Interview

CULT OF LUNA

Lundi 5 août 2013

How are you doing ?

Johannes Persson : I'm doing really fine right now.

When did you arrive at the festival ?

J.P. : We basically only got here, I ate some dinner and I'm doing interviews since then.

While the others just chill, so unfair.

J.P. : Yeah, they're watching other bands I guess, setting strings on the guitars, etc.

© ChamO

Are you planning to see some bands after the interviews ?

J.P. : I was just watching the line-up of the festival this year and there are so many bands I want to see. But I'll probably end up not watching any. Hopefully I'll be able to see some Morbid Angel

Morbid Angel

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songs after we have played. They're playing after us on the stage just behind us. This is a festival I could actually imagine myself going to as an audience.

Do you go to a lot of concerts or festivals ?

J.P. : No, never !

So what would make you come here ?

J.P. : Probably the bands. Erm... Make it closer to my home, then I could come.

© ChamO

You released a new album this year, after a few years of silence. What did it last so long ?

J.P. : It was a very ideal place to take a break because first of all, we were done with our obligations towards the record label so we didn't have any strings attached there and also look, we have made five albums and a couple of EPs in eight years. It's a lot. So we just felt like taking a break. I honestly think it's not good for bands to write too much music. First, writing music is very hard. It's not easy. And I think if you're writing too much, you are in the process of making your music unspecial, if you write an album every year. Because it's very hard to change your music without changing the band's soul. At least when it comes to me personally, I need time to write and I think these five years have been really good for us to take our time and write the best we could. I think it's shown on the material that ended up in the album. I'm really proud of the result.

When did you decide to come back and make some new music ?

J.P. : It was really in 2011 that we decided if we were to do a new album, we needed to start working on it now. Because when you press stop on the machine after working very fast for the last years, we realized it was hard to press start again. Because we got new lives, did different things and it was hard to get everybody to focus again. But we managed. We live in different cities now, so we need another process of working together. It was hard to find a pattern of how do we work the best, how do we write the best, what's most efficient. I started learning how to write on my computer. I'm not really there yet though, but I could write ideas and send them out to the band. So we could say "this is what I'm aiming at", "this is what we need to work on when we meet in the rehearsal room", which made things easier than if I came with just an idea that I had in my head.

For this album you signed on Indie Recordings for Europe...

J.P. : We didn't sign, I mean we own our own masters, so we licensed the album to Indie Recordings. It's Indie for most of the world and Density Records for the United States.

It's quite a surprising choice because they mostly released stuff from Norwegian bands.

J.P. : One thing I love about Indie and it's the reason why we chose them is, even though they don't give the best economic deal, but they have some serious passion and that's one thing that's very obvious in their approach to us. Passion for me is half the game. I love passionate people, whether it's about music or life in general. People who just burn, people who are in it for the art basically. I hold respect to anyone who goes to something with the head first. And I think Indie Recordings really do that. They are about passion.

© ChamO

You've been touring a lot since the album was released, it's almost impossible not to see you live.

J.P. : More than we thought we would actually.

So you missed the stage that much ?

J.P. : The reason why I play is to be on stage basically. But I'm not twenty years old anymore, so I don't enjoy touring as much as I did but I love playing live. It's different because I have kids now. When I was twenty, I just wanted to go out and play. But yeah, we play a lot and I missed being on stage with this band, absolutely.

You're playing several metal festivals like this one. Where do you like to play best ?

J.P. : I love this festival because it's a wide span of different kinds of subgenres of metal and hard rock and they seem to book the best bands in every genre.
Sometimes I don't even know where we fit in. But if people ask us to play, then we play. It's not harder than that.

What does the future hold for the band ?

J.P. : We're gonna be on tour for another year. We'll go a couple of festivals in Europe in August and then we'll see. I don't know actually.