Keep of Kalessin

June 21 2009 (Hellfest - Clisson)

Although not really into an interview state of mind at first, the Norwegian quartet showed how nice they really were, as the meeting went on. They shared with us their thoughts about their recent signing with a new record label, about their tour supporting AMON AMARTH, and of course their excellent latest album "Kolossus".

Fab: So are you happy to be here at the HELLFEST 2009 ?
Obsidian Claw(Guitar/Keyboard): Yes, it's very good. We're very lucky to be here in this festival. Nice weather, good crowd and a lot of people.

Fab: Do you prefer play in festival, during day time?
Obsidian: it depends. I think variation is very important for a live performance. Some night, it's great to have a more intense club show, and some night, it's great to have a big outdoor festival. Because we would be tired of doing live shows if it wasn't different. But personally, I think that playing indoor with the proper lights and stuff like that, would be better than playing outdoor with the sun.

Fab: It's better for the mood.
Obsidian: Yeah, I think so.
Vyl (Drums): But hopefully, you know, sometimes you play festivals in the dark, outdoors. That would be what I prefer.

Fab: How is your feeling after you show here?
Obsidian: It's the first show of a long tour. So, as an opening night for us, it was really good. I think that, like always, it's gonna get better as the tour goes on, but the crowd was really good for us, there was a lot of people. So, I'm really happy about the show.

Fab: And it's a way to win over new fans.
Obsidian: Hopefully, we gained lot of new fans today. We could see that the first rows were waiting for us, while doing the soundcheck. They were waiting for us, and behind there was a big crowd, with probably many people that have never seen us before… so …

Fab: Why the name of "Keep of Kalessin?"
Obsidian: It's a fortress. It's taken from a book story named "Earthsea" (original name: "Terremer" from the American author Ursula K. Le Guin), and Kalessin is the most powerful and old dragon of Earthsea.

Fab: Could you tell us a little bit about the songwriting approach, inspiration and recording process on your lastest album "Kolossus"?
Obsidian: Normally, we start as I'm making some riffs at home, and bring them to the rehearsal room, try out different drum arrangements and stuff like that, and go back home to work more on the songs. Or it can be, I have several different approaches, it depends what kind I wanna write. If I want to write epic melodic stuff, I normally make the melody beforehand, before I even touch the guitar. Or, I can sit down and work through it. There are so many different approaches. Sometimes, I have the whole song ready when I go into the rehearsal room, and then we work together with the drum arrangements and stuff like that.
Vyl: But usually we work it later, it starts with the guitar.
Obsidian: And then, now that the whole band is into the KEEP OF KALESSIN writing process, everybody is contributing more with the lyrics, the riffs and the songs. I think it's pretty good to have fresh ideas.

Fab: It is a concept album? The continuation of a storyline?
Obsidian: Normally, we focus on each and every individual album, but on "Kolossus", we chose kind of continuing the story from "Armada". So, the two have a very strong connection but still very different.

Fab: The production is really good. How did you achieve that?
Obsidian: We chose to go for a very organic sound on Kolossus. Instead of, editing too much on the album or editing where they may be errors or something, we chose to actually record several takes. We say "ok let's all recorded together" instead of just going into the drums and editing everything. We actually let a live kind of vibe to the album, so you can hear that people are playing, this is not a product with just modern editing techniques, it's more a result of who we are as players, which give a very organic and actual feeling at the album.

Fab: You signed with "Indie Recordings", the biggest Norwegian metal label, which also signed GOD SEED. Tell us about this decision.
Obsidian: We signed with Indie Recordings for most of Europe, and Nuclear Blast for other territories. I think that Indie is by far the best Norwegian label, and we wanted a label with people that we knew. It was very natural because we signed with Tabu (Recording) on "Armada", and the people that were running Tabu quit, and found their own label called Indie. And that was people that I was going to at the time, so I just spoke with them, "I want to continue to work with you guys". People were the same, they just changed the label's name.

Fab: You opened for Amon Amarth in march in Paris (ndlr: with also LEGION OF THE DAMNED & OBITUARY as a support act for AMON AMARTH, even if OBITUARY were on their day off when in Paris unfortunately for me), could you share your feelings about it? How this tour went?
Wizziac (Bass): It was really good tour for us actually. AMON AMARTH is a little bit into the melodic easy accessible music, so their fans probably liked KEEP OF KALESSIN for our melodic stuff. So I guess we got some new fans on that tour. Overall, it was a very good tour, lots of people and great fans.
Vyl: Yes. At first this was "What the hell is this?", but after we played a couple of songs, they were like "Yeah, it's alright!". And they would come see us at the end of the shows.

Fab: Yeah. Because your music has a deepness, a more "serious" side to it.
Wizziac: Yeah, it was a good mix of Black Metal, Thrash and Death metal. We got the best out of the tour actually. Since AMON AMARTH were the headliner, I guess most of the people came to see them. But it was a really good line-up. It couldn't have been better for us I think.

Fab: About the vocals, how do you prepare yourself before going on stage?
Thebon: Like the warm-up? A lot of coke (laughing). It's a different way than the traditional black metal, death metal scene. It's more singing than screaming, even if it's a mix. It's very hard to do but, over the years, I've learned how to do it without breaking my voice. Somebody who doesn't have like training in doing it, after one minute of that kind of singing you would loose you voice. It's like a mix of traditional classical singing techniques and the screaming vocals techniques. And it's not hard anymore to switch (from clean voice to growl voice). At the beginning, it was kind of hard but, now I've kind of found the middle, so it's easy to go from hard singing & screaming to the melodic singing, in between. But of course, it takes a bit of training.

Fab: As a lot of metal bands, you offer really good artwork for you cds, merchandising, etc…What's your involvement into this?
Obsidian: We start when we have the album title and the overall look and colors, we want, which is very early on. So I work together with a designer to get the cover and atmosphere that i want. Then they provide me with different artworks, and we just look through all their ideas and pick something.
Vyl: It's very important to have a layout with the music of the album, it's a package. Hopefully we achieved that on the two last albums. When people look at our album's cover, it's very different from what you get into the extreme metal genre and it says a lot about the music that's inside.

Obsidian: As far as the merchandise and stuff like that, we normally say what kind of styles we want, except from now we have started to do more of that work by ourselves actually. Wizziac has designed a very very nice tour t-shirt for this tour (applauding). Personally, I think that's the coolest looking t-shirt we've ever had. So I think we will continue by doing that. Hopefully this tour t-shirt will sell itself a lot more than the other ones.
Wizziac : It's kind of like with the music. We make music that we want, that we like ourselves. And I think, what the merchandise should look like, is what I would wear myself, what I think it's cool. It's a kind of balance between not going over the edge to pure Black metal stuff. We try to have our own style, the artwork should be as much as an art than the music.

Fab: Because yours is great.
Vyl: Yeah, we'll soon have KEEP OF KALESSIN bikinis (general laughter)

Fab: Yes! Sure, sure.
Vyl: We will wear them onstage!! (more laughter)

Fab: And back to the artwork and everything, it is a way to fight the illegal downloading? To offer a good package and boxset ?
Thebon: That's what we did with the Kolossus album, we had like this limited edition metal box with the artwork, the necklace, etc… it's a good thing to sell. It offers something extra.
Wizziac : The real story is that kids have grown up thinking that downloading an album, is not any trouble. Everybody does it thinking that they're not doing anything wrong. That's the problem. The moral has to change, because that's really hurting the middle plus bands.
Thebon: Industry has to adapt to the downloading generation, and providing good solutions for it. People could actually download, but pay a little money for each song.
Obsidian: It's really important that the free side get actually killed down, because no matter how much the industry adapt, it will always be better to get something for free. And it's impossible to compete with free, no matter how good your service is. The moral has to change. People have to realize how much all this costs to the bands
Wizziac : If you like the bands, you'd like the bands to continue making music, and that won't happen if you just download and never buy. We try to offer the fans the best we can and if it's not good enough, we are losing. You can't compete with free and fast.

Fab: What's your plan for the close future?
Obsidian: The plan is to record the new album in September, after this tour. We will work until the album is finished (around October maybe).