Mercenary
Mercenary is a band from
Denmark existing over a decade now. Their music moves on a high status
in the extreme metal branch. Lastely they have released their 3rd official
studio release entitled "11 Dreams". Mike, Mercenary's drummer has offered
us an interesting interview covering at the same time a lot of ground regarding
the band and their future plans.
1.I will start off with a classical question,
why did you name the band Mercenary? Does it have to do with the members
of the band?
Well none of us are hitmen, obviously hehe.
No, it was back in 1991, when Kral and former member Andreas, had to name
the band. They were going through a dictionary looking for a one sentence,
easy to remember kinda word. At the same time Slayer's "South Of Heaven"
on vinyl was spinning in the background. And when Tom Araya shouted "fallen
mercenary" in the song "Ghosts Of War" they thought there it was....And
that was really it.
2.If I am not mistaken, "11 Dreams" is your
3rd album since your debut Sixth Supremacy MCD on 1996. What has changed
all these years?
First of all there has been a lot of line-up
changes. When "First Breath" was released Mercenary only consisted of 4
members. No clean vocals or keyboards. But it still has the Mercenary "feel".
On Everblack Mikkel and Morten was only recruited as session musicians
but luckily they decided to stay. They really gave the songs new depth.
But because they originally only were supposed to fill in the blanks they
are not as dominating on "Everblack" as on "11 Dreams". The songs on "Everblack"
were not written with keyboards and clean vocals in mind. On "11 Dreams"
Mikkel and Morten were involved in the writing process from the start which
gave a hell of a lot more possibilities. Also, I joined the band
just before the release of "Everblack", so I've played all the "Everblack"
related gigs, which gave me the opportunity really to adjust my way of
playing to how the new Mercenary should sound. I have a more aggressive/
progressive approach than the previous drummer so we used this to go a
step further and was now able to write heavier and faster music. Then in
August 2003 Martin joined the band. He's extremely talented and recorded
some really wicked leads!!! He's very versatile which enables him to deliver
something more than your average heavy metal shreds. And to finish this
off, we have all just developed our song writing skills a lot more since
"Everblack".
3.Describe me with your own words how "11 Dreams"
would sound in the ears of a metal fan?
Hopefully it will sound excellent...hehe...For
those who have heard Everblack I can only say that whatever Everblack's
got 11 Dreams has ten fold. The aggressive parts has been more aggressive
and the melodic parts has been even more melodic. And also we as musicians
deliver a more tight and well played effort this time around
4.Is it a concept album? Or are there just
some songs with a common
reference?
Well they all have that overall dreamy theme
to 'em, the atmosphere and depth and also the lyrical aspect of things,
is somewhat connected. I mean Kral was writing down notes from dreams he
had in that period. And obviously when, after a year of dreaming, collect
all the notes and put them down on paper, things will surely seem surreal
at a first glance, but once you dig deeper in the dreams things will start
to make sense, well maybe only to Kral....hehe I'll let you the listeners
of this album be the judge of that.
5.I can see titles like "World Hate Center",
"Supremacy v 2.0", "Times without changes". Can you tell me with short
words, what inspired
Mercenary for the lyrics of the album.
Are there any songs with political
references?
Again I would say a mix between dreams and
of course things we experience in real life. We all see the parallel to
a certain event and the WHC title.But I think that song has a more Biblical
theme to it, which also can be connected to a certain tragedy. Supremacy
v 2.0 is the sequel to the Supremacy we made back in 1996 so it's
a continuation of that. Times without changes is more like a heartfelt
image thing. I really think you should analyze that one, 'cause revealing
too much only makes the images fade for the listeners.
6.What is your favorite song from this album
and why?
My favorite...hmmmm....It changes a lot. I
think that every song on that album has been my favorite at one point.
Right now I'm really hyped about Firesoul. It has it all. Fast parts, exceptionally
melodic parts, great leads both on guitar and keyboard, screams, growls,
clean vocals, female vocals, an acoustic part with piano.....well....you
name it!!
7.How time did you spent on the songwriting
and the mixing
procedure in the studios? Have you experienced
any problems during the recordings and the "creation" of "11 Dreams"?
Right after the Everblack release we started
working on some new songs. The track 11 Dreams was actually already finished
at that time. So we wanted to do an EP with 2-3 songs and the Kent-cover
but as we got closer to the recording dates we just thought :...Hey, why
not do a full album??? So we decided to make some more songs and thus 11
Dreams came out. Then in between studio sessions we had gigs in Denmark,
Norway, Sweden and the USA which forced us to stretch the recording process
over a longer period than originally planned and then when we were almost
at the end we recruited Martin and the leads had to be done all over again.
8.Can you tell me, which are the major problems
a musician faces from
the so called music industry?
One of the main problems is of course to break
through all the competition and getting their attention in the first place,
haha. You need to stand out compared to the thousands of other bands in
whatever genre you're playing. But I think we've been around long enough
to have developed a certain sound that's recognizable enough to have enabled
us to cut through that phase at least for us to have established good working
relations with the industry present in the metal scene. Here in Denmark
though, that strategy hasn't really been a help - the established music
industry here has almost zero interest in metal, and almost no interest
in general hard rock either, as opposed to e.g. Sweden where both genres
are well respected and covered by the mainstream medias. Another problem
for musicians for us would be, that working on the terms of the music industry
doesn't exactly provide enough of an income to make a living, so it requires
a lot of time, energy and dedication to keep playing the game...
9. Which are your main influences as a band
and yours personally?
Having 6 members in a band provides a lot
of different influences which we try to use most beneficial. I think
the bands that we all draw influences from are bands like Nevermore, Soilwork
and Arch Enemy. But we all have different influences and favourite bands.
My personal influences are Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Nevermore, Testament,
Meshuggah and a lot more Especially Van Williams of Nevermore has influenced
my way of playing. He's really tight and doesn't use any unnecessary fill-ins.
10.Which records and are you listening to lately?
My current Top 5 is something like this :
1) Nevermore : "Dead Heart....."(which I have been listening to at a regular
basis since it was released), 2) Soilwork : "The Chainheart Machine", 3)
Meshuggah : "Destroy Erase Improve", I don't think that Tomas Haake is
human. He's unbelievable, 4) Into Another : "Seemless" and 5) Refused :
"The shape of Punk to come". And I recently received the new Slipknot DVD
"Disasterpieces" which is absolutely amazing!!!
11.What are the future plans of Mercenary after
the release of the
new album? Will you go on tour? Any chance
to play in Greece?
Hopefully we'll go on a tour and we'd love
to play in Greece. I've actually never been there. Playing live is what
makes it all worth while so we would like to play all over the world but
we don't have any plans yet. First of all we have to get the album out
and then we'll take it from there.
12.If you had enough money to make a super
musical project, which
other musicians would you invite besides
the other members of Mercenary?
If I played the drums and it should be a similar
line-up as Mercenary I would invite Bruce Dickinson (clean vocals),
Meshuggah's Jens Kidman (shouts/growls), Nevermore's Jeff Loomis (guitar),
Dimebag Darrel (guitar), Dream Theater's Jordan Rudess (keys) and the bass
should be played by Les Claypool of Primus. There you have it...I think
that'll make an interesting band!!
13.Finally, if you had to describe yourself
and Mercenary with a short phrase what would that be?
In your face and heavy as hell!!!!!!!!!!
Costas "C.O.B."
Meidanis
|