Interview with Markus Sigfridsson (guitars) – Harmony, interview done in January 2015
| Could you please introduce the members of the band to our readers?Sure, it´s me (guitars)(Markus) and Tobias (drums), we are the song writers and founders of the band. The current line up consist of John Svensson, keyboards (Empire21), Raphael Dafras, bass (Almah, German Pascual) and Daniel Heiman (Lost Horizon, Heed) on guest vocals.In the info I read that Henrik Bath (vocals) left the band because he wanted to focus on his other band Darkwater. Is that the real reason, or were there musical differences?
Yes, that is correct, he wanted to focus on Darkwater, which is more his thing. He was never really involved in the song writing either so it was mutual. Was it easy to find Daniel Heiman as the new vocalist for this album and is he a real member, or can we expect another singer on the next record? He´s a guest vocalist but we hope to have him on the next album as well. We had some auditions before we asked Daniel to sing but didn’t find anyone we were happy enough with. Why does it take the band 5 or 6 years to get a new album recorded, because it isn’t easy this way to build up a real steady fan base! It’s a long time, but we’ve been busy doing other things. The main reason is that we are involved in another band called Darkwater, which Henrik and Magnus decided to focus on. We have released two albums with Darkwater during these twelve years and I have also released two albums under the name of 7days. We also have full time jobs, and some of us also have families and other things that happens or keep you bussy. So it’s just not that easy to release albums, but it won’t be five years to the next album. You and Tobias are the founders of the band, do the other members have something to say about the song writing and lyrics, or is it in fact a 2-piece band with 3 members to complete the line-up? So far it has been me and Tobias who writes both music and lyrics, we are not sure how it will be in the future. When it comes to arrangements we let the other guys do their thing. The new album ‘Theatre of Redemption’ was recorded at different studios in Sweden, why is that? That’s the way it works these days, the budgets are not like they used to be and it is also comforting to record home in your own home studios, those are the main reasons. It is very costly to rent a proffesional studio and records everything there. Again we find a musical mix of melodic metal, power metal, progressive influences and some neo-classical guitar pieces. What or who are your main influences? Me personally, to name a few, in my younger years Yngwie, Helloween and Candlemass. And then Helloween, and later on Kamelot and Symphony X, and nowadays a lot of older music from the 70’s like Rainbow, Scorpions and Deep Purple. There are also more orchestral parts on the new album, who’s idea was that, and can we expect this even more on next albums? We had more of that on our first album, maybe not so much on our second. I think it will be some of it in the future as well, but probably not more than on TOR, but you never know… “Son of the Morning” has Eastern influences, could you tell us where the lyrics are about? It deals with the beginning or creation of man or mankind, and our transformation from evil to good (hopefully), it’s based on some theological ideas. Besides some heavier songs there is also a beautiful ballad called “You Are” and a very emotional song called “What If”. Are this songs about own experiences? Tobias wrote the lyrics for those, don’t know if they are personal, but we generally try to write lyrics that the listener can relate to or make their own interpretations of. What next, can we expect the band somewhere on stage in Europe? Not sure at the moment, but we really hope so. Will it take again six years before a next album will be released? No, I can almost guarantee that…lol. Which 5 albums should every music lover have in his/her collection? That was the hardest question…but I’ll name five although there are probably more, keeping it to metal and hard rock.
Anything else you want to say to the (Danish) readers? We hope the readers will like the album, we will have some more surprises in 2015. Please visit and like us on Facebook for news of shows etc, we have presented some special releases of the cd for the fans to check out. |
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