Oddleif Stensland (Communic)
April 2008
You have completed a very unusual tour last year. It was unusual because it didn't immediately follow the release of the previous album.
Actually, our original plan was to go to the studio with our new album at the time that tour happened. We got the offer to do the Threshold tour and we liked th idea of doing another tour so we postponed the recording of the new album. I think it worked out pretty well. We had some great shows on that tour and we got to see some new countries, we had a great time actually.
What do you think about the other bands on the bill?
I liked Threshold, they are a really cool band. It was the first time that I heard Serenity. They are cool guys and their music is nice. And also this was the first time I heard Machine Men from Finland and they were pretty good as well. We had a good time travelling around Europe with two nightliners. We were in the same bus with Threshold and we got along really great. It was a really relaxing tour with grown up people with not much party going on and that suits me perfect. (Laughs)
What was the gig that you enjoyed the most?
Probably the gig we did in Prague or the day after in Budapest. Your boat was pretty cool, it stuck in the memory. (Laughs) It's a unique place and the river was flooding so it was really cool.
You said that you were already about to record when the tour happened. So when did you actually write the material for the new album?
Most of the songs were almost complete when we went out on this tour but we didn't have vocals and lyrics. So the tour came very good for me so I could put this on hold until we come back. (Laughs) This way I could work more on the lyrics. Right now it feels like it's only the last 6-7 months that we spent with creating the new album. That was when we were focused to get it done.
Do you write songs all the time? I mean if you have an idea you write it down or record it immediately?
Yeah, always. I have a small personal studio setup at home so I can easily record guitars or try out some vocals. Usually when I'm at home after work in the evening most of the time I'm sitting in front of the TV with my guitar and then I come up with some ideas that I have to record so I could remember them the day after. (Laughs) I always have a huge pile of ideas and stuff on the computer that I can pick from. I probably make some new stuff every day I guess, so for me it's something I have to do and even if I wasn't in a band I would do these songs just for myself.
Well, let's see the new album. To me it sounds somewhat darker than Visual Decay was...
Yeah, probably this one is a little bit more heavy, thrashy and yeah, I use a little bit more darker vocals, so I think you are right! I think we have some movement within the band. We don't move too much but I still think that we do more or less the same kind of music or sound that we have done on the first two albums, but it's kind of a natural progression I think. We don't feel that much pressure to what we write because we don't rely on this band to pay our bills. We all have our jobs besides the band and creating music for us is the joy and fun we have when we play these songs. We try to come up with ideas that first of all we like and stuff that kind of inspires us to be creative. We just write stuff that comes into our minds and when I present it to the other guys at the rehearsal it kind of evolves because the other guys add their own ideas.
I think this album will silence all the people that ever called you a Nevermore clone...
Yeah. (Laughs) Hopefully people can see that now that we actually have something like our own sound. Of course I can understand that people want to compare my singing and my kind of vocals with the types of Nevermore. When you are putting out your debut album like we did after the Scariot album, everyone wants to compare you to something. And Communic is pretty difficult to describe and I think they didn't find that many bands that we actually could be compared with. You can't say it's like Helloween or Iron Maiden or whatever. But I don't think too much about it. It's more like a compliment I would say. But the new album is more Communic than anything else. We have three albums now and people kind of know what they are getting. We don't have any borders when we create music, whatever fits for us we will use it.
You seem to have kind of a formula for your songs as they are all in the 6-9 minute range and there's no more than 7-8 songs per album...
Well, as I said we don't have any rules and we never decide on a setup for a song. We just write the stuff that comes to our mind and if that ends up being ten minutes long that's fine.Actually we never manage to create short songs. (Laughs) I think the shortest song we have this time is like 6:40. (Laughs) Maybe we'll manage to write shorter songs in the future, I don't know, we just continue until we feel that the song is complete. And we don't want the album to last for more than an hour because it's pretty intense so one hour should be enough. That is actually setting the limit of how many songs we can put on the album. The other two albums had 7 songs and thins time we put one extra song on it.
I don't know how much you were involved in the songwriting of Scariot but their songs were a lot shorter.
I never wrote any music in Scariot. I only wrote the lyrics and the melody for the vocals. The other guy was putting together the songs and I was only the vocalist, which in the long run was pretty boring. I think Scariot was a really good band and the album that we made was pretty cool. The reason I think that it actually broke up was because there were so many strong musicians in that band that also wanted to write music in the same band. The bassist and the other guitar player and myself, we were all writing songs but we were not allowed to put it into the band because Daniel was writing everything. When all band members started their own projects Scariot fell apart because we got a record deal for Communic and we quit the band to focus on Communic.
Have you heard the last Scariot album?
Yes, sure. I got a promo from Daniel. I think it's a cool album. The singer Øyvind is actually one of my favourite singers. He's from the closest city from where I live. His old band was called Manitou and the album they did is one of my favourite albums. So the vocalist is really good but I don't think it fits with te music. The music is a little bit more thrashy while he's more like a Fates Warning kind of singer. Actually we started working many of those songs while I was still in Scariot and since I'm a melodic singer I found it difficult to make good melodies and catchy vocals to that kind of riffing because it was more straightforward thrash metal riffing and not much room to make cool vocal lines.
Let's go back to Communic. My favourite song on your new album is Unpredictables Of Life. What is yours?
We had two choices to make an opening track for this album and one of them was Unpredictables Of Life but we put it a little bit further back on the album. I think it's a really cool song. Actually my vocals there remind me of maybe Megadeth. It's one of the best songs to play live so probably that'll be part of our concerts in the future. My favourite song would be either The Abandoned One or Through The Labyrinth Of Years.
Who was playing the keyboards on the album this time?
Well... hmm... that's a good question. (Laughs) Actually I don't know his name. I think his name was Kim, the guitar player from Anubis Gate. We called him up in the studio because Jacob (Jacob Hansen - producer) had used him on some other albums to do some keyboards. Basically we hired him to drop into the studio and do the keyboards. It went pretty well. We don't use that much keyboard but I think the keyboards we have this time were more professional even though it's quite far in the distance in the background in the music.
And who was writing the keyboard parts for the album?
That's the keyboard player. He just came into the studio, listened to the songs and he was like, "Okay, here we can do this and there we can do that." So it's not really written in advance, it's more like creativity of the moment. I talked to him after the studio recordings ad he actually didn't remember anything he had done. He was looking forward to hear the album to her what he actually have done because he kind of improvised the stuff while doing it. That's how we usually make stuff and it's the same with the solos I play.
So in any case you're not looking for a touring keyboarder...
No, we don't want to use the keyboards live. We decided about this after the first album. Our music became too nice. (Laughs) When we play live it should be more about energy.
And have you ever thought about having a second guitarist to have a richer sound on stage?
Yeah, we have thought about that and we actually tried out some guitar players as well but it was long time ago and we didn't feel that it was working out that well. We felt that the dynamic in the sound we have now is much better when you are a trio. Actually people who saw us live said that we sound like five musicians on stage so it seems to work this way for us. And as long as it works for us we don't want to bring more people in. The more people you have the more problems you face when it comes to rehearsals and arguments. It's just easy when you have drums, bass and guitars. And it's more economic to be just three people. (Laughs)
In that case you can fire Tor Atle and have a drum computer...
(Laughs) You can but then you won't have the dynamics that you have with a real drumkit. But I've seen bands playing with drum computers on stage and it's just silly. Then would have rather stayed at home I think.
You already mentioned about recording the album with Jacob again. What makes him special?
I think that we could get it done just as good somewhere else but after we did the first two albums where everything went so well, we didn't feel like changing things. It was kind of the "Don't change the winning team" or "Don't fix it if it's not broken." (Laughs) All the reviews about the first two albums have been like totally amazing and we didn't want to do too many changes in our sound as we feel that we have found our kind of sound in the way we work at Jacob's. I know that there will be a time when we will need to make some changes of how we put the album together in the studio but this time we worked like this. I don't know if we will record the next album with him, I can't say that for sure, but he's really good and we feel home there. We can work all night if we want, we can do whatever we want and there's a nice atmosphere and it's easy to work there.
Are you going to support the new album with a European tour?
Hopefully we get some offers so we can go out and do a support tour for a big band. That is what we hope for. We have booked some festivals for the summer and we are working on some more. Our main goal right now is to get the album out and do the promotional campaign and the festivals in the summer and hopefully we can put together a tour for the fall. These are the plans but of course we have to see about how the album is received. Also just three weeks ago I became a father for the first time in my life and it turned my world upside down. (Laughs) So we have to see how much activities we want to have this year. Of course we'd like to tour but I don't think it could be more than 2-3 weeks long maximum because I feel that I need to be at home in this period of my life.