This autumn THERION will make their first visit to russia…
Yes, we've really thought about it. We know that we're popular in russia. We're looking forward to it. I think it's a particularly good opportunity this time because the new album has some russian influences. We've got russian balalaikas and domras on the song 'Quetzalcoatl', and there are two lyrics related to russian themes — about Gurdjieff, the mystic, and Rasputin. And in the song about Rasputin there are some lyrics in the russian language. I must say that when it comes to opera, I've tended to prefer German composers like Wagner, but when it comes to classical composers without words, I've tended to prefer the russian ones — like Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, Rakhmaninov, Prokofiev, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky, of course. That's why I've started to admire russian culture. I hope that the show in moscow will be very successful, because if it is, we'd have a chance to return again with a big orchestra. We want to do a show with a really big symphonic orchestra and a really big choir. And I think russia would be the best place for that, because it's a country which, by western standards, is quite affordable — not too expensive — but at the same time you have very good musicians. If you take other countries, like South America for instance, I don't think the orchestras there have a quality comparable to European ones (it's not a mistake that I compare them to European, because half of russia belongs to Europe). So if we have a really successful show, pulling a lot of people, we can manage to raise the money we need to do another show maybe half a year later with a full orchestra and choir. I imagine it would be recorded professionally for our next DVD, so it would be cool to do… If we have a few free minutes before our moscow show, I'd like to visit the Bolshoy Theater, the Kremlin, and also the places where the action of Mikhail Bulgakov's 'Master and Margarita' takes place. I like Bulgakov's literature a lot. First and foremost 'Master and Margarita', but 'Diaboliada' and 'Fatal Eggs' as well. I also like Soloviev's 'The Tale Of Antichrist', you know. But when you come with the band you don't have much free time, so you just can't be like a tourist asking 'Oh, where is that place?' Certainly, we often see the most common sites, but when it comes to such special places, I'm afraid I would need to go there one day as a simple tourist. Anyway, if there's any opportunity to see those places, that would be incredible!
'Lemuria' vs. 'Sirius B'…
Actually, it's not a twin album as most people think. It's two different albums that will be released as a double album in the next three months as a present to our fans. The recordings were mostly completed in November last year. They took nine months up to that point. Actually, the recording period was eleven months long, but we took a two-month vacation in the middle. 164 musicians and singers were involved in the production of the album; including producers and sound engineers, there were 172 people. We've gained a lot of experience this time working with a full orchestra. Our first intent was to go to st. petersburg to work there, but then our management had some contacts in Prague (there's a very good orchestra there too), so that's how it turned out. And after all that, there was rehearsing with the band and doing interviews — over 145 interviews so far.
_N. B. Haven't the guys from the Guinness Book tried to contact you to document all that?
Huh, I don't know if it's a record. Maybe it is, hehe… In fact, I don't care that much. If this record is worthy of being documented, why not?_
Each of the two albums traditionally includes eleven songs. Eleven is not a simple number for me. It's the number of Kliffoth, the dark side of Quaballah. Actually we had over 30 songs we wanted to put on the album — that's material for three whole albums. But we didn't want to record them one by one; it would have taken too much time. We decided to lay down two albums now and save the material for the third. So these albums are Number One and Two of a trilogy. How soon the third one will follow depends on how much we tour this time. When we stop touring and get a proper vacation to rest, we'll start recording again. As for the concept, the 'Sirius B' one is pretty complicated. Sirius B is a companion to Sirius A, which is the ordinary star. When you look up at the sky and see Sirius, you're actually seeing Sirius A. Sirius B orbits around Sirius A, and these two stars shine together, so you see one star where there are actually two. And there's a very interesting thing: a tribe in Africa, in the country of Mali, knew about this long before we knew about it in Europe. According to their folk tales, people from this stellar system came to them in the past and told them about their star home. I don't believe in UFOs and that type of thing, so I'd rather think that the shamans of this tribe long ago had some kind of spiritual or astral contact with those entities. I don't think it's much less controversial than the UFO theories, but it suits my view of the world much better. So that's what this title is referring to…
Costs…
The recordings cost us a bit over 100,000 euros. That's what we got from the record company. We also spent a lot of money on the listening session. We rented a castle in Germany this time. And there were some medieval entertainers and things like that. We even made our own beer, huh! We called it 'Sirius Beer' with the album's front cover on the label. That was a royalty that Nuclear Blast paid for completely, but when we record an album we get an advance because everything spent on the recording comes from the record sales. Actually, we've always used every penny given to us to make our record better. I think there isn't enough money on the planet to limit THERION's budget...
Dragon Rouge...
It's an order — a society with an organization around it. It's primarily open — more or less everybody can join, you just need to apply. I joined them in January 1991. It was a very small group of people — 15 members or something — back then. We had common interests. I've been part of building this up into a big organization. For me it's a kind of spiritual training. Besides that, we publish our own material, our own techniques. We hold lectures and seminars, we also have initiation courses… Meditation — it's more like a way of focusing. It's a way of taking complete control of your mind… Magical practice — we need words to communicate, we need to put names on different things to recognize them. Magical practice is a way of learning how to use a very effective tool to make things happen in accordance with your will… Martial arts — that's a physical version of it. We also work with spiritual energies. They manifest in a physical way, showing how to focus the mind and body in accordance with each other to do things that would be physically impossible for an untrained mind. I've never practiced it myself, but there are a lot of people in Dragon Rouge who do…
Music & Spirituality…
That's something completely different. It's hard to say. There are many different types of music. What do we get from punk bands, for example? They drink beer, they make noise… And on the other hand we have Richard Wagner, who made the best music ever written on this planet. And there are myriads of things between those two! It could be anything from bullshit to gold... For me, music is a link to spirituality, another way of expressing my visions from a higher plane into the physical world as a medium people listen to…
_N.B. Alexander Skryabin, the russian composer of the early 20th century, said about his unfinished 'Mysteria' symphony: 'I discovered the secret of the universe'…
That sounds like how he interpreted it, and I really respect that. I don't think he could say it in a universal way — maybe it was the most successful allegory to describe his highest musical perception…_
When you listen to music, it's like you're trying to find a radio station on your radio. If you can tune yourself in and find the same 'channel' as the composer, sometimes you can say that his music is very beautiful. But sometimes you simply can't find the same frequency as the composer, because what you hear and what you like is not what the composer was trying to say. This happens sometimes with THERION's music too. People say what they think about a song, what they think is important in it, and so on. I'm not saying that anyone's wrong, but maybe those things were not at all the same things we were thinking about. Music is very much about interpretation, like every other piece of art. It's like someone paints an oil painting. A hundred years later, someone is watching this painting in a gallery, and even though the painter was very happy with it and maybe said it was his best work, and even though people who look at the painting say, 'Yes, it was his best work!' — are they really seeing the same painting that the painter intended? These things we'll never know, because art, form, and color are all very open to interpretation. And that's actually one of the most interesting things about it — the creation of thoughts and emotions. But maybe it can be a bit random, a bit unexpected. Of course, if you have very simple stuff like a punk band, it can't be interpreted in that many ways. It's like making a drawing with just a pen. But if you create something that has a lot of dimensions to it — like few metal/rock bands do, but almost every classical composer did — something you can also find in those really beautiful Renaissance oil paintings, the symbols of the Romantic Age — then you really have something beneath the surface, and some people don't see it, some people do see it, but all interpret it in different ways…
If you had a time machine…
That's especially hard to say. Probably I would go back to live 130 years ago, when Richard Wagner was staging his operas. To be able to hear his operas conducted by himself — that would be truly incredible. Or if not Wagner's time, then the time of the First World War. I would try to stop it, because I think the biggest mistake of mankind was that the two greatest cultural nations on this planet — russia and Germany — destroyed each other. It was the biggest catastrophe we've ever had on Earth. And of course, without the First World War there wouldn't have been the Second World War. Of course, it would all be worthwhile only if I could bring along the knowledge of today… And if I had a chance to bring one singer from the past to participate on a THERION album, I would bring Gunda Layanovich. She's still alive, but she's the best opera singer I've ever heard. If it had to be someone else, it would be Jenny Lind — she was a Swedish soprano and was said to have the most beautiful voice any living person had ever heard. Or I would bring a great politician, though I don't know what he'd contribute to the album, hehe. Or I would bring Goethe or Schiller because they wrote very interesting lyrics. Or if I were making a concept album, Bulgakov of course — he would write the story while I made the music. But seriously, I doubt any of these historical figures would have anything to do with a rock band, hehe…
History Lessons…
If I start thinking about the historical figures who made the modern world what it is, only negative ones spring to mind. Of course, Stalin was one of them because he created a form of socialism in your country. Without that idea there wouldn't be world communism, and the world wouldn't have been divided by the fear of a Third World War. Stalin is probably the worst person I could imagine. Then there was Karl Marx who created communism, which is a very bad thing in my view. russia lost many of its cultural achievements during those years. And then there was the Roman Empire (I can't single out anyone in particular). Many people don't think about it, but today the USA is based on the old idea they had in the Roman Republic. I mean that Roman warfare led to changes in the Empire, for good and for bad. I could say Julius Caesar, but he wasn't responsible for all of that. He was just one of many emperors…
The future…
Some time ago I was working on a book about THERION's history. But I haven't been writing for a long time because of the lack of time. Besides that, I really want these albums to become part of the story. And about the show in moscow — I must say that it won't be just another gig for me. I'm really looking forward to it. And I think we'll do a little something special for the russian fans. Thank you for listening to our music all these years…