Hello, how are you ? How do you feel about playing here today in Liège for the Warzone Metalfest vs 6K Fest ?
Harald Barrett :
I feel I think…. We all feel really good. It’s the first show we’re doing in Belgium in more than three years. I think it’s a very good opportunity for us to come back. It’s been a while and we didn’t include Belgium on our headline tour.
So I’m really glad that we were able to do it like pretty close to the tour as well, like to have it as a good follower. Yes. So I think we’re all really excited and happy to be able to play also the festival. That was cool to be a part of the lineup.
You announced recently a show in Sweden and two shows in Germany, and you said “We have something very special in mind”, can you please tease us a little bit about that?
Harald Barrett:
I think we can say that uh … you’re gonna have more news the 1st of March. Yeah I think that’s what we can say maybe. Some more information is going to come very soon and it’s gonna be really special. I think it’s gonna be something interesting for all the people who’s been following us for a long time as well. But keep your eyes open by the end of March and you’ll find out what it is.
You had a tour last year, how was it? Did you have any anecdote to tell us?
Christian Höijer :
That tour in general was the biggest headline tour ever done. Like a first real headline tour, something that was a big learning process for us as well because all tours we’ve done before it’s been like DIY tours we were able to do them yourself this time we’d like had real promoters who had everything backing up and the team working with us to do the tour as good as possible and it was just a really good tour as well because so good.
Harald Barrett :
It’s not really true that we only did DIY tours. We started doing that as old bands do, you know, you pack up your van, pick your own shows and go on the road. For about two years, I think we have been supporting big bands like Alazka and also Emil Bulls. So this was the opportunity for us
, after the album release, to follow up and do a real headline tour but we didn’t try that for a long time. And now, like Christie said, we had the big team behind us and everything worked out. That was an interesting thing to see : should this actually work. People really come to see our show now and we have a crowd; we have an audience here.
Harald Barrett:
Thinking about a funny story on the tour itself… There wasn’t any problems. I think everything went incredibly smooth.
Christian Höijer : Well … We had a lot of problems with the lights.
Harald Barrett : That’s the funny story actually.
Christian Höijer : Funny or not funny : I’m not sure it was fun it’s just us driving a lot.
Harald Barrett:
We own some old lights and we have some in the stage risers. One of the risers, the smoke machine, start to make us some troubles. So what we did was we went to change it in the music store. We went like really far to change it
and it was pretty expensive. We usually bought everything before the tour.
We bought a new one : it didn’t work. We were like “Fuck it’s also broken!” and we spent a lot of money on it.
Christian Höijer :
We just returned everything but we’ve spent like four hours in the office. We need to go home because we had a show that night to play.
Harald Barrett: And we managed to get it but anyway… After the tour, we had used like six smoke machines or whatever. We kept four of them. So we came back with more smoke machines and that was really cool.
For your new song “Paralyzed” you made a music video, how was the recording? Did you receive some help to imagine it or was it all yours?
Harald Barrett: We worked with a really good video producer called Pavel, Pavel Trebukhin.
Christian Höijer: He’s actually in town tonight.
Harald Barrett: He’s actually in Liège tonight. Yeah.
Christian Höijer: Shooting an other music video.
Harald Barrett:
About the video, we’ve made up the concept together with Pavel. He’s based in Latvia.
We took the ferry from Sweden and we went all the way to Latvia. It’s like eleven hour of ferry ride and then we drove for like six hours to get to Riga where we shot the video there with him with his crew.
It was big pretty time taking process and a lot of shootings a lot of different locations. Yeah.
So I’ve probably been that way the most ambitious one we’ve done I would say maybe because we actually really went abroad to shoot the video but I think it worked out really well.
And Pavel is such talented.
Christian Höijer:
He is such a pro : Everything is prepared. He knows what he wants and he’s very picky. He knows the shots he wants and he doesn’t stop until he gets it.
Harald Barrett: He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t really get excited until he get it perfect.
Is this song part of a potential new album? If yes, can you please tell us more about it?
Harald Barrett: We can’t really talk about a new album right now but there are gonna be a lot of news coming soon in March.
We are coming to the end of the interview. Do you want to say something to our readers ?
Harald Barrett:
Well for anybody who came out here tonight to see our show. It was really great being back in Belgium and I hope we can come back really soon again. Maybe including it in the next headline tour or something. As we said before just keep your eyes open for what’s coming soon. Because we’re in a process now where a lot of things are happening with the band. And I would say we’re really really excited to prepare a new step for the band also.
Yeah, we’re just really excited for everything that’s in the planning for this year basically.
Christian Höijer: And also it’s a real nice time to walk around. This is my first time in Liège. This is great.
Harald Barrett : We did one show in Liège years ago. A really small place called “Le Smile Café”.
So coming back now playing in front of maybe … First time we had 20 people now we had maybe 500.
It’s cool. And I think it’s a really good development. So thank you guys for supporting and for coming out.