THRESHOLD INTERVIEW |
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After having received the amazing "Dead Reckoning" I thought it was about time to do a little interview-session with THRESHOLD, so I had talked to their Danish distributor about setting up an interview. I didn't hear back from the distributor that it was confirmed before Richard West (keyboardist and composer) called me up a day earlier than expected, so I rushed to grab my tape-recorder and started the interview. After a very pleasant half hour conversation, I found out that the tape-recorder hadn't been recording anything, so this is some sort of a by-memory transcription of the interview.
Interview by Claus Jensen |
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Congratulations on the new album, I really feel it's your strongest album yet. And I have always loved your first 2 albums the most
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"Thanks. That's great to hear."
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A lot of times fans say that they prefer the early albums of a band. Why do you think that is? Is it because the band defined their style there, or
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"For me it's not really like that. For example my favourite Fates Warning album is "Disconnected", which I know a lot of people don't like. But it was the first one I heard with them, and it has a great production. But yeah, I know what you mean with early albums, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with WHEN you started listening to a band as that's the defining moment for you."
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Musically Threshold seem to differ from most of the typical US progressive metal bands such as Dream Theater, Fates Warning and Queensryche - it's quite easy to hear you're a British band, as you have that Queen meets Marillion sound
would you agree?
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"Yes and no! Marillion isn't really an inspiration for us - it's probably more that they share the same influences as we do. I haven't heard much Marillion since Fish left them. But Queen and Genesis are big inspirations for us, so that's probably true about the UK sound. Also bands such as Deep Purple, Rush and even Testament have inspired us."
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Yeah, you can't really deny the Queen inspiration in a song like "Pilot In The Sky Of Dreams"
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"I guess so, I don't know about the other band members but Queen was my favourite band for a long time."
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Most of the progressive metal bands coming out after the early 90's have based their sound on Dream Theater
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"Well, I am quite reluctant to call Threshold for progressive metal in the first place. I don't like categorising our music. And, I don't feel we musically have much in common with Dream Theater".
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But most fans base their CD-buying habits on what they hear reviews compare new bands to, right?
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"I guess so. But honestly, I don't read many reviews, so I don't do that myself."
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Okay, let's talk about "Dead Reckoning"
It's your first album for Nuclear Blast - how did that deal come in place?
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"We had a 3 album deal with Inside Out, and we had fulfilled that one. Apparently Nuclear Blast heard about us being "free from contract", so they contacted us, made an offer, and we signed with them."
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Nuclear Blast is obviously a bigger label than Inside Out, and you're more or less their only progressive metal band, right?
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"Yes, that's probably true. Although they do have bands such as Communic and Nightwish, so they're not only about death metal."
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What do you think you'll gain from having signed with Nuclear Blast?
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"I don't know yet, but of course they have bigger promotion budgets etc. Also, we've never really had a break-through in USA, and seeing how well they are doing with bands such as In Flames etc, we hope they'll be able to do something for us over there. In fact, "Slipstream" is coming out as a single over there right now."
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And in Europe
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"The first single will be "Pilot In The Sky Of Dreams", and we're also using "Slipstream" for a lot of our promotion on the web and on magazine cover discs.
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Great - "Slipstream" is an awesome song - it might be my favourite song of yours ever.
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"Thanks. It's one of mine as well."
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Speaking of "Pilot In The Sky Of Dreams"
this was supposed to be the album title at first, right?
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"Yes, but we decided that we didn't want to have one of the songs representing the entire album. We feel that it's quite a diverse album with lots of different flavours, and it would be better to use a title that wasn't a song title. So we decided on "Dead Reckoning" which is a powerful album title."
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And it also goes with the usual Threshold style of having very short album titles ("Clone", "Hypothetical", "Wounded Land", "Psychedelicatessen", "Subsurface", "Critical Mass", "Extinct Instinct")
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"Yeah, haha".
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It looks like you've used Thomas Everhard again for the cover art
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"No, it's not Thomas. It's a guy from Italy, and when we saw the cover he had done for the band Extrema we knew that he was the right guy for the job."
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Oh? It does have a lot of Everhard style to it though.
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"Yes, it does. It has the mono-chromatic colour scheme. But earlier on we were in our "brown phase", and now we're in our "blue phase" so to speak, haha."
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Which of your albums do you feel is your best work?
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"Definitely the new album. It's got everything that Threshold is about."
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Okay - I kind of expected that answer, haha. Are there any of your albums you don't like at all?
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"No, of course not! Although I don't listen much to "Wounded Land", it was recorded on a low budget and I don't enjoy the sound as much as on our later albums
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But that disc have 2 of my favourite Threshold songs, "Paradox" and "Siege Of Baghdad"
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"Really? Well, we've played "Paradox" live for a lot of years, but then we decided that we didn't need it in the setlist more, and dumped it. Hmmm, we haven't played "Siege
" for a long time - we perhaps should try to include that in the setlist?"
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Oh yes, that would be awesome. Speaking of playing live, what are your plans on that?
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"We're gonna be playing some festivals over the summer around Europe, then ProgPower USA in October, and then we're in the talks for a European tour in the fall. Our booking agent is working on that right now."
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Any chance of seeing you here in Denmark?
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"Sure, we'd love to play Denmark"
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You haven't been here since 1995 when you were out on tour with the "Psychedelicatessen" album
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"Right, we played in Copenhagen at Christiania."
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Yes, together with Psychotic Waltz. One of the most amazing concerts I've ever seen. I totally became a fan of you that day, and I bought both "Psychedelicatessen" and "Wounded Land" right there, and had you guys sign the discs, hehe
It was Glynn Morgan singing for you back then. I totally love his voice - but apparently things didn't work out with him?
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"Glynn is a great singer, but he never really fitted into the band so well, so eventually him and our old drummer Jay left Threshold, and went on to do Mindfeed."
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Okay, and that of course leads me to ask you about Damien Wilson, who were your original singer, but then left after the debut album and came back in for the third disc
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"Yes, Damien is a fantastic vocalist, but when we had done the debut he got an offer to join another band called LaSalle. They recorded a disc, but it never got released. Actually I have a copy somewhere, I should sell that one on Ebay, I could probably make a lot of money on it, hahahaha. When we were going to do "Extinct Instinct" we didn't want to have a 3rd vocalist for our 3rd album, so Damien came back on board. He was actually supposed to do "Clone" as well, but left just shortly before the recordings. So that's when we found Mac, and he came in and delivered a very good job. And he's been here ever since."
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I caught you on that tour at the first ProgPower festival in Holland
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"Oh no - that was our worst show ever!"
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Yeah, I was gonna say that Mac was soooooo drunk there, and it really was a mess
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"Yes, Mac got drunk before we went on stage, and I think someone on the first row handed him some weed during the gig
You have to realise that Mac had just joined the band when we were in the studio recording "Clone", and there was a lot of pressure on him, But I guess he drank a little too much that night!"
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Does he still have that? I mean, I saw him last year in Germany on the Rock Hard festival
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"That was a great show, did something happen that I didn't notice?"
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Well, he was running across the stage drunk as hell during the Pretty Maids show
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"Really? Are you sure it was him? I didn't know anything about that - but I'm gonna ask him, haha."
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Well, no matter what - the other times I've seen him, he has been a brilliant frontman.
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"Yes, he's awesome. There was a time when he used to go quite crazy on stage, doing headstands, climbing lighting rigs and carrying the guitarists on his shoulders etc, that we started to call it the "Macrobatics", haha. Perhaps he should start doing that again :-)"
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I hope so - I'm gonna see you at ProgPower in Atlanta, USA in October.
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"Cool. Yeah, we love those ProgPower festivals, we've played at all 3 of them. The US and UK shows are in great venues, although I think the Europe edition was better when it was in Tilburg, now it's in a smaller town and it's lost some of its charm. But it's still a great event and we'll always support the ProgPower name."
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Great. I'm really looking forward to seeing you live again! Alright, I better end this interview with wishing you good luck with the new album - I really think it's a wonderful disc, and your best one yet.
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"Thanks Claus. I appreciate that. See you at ProgPower USA."
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