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Interview with Lanvall - Edenbridge
Edenbridge is a band from Austria playing some fantastic Melodic Metal with female vocals. They have just released their third album Aphelion. You can read a review of that album here. We set up an interview with the mastermind behind the band, Lanvall. Here we go...
Hi Steen, here is Lanvall from Edenbridge.
Ahh Hello! I want to start by congratulating you on the new album.
Thank you very much.
So, did anything unexpected happen during the recordings and production of Aphelion?
Not really. We did the whole production in 25 days and more or less everything went very fine.
I feel you have progressed a lot since Sunrise in Eden. How do you feel you have developed as a band?
Well, I think it's a normal progress and a normal thing, when a band puts out it's debut album, like we did with Sunrise in Eden. Then you're making progress step by step with every album, so for me as a songwriter it's always important to progress to get better with every album, concerning the songs and concerning the arrangements, and also concerning the production. I think we have made great steps from Sunrise in Eden to Arcana and then to our new album Aphelion.
I definitely see a lot of improvement. I was thinking, with the speed you release albums, will we see a new one at the start of 2004?
No... (Laughs) It was important for us to do those three albums relatively fast, because we had the songs and also we had the right time, but now I think it will be some more time before the fourth album.
Okay, so did you have some extra songs after each album?
No no, the songs are all new. They were all written after the production of Arcana, but I had planned to go into the studio in November and I didn't want to change the recording date and therefore I had to write all the songs in about one year or so.
So, how did you come up with Aphelion for the album title?
Well, I had written the first songs. I think it was four or five songs, and I also gave them titles. The first ones I wrote were Whispering gallery, Perennial dreams, As far as eyes can see and Fly at higher game, and then I discovered the title Aphelion, which means Outermost point. And I saw this outermost point in areas of the first songs. Then I continued to write stuff where this title is also coming through. Therfore lyrically it can be seen as a small concept album, because this outermost point is coming through in every song. But musically it is not a concept album.
But there is a specific theme running through the album
Yeah, it's like a red line, which is going through it.
When i first listened to the music and read the lyrics to Sunrise in Eden, it all stroke me as very spiritual and the same with the music on Aphelion. I feel a very warm and positive vibe from the songs. Haven't read the lyrics yet for the new songs, but could you tell me what some of the songs are about?
Yeah. You mentioned Sunrise in Eden and you had this positive feeling, and that is a very important theme for me, also writing the lyrics about positive things, positive energy, dreams, freedom and all this stuff. Some songs are, as I said more or less based around the title. This title is coming through in different ways through the lyrics. Sometimes it's the universal sense of Aphelion, sometimes it's the human sense of this outermost point, sometimes the time sense and also the distance sense.
To talk about some songs, I would mentionPerennial dreams. I'm a big Star Trek fan, especially of The Next Generation and Perennial Dreams deals with a hologram that's getting consciousness, and the hologram tries to break our from its artificial surroundings.
We have The final curtain, which is based on the movie The Elephant Man. It's one of the saddest movies I have ever seen, and I thought I had to write a song about it.
Deadend Fire is more or less based on the movie Moby Dick where St. Elmo's Fire is coming down from the sky, and often you can see it on the mast of ships and I wanted to write a song about it.
What about Red ball in blue sky?
Yeah, Red Ball in blue sky is a little hard to describe. On one hand it can be seen as a whole sunrise and also about an old man thinking back about his life.
It's a bit hard to explore all the themes and we have some really positive feeling songs like Skyward and Fly at higher game
Do you have any favourite song on the album, or a song that you are most proud to have written?
Yeah, definitely Red ball in blue sky, because it's the most complex track, I've ever written and also because of the appearance of D.C. Cooper, who is one of my favourite singers. It was a great pleasure to have him on the album. Therefore I worked a lot on this song and I'm pretty happy about it.
You added a second guitarist after Sunrise in Eden. Was that always planned and has it affected the way you compose the music?
Well, on the first album I recorded all the guitars by myself, but when we started to rehearse the songs I thought about it and it was necessary to hire a second guitar player. On the first album it was thought at, that the second guitarist also plays rythm guitar when I'm soloing, because there were a lot of solos. Then when I saw we had two guitars, and the music of Edenbridge is based on two guitars, I tried to develop more harmony solos for Arcana and continued that on Aphelion and now it's absolutely necessary working with two guitars.
I assume you will be going on tour soon. Is there any chance that you will visit Denmark?
Well, I don't know. At the moment we are still waiting for good offers and looking around for a good tour. I hope to play in Denmark, but on the last tour we were only travelling through on our way to Sweden and Norway. I don't think that there are so many concerts there. When you see the big tours like Stratovarius, I don't think they are even playing in Denmark.
They were here on the last tour but this time they aren't.
It would be cool to play there though.
Can you tell me the best live experience you've had?
Well, the best live experience were two shows. Both of them were last year in Korea, and the first one was the Busan International Rock Festival where we co-headlined the first day of the festival and played in front of 20.000 people. It was really unbelieveable. The best concert I would say we have played was the second show in Seoul with Sinergy, in a cool club and the crowd club went totally crazy. Those two are definitely the best ones.
What about the worst one?
Uh, the worst one. There was one on our first tour in Vosselar, Belgium. We played with the keyboard coming from the Midifile player and the click amplifier for our drummer broke, so he couldn't hear the click anymore, and we steadily were one beat aside from the keyboard and it was terrible. I thought "Hopefully this show will end soon" haha. But as long as you work with technique, these things are what can happen.
Are you working full time on Edenbridge?
Yeah, I am. Edenbridge is taking my whole time. I'm doing all the songwriting, all the lyrics, all the organisation and nearly all the interviews, so that takes a lot of time, but I'm happy that I can do it. It's a great thing.
I have a couple of your solo albums. Is there any hope for a new one any time soon?
Yeah, there is! At the moment I'm working on my fourth solo album, and I hope I can have it finished by summer or so. I think it will come out before our next Edenbridge album. At the moment, I'm totally working without stress and only recording when and what I like, because I had enough stress in the last years with Edenbridge. It's going to be very symphonic and is going to use a whole orchestra. It's a combination of orchestra and my guitar playing and some metal aspects. A lot more symphonic than The Pyromantic Symphony.
That sounds excellent!
Yeah, I'm very confident to have it finished around summertime.
Do you have any time to listen to other music? And which albums are you listening to at the moment?
Well, I do have time to listen to other music. At the moment I like The Queen Symphony by Tolga Kashif. I also like the soundtrack of the new Lord of the Rings. I just bought the new Stratovarius and also the new Masterplan. I don't have that much time to listen to music. I usually leave it in the car, when I'm driving because at home I do my own music, but I have a big collection of CD's and also Vinyl.
Can you name your three all time favourite albums?
Yeah. On first position would definitely be Dream Theater with Images and Words. Second position would be all of Robbie Valentine. I can't name a certain album from him because all his albums are great. And third position would be... Difficult... I would name Royal Hunt with their live album from 1996.
Cool. I don't know many bands from Austria. Is there any kind of Metal scene there at all?
Well, Austria is also, like Denmark a very small market and there are not so many bands coming out from here. I mean, we do have a lot of bands, but most of them are not original enough to make it beyond the borders of Austria. Especially in the Melodic metal scene it looks very poor at the moment. I think we are one of the only bands there. I'm sure we are the biggest one at the moment coming from Austria concerning melodic Metal. We have a lot of Black and Death Metal bands but, yeah, it's a small country.
You have to show the way then...
Yeah haha
I was wondering, how did you and Sabine meet?
We met the first time in 1995 and Edenbridge developed itself out of another band called Cascade and she entered in 1996 and from that point we have been working together.
Okay, do you have any final words for our readers?
Yeah of course. I want to greet all our Danish fans and also the people who are reading this article on Revelationz.net. Click to our homepage, we have a new forum online where you can talk about our music and also all the other things you want to talk about. Visit our homepage and thanks for your support.
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Written by Steen - 3/5/2003 |
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