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Interview with:

Johan Edlund
Anders Iwers



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Sometimes interviews are more a good conversation to get to know eachother, than some various questions. One of them was the nice talk with frontman Johan and bassplayer Anders from TIAMAT. It was a long talk about what’s on their minds at the moment and about their long experience in the music business. The band doesn’t need any introduction; they have proven themselves a long time ago. Just read about how things are now, when I met them in Oberhausen after their gig on the festival “On A Dark Winters Night” on the 28 of December 2004. 

Experiences

Johan: “We have seen a lot of bands come and go. We know that it goes up and down and sometimes you have success, sometimes you don’t. We’re trying to concentrate on doing our thing. Sometimes you can blow thousands of euros on a lightshow and sometimes you can’t. Just accept that and do the best all the time and don’t get too bothered about it. Nightwish played support for us as well a couple of times.”
How difficult is it to create your own sound?

Johan: “The best thing is not to listen too much to other bands….” Than Anders interupts him and says that you also shouldn’t listen to journalist, fans and the record company. After that Johan continues his story: “Keep up with the other band colleagues and write music instead to listen to music.
Anders: “We have been around long enough to say that we saw things go up and down. We still like to sit in a tourbus and play shows."
 Then Johan start to laugh and adds: "It’s very important to feel like a family and we really do. It’s hard to explain, but when we are about to go on stage and there’s this magic between us that unites us, that’s maybe the most important thing for every member. So we stick to that very much. Basicly we have two feelings before we’re about to go on stage. First it’s us, the 5 of us, against the rest of the world and the second I forgot…"

Anders: “We try to find something we can punish the audience for in a way. We have to find the agression and we always try to make something up. In Leipzig yesterday they had a cannibal ring being exposed for the police stuff. So we say: ‘Damn them for the cannibals you should need your fellow friend.’ Just find something and put your finger on it and try to channel that. I don’t want to call it agression, but aggressive asperants.  It can happen that we have a bad day, but it didn’t come across. Tonight is a good example: There’re more than 10.000 people and obviously not everyone came to see us. Still we try to give more than 200 procent no matter for how many people we play.”
Johan: “I just remember my second point: We always play every show like it would be the last . It’s very important to remember that for us.”

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Both guys are sitting on the floor next to eachother. That’s creates a evoriment where it’s easier to talk about emotions. They can look eachother in the eyes and there’s no table between us. Sometimes the sound of OOMPH is on the background, but most of the time there’s a silence which makes it easier to concentrate on what they say. Sometimes they’re almost like a married couple: they know exactly what the other wants to say, know each other very well and have dicussions and jokes. They interrupt each other time to time but always in a nice way. They’re very different from eachother, but have the same devotion.

Johan talks very slow and has a melodic voice; it’s nice to listen to him. Anders speeks faster and his voice is raugh, but he’s more practical point of view.

Higher level

When we talk about how it is to give more than 200 procent every show, it soon goes about energy.  Anders: “If we come off the stage and someone has still more to give we’ve not succeeded. We have to put it on a higher level and we have to put some pressure on it."
Johan: “They are not 10.000 people, but individuals and they payed for the entrance and so we have to do our best all the time. We can’t have a crapy attitude because the cathering sucks. Ten years ago I was horrible in with that. We don’t want to do things nowadays that affect the audience. I had a couple of times when I felt that I didn’t do my best and when you leave stage you feel that for more that two days. If you did your best then it’s ok.”
Anders: “Honesty is the keyword. You have to be honest to the five of us and second there’s to audience who pick up on that. That’s a mistake a lot of bands make I think.”

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Reality

Johan: “Let me tell you what we think about this festival. We like to think that we’re a bit different than the other bands who play here, but meanly I don’t see the difference in music, but rather the concept of the band. A lot of bands tonight, like NIGHTWISH, they like a fantasy world and science fiction. They write about things that don’t really exist. We see ourselves as the really hard reality. We write about reality!
When you come down to our level it’s very dark and we write about stuff that’s really in your mind. Girls like NIGHTWISH they like to escape, stand on stage and forget all the problems they have. I don’t think it’s scary to write about reality. There are experiences in live that are hard for me to understaind. Well I have to work with that. I end up in situations where things are not easy. “

Anders: You end of with a lot of questions and no answers, but that’s life. That’s probably the essence of how we look on life.” This time Johan interupts him: “It’s secondary that people understand that in our lyrics. I need to do it and if they want to have something from me they’re free. “ Than Anders continues with his story: “That’s the beauty of our interpretation, the thing that he writes can mean something to him and something different to you, but when you get a short of emotion from it, that’s fine. I think negative about the world every day and that reflects in my lyrics.”

Anders: “You have to learn to put certain things aside. It’s good to be aware of it, but it’s not that I can do something about George Bush. Nothing is black and white anymore. Even my live; I don’t see myself as Anders on tour and Anders at home. That’s what you get when you growning up. It’s a great world with shades of grey: this could be bad when you see it this way, but also it can be good when you look at it from another side. I think we’re old enough to say that we don’t choose to play music; in one way or another we have to do this.”
Johan: “I have to say that I deceided to be Johan from Tiamat more than 15 years ago. When I am not in the studio or on tour, my personal life is about that. Most friends are playing in bands.  I am such a simple mind that I love to be a member of Tiamat. Well, and when someone doesn’t like us we don’t want to convince them.”

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Dreams

Anders: ”What drives us is interests. We still don’t want to make the best album in the world. We’re interested in making a better song. Not the perfect guitar solo, but a song with more magic, whatever that can be.”
Johan: ”When you’re jong you have dreams like to be recognised and those dreams are different now. When you get into the music business you start to see things different. It’s great to make records and that becomes a dream as well: to make the perfect record.”


We would like to thank Tiamat for this interview

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