think it's a pretty bad thing which is happening especially in Metal right now, because it seems like there not a whole lot of money floating around as for playing live and even though we have been offered a lot of festivals, it's almost ridiculous economical what we have been offered, and I mean we are not an expensive band, we actually don't play to get a lot of money we actually just want our transportation cost covered and not even that has been successful for us yet so it has been a big struggle for us, we are kind of an awkward band because we always go against the music industry and against the trend, and I think that is what is going to happen with this also. Sweden Rock wants us to play but they don't want to pay us any money, there actually say that, a lot of bands is actually paying to play on Sweden Rock and I think that sucks, because not only are Sweden Rock earning on the tickets but also on the sale of merchandising and who gets the money, well it's not the bands then who?
If I get a ticket and they have to go out and perform for free, that is a wrong development and I don't want to support that. Sweden Rock has been telling me, well it is a good opportunity for you Finn, because you get to play in front of a whole lot of people who wouldn't have been there originally. So I say OK, what are you doing besides doing Sweden Rock (I think this guys was a layer or something), and I just told him, well if I give you a megaphone you can go out in the streets and scream at people: I'm a layer, get into my office and you would actually hit a lot of people you wouldn't hit normally, would you do that? And of course he didn't want to do that, and I think that is very comparable.
So instead of investing money, pay our own travel cost and go to Sweden Rock and play, we would much much much rather actually pay a tribute to the fans who has supported us and bought our albums, so if we should do anything like that, we would say, OK we are going to pull of some gigs now and it's going to be free, so all the fans how has bought our records would come and see the show for free.
That is a possibility and then also our record label has been working on a tour for us for a while now and it's it looks more and reasonable, but still it's a big struggle for us.
Q: OK, that explained a lot. Now, you're from Denmark just like me, what do you think about the Metal scene here right now?
It's absolutely awesome, when I started in the nineties (1990 I think) I wasn't able to find any Metal musicians and that's why I moved to Sweden, things were so small so nothing happened here and I think it has grown a lot, the industry has grown a lot and now all of the sudden there is a lot of good Metal bands, a lot of good bands who is actually having success internationally and there is a lot of good music coming out of Denmark so I'm very proud of that, finally something happened ha ha. But yeah because we have always been the underdogs to the Black Metal scene in Norway and the whole Heavy Metal scene in Sweden and Germany, finally now we are actually delivering a lot of good stuff and that's very good.
Q: What about the rest of the world, do you have a feeling that there is growing tendency in the support of Metal music, and if your answer is yes, how does that compare to the fact that is quite difficult for you to make a living out of it?
Well this question has a lot of aspects to it, no doubt that Metal topped in the eighties and early nineties, and I think it's gaining again, and it's getting better and better. I don't think it's anywhere near the same level as it was, but I think if you look at music the same way as you look at fashion it will always repeat itself and I think Metal will come back at sometime and be just as big as in the eighties and early nineties. I think one of the reasons why Metal is having hard times right now has to do with that it is not exposed, you don't get any chance in a lot of countries for getting your music exposed and if it doesn't happen no one will buy it, so that is pretty simple, apart from that sales in music in general has dropped dramatically, the record sales has dropped 40% in the last few years, so there is a lot of aspects to it I think.
Q: What is your biggest dream as a musician, perhaps you are living it right now?
I think I am, my biggest dream is to be able to create music with one purpose and that is to be able to create art without any commercial interest and luckily I can do this, and I will never release anything which has somehow been controlled or somehow managed by commercial interest, so I'm very happy for doing what I'm doing. I'm not dreaming about any super hero living at all, of course it is very good to get recognition, I mean, there is so much work and so much time I put into this so of course I'm happy about that, but most important to me at all is actually just dealing with art.
Q: Can you name me some of your own favourite albums?
Yeah, None with Meshuggah, it's not an album but an EP but I think it is a masterpiece; I'm extremely much into kind of into kind of more extreme music. I don't have a whole lot of records with keyboards, which is kind of bizarre now that I'm a keyboard player. But that EP is one of my favourites of all time and then there is a whole variety of albums, I really like Tory Amos' album Little Earthquakes, I like Dream Theater's Images And Words, I like Master Of Puppets, Ride The Lightening and .And Justice For All, the classic's. I like Slayer's Reign In Blood and South Of Heaven and a lot of their albums, there is a whole variety. I like a classic composer called Janáèek, there is Björk, whole lot of different artists that has made good albums.
Q: The next questions are some were you have two choose between two possibilities, it's about which you favour the most, you shouldn't take it too seriously.
First one is between cold beer and a soccer match versus fine wine at a theatre show?
Oh my god, I like it all ha ha. I would say both, but I have to make a decision, damn it ahhh.
Q: The first one is hard so you can have them both ha ha.
Cool ha ha.
Q: Next one is Philosophy or Chemistry?
Philosophy.
Q: Hard Rock or Power Metal?
If Hard Rock is stuff like Europe then Power Metal.
Q: Iron Maiden or Dream Theater?
Dream Theater.
Q: Bravehart or Alien?
Ahh Alien.
Q: Now something a bit more serious, are you already thinking about what is going to be on the next Beyond Twilight release?
Yeah, I have been playing with thoughts of making it differently this time, at least for a try out. I have purposed for the other band members that it could be fun this time to write as a whole band, because on the other two albums I have been writing completely alone and it might be an interesting development. The musicians on the first two albums has of course in the sessions added their edge to it and their own personality, but as for writing as such they haven't participated, and I think that might be interesting and we are discussing it wildly because some of the members think that in that case it isn't going to be Beyond Twilight anymore, it is going to be something else, and I have said that we don't know that until we have tried it and I do think we should try that, and if it works, good, if don't, then the same thing will happen as always, I will isolate myself and just take it to wherever the music takes me.
Q: Whatever of the two I'm really looking forward to it.
Thanks.
Q: As a last thing, are there anything you would like to say to our readers?
Yes. It's sounding like a cliché but it's really not, I really mean this very sincerely, I really want to thank the fans and all the people supporting us, including you as a journalist. It means a lot not only to me but also for the whole band, that we feel people like what we are doing and supporting it. It actually means more than I can say with words, I think there is some personal issues for me, I had two traffic accidents where I broke pretty much everything in my right side and I had to recover from that, and then I broke my right upper arm and used a year to train my fingers and get back in shape. If it hadn't been for all the people sending me e-mails, encouraging me to get the hell back in the writers chair, it probably wouldn't have happened, I think that I might had just given up on it all, and I think that I personally owe a lot of things to the fans, I know it sounds as a cliché but I really mean it, big thanks.
Q: That's really great to hear, I want to thank you for your time and wish you guys all the best in the future.
Thank you.
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Written by Tommy - 9/25/2005 |
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RevelationZ Comments
| Comment by Matt (Anonymous) - Sunday, September 25, 2005 | Very insightful review from one of the greatest composers out there.
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| Comment by George Heron (Anonymous) - Thursday, October 26, 2006 | What a great interview and what a great guy Finn is. Living on the streets in London?!?!?! A bit eccentric but sincere with it. I really need to get BT's latest!!!
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