Rockezine.com interview with Theatre Of Tragedy on Jul 05, 2001

with Frodo on Jul 05, 2001

M`era Luna is getting closer every day! One of the bands that will perform there this year is Theatre of Tragedy. At this very moment they`re working on their 5th album together with official "new" member Vegard Thorsen. After the Mera Luna festival they will go into the studio with no-one less than Hili Hilesma (HIM, the 69 Eyes etc.) as producer. Which can only, in my humble opinion, make ToT`s new album even more interesting and worth waiting for…. Meanwhile Rockezine will treat you on a get together with Hein Frodo Hansen (drums) and a bit of Frank Clausen (guitar) we had earlier this year. A little chat with one of the nicest persons I ever met...
		First of all I truly need to ask the following question … You should have been playing at the Wave Gotik Treffen Leipzig last year, what happened? We couldn`t because the Wave Gotik Treffen festival was bankrupted in the middle of its own event. There was no security, no sound engineer or whatsoever. We sat in our hotel thinking "are we going to play or what?". Just drinking beer at Raymonds`s room. This most have been the most expensive party we ever had; 6 plane tickets for people from Norway, food, hotel, and crewmembers. Everything was already settled and we couldn`t work. So it was a pretty expensive weekend Fortunately ToT got the opportunity to make it up at this years Wave Gotik Treffen So that must have taken away the hang over of the previous event. From what I`ve heard Theatre of Tragedy had a ball with all the Goths over Europe united... (red.)
		Last year you did play the Eurorock festival. To be honest I was a bit shocked! Not only a very different kind of music, but also a different kind of show. More elektro/industrial and less Gothic romance. What kind of reactions did you get? When we played the Dynamo we selected especially the type of songs that were suitable for that particular festival. Since Dynamo is a metal festival we played all the harder material. But Eurorock is a Synth/Gothic festival, so we figured out that it was a good moment to try some of our new stuff before it came out. We got some negative reactions and some positive ones. The reactions were a bit mixed. As a matter of fact we only did two new songs and people said, "oh they`re going techno".
		But what about the looks? There was a good reason for that! There are already so many bands doing the classic gothic style. Wearing a pirate shirt, having long black hair and velvet dresses. Too many bands were doing that same thing. We already did this for quite a long time so we thought let`s rearrange our image at make it more how we feel today. Five years ago, we would have gone out in that kind of clothes but now we feel different. People change, and so does your personal style.
		Theatre of Tragedy have always been an example for many Gothic bands. Aren`t you afraid they might follow this "new" image as well? Hopefully they can`t! Of course we don`t know what might happen, we don`t really think about that. We just do what we feel, that`s what we`ve always done. We don`t write songs to be different, we just write songs that we like. When that`s different, it`s different!
		Is there also a change in the band that might influences you? Do you listen to other kind of music than you did 5 years ago? Yeah, but we`ve always listened to all kinds of music. Sometimes it`s amazing for us to see that that some people just like one type of music and hate everything else. If you ask the members of this band to their musical interests, you`ll get a whole range of music from popmusic to Slayer. When people like one particular style they become narrow minded and very reserved to new influences. I think that this not only goes for the Goths but also for Metal people. When we start of in 1994 we heard that the keyboard had no place in Metal, people said it sucked. We didn`t care about it then and did it anyway. Nowadays our kind of music has become so common that wanted to brighten our horizon some more. I think we`re a band that falls in two categories, we`ve got Gothic but Metal fans as well. And now with our new style we can also draw some people that are more into electronic stuff. It expands our fan base.
So far so good! Theatre of Tragedy has changed and will continue to grow as the years go by. Even for me, and I consider myself not to be a narrow-minded person, it was a bit strange to hear and see the new and improved Theatre of Tragedy. But after hearing their latest CD "Musique" and seeing them live a couple of times I did grow attached to this brand new sound. And without a doubt I`m looking forward to see them live on stage at the Mera Luna Event. (Cyn Nederpel)