Interview
with Theory
In Practice
drummer / Mutant
vocalist Henrik Ohlsson
Interviewed
by Nathan Robinson
Theory In Practice
Theory
in Practice was born in July 1995. How did the four of you come
together?
I
met Peter (Lake, guitars) and Mattias (Engstrand, bass & keyboards)
at a local bar, I knew them before but that was the first time we
discussed forming a band together.
So at first we were actually a three-piece band.
I knew Johan (Ekman, guitars & vocals) from another local act
and decided to call him and check if he was interested in doing
something with us, and it turned out he was.
Were
any of you in previous bands?
Sure,
I knew Johan because of the fact that he played in a death metal band
called Incarnation and both Peter and Mattias had been playing some kind
of Yngwie metal for years in a band called Rivendell. Peter was also a
part of the locally known death metal act Sorcery before that. I've been
playing in a number of projects but my two main bands before T.I.P was a
death metal band called Adversary and a thrash band who went by the name
of Legia.
What
was your musical vision when Theory In Practice first started writing?
Was the music back then as technical as the debut album ended up being?
Why technical music in the first place?
We
actually started out with the intention of doing technical and brutal
music, all the songs we’ve ever done have been recorded onto albums.
You have to remember that we got signed quickly after our first and only
demo and we didn’t have that many songs at the time. We just took all
the songs from the demo, added as many new songs as we needed to and
went into the studio. Our intention with T.I.P was to confuse the
listener, so yeah, we've always been this crazy…
How and why was "Theory In Practice"
chosen to be the band's name? What does it mean to you?
I
named one of the early songs "Theory In Practice" and at that
time we didn’t even have a bandname, the other guys thought it was
cool and I said "allright, let's use it" you know. The lyrics
was telling the tale of a guy who thinks that life is meaningless and he
has this theory that he might as well be dead. So he puts his theory
into practice and kills himself. I’m simplifying the lyrics here but
that was basically it. We thought that Theory In Practice was a great
way to describe our music and that gave the title a different meaning.
In the end we re-named the song to "Theoretical Conviction"
because we didn’t feel that the song was good enough to have our
bandname as a title.
In 1995 you released the Submissive
demo, which was received very well from what I understand. Are there any
plans on releasing that demo material in the future? Either on an EP or
as bonus tracks on an album?
As
I said, all the songs from the demo can be heard on the first album, but
since Pulverised didn't have a good distribution I feel that we can
re-record any song from Third Eye Function for bonus tracks on
future releases. The Japanese, for example, would surely appreciate
that.
Pulverised
Records, in Singapore, is quite far from Theory In Practice's home in
Sweden. How did you get
signed to Pulverised? How
was the reaction from metal fans to Third Eye Function? How
did it meet your expectations? Do
you feel Pulverised promoted it properly?
We
just sent the demo Submissive to a bunch of labels and Pulverised
was the first label who wanted to sign us. We were really excited by
that and hurried to agree with their deal, none of us had ever been
signed before so we were almost pissing our pants with excitement. But
later it turned out that Pulverised wasn't the best label in the
world... Anyway, I think that the response was overwhelming considering
the bad distribution and promotion we had for Third Eye Function.
We were pretty happy with it at the time. We didn't really expect
anything ’cause we didn’t know what to expect from a label, we just
wanted to have the album in our hands. We got that and we were amazed
that we had actually released an album. It was all so simple back then!
Looking back now we realize that Pulverised did a lousy job with most
things but what the hell, you have to start somewhere.
I find some similarities between Third
Eye Function and both early Meshuggah and
Atheist. The album also has a fusion jazz element to it. Would you agree
or disagree?
We
have heard that a thousand times, ”you sound like Meshuggah blablabla”.
We tried as much as possible to get away from that on The
Armageddon Theories. I think that Meshuggah sounds very different
from us and always has, we have more melody in our music and we’re
more death/black metal than they are but since we both play very
technical I see why people compare the two of us.
Atheist was in the back of our minds when we formed T.I.P but
nowadays they are not exactly an influence. I can agree with the fact
that there is some fusion stuff on the first album. Sure. But there’s
not really that much of it in my opinion.
Production
on Third
Eye Function was handled by the well-known
Swedish deathmeister Tomas Skogsberg. Usually when his name is
mentioned, people think Entombed, Dismember, old-Amorphis, Afflicted,
and many other classic death metal bands which had that unique buzzsaw
guitar sound. However, Third
Eye Function, sounds completely different than
the aforementioned bands. Why is this the case?
Very
easy to explain. Tomas was hardly present when we were recording in the
Sunlight studio and when he was there he didn’t really seem interested
at all in what we were doing. We weren’t satisfied with the production
but we tried to convince ourselves that it wasn’t that bad. We
didn’t want the typical Entombed/Dismember sound since that wouldn’t
fit our music, but we weren’t satisfied with how it turned out either.
It wasn’t the right studio for us, they didn’t understand what we
were doing. They were more into regular rock'n roll with punk influences
and those sort of things.
Vocalist/guitarist
Johan Ekman left after the debut album to pursue studies in music. Do
you keep in contact with him? Do you forsee the band working with him
again in the future? Do you think the world of metal will hear his
talents again?
I
can’t say we’re in contact with him nowadays.
I drank some beer with him last summer but that was it. He’s
fed up with metal and he’s more into classical guitar and stuff like
that. I can’t possibly imagine that he would seriously start playing
metal again.
Daniel Bryntse of Withered Beauty was to fill
Johan's shoes at one point, but that apparently did not work out. What
happened?
He
failed learning the songs. The easiest song was complicated to him and
that’s when I realized that it wasn’t going to work out.
We didn’t have time to wait for him since we had dates booked
in the Abyss studio and after a couple of rehearsals with Bryntse I knew
that I would have to do the vocals by myself.
The
Armageddon Theories
was finished in mid-to-late 1998, but was not released until early 1999.
What accounted for the long delay?
After the release of The
Armageddon Theories,
the band left Pulverised and signed to the French label Listenable
Records. What made you decide to leave Pulverised, and how did the deal
with Listenable Records come about?
The
delay was just Pulverised Records’ fault, I don’t know what the hell
they were doing. Their payment to the Abyss studio was delayed, their
releases were all delayed, they didn’t promote the bands. We were so
fed up with them that I decided to, once I got the album, send a copy to
Listenable records who had just signed our project Mutant. And that’s
what I did! It didn't take long before Laurent (of Listenable Records)
called me and told me that he loved the album and wanted to sign us.
That was such a relief!!!
Listenable Records has just released the new
version of The
Armageddon Theories, almost a year after its
initial release on Puverised in 1999. It seemed that the first version
of the CD had very limited distribution, and as a result it was very
hard to find. What kind of reaction did you get after the album was
released the first time?
That’s
right, as soon as we knew that Listenable wanted to sign us and
re-release The Armageddon Theories we had to tell Pulverised what
was going on. They understood us and was willing to sell the master tape
to Listenable and they promised to withdraw the album from their
catalogue. So that was the idea: the first version of the CD wasn’t
supposed to be found! But I think Pulverised sold some copies anyway,
and I was once again amazed by the response we got. Considering the
relatively small amount of copies that came out it was incredible!!! I
saw it on several "Best of`99"-lists.
How
many copies of the Pulverised CD were pressed?
I
think it was one or two thousand copies, but as I said they
didn’t/don’t have the right to sell them anymore. Listenable bought
the master tape a couple of weeks after Pulverised had released it.
The
Listenable re-release contains new artwork, and a completely new layout
for the booklet. Why the change?
Because
the old artwork sucked! We had to use the cheapest artwork possible when
we were on Pulverised and when we signed to Listenable we were offered
to use much cooler and more expensive stuff. The artwork that the Polish
company Graal did for us just blew us away, they did the artwork for
both T.I.P and Mutant.
It
seems that Listenable is doing a fine job promoting the album, as I have
already seen advertisements for it in magazines. What do you hope to
achieve with the release of the new version of the CD?
A
lot more people will have the chance to buy the album and it won’t be
wasted because of bad distribution/promotion. We have a license in Japan
through Soundholic which is a really cool thing. What we really want now
is to get a live line-up together and play some shows abroad. Japan
would be cool of course but just traveling through Europe would be fine
too.
At
one point the band was going to change its name from Theory In Practice
to Monument, then to Rapture. But in the end, you kept the name Theory
In Practice. Why was the decision made to change the band's name to
begin with? Why did you decide to keep the name the same after all?
At
first we agreed with Listenable to create a new start for the band with
a new bandname and so on but we couldn’t come up with a name that
sounded or felt like us. In the end we came to the conclusion that the
right thing was to keep Theory In Practice as a bandname and when we
told Listenable how we felt they understood us. We can’t do things
that don’t feel right, and we realized that changing the bandname was
all wrong.
The
Armageddon Theories
is much more of a challenging listen than Third
Eye Function.
It seems more complex and technical than the debut. How did the writing
process for The
Armageddon Theories
differ from Third
Eye Function?
The
fact that there is an over twenty minutes long song on The Armageddon
Theories makes it a bit harder to understand. Even though it’s
divided into parts, or "phases", it is still a massive thing
to digest in one listen. There’s just a non-stop intensity on the
album that doesn’t let you catch your breath. You just have to listen
to the album a few times to be able to follow the songs. With Third
Eye Function we had separate songs all the way through with some
laid back parts in them and the songs were written over a longer period
of time. When we wrote the songs for The Armageddon Theories we
rehearsed like maniacs over holidays and everything so I guess that’s
the difference as far as the writing process went.
With
the advent of computer technology, it seems a lot of musicians record
right onto a computer's hard drive, and use editing software to
facilitate the creation of songs, and to make things easier in general.
How does Theory In Practice go about writing material?
Peter
recorded some stuff on the computer when we wrote songs for The
Armageddon Theories and presented it to us that way. That was
however a pretty boring way to work so that’s nothing we do too much
nowadays. So, some parts of the songs were done that way on The
Armageddon Theories but most of the time we jammed it together in
our rehearsal place. Which is a lot more fun.
Do
you physically interact with each other during the writing process, or
do you each write separately and mail/e-mail each other the music?
We
rehearse as much as possible and there’s no problem rehearsing four
times a week when we live as close to each other as we do. So there’s
no meaning in e-mailing the music when we can meet and physically
interact instead.
What
types of music, or which specific bands and/or musicians, are the
members of Theory In Practice influenced by?
From
the start we were influenced by the band Mekong Delta and that is a band
we are still influenced by. I think we are influenced by all metal
genres, we try to use what’s good about each genre. Apart from metal,
Peter has always been into Al DiMeola and that kind of guitarists. I
know Mattias is into classical music because it’s a great influence on
his keyboard work, he’s been playing that instrument for a long time.
I listen to metal most of the time and Snowy Shaw has always been a
great influence to me, no matter what band he played with I admired his
work. I think his new band Notre Dame is cool as hell too, even though
he’s not the drummer in that band. I like some classical music also
because of the atmosphere it creates. I think we all like classical
music to a certain extent. But to be honest influences can come from
anywhere, fusion jazz, a cool drum rhythm, a state of mind, nature. You
get the idea.
In the past, technical metal bands tended to go
unnoticed by the majority of metal fans. In recent years, the metal
community has come to embrace technical metal more openly. I find that
this is evident by the dawn of newer technical bands (Theory In
Practice, Cryptopsy, Aghora, Martyr, Spiral Architect, to name a few),
the fact that established bands continue pushing the boundaries of
technical metal (like Death and Gorguts), and finally because there is
an increasing demand for classic, out of print titles by bands such as
Watchtower, Atheist, Cynic, and old Gorguts. What are your thoughts on
how technical metal has been received in the past, and where it stands
today?
People
seem to understand technical music better nowadays.
That it is a good sign. It shows that people demand more of the
music they listen to. No one understood what Atheist was doing in the
beginning of the 90’s except for a small number of people and now
it’s suddenly cool to like Atheist, you know. I quickly became
interested in technical music when I had been playing with bands for a
couple of years and I always appreciated bands like Cynic and Atheist
but a large number of people couldn’t take development of extreme
music back then and that was something I was frustrated by. I still come
across attitudes like that. But I think that there’s more
open-mindedness towards the technical metal bands and nowadays it’s a
bit easier to get credit for being able to play that kind of stuff.
The
Armageddon Theories
was recorded as a three-piece, with yourself fulfilling vocal duties.
How do you feel about your vocals compared to Johan's on the debut?
How
do I feel about them? Well, I think the vocals came out O.K considering
the fact that I had never been a vocalist before except for some backing
vocals on the T.I.P debut. It made me want to be the vocalist in Mutant,
’cause I felt that I was able to actually be a vocalist. I wouldn’t
want to compare myself to Johan, it’s just that his vocals are deeper
and mine is more of the screaming kind. When we recorded the Mutant
debut I discovered that I am able to sing deeper as well, but the
screaming raspy vocals comes naturally for me. I like to scream,
growling is not as fun to do. I
will probably use a wider range of vocals in the future though, to get
some variation.
The
band is currently searching for a replacement for Johan…someone to
take over second guitar and possibly vocals. Are there any touring plans
for the band? And if so, what will you do if a new vocalist has not been
found? (I would assume it is hard to sing and play drums at the same
time!)
Yeah,
that’s right. We’re searching hard now to find some session members
for live shows. All we really need is a vocalist, even though a second
guitarist would be really helpful too, and if we don’t find one then
there will be no live shows. Simple as that. You’re assuming
correctly, it is impossible to play those drum rhythms and sing at the
same time. It’s too much of an effort to play our songs.
You
are also in the process of writing for the third album. How far along
are you? How will the new material compare to the first two albums?
Right
now we have four new songs. This time we will do separate songs again,
we haven’t planned any long concept song for this one. I guess you
could say that we will do like a mixture of the first and second album
with some new elements and try to do a pretty varied album. It’s still
really technical most of the time but we will also try to cover a wider
spectrum of music I think. That’s what it feels like right now anyway.
But it will still fit the description "progressive death
metal". Hell yes.
Mutant
How
and why did Mutant come to exist?
Mutant
was brought to life right after we had recorded The Armageddon
Theories for T.I.P, we were sick and tired of Pulverised and we channeled
all the frustration into this side project.
It seems that over the past few years, the
black metal scene has been inundated with a multitude of black metal
bands, to the point where the scene as a whole has faded. What do you
hope Mutant will bring to the scene?
A
different aspect of how Black Metal can sound like and a greater
understanding for the Aeonic ones. This is Black Metal filtered through
our minds, dissected and extra-terrestrialized.
All
guitars for Mutant are played by Peter Lake, correct? And the vocals are
yours? Drum programming was
used on the Eden
Burnt to Ashes demo, correct? And it sounds as though drum
programming was used on your debut album The Aeonic Majesty. What
made you decide to use programming instead of playing them yourself?
Yes,
you’re right about all that. The reason there’s no real drums in
Mutant is because we’ve recorded all the Mutant stuff by ourselves in
our rehearsal place. Even though Listenable bought studio equipment for
us, it wasn’t enough to actually turn it into a real studio. It was a
pretty awkward recording atmosphere to say the least, but we planned to
do Mutant this way and it worked out surprisingly good.
But now Peter is building a studio so things will be different in
the future.
Most
of the material on The
Aeonic Majesty would not fit within Theory In
Practice. However, I find that "Abduct to Mutate" in its
entirety would do very well as a Theory In Practice song. How did you
determine which music was right for Mutant, and which to save for Theory
In Practice?
Yeah,
"Abduct to Mutate" sounds more like T.I.P than Mutant. But
when we created and recorded the demo material for Mutant we didn’t
really have T.I.P in our minds at all. Everything that came out then was
Mutant material, you know. The same thing happened when we were doing
the stuff for the debut, we spent most of the year of 1999 writing and
recording The Aeonic Majesty and everything that came up was made
into Mutant songs or adjusted to fit the Mutant sound. Right now we’re
concentrating on doing songs for T.I.P and now everything goes to that
band, we kind of concentrate on one band at a time.
Will
any Mutant songs ever make it into a live Theory In Practice set?
I
know that you should never say never but right now it doesn’t feel as
if we need Mutant songs to complete a Theory In Practice set, we have
enough T.I.P songs that we want to play anyway. Well, maybe "Abduct
to Mutate" will make it, he he he....
The album cover artwork is pretty
representative of the music within…dark, evil, twisted, and a bit
disturbing. Who did the artwork? Is this the same person who did the new
artwork for The
Armageddon Theories?
Yes,
it’s a company called Graal who has done the artwork for both albums.
They’re a bit slow to work with but their stuff is fantastic.
Is
Mutant something you would like to expand on in the future, or is it an
"as time permits" project?
That
depends. If people give a huge response to the Mutant album and so on,
we will try to make it more like a real band. If not, there’s no need
to hurry, if you know what I mean. But we’ve signed for three albums
and we will fulfill our recording contract. Judging by the amount of
interviews I think we’ve received a great response by the media, now
it’s up to the metal people out there if this is something they want
or not. Remember that the Aeonic ones are possessing Mutant and they
will not take disappointments, we’re doing this with our souls as
payment.
Well,
that's all! I want to thank you for taking time out to answer these
questions! I hope some people out there check out your music, and I wish
you and the rest of the guys the best of luck in the future!
Any
final words of wisdom?
Thank you for supporting us, check out our websites:
http://hem.passagen.se/theory
and http://hem3.passagen.se/mutant1.
How’s that for wisdom?
Other Information in Metal-Rules.com
CD Reviews
Mutant - The
Aeonic Majesty
Theory
In Practice - The Armageddon Theories
Sounds
Check out Mutant and
T.I.P. in our MP3 archive.
Mega thanks to Laurent of Listenable Records for the opportunity, and
to Henrik Ohlsson for his time towards answering these questions!!!