Rockezine.com interview with Therion on Sep 18, 2001

with Christofer Johnsson on Sep 18, 2001

Therion has been around for many years now with Christoffer Johnsson being the only remaining guy from the original line-up. With the new album ‘Secret Of The Runes’ out Therion has just started their tour to support this album in South America and will be coming to Europe very soon. Johnsson talks about his new album and the upcoming tour when I got the chance to talk to him. A man who’s love for metal equals his love for classical music, something that is clearly shown with the latest Therion effort.
		Well Christofer, the new album is called ‘Secret Of The Runes’ available since early October. What do you think of it yourself? Yeah, I think it’s the best album we did so far, this is no surprise because I always think that. If the new album isn’t better than the last one, I won’t have it released. We don’t leave the studio until it’s better, in our own opinion of course. It’s also the first concept album we did. Let me explain the concept. It is focussed around the Northern mythology and we used the most central part of it, which is the ‘Ygrassil’, the world tree which is holding nine worlds. And the concept is that we did one song for each of these nine worlds. Each songtitle being the name of each world. Then we also had a prologue and an epilogue to the concept and the prologue is called ‘Ginnungagap’. That’s the void of creation where everything is placed. It’s an empty space where fire and ice were merging and meeting and somehow creating the world, something like the Big Bang, but then in the Northern mythology. And then you have the epilogue ‘Secret of the Runes’ which is the quintessence of the entire concept. It describes the journey of Odin when he hanged himself on ‘Ygrassil’, the world tree. He was making a journey through these nine worlds when he was hanged there and he was receiving the runes. The word ‘rune’ means ‘secret’. Well, the original Swedish ‘runa’ means secret. So the title could be interpreted as ‘Secret of the Secret’.
		How did you get insprired to write this rather complicated story? I woke up one day and felt like doing a Northic album. If someone would have offered me this two years ago, where it would be possible for us to make a Northic album, especially since 3.5 of the lyrics are in Swedish, I would have said ‘no, I could never do that’. But one day I was just waking up and had the idea that this was something I really had to do.
		Your older work’s main theme was about dragons. You seem to have an interest in the fantasy and mythology. Not really fantasy, rather mythology. You see, the dragon is the most common character in mythology except mankind itself. The dragon has always been the symbol of wisdom and ancient magic and also the symbol of creation. So to choose the dragon as a symbol to work with is pretty logic concerning the other albums
		Have you always been interested in mythology? For the last 10 years I’ve been actively interested in this type of cult related mythologies. But I’ve always had some kind of interest in it my entire life. I remember when I was a kid at the kindergarten I always forced to teachers to read from books about space, different planets and books about dinosaurs and stuff like that. So somehow I’ve always been interested in the mystical subjects.
		To get back on the subject of the new album, the line-up is the same as it was on ‘Deggial’. Is this also the line-up that is going to perform live? Yes, this is a permanent line-up. I think you can also hear on this album that we sound more like a band. The guys in the band seem to be more comfortable this time, they are more secure about their position in the band. And I know that they are very reliable people from working with them on ‘Deggial’ so I gave them more free hands on this album. Especially the drummer, he could basically do what he wanted on this album.
		What about the choir and the classical musicians, is that also the same as on ‘Deggial’? Oh no, it is completely different. This new album was recorded in Sweden. Normally we record in Germany. But somehow it didn’t seem right to record a Northic album in an industrial city in Germany. And also because of some of the lyrics being in Swedish it’s hard to get the German singers to sing it. And it would be a waste of money to fly over the entire choir from Sweden to Germany, so we decided to record in Sweden. This is a pretty advanced album, it’s 64-tracks recording. We didn’t find a studio where we were satisfied with so we decided to build our own studio, which wasn’t as easy as we thought. It took us 6 months to build this studio.
		Is this the studio you’ll be working at from now on? I hope so. I mean, if it lasts. I always extend the orchestra for each album. For this album it was perfect, but if I were to double the orchestra, something I’m thinking of doing, it might be too small. But at least we can use the equipement we used partly again. It is a private studio, but we will allow a couple of bands per year to do the production there. Our drummer will work with other bands. It would take a long time to record another Therion album, so in the meantime we will use the studio to work with a few other bands. Then we’ll see what happens. Also, we didn’t have a producer, we produced the album ourselves. And there was no conductor, I conducted the orchestra and choir myself. So this is a very personal album, it’s handmade, I mean we even build the studio with our own hands. This is as much Therion as an album will ever sound like, this is really us.
		When you compare for example ‘Lepeca Kliffoth’ with ‘Secret of the Runes’, it is a lot different, what do you have in mind for the future when it comes to musicstyle of Therion? Yeah it is. The same thing if you compare in my opinion ‘Vovin’ and ‘Secret of the Runes’. If you listen to ‘Secret of the Runes’ you can hear it’s a very heavy production. We even have distortion on the bass, it’s very noisy. ‘Vovin’ is very clean, very polished. While ‘Vovin’ has… how to say it… ‘pop’ish’ songs I could say, for lack of better words, ‘Birth of Venus Illegitima’ for instance. It’s very easy going. The new album is more complex in its choir structure, like the choir singing different words at the same time. A song like ‘Nifelheim’ (the 8th track on the new album- FA) we could never have done back then, everything was much more straight forward and easy to listen to then.
		When it comes to the future, each Therion album is different. There are still lots of things to explore when it comes to the classical and choir arrangements. I would never become the lead singer of the band again, this is for sure. There’s no chance that we would go back to our old style. But just the words ‘go back’ makes me feel sick. I am proud of my old albums, it’s not that I don’t like them, but I just want to do something new. In what way it will be new will be hard to tell cause songwriting has a will of its own. I can never sit down and say ‘lets do this and that’. Who knows, maybe in the future we will make music only on harp (laughs). Nah, I think there’s so much more to explore that can lead to another two or three albums that can for sure do something new using orchastral and opera elements. I find it very hard to imagine what else I would do now, because it’s so unique with the classic orchastra that you have so many different instruments that can be used in so many different ways. With a guitar-based band it’s kinda limiting, you’re limited to what you can do. Everything has already been done almost, I mean, what is left to do in metal that hasn’t been done? Maybe when I can’t bring Therion any further I will concentrate on writing only opera music and classic.
		Have you used any instruments on ‘Secret of the Runes’ that you haven’t used before on the older albums? Oh, there are plenty. Among the more ordinary instruments, there are Trombones. We also used Piccolo flutes and Altflutes. That one is pretty rare, it’s lower than the normal flute. We used a Bassoon and also an English Horn which we’ve never used before. And we’ve also used a Contrabassoon and this is very rare. It sounds low and it’s very expensive, it costs thousands of Euro’s. We had to borrow it. Another very rare instrument we used, was a Wagnertuba. This was created for a Wagner’s opera. Not many people have used it, I think only Strauss used it also. So basically this is a Wagner instrument and that’s why it’s called Wagnertuba and this was used by accident. I’m a very big Wagner fan and we were using two French Horns and I was speaking with one of the guys regarding how to play it since French Horns are pretty complicated.
		Anyway we had a long conversation and I asked him if he knew the Wagnertuba and he said ‘yeah, I play it’. I was like ‘what, you play it?’ (laughs). He didn’t have one of his own, since it’s also expensive, more than 7.000 Euro’s. So he said that the ‘Royal Opera’ has a few so we borrowed one from them. We tried it for fun and it sounded excellent. You can hear it on the title track and it was a great experience.
		How are you going to perform all this on the upcoming tour? Well, we’ve never toured with an orchastra before. We did two shows with an orchastra, back in 1998/1999 to support the ‘Vovin’ album, cause we didn’t used that many instruments then. With ‘Deggial’ we used much more and now with all these other piculiar instruments, there’s just no chance we can put on a show with a full orchastra. Noone would pay us that incredible amount of money. So we are forced to put it on tape, but it’s an advance system and it’s the same stuff that is on the album so it’s a good quality.
		When it comes to the choir, we always have a minimum of a six persons choir after the ‘Deggial’ tour and we will never go under that from now on. The choir is so important since we don’t have a lead singer. Ok, I might do some singing when we play some old songs, but for 90% of the songs, we don’t have a lead singer. On the Wacken festival, we had eight people in the choir, but that was because we had more money. On the upcoming tour, I think we’ll have six people.
		Any last comment to our readers? I just hope to see as many people as possible on the tour, it’s going to be fucking great to go on tour again. We’re starting in South America, going to countries we’ve never been before, but also countries there that we have visited before. Our old albums are almost as popular as the new ones there, so we’ll be playing some extra old songs there. We’re also really looking forward to play in Tilburg (at the 013 venue, the Netherlands –FA), cause the last time we played there, there were around 1400 people and that was fucking amazing. The show we did before that on the same tour, were visited by 1100 people. Our fanbase has been growing big in Holland. I’ll be very impressed if there will be even more than that on this tour. We’re going to do everything we can to beat those shows!
For tourdates, check out the official Therion website at www.megatherion.com (Frank Alders)