1. Congratulations on the amazing Metamorphosis. Have you been pleased with the reactions to the album thus far from reviewers?
Thank you! And yeah, I think we’ve had a lot of killer reviews so far. I even think that almost every single review from North America have been very positive, so that’s really nice. Of course there are some disgruntled reviewers and fans here and there, but you can never satisfy everybody, especially not if you change your lead singer every once in a while …
2. With the album coming out March 29th is there something you want to say to the fans that are on the fence about purchasing it?
Yeah, it’s been out a few days now, and we just hope people will give the album a few spins, because we feel that it’s a very diverse album, so there should be something for every metalhead to love if they listen to it with an open mind. It’s very straightforward but at the same time I’d like to think the album has a lot of depth and lots of details to make it interesting for a long time. I both think it’s our most melodic and poppy album yet, as the melodies are catchy and straight to the point, and yet the album is also our most aggressive yet with a lot of fierce drumming and pounding riffs. I can highly recommend the album, hahaha! No, honestly, it’s really an album we feel good about all the way through, which is actually a first for us. It might not be to everybody’s taste but it’s what we wanted to make all the time and I see it as the true logical follow up album to 11 Dreams. So we both go a bit back to elements from our older sound and not so much the two last albums, and at the same time we add some new and interesting element, I think.
3. Membership changes appear to be an inevitable part of being in a band. How did Mercenary deal with the major member changes it has gone through?
Well, you know, we just trudge onwards and onwards, haha! No really, the latest lineup change was actually really needed and it really vitalized the band. We were having a lot of disagreements within the old lineup and we just couldn’t have continued. We chose to focus on what the rest of us shared and maybe narrow our sound a bit to make it more direct and forceful. It was very much a back to basic approach, where we just focused on the music we loved and tried to forget about everything else for a while. I think that mentality helped carry us through a rough period, but we never really doubted that it would work out fine – it was such a relief to all of a sudden have a lineup where we agreed on almost everything musically and didn’t have to argue, vote and compromise on every single detail.
4. The technical work on the album is immense, but not so much as to alienate non-musicians. Is this something the band is cautious of?
Well, thanks. But I actually don’t really see us as a technical band. Of course Martin (leadguitar) and Morten (drums) are immensely gifted and technical players and that shines through in the leads and the drum work, but we never really strife to make our material technical as such. If we can improve a song by adding a technical change in time signature or whatever, we don’t hesitate to use it, but it’s not like we try to add technical parts to show off, throw people off or make our material unpredictable or complex. We use it as long as it’s interesting but still natural and relevant. I’ve always personally preferred material that was straight to the point. I can also listen to very progressive bands or tech death or whatever, but it’s not really what I feel like playing myself, I just can’t be bothered.
5. What are the key differences between Metamorphosis and Mercenary’s past work?
I feel like this is the first time where everybody has pulled in the same direction. In the past we’ve had a lot of diversity on the albums to the point where I personally felt that the coherence of the albums was suffering. We also have diversity on the new album but it’s within a more cohesive direction. We put minimum of weight to outside expectations this time and just sought back to what we felt was fun about playing music for its own sake without all the hassle of long arguments, discussions and compromises. I think the result sounds and feels really fresh and relevant, whereas I hardly felt we were a very relevant band when we did ‘Architect of Lies’ – and that’s a plain nasty feeling to suddenly find yourself with towards your own music.
6. Are there any touring plans in place to support the new album?
We just finished an amazing tour with Symphony X and Nevermore in Europe, and over the summer we will be doing some festivals in Europe, some Danish headliner shows, and another European tour in the fall. We have some interesting offers to play Russia and Australia as well, but so far there are nothing scheduled for the US, unfortunately. We do have a possibility that we hope will come through, but we don’t really want to get people’s hopes up as that is very uncertain still.
7. What is a typical day like for Mercenary on the day of a show?
There’s not much glamour or excitement, I’m sad to say. There’s so much waiting and just hanging out, really. On the recent Power of Metal tour, we slept in the nightliner until we arrived at the venue any time from morning to early afternoon. Then there’s a bit of catering on the venue which helps nurse the occasional hangovers, and we’d help carry our own gear and backline and maybe also the merchandise inside the venue just to get our old bodies going. It was a five band package, so we didn’t do a soundcheck but just prepared our amps and pedalboards and various gear in the side of the stage, and then it’s basically just a matter of waiting until showtime. Maybe go for a walk in whatever city we’d be in or even go for a run sometimes. I like doing that as a way of getting a feel for the local area, wherever it is, even if it’s a boring city or an industrial area. You still get some sense, however small, of location, context and culture by seeing the ordinary local people and the places they live and so on. Sometimes you just go between the nightliner and the venue all day until you leave and that can give you a sort of weird feeling of estrangement, like you’re in a place that’s not a real place at all, because you basically don’t know where you are. Maybe you can’t even remember the name of the city without looking at your backstage pass with the tourdates and most days you won’t even be able to point out your location on a map, so it’s almost like a weird kind of parallel existence outside normal laws and habits. So I normally try to get out even for a short while to get some sense of where you are. And yeah, after all the waiting it’s showtime and you got to give it your best, no matter how tired or bored you are, you know, because people paid to see you so you can’t really allow yourself not to deliver the best you can. Afterwards, there’s more waiting. Sometimes you’re in a mood to party, but I never drink just to fight boredom, so sometimes you just hang out and wait until the venue closes and the gear has to be loaded before the bus leaves for the next show at 2 or 3 in the morning. On this tour, we had a lot of great late night binges with this really cool polish backliner, Piotrek, who always did his best to drink us under the table in pure liquor. We had a lot of good times, and yet at the same time it’s all quite trivial in a way. But within this routine you also get really close-knit with the other bands and the crew in a weird way where they become something between friends, colleagues and family. It’s a very temporary and fragile bond, and that’s actually something really special that you have to remember to appreciate while you’re there. Apart from this, the concerts are of course normally a great highlight – they are the whole reason why why you’re there, but sometimes they paradoxically feel like the smallest and least important part of the day compared to the conditions that “really” matter for you as a musician – is the food good? Is there a decent, hot shower? Is there any backstage room at all? Like I said, it’s paradoxical and of course we love performing the music, but that’s how the routine of touring typically is and what it can sometimes do to you.
8. Fan Question from Bob N: Your songs are very complex. How does the song writing take place? Is it a collaborative practice or does each member do their own part?
It’s very much a shared effort, yes. Martin and I usually jam some of our guitar ideas together and then when we have a rough idea of which ideas fit together, we jam it out with Morten, our drummer. Then, when we have some fairly workable structures for the songs we normally jam them with René to see if he comes up with any cool ideas for vocal arrangements. And that’s how it goes, some times we work on a song for several months like this before it’s done and other times the basics are all put together in 30 minutes. For this album, we didn’t have a full time keyboard player, so we had a guest musician, Kim Olesen, come in and put down a lot of different ideas from the top of his mind during a day or two in the studio. We then sorted those and discarded some of them if they didn’t fit. Martin added some keyboards here and there to fill the gaps and that was it basically. It’s just the universal procedure of getting together, jamming it out, discussing the material and fiddling with all the details along the way.
9. Fan Question from YOYO: For Rene – I love your voice. How do you go from growling to regular vocals? Is it hard on your throat?
Rene: Thank you. I have spent a lot of time working on the transitions, It is all about the technique. I sing along with the songs at home to keep my voice in shape and make sure to warm up before the show. When I shift between the two vocal styles I use two different techniques and with enough practice it has become easier through the years. But If I get sick the high pitched cleans are the first to go. It’s not a strain to switch between the two style for me, though.
10. What influences does the band rely on? Metal and non-Metal.
I guess we all have a lot of different influences that inform what we do and what we like. It’s kind of hard to pinpoint bands that we all like and that’s somehow important for our sound as it has evolved today. But I guess there’s quite a lot of love for some of the late era melodic death metal from Sweden, like Soilwork and some In Flames, but only to a certain extent. Nevermore was a big influence on some of the older material, and they were actually the direct influence that made us invite Mikkel Sandager into the band back in 2001-2002 in an attempt to make the vocals more varied. On our new album I think there’s also a hint of some Lamb of God, a bit of Dimmu Borgir and a slight taste of Gojira, but again, I don’t feel it’s not something that really shines through unless you know exactly where to look, and it’s not something that’s very deliberate, it’s just what we like playing. There’s also some old school inspiration on the new album, for example the song The Black Brigade which is hugely inspired by classic Megadeth riffing. But in general I think we have a sense of what works for our sound and what doesn’t, even we try to push our boundaries and reinvent ourselves, which I think we did to a certain degree on ‘Metamorphosis.’
11. We ask this question to everyone. If you could share the stage with one act, living or dead, past or present: who would it be and why?
Personally I would have to say Death’s Symbolic linup. Chuck Schuldiner was probably my greatest guitar influence and inspiration ever and every album from Spiritual Healing and onwards were a great inspiration for me in my formative years as a musician, it was definitely the one thing that made me tick back then and made me want to write my own music, and I still hold the albums in high esteem. I think Symbolic is a timeless classic that was way ahead of it’s time.
Show me your horns,
Martell
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