Nous avons eu la chance de discuter avec Inferno, le batteur de la formation extrême Behemoth, qui sera de passage au Club Soda le 22 avril prochain dans le cadre du Metal Alliance Tour. On parle du nouvel album du groupe, des meilleurs drums du monde et de ses albums préférés, entre autres.

Thorium – So you just came back from a european tour with Behemoth. How did it go ?

Inferno – We are really happy about it. It was like our last european tour with Cannibal Corpse, pretty much the same venues and lots of the shows were sold out. We had a new setlist, we totally changed it and played five new songs from the Satanist. We felt pretty good about it.

T – What can your North american fans expect from the tour?

I – I can’t wait ! It’s always good to be back in the US and Canada. We always had a great response over there so I just can’t fucking wait !

T – You have released an album earlier this year that came out to tremendous praise. What are you most proud of out of it ?

I – For me, it was the possibility to change my drum sound. This time around, we tried to get a more natural sound from the room where we recorded the album. The songs are also very differents in terms of arrangements and rough structures we never had before in this band.

T – Did you change your kit for this record ?

I – I had a choice to use anything I wanted, so now I moved to Pearl Drums for the european tour.  I just signed with them and and am waiting on a new kit now. They have the best gear on the planet so it was easy to make a decision. The recording session was very confortable, we were very well prepared and rehearsed for a couple months, pretty much everyday except weekends.

T – Is there anything special or unusual about your drumkit ?

I – I used rototoms on the albums this time around. They were used in the eighties in old Sepultura and Kreator albums like Pleasure to Kill. I used splash cymbals for the first time also. It gives more flexibility to arrangements.

T – Behemoth came out as an unstoppable force in the recent years. Do you think anything can stop the band from bringing the music to the masses ?

I – It’s not gonna happen. We are who we are, and the statement behind us  is to stay strong, and we are stronger than ever now.  Nergal is doing well and is totally healthy, and he has even more energy than before, so… no way !

T – Nergal has released a pretty controversial statement about american death metal bands, saying the majority of US bands are boring and generic. Do you feel the same way ?

I – He was probably thinking about the newer generation, nu metal and metalcore shit.  We are all big fans of american bands like Deicide, Morbid Angel and the rest, so it’s probably not about satanic and death, thrash or black metal bands. We have huge respect for the US black metal scene, for the bands like Inquisition which we played with on the european tour and will share the stage with in America, Leviathan… That’s what I think about it.

T – You are one of the fastest drummers ever recorded in the extreme metal scene. Do you think speed is necessary in extreme and death metal ?

I – No, definitely not ! Man, I can say I try to spend more focus on precision and trying to play as well as I can. It’s nothing about speed. The Satanist is not so fast as we were before. It’s focus is more about emotion and atmosphere.  It’s the way I understand it after twenty years of drumming, it’s definitely not about speed. It’s about having an open mind and doing pretty much everything.

T – What are the albums you listen to the most ?

I – For now, the new Titan Blood record, Grand Magus, Dead Can Dance,  and most of the old school stuff like Immortal.

T – Do you feel you have grown since your first american tour in 2003 ?

I – I’m definitely more professional and mature, that’s for sure, and conscious about the music I play. As a band we also dropped our limits. You can hear it in the new album, the riffs and the rock structure, we never would have pulled this kind of stuff on the previous records, it was not possible. This time, we wanted to play the music we wanted to listen to, frankly.

T – Any other bands you would like the share with ?

I – I would have to say The Devil’s Blood, but it is not possible anymore, unfortunately. I remember the tour we did with them a few years ago and it was the best tour we’ve done, ever.

T – What can we hear if we ride in Behemoth’s tour bus ?

I – You can hear some really crazy shit in there, especially during party time ! Stupid music from polish cartoons, old school stuff, pop rock stuff from Poland, and of course, a lot of classic thrash, black metal bands. There’s always Mercyful Fate’s first album and stuff like that to make everyone happy.

T – Do you have anything to say to your Montreal fans ?

I – Can’t wait to play over there !  Thanks so much for your support !

httpv://youtu.be/Czx-OIyrQwQ

Auteur: Phil Mandeville

Crédit photo: Paul Blondé (Archives Thorium)

L’équipe de Thorium a eu la chance de parler avec le claviériste Jordan Rudess en préparation de sa tournée nord-américaine avec le groupe de prog metal Dream Theater. Nous avons aussi profité de l’occasion pour lui parlr de ses autres projets musicaux.

Thorium : How was the European leg of Along For The Ride?

Jordan Rudess: I just got home actually. It was a whirlwind! We we out for about two months, but I have to say that it was very successful. It was a great feeling, looking at the audience every night and seeing all these different and happy faces. For all the years I’ve been with Dream Theater people, you know, loved the band, but this was a new level of excitement going on. It might be partly because we’re performing “An evening with…” shows, which means almost three hours of Dream Theater music, but also because de expenditure of what we’re presenting, it’s definitely bigger than what we’ve ever done. We’re putting even more in the music, but also in the entire presentation.

T-How hard is it to keep a tight ship with Dream Theater when you have such an extensive touring schedule?

JR-It’s a very busy time for us. I don’t even have a break now, since I have a couple hundred of my orchestral solo, which just came out project CD’s to sign. What is great though with such a schedule is that everyone will kind of stay in the mood, you don’t have time to forget the songs. We’ll bounce right back on stage, so in that sense it’S a big positive.

T-Let’s talk about the tour: What can the fans expect from an evening with Dream Theater?

JR-The biggest Dream Theater show to date! There’s a lot behind this, and not only a lot of music.. Fans and promoters were requesting “An evening with Dream Theater”, so we’re offering that. We’re interested in having people walk into a Dream Theater show and from the moment they walk into the door they become part of our experience. We put a lot of thought behind how to make that happen, and the reactions from the fans is that it’s the most fantastic show yet. I would have to say that if you’re into Dream Theater, or you want to get someone else into the band, it’s definitely the time to do it, because we have a lot of talented people working with us. Media and graphics for the band, movies, visual things happening along with the music, our lighting is probably the best it’s ever been. It’s a really good time for Dream Theater.

T-Hardest part of preparing for a world tour?

JR-It’s a lot of work, on a personal level as well as a musician. In studio, if I’m doing an orchestral type sound, I have to do the strings, the brass, some percussion and whatever, but when it comes to playing it live, of course there’s a performance to be done on the keyboard. I spend a lot of time doing preproduction, working out how to make all these orchestrations, how to make the things that happen in studio happen on stage because everybody wants to see Dream Theater play, and not listen to a record, they want to see us do our thing. That was really hard. There was a part that was very time consuming, and hard as well,  which was planning it out: How to make this performance blow up. Which songs to play, how to create our visual effects. Planning it out properly needed a lot of thought and phone meetings. This tour is our reward for planning something like this out. When we’re up on stage, we’re just so proud because we spent so much time planning this experience together.

T-Let’s talk about Dream Theater’s most recent album. How would you compare the record to the other ones you have released with the band?

JR-This record is unique in the sense in what we tried to do is we tried to take all the elements that makes a Dream Theater album: The intensity,virtuosity, diversity, melody, drama… All these things, we tried to offer them in a more concise, to the point way. Although there’s a huge epic on this album, The Illumination Theory, there are also a lot of songs that are shorter, and it was our goal to present our music in this way.

T-Was the composition for this record different from the earlier albums you released with the band?

JR-One of the things that happened with this album is that we had our drummer, Mike Mangini, in the studio with us. He wasn’t around for the first album when he joined the band, so that influenced the way the album came together, having his energy and his drumming when we were writing music. Compositionally, it was put together in a similar way in that we went into the studio, having to write an album, writing and recording… About the organization as a whole, everytime we do an album we learn so much about getting the best tone out of our instruments, tweaking the guitar and vocal sounds, and I learn a little bit more about recording the keyboard properly, using the technology to get a sound that’s the cleanest it can be. We try to advance things to the next nevel, not only musically but with the recording techniques. Each new album is an opportunity to up our game.

T-Where do you think upping your game will take you in the future?

JR-This isn’t a band that really slows down. Because we all have the ambition to be the best musicians possible, we’re always working, writing, planning. We have a passion for what we do. I think that kind of approach to things keeps us moving straight, and forces us to keep the band alive. Lots of bands don’t really last this long. Dream Theater is a unique organization of people who really are caring about what we do, and we are all passionate about our instruments. All of us have this to maintain, so we’re just going to keep working!

T-You have released a Dream Theater record, a solo album and an album with Levin Minnemann Rudess. Do you ever take a break from music?

JR-I haven’t taken much of a break lately. I just got home from the tour and I had to sign hundreds of my orchestral CD, which is called Explorations for Keyboard and Orchestra that has just started to ship. I did this massive Pledge Music campaign and it was all around this orchestral album that was very successful, but it was also a lot of work. Not much break this time around! Here’s what I say to people who ask me why I never take a break like that: I really love what I do, I’m passionnate about it! I have a lot of hobbies, but I enjoy playing music and I also enjoy playing music of every genre. It was very satisfying for me to release the solo piano record I just did which is called All That Is Now. Tremendous, important projects for me like Explorations are a way to express myself in different ways. I’ve been very busy but it’s also been very satisfying.

T-How do you feel Pledge Music influenced your recording?

JR-I really couldn’t have done that kind of creative project in any other way. To hire an orchestra and get them to play a piece as complex as my Explorations for Keyboards and Orchestra is just so expensive. By doing it as a Pledge Music campaign, I was able to raise money to really do this right. It kept the orchestra in the studio for a month, rehearsing, taking the time to record everything until it was the way we wanted it, and mixed properly. To me, the Pledge Music as a campaign has worked very well. I can definitely some people for who this type of project wouldn’t work, but for myself, I have a lot of dedicated and wonderful fans around the world, and they appreciated being allowed to participate in this. A part of the whole pledge music thing is one has to be very willing to engage socially with their fans, and I like to do that, through social networks, and the whole sharing process. That’s like a requirement for someone to do this. The fact that I got the money I needed to complete the project and that I could bring the fans into my world is what made this campaign successful to me. Of course today I’m signing hundreds of CD’s, original artwork, and all that so it’s a big project for sure, but it was worth it.

T-Do you think crowdfunding is the future of music publishing?

JR-I think it’s a very viable and interesting way to go. For me and my solo career, it’s been a great thing. I think for a band like Dream Theater it doesn’t need to be, because our record company, Roadrunner,  is so capable in taking the band and doing the right thing, doing a record, publicising, and all that. But things are changing so fast, one has to keep their head up and be aware of all the changes.

T-How did Minemann Levin Rudess happen?

JR-I’ve worked with Tony Levin in Liquid Tension Experiment, and he and I always clicked together musically and personally. I met Marco Minneman around the time Dream Theater was looking for a new drummer, and I really wanted to work with him because he is an exceptional musician and drummer. And so, Scott Schorr of Lazy Bones Records contacted me and wanted to know if I wanted to be the third musician in this really cool project between Tony and Marco, which had already started throwing around musical ideas. Being two of my favorite musicians, I thought it would be a very fun project, and it really was. Originally, I thought we would get together and improvise, but when I got their stuff, I went “wow!” and wanted to apply myself, make this as cool as it could be. We ended up taking six or seven weeks instead of a few days to make the album, and people really loved it. It was so much fun to do, I wish we could do another one.

T-You released a music video with this project. What’s the deal with the fish?

httpv://youtu.be/KF9JZTVDB7I

JR-*laughs* It was just a little bit of a cute inspiration. We wanted to do something that had a funny ring to it, so we thought that was the way to go.

All right, one last thing before we go. What do you have to say to your Montreal fans before you come around?

JR-Well, we’re very excited to come around there. There are some of the best Dream Theater fans in the world in Montreal and Canada, also being the home country of our lead singer. It’s a city we truly look forward to going to. And then again, it’s the biggest Dream Theater show we’ve ever produced  and I encourage anybody who’s following us or wondering about it to come out and share the experience with us.

Dream Theater sera de passage au Centre Bell le 21 mars prochain, un spectacle présenté par evenko.

Auteur: Philippe Mandeville

Photos: Archives Thorium, Paul Blondé

5 février 2014 – On avait la chance de passer du temps avec Max Lemire et Savage Phil de Dance Laury Dance pour parler de leur tout dernier album, leur vie sur la route, le sexe, la drogue et le rock n’ roll.

httpv://youtu.be/-2Nvf-cTMV4

Entrevue par : Phil Mandeville

Vidéo et Photos par : Paul Blondé

Thorium a eu la chance de rencontrer le légendaire guitariste Joe Satriani lors de sa tournée de promotion pour l’album Unstoppable Momentum. Au menu: comment créer de la nouvelle musique pour un 14e album et comment réunir un groupe de musiciens de talent autour d’un guitar god.

T : How goes your tour so far ?

Joe Satriani : It’s been great ! We started touring back in the summer, we’ve been in Europe for five weeks, and we’ve been out for a month and a half across the US. We’ve been in Canada for almost a week, it’s been really good.

T : How does it feel to be back in Montreal ?

JS : I’ve only been here a few hours ! I usually really connect with a city when I go out on stage and go in front of the audience.

T : You’ve released a new album in 2013, Unstoppable Momentum. How hard is it to come out with new music after thirty years ?

JS : It’s funny because the album title is all about the fact that it’s not been difficult. I was surprised at how excited and interested I was. The big picture about coming up with a concept for a album is getting smaller. What kind of music, what kind of songs will we play ? Even the little things, what pics will I use, will I change the size of my strings… All those things, still, I find very exciting to deal with, even the tiniest of details. I wrote the title track based on that realisation, that after so many years I’m still as excited as a teenage kid who gets his first guitar !

T : How do you feel this album compares to the rest of your catalog ?

JS : It’s hard for me to say. It’s something for you to decide : The critics, the reviewers and the fans have a different, a more unbiased way of looking at it. For me the albums are all works in progress, I don’t really finish them. I never look back and compare them either, I don’T think that way. I always think about moving forward. My main concern is if I captured, on the new album, exactly how I felt at that moment. When I’m done, I force myself to think about the next record.

T : There are a lot of backing tracks, piano, etc. on the newest record. What can we expect from it live ?  Was the rearrangement difficult ?

JS : You have to be prepared, and the musicians have to be really good to pull it off. I think ultimately the payoff is in the organic nature of the recording, and the audience picks off on that. It becomes a record they can listen to over and over again, and it sorts of becomes fresh each time they listen to it. I feel that’s the beauty of having either all live or partial live performance as part of a recording.

T : You’ve built a very different band for the tour than you had for the album. How hard is it to pull a show off with them ?

JS : I got really lucky that I could work with a team that had worked together before. On the new record I had Chris Chaney on bass, from Jane’s Addiction, and Vinnie Caliuta on drums, and Mike Keneally who’d come back from my previous album and tours. When I was thinking about putting a band together, I was thinking that this new band has to not only interpret the new album, but also look back to all the albums, all the thirteen previous studio records, and all the things that we’ve done at G3, and the live DVDs. I thought that it would be great if I could get guys that know each other a little bit. Turns out that Marco Minnemann, Bryan Belley and Mike have played with each other in different forms for twenty years. They played in Aristocrats, they play in Dethklok, Zappa Plays Zappa, even each others’ solo albums and tours. That gave me a chance to tap in how they can improvise with each other on stage.

T : Are they part of the creative process to go from the studio recordings to the live act ?

JS : The way that we’ve always run the show is that it’s a balance between discipline and melody. It’s really what the audience is responding to. They fall in love with the music because of the melody, harmony and uniqueness of each song. If you start to break that down, the whole thing falls apart, because we don’t have lyrics. If it’s an instrumental and screw around with melody, you’ve lost it ! You have to preserve that in each one of the songs. What we’ve been able to do is take the arrangements of some of the songs and designate areas for improvisations. This is where this particular live band has been particularly shining. It makes each night a little bit different and keeps the tour really fun for us.

T : How do you get all those guys together ?

JS : You give them a call ! *laughs* See if they want to do it ! Everybody has to move their schedule around for it to work. We all respect each other’s different desires, and we want to accomplish with our different bands. You give me march and april, I’ll give you june and july, you give me september and october and keep november and december. That kind of things.

T : How hard is it to conciliate all your touring with your personal life ?

JS : It’s not too bad. My family’s been around me most of the time, and I think combining family with music is a great way to live. It’s really not a problem for us.

T : You’re also known for your guitar teaching. You’ve tutored a lot of now famous musicians over the years, some of them we still hear about. How important for you is it to share your love of music that way ?

JS : Many years ago, teaching was kind of a day job for me. I was in a rock band that played clubs in the San Francisco Bay area, during the day I was teaching guitar, and it was a lot of fun, kept me involved in music instead of waiting tables, or whatever. Since I spent my whole life in music, I never really had another profession to rely on. I became a very lucky teacher in that I had students like Kirk Hammet, Alex Skolnick, charlie Hunter… A host of really great players. They made teaching a lot of fun. I haven’t been a professionnal teacher from January of 1988, I gave my last lesson to Kirk Hammet and then I went out on the Surfing with the Alien tour, and it’s not something I do anymore.

T : Is it something you want to start again if you stop touring eventually ?

JS : Maybe. I’m not really sure. I recently thought it would be a shame to stop traveling, I really love going around the world, there’s so many great places to go. I’ve kinda fallen in love with all the poeple around the world that we’ve played for. I just think I’d slow it down, as I get older. Right now, we’re still rocking and rolling pretty hard, because we like it. Once in a while, we’ll do a master class or a rock n’ roll fantasy camp, but I only do maybe one every couple of years.

T : From your teaching years, can you tell something to all the budding guitarists out there ?

JS : You gotta practice ! If you don’t practice to play well, you’re gonna perform pretty badly. That’s what I used to see over and over again. I know when you’re very young playing music is very much your social scene, sometimes people can overpractice a few things. The hardest thing to teach a young person is to practice a little of a lot of things, and to prepare for ten, twenty years down the road. I know exactly what it’s like to be fourteen and standing on a stage in high school, you feel the pressure of your friends more than the weight of musicianship. Most likely, musicians who are 14 or 15 will live to be 50 and will be playing music somewhere. All that work that they didn’t do will be obvious. That comes a lot earlier than they think. In their 20’s, it becomes obivous if they really practiced well in their teens. It’s not about practicing to play the fastest, it’s about trying to understand what notes and chords do to the audience. That’s what it’s all about. We provide music and it has an emotional impact on our audience. They depend on us to give them music, we all need it in our lives. When you get that straight, you start thinking : Well, I have to understand chords and scales and melodies and timing. It’s hard to imprint a young person with that, but that’s the lesson that will benefit you the most. It can be in any style, theory has no style ! You don’t have to stress your body by trying to play too fast or the same over and over again just to impress your buddies. No one’s interested in that.

T : All right, anything else you want to add for your Montreal fans ?

JS : I just want to say thank you for inviting us back ! We love it here, I’m so glad to be back !

Entrevue: Phil Mandeville

Photographe: Paul Blondé

Pour en savoir plus: Joe Satriani

Thorium avait la chance de rencontrer John Garcia de Vista Chino pour une entrevue d’une dizaine de minutes avant son concert au Théâtre Corona de Montréal le 23 septembre 2013.

httpv://youtu.be/TbZiTE8_94A

Auteur & Montage : Paul Blondé

Entrevue: Phil Mandeville

Photographe: Paul Blondé

Pour en savoir plus: John Garcia, Vista Chino

L’équipe de Thorium avait la chance rencontrer le batteur Kai Hahto, du groupe Wintersun, avant sa performance au Heavy MTL 2013. Au programme : la vie sur la route, la tournée estivale du groupe et le contenu de leur prochain album.

httpv://youtu.be/yYXYMF_TcY0

Auteur & Montage : Paul Blondé

Entrevue: Phil Mandeville

Photographe: Paul Blondé

Pour en savoir plus: Kai Hahto, Wintersun, Heavy MTL