ANUBIS GATE (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What are you currently up to?
Hi. This is Kim Olesen of ANUBIS GATE. Currently we’re in the early stages of writing the next album. We’re planning to go in the studio mid 2013. so late that year there should be a new album out. Also were preparing digital rereleases of all our old albums with bonus tracks. And the bonus tracks are all good quality stuff. Some cover versions. Songs that didn’t make the album. Live stuff. AND digital booklets on the iTunes versions, containing all lyrics, an introduction to the album and all members recollections of the creation of each track, including past members.
We’re also gearing up for a bit of live work. We don’t often do concerts but we really want to change that.
– First of all, though you guys have been around for seveal years, if you don’t mind I would like you to make some history of the band.
I don’t mind at all 🙂 Anubis Gate is really the gathering of very old friends. We have all played together in various bands in our teens. Henrik and Jesper started playing together (with Per M Jensen of the Haunted) when they were 11 years old. Some years later, after Henrik left that band, there was another band with me, Jesper, Per and Morten Sørensen (who was on vocals (Testament style) instead of drums). Later Jesper and Per played with Jacob Hansen in Invocator. In the late 1990s Jesper and Morten decided to form a band in the vein of Crimson Glory and Savatage. They did some tracks some of which eventually became the Purification album. At that point the songs were just rhythm guitars, bass and drums (and a little keys) so i was asked to finish the instrumentation of the album, adding keyboards, harmony guitars and leadguitars. Henrik was asked to make some vocal melodies, which he did. And then we found Torben. He auditioned at my little studio and after hearing the recordings we just knew he was the right singer. So that’s what happened up till the first album. Actually the first album was, in our minds, just the demo of the album. We were always going to rerecord it and make the real version of it if we could get a record deeal. But Locomotive offered us a deal within half an hour of hearing two tracks from the “demo”. But they also insisted that the demo was what they wanted to release as the first album. So apart from a few guitars being rerecorded the demo becamo our first album.
– Why did you pick the name of «Anubis Gate»?
That was Torben. He is a great lover of sci-fi litterature and suggested the name of a novel by one of his favorite authors. So everybody thought we were talking about egypt but really we weren’t. But then again we did play the egyptian card quite heavily on the covar art of the first two albums.
– And what are your main musical influences?
Thats a hard one because there are so many. Queensryche, Crimson Glory, Megadeath, Testament, Iron Maiden, Voivod, Rammstein…. But also a lot of non-metal stuff. Genesis, King Crimson, Yes, Kraftwerk. We have lot’s of different things we put into it but we make sure that it fits the framework of metal.
– All your albums have gotten an awesome feedback. Does this fact throughout the years make you feel more pressure to top over the previous effort each time or maybe is bonus motivation to create new material?
It’s true, they have. We are really fortunate to have had struck a nerve with listeners of this style. We have never really given a thought to the fact that people expects us to live up the previous album. But after the Detached i must admit that for the first time we felt a pressure. So we decided that rather than be weighed down by the fantastic press The Detached got, we would step aside and let that album be what it was without trying to top it.
– With such a superb album as «The Detached», some people could have though you would try to do its second part with this new «Anubis Gate», but you haven’t even tried it. Do you think there is some people that has felt disappointed by this?
Sure, there are people who would have loved The Detached part 2. But to us i guess The Detached was really Andromeda Unchained part 2, and really we would have gone down bad if we had tried. The way we work is to accept what inspiration has in store for us. And the material we came up with for the new album was not like the material we did for the last. And the worst thing you can do is to try and make the album you think people wants to hear. It will sound fake. Rather we make the music we are inspired to make and we just have to hope people like it.
– Anyway, what could you say are the main differences between these two pieces?
I think we calmed down a bit. The Detached was our attempt of making the concept album of the decade. In some way you could say that that album was our Sgt Pepper. It was so complex a piece. Making everything fit with the story etc… Making an album like that gave us the chance to do stuff we’d never done before because we could excuse it with the story. And it really worked. But at the same time a lot of good valid musical ideas had to be left off because they didn’t fit the concept. So not making a concept album gave us the chance to give each song a more individual character instead of them having to be more uniform.
– I personally think this is more beautiful in terms of composition, and also more mature than some of your latest works. What are your thoughts on this?
Oh i absolutely agree. We learned that it’s ok to take our time in some of the musical sections instead of rushing from one idea to another. A great example of this is the song World In A dome where we really give each idea time to develop instead of pressing more different parts into it. And i think as a band we have a very good ear for when things get boring. So we know when it’s time to move on to the next theme and when not to. That’s one of the things we learned during this album i guess.
– Due to this, I would like to know how the songwriting process tends to be like in a band like ANUBIS GATE.
We all come up with themes and ideas. Anything from small bits to almost finished songs. Then the others put stuff on top of those ideas or suggests alterations. That way the stuff bounces back and forth. I then pull them into their finished state, doing the final arrangements etc. Henrik is responsible for almost all the vocal material and lyrics. I sometimes do a bit there too, but only a little. All this happens over the internet. We never write in rehearsal. We live too far apart for regular rehearsals anyway. The first time a song is played live by the band is after the album has been released. We really have to relearn and rearrange the songs for live performance. Which is good fun. Sometimes we come across fine ideas that weren’t on the album but we’ll include them in the live performance.
Basically i assemble demos of the songs in their finished state. Then we go into Jacobs studio and replace all the demo tracks with real tracks. Some things may survive from the first demo of the song (our songs go through many different versions before being finished. Options – Going Nowhere had 40! different versions before the final one). In other cases the song may change even on the last day of mixing. The start of Oh My Precious Life didn’t exist untill the final weeks of production. Long after the drums had been tracked. Another example would be the chorus of The End Of Millenium Road (from Andromeda Unchained). That was something Jacob and I wrote on the last day of mixing because we thought it needed a chorus. So really we have no holy cows in the way we make a record. Only one thing counts, and that’s making an album we can be proud of ourselves.
– Anyway; how could you describe the sound on the album in just 3 words?
Beautifull, beautifull and…..beautifull.
– This is a self-titled album; is it some kind of statement?
There is a statement. This album was rally make or break for us. We lost Jacob after all the music was recorded (it has to be said that there is no animosity between us and Jacob, we remain very good friends. He just didn’t have the time for it anymore). Our old record label Locomotive closed down. AND SCREWED US FOR A LOT OF MONEY!!! So we were in financial debt. Actually they are still screwing us, selling our old albums as digital downloads despite not having paid us royaltees since 2007. So basicilly someone from our old label are stealing money from us with each sale. It’s so frustrating….. So with these things standing in our way we knew that we’d either pack it in or emerge stronger. To tell you the truth, if Henrik hadn’t been such an awesome singer i think we would have split up because finding the right singer for a band like us is so hard. And we don’t want to use a hired hand. We want to be able to meet and laugh and have a drink together. And you can’t do that if your singer is from another country.
So despite everything we did get this album done. And now that we’re reduced to the guys who were always in the band. and have been friends for almost 25 years. we thought it was apropriate to call the album ANUBIS GATE. Us, cut to the core and surviving the loss of our record company, the ongoing theft of our finances and the loss of Jacob.
– In fact when you released the album you were celebrating the band’s 10th anniversary. How do you think has your evolution been since you started?
That’s hard to say. We really have developed a lot. The first album is hardly comparable to our last in the sense that if you played the side by side noone would say “hey those are the same guys on those records”. I’m not dismissing our early albums at all, we love all our “children”, but to me they are of a different age. It just seems so long ago. We have grown older. We were still in our (very late) twenties then, and the way the music has evolved i guess reflects the way we have grown as human beings. Each album drawing on the experiences (both musically as personally) we gained through making those before. As we matured in life so does our music and the subjects touched upon by our lyrics too.
– The cover artwork for «Anubis Gate» is something that really caught my attention, is quite intriguing. Could you please tell us what did you want to express with it?
We choose that cover because the eye is the gate to the soul. And we also felt that this was the album we’ve done that’s closest to our hearts and souls. For the reasons described above (us struggling to survive).
– I read this record featurd 10 different stories. Would you mind to elaborate a bit on them?
Some of them are personal reflections of ageing. Golden days in particular. For Henrik this became an extremely personal album along the way. I’m not even sure i should detail what Circumstanced is about. Then there are those great little stories that Henrik is so good at inventing. Telltale Eyes is about how we in the future may solve crime by simply looking into the eyes of a criminal. Desiderio Omnibus is about a man wanting to control his death. Trying to die each day for the thrill of it.
– Once more, yourself and Jacob Hansen took production duties; what are the prons and cons of this? I mean, is more comfortable for you, as I guess noone like you knows what sound you want to get, or does it suppose harder more and more pressure?
I can’t see us using anybody else really. He just know us so well (both musically and personally). Jacob and i have developed a modus over the years as to how we fit all those elements into the mix. We have many little tricks. Our music has so much going on that we’ve had to find out how to create space for it all in the mix. The mix situation has gotten easier and easier over the years. It’s a pleasure to work with Jacob. And add to that that i’ve worked on many albums for Jacob as a session player which makes us very in tune with each other and how we communicate ideas about sound etc.
– This is your first album with Henrik Fevre (your ex-bass player) as singer; why didn’t you look for a new vocalist outside the band? And what does Henrik brings to ANUBIS GATE in vocal terms?
Actually Henrik is still the bassplayer 😉 When Torben left the band (due to health reasons, we are also still great friends) after A Perfect Forever we had some livedates booked. Henrik sang on those. And did fantastically well. But at that time he didn’t really have any ambitions to front the band and Jacob wanted to join because he had “fallen in love” with
our music. So when Jacob had to bow out it was the obvious choise. We knew he was a great vocalist live. And he has had a couple of places on the old albums where he sang, lead. And he always sang much of the backing vocals as well. So we knew he was great on record. And he was the one who wrote the majority of the vocal stuff too. And this time he did have the ambition to be the front man. Henrik has a more accesible voice in my oppinion. In some ways he reminds me of some of the great male singers of the eighties pop era. And we all love that kind of music. You know, Duran Duran, Ultravox, Depeche Mode, Aha etc etc He has a real pop sensibility and much emotion to his voice. Some of which might also be due to the fact that he knows what the lyrics are really about.
– You have filmed a video for «Golden Days»; could you shed some light on this?
The head of our new label, Nightmare Records, asked if we would consider making a video. And i knew Lars Neckelmann (the director of the video) from my younger days where we played in a Pink Floyd tribute band together. So i sent him the song and asked if he was interested. And he really loved it and gethered together a great team for the production. I think he did a fantastic job. Also conveying the message of the lyric. And Henrik is very good on camera too so we could have him in focus.
– If I’m not mistaken, you have always been with Locomotive Records, but this new one was released via Nightmare Records. What prompted your move? Has been a change for the better?
As i said earlier. Locomotive ceased to exist. They continue selling our old albums and stealing all the royaltees. We have contacted them via lawyers etc but they just don’t respond. So even though they are closed there is someone making money that should be in our pockets not theirs. I knew that if we were to continue we had to have a new deal. So i reached out to Lance King (head of Nightmare) and asked if he was interested. And the same day we had agreed on the terms of a new deal. Without Lance and his faith in us we would have stopped there. Definately a good change for us. We are really making gains on the American market. And we have a record company who loves our music and with whom we can always speak to. I don’t think i’ve ever spoken to someone at Locomotive. We always mailed them and after 2009 they stopped responding to any communicaton.
– We could say you are kind of a progressive band, a scene that seems to be constantly growing. Have you noticed in the band this strong interest for this music style?
We’ve definately noticed that prog is making waves on the internet. Without the internet and debate forums and net magazines we would never get noticed. I think a lot of our sales stems fro word of mouth. Funny enough we don’t really consider ourselves to be a progmetal band. In our own eyes we are a melodic metal band. We may have progressive tendencies. But we also have some thrash influence here and there. And some more 80’s metal tendencies as well.
– As 2011 has just ended; could you tell us what are your favorite albums released past 2011? And the worst one?
For me the best release of 2011 was the experience version of Pink Floyds album Wish You Were Here. The live tracks was a real revalation to me. The biggest dissapointment was Maidens The Final Frontier. That, to me, is the sound of a band who has stopped making an effort. They should hire Me and Jacob to produce their next album LOL.
– And finally, what are the near-future plans for ANUBIS GATE?
The afore mentioned re-releases with bonus tracks are on their way. Maybe some live shows. We hope to play ProgPower europe next year.
– That’s all, thanks you once more for your time. If you want to add some final words; last lines are yours.
Thanks for your interest. And if you made it all the way down here, thanks for your patience 🙂
