Rockezine.com interview with Notre Dame on Apr 15, 2002

with Snowy Shaw on Apr 15, 2002

Notre Dame has (re)released their album “Coming soon to a theatre near you”; and they have baptized it the 2nd coming. In light of this new album I had a rather nice conversation with front man and founder of the band, Snowy Shaw, whom most of you will know from having been the drummer on ”Merciful Fate” and “King Diamond”. After 45 minutes of questions, answers and small talk, this was the result.
		Hi Snowy how are you today? OK, I guess; not too bad right now.
		You’ve once described yourself as being an elevator going up and down. Where are you at the moment; up or down? Haha, well, that was to illustrate the mood swings I sometimes have, but I guess everybody has a couple of those every month. But at the moment I’m up.
		To be honest, I never heard of Notre Dame before this new album, and I had to say that I was quite surprised by it. It’s so many styles of music on one album; very hard to categorize. How should I pigeonhole Notre Dame? I do hear that a lot, that people don’t know what to think of it. It’s just that I don’t listen to one particular metal genre myself. I want to take my music somewhere else than the metal that is currently being made. I follow my heart when I’m writing the music, so when I’m in a pop mood it could well be that I will write a pop song. At this time we get compared to Cradle Of Filth a lot, but we make completely different music. I’m not making music to get rich and make a lot of money. First of all I want to make music that I like. I don’t want to compromise in my writing just because everybody demands one single style or sound. I like my music to be more creative and not something easy that everybody is doing because it sells nice.
		What about the title of the new album? I haven’t seen you guys at a theatre near me yet. Well the title was just an appetizer. As you probably know this album is actually a re-release that we did, but we put 6 new tracks on it. The original “Coming soon…” was released somewhat earlier but at that time we had a lot of problems with the record company. So we decided to put some new tracks on it and release it again under Osmose Productions. But to get back at the question, we want to go on tour and come to a theatre near you, but at the moment we have some financial problems and I will go on tour as a session drummer with the band “Dream Evil” this summer. We’re gonna do a lot of festivals with “Dream Evil” so maybe Notre Dame will go on tour at the end of this year.
		As Notre Dame you wanted to start a tradition to release all new albums on the 31st of October (Halloween), but this record is being released now. Is this the end of that tradition? Well we had this original idea to do it on the 31st but due to circumstance we were never able to finish it in time. Recording sessions that took up longer than expected and so on. I also wrote a lot of songs with regard to the predictions of Nostradamus about the end of the world that should take place at the change of the millennium. But when the album still wasn’t released after January 1st and the world was still there in the year 2000, it would be completely stupid to warn everybody for the coming end. We had to cancel all the tracks concerning this subject. And then this guy made a mistake in recording and printing our CD just in mono. It’s completely stupid; with this DVD era, who still listens to music in mono? This guy was fired but that didn’t help us; it would have been better if the record company gave us free printing on DVD or something like that to apologize for their mistake. Firing this guy didn’t help us further; we still had a bunch of mono albums that we couldn’t sell. It was foolish of us to think so naļve; that everything was going to turn out as planned. And we’ve learned from this. We now don’t haste in writing songs just to be in time. There’s no use in settling for less quality just to be in time for a nice release date. We will release the record when we think it is perfect and if that will take up more time than expected, so be it.
		Do you still write all the tracks yourself? No tracks written by the sadistic brothers yet? No, no input from them yet. We’ll be bringing out a new album, which will be a double album. We have this thing for the number thirteen and the next album will be a double album where each of the two CD’s will be made up of thirteen songs. In total 26 songs and the idea is to start each song with a letter of the alphabet. So an A to Z of the horror alphabet. 26 songs is a lot so if the brothers can contribute with new material, than it will be most welcome. If not, than that’s no problem either. I like writing music, that’s one of the reasons I quitted all the other bands. I wasn’t allowed to write. Now I have my own band and I’m able to do what I want to and write for myself. I can now be “King” of my own band, I a good way of course. But the brothers still don’t show that they are motivated to write.
		Mannequin drank animal blood once and got blood poisoning. What was your reaction when you heard this? He was kind of insane at the time. When we did our last album “Le Theatre Du Vampire” he was really getting into this vampire stuff. He heard that drinking horse blood was good for your vocals and he did it. I thought that was really stupid and that he should grow up. I like horror a lot, you know; the comics and movies, but that doesn’t mean that I have to act like that. We don’t live like this. It’s just a horror show that we perform to entertain people. In normal life we should be normal as well, apart from the “Nosferatu” hair that I have right now. Were not satanic and we do not burn churches and kill baby’s. Unfortunately these incidents let the people think that we are. It won’t happen again, hopefully Mannequin knows better now.
		Being from “Merciful Fate” and “King Diamond”, have you heard the new “King Diamond” album “Abigail II”? I heard one song, but it’s all pretty predictable. Still good what he does, but I’m more preoccupied with my own work at the moment.
		I can’t seem to find older albums of “Notre Dame” in the shop. Are you still satisfied with the promotion you get from the label Osmose Productions? Well at those days we had a Norwegian record label that promised us distribution across Europe, but in the end only distribution across the Scandinavian countries remained. That sucked big time. This is also the reason that we released “Coming soon to….” again with Osmose Productions. Most people in Europe don’t know the tracks because of this Norwegian label. And to make it more like a new album I wrote 6 extra tracks. We hope to do better with Osmose.
		Some personal questions: “Vampirella” (the female within the band) is your ex-girlfriend. Isn’t it hard to work with an ex-girlfriend? Well there are no “love” feelings between us anymore; we are good friends now. I have a new girlfriend at the moment and she doesn’t have any problems either with me working with my ex-girlfriend. There is this promotional photo where I bite the neck of “Vampirella” with her being completely naked. We wouldn’t be able to do this if there were any feelings between us. So it’s no problem.
		What does your daily schedule look like at the moment? Well, unfortunately I’m forced to have a day job fixing equipment, because the money we make with “Notre Dame” isn’t enough yet. Further I am learning how to produce better, learn more about the procedure how to mix different instruments. And of course writing new songs. I’m also rehearsing for the band “Dream Evil” as a session drummer for the upcoming tour this summer. So quite busy at the moment.
		“Notre Dame” uses a lot of theatre in their live show. Will there be a video clip or maybe even a movie like for instance “Cradle Of Filth” has? We made a video clip ones with a budget of only 6000 dollars! We had to build a lot ourselves and we had to find an amateur who wanted to shoot the video for a small amount of money. Unfortunately this person totally screwed up and to add to his misery he wanted to direct the entire clip according to his vision, which wasn’t entirely our vision. This wasn’t a good idea, so we need more money to do it properly. Money which we unfortunately don’t have. We have to wait until our records start to sell. This is also the problem with the live shows. The shows that we want to do require a lot of money, for which you should be a headliner. We are not big enough to headline yet, but as a supporting act we never get the resources to perform the way we want to. And if we don’t perform nobody will know us. I’m not used to this; I’m spoiled by my past with “Merciful Fate” and “King Diamond” who had fewer problems in this area.
		So for this new record to sell you need a lot of positive reactions. What are the reactions so far? A lot of people seem to think that I sound like Marilyn Manson. That was not on purpose, but if it helps than so be it. But most of the reactions are positive, but still it’s difficult for most people to put the music in a certain place of the musical spectrum.
		Well we have been talking for 45 minutes already, any last remarks? …Hopefully a lot of people will buy our record and by this give us the means to make a killer live show at a theatre near you.
		Thank you for this pleasant conversation. Well, thank you, it’s been a pleasure!
(Matthijn Vos)