Pain Of Salvation (Anglais) (Par Email)

25/11/04

Interview with Fredrik Ermanson (Keybords)

01 - After the concert given in Sweden, BE as an album is released. How would present it? As a concept-album? As a movie soundtrack?

It's most definitely a concept album evolving around what might be the most ambitious concept so far by PoS. The original ideas came up in Daniel's mind sometimes in 1996 and since we were given the opportunity to present BE as a stage performance it added an extra dimension to the concept. First of all the visual aspect of a concert but also with help from the projections we hade on a big canvas on stage.

02 - Don't you think the story of this album is quite special for a metal band ?

Maybe special but not  too hard to grasp, I think. Just give it time and you will find a lot of aspects in the concept and hopefully it will trigger your mind to elaborate further on the issues.

03 - May we understand BE just as an other Pain of Salvation's album or more as an phylosophic or intellectual concept ?

I think all our concepts so far offers both philosophical and intelligent aspects, the thing with BE is that it spans over such a big spectra of ideas weaved together. As well as remarks and observations of ourselves as people, the evolution of mankind, BE also offers being a theory, a made-up experiment of thoughts. This where Remedy Lane and TPE I for example, offered more individual and personal concepts. But I think that all of our albums offer philosophical and intellectual challenges.

04 - Limitated to the music, BE is a very audacious production, melting a lot of different influences, and not only on metal scene but even on folk music, negro spiritual...Don't you think this can bother the fans to comprehend it ?

Maybe, but good music is good music no matter the genre. We can only make music we believe in and try to do it as good as possible. Are the different styles of BE difficult to comprehend? I think not. They might be surprising for appearing as they do, in a "metal" album, in one CD following each other, but difficult as songs? No, I don't think so.

05 - The cover art-work is very simple contrary to the booklet who contains many photos illustrating the concept. Why a such difference? To invite the listener to travel by the way of the booklet design ?

This is more a question for Daniel who designed the booklet but I can only say that it looks very good! I don't think the underlying meaning was to keep the cover simple to make people more interested in the actual booklet. You must remember that for the shows we did of BE, we used projections on a big screen so some of them are included in the booklet to illustrate more of the songs. To listen to the album and following along with help of the booklet is always a good idea.

06 - Pain of Salvation is very productive, 5 cds during the last 6 years...How and where do you found your inspiration ?

And we always think we don't have enough time to record as much as we want to! Inspiration? Since most of the song writing process takes place in Daniel's head, only he can answer where his inspirations come from, but the inspiration to record and produce albums is something we all possess. It's often a hard working process from start to finish but so rewarding in the end!

07 - How is BE received by the fans and the magazines ?

Very positive! The comments from reviewers, interviewers and fans have been great.  BE might require some time to fully digest but the response so far has been truly overwhelming.

08 - What about a future promotional BE tour ?

Touring requires planning and we want to go on a tour not too far into the future but right now we don't have any specific plans. Performing BE on a tour is a difficult task to fulfil considering the fact that the music to a large extent was written for an orchestra. We'll see how we solve that problem.

09 - Had the band some projects, for now or farther in time ?

We have ideas about coming albums of course and The Perfect Element part II will always be in the back of our head even if that one requires some big efforts and most likely won't happen next year or so.

10 - One last word for those who will read this interview ?

Well, I hope you all had a chance to listen to BE and hopefully liked it! We sure had a fun time creating this album. Hope to see you all in the future and remember to give peace a chance. Really, give it a chance!

Interview by Ronan