Katatonia Interview Translation

falling bird

schoolgazer
Jan 11, 2002
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Ok guys and girls, I sat myself down and tried my best to translate the Katatonia interview into english, here we go.

Show begins with “Ghost of the sun”

Host: “Ghost of the sun” starts off the 7th Katatonia studio album “Viva emptiness”, an album that shows the band with a steady development. The whole thing began in the 80s/90s in Stockholm with brutal Death Metal but that was long ago, exactly like the band’s friends Opeth which have released albums throughout the whole year. Before making that album Katatonia have above all listened to Tool’s last album’s rock music.
Guitar player Anders Nyström talks about the meaning of the music and singer Jonas gives his comments.

Anders: The reason we started this whole thing was that we felt that right at this time there was just no other group who sounded like what we had in mind (Jonas: Exactly) and than we were trying to continue making that album. You finish it and you get as close as possible to it or you get tired of the whole thing. What I can say is, that if I’m honest, I can’t do anything else than this, play music and live for it and I’ve done that for 12 years now. So this is in fact the only thing that seems interesting to me nowadays (Jonas: The same goes for me too)

Host: You said, you live “for” the music, but can you also live “from” the music?
Anders: Well, it’s not the same (Jonas: No) but within the last years we have had luck I must say, I mean besides the band we’ve done these extra jobs you know. If you are like us, risking everything, it’s just hard to keep your job at the same time and live from that and then you get to feel it when you have to come to a decision whether to keep your job or continue making music and that one is easy for me as it’s of course the music that counts.

“Criminals” sets in

Host: We just heard “Criminals” from Katatonia, one of many bands from Stockholm that began playing Death Metal in the beginning ot the 90s. Those were the times of trying to get as much as possible out of the amps, making noise. With time the musical expression has changed though because of being older and all that stuff, but the name Katatonia has been kept. 5/6 years ago the most decisive change took place.

Jonas: It must have been around 1998 that we kinda left our boundaries, we recorded “Discouraged ones”, recorded it in1997 but it got released 1998, and with that album we tried to come up with something new and tried clean vocals.

Host: What made you come to that decision?

Jonas: It was this challenge that we talked about earlier that now when we had made 3 albums with kinda screaming vocals -and we liked it a lot- that it was time to try something new.

Anders: We used to arrange our songs in a strange way so we haven’t even done a song like that before, a normal song, with verse and refrain and such things so we felt like this was already the challenge, to create a normal song.

Host: So you mean like a trade?

Anders: Yes, I mean before, we had songs that were 12 minutes long and they just kinda were created, so it became a challenge to get the song length down. I mean, it may be the easiest thing in the world for any other band to do a 3-minute-song but for us it was really hard (Jonas: Yes, it was)

Jonas: But it was cool, only this was the challenge itself and to be honest it felt a bit stupid to just play them monster tracks.

“A premonition” is being played

Host: “A premonition” by Katatonia on P3 Rock which is all about Katatonia’s latest album “Viva emptiness”. So here is now Jonas talking about his lyrics.

Jonas: I try to make them as simple as possible and try to get away from writing a song by using a list of words, furthermore I want the song to fit in to the music above all. So the lyrics on this album are actually about the daily life being neglected so it’s not about dragons or demons but about small dark happenings. Although this is not a theme record I think that the record do has a theme on it, I guess it’s just those small happenings only that they happen the normal way, not like in some saga, I think this is the whole theme, just how I look upon this world, sometimes when it is kinda strange and cold.

“Will I arrive” sets in

Host: “Will I arrive” by Kataonia and P3 has been talking with guitar player Anders Nyström and lead singer Jonas Renkse and in autumn Katatonia are thinking of beginning their work on the next album.

Yepp, that was it guys, it’s 5:42 am and I feel a bit tired.
To all you Swedes out there, they may be a few mistakes here and there, feel free to correct them!

Good night.
 
interesting that they didnt talk anything about recent problems of festivals..
 
tack så mycket:)

I could understand the general meaning, but of course your translation was great:)
It´s a pity that the host called Jonas Johan....I mean people sometimes say Renske instead of Renkse...and now they misunderstood even his first name...
I think it must be so boring to always answer to the same questions, but it was nice to hear them and it´s good they broadcast a few songs from the new album on the radio!