Pain of Salvation Interview

Interview
Daniel Gildenlöw
Pain of Salvation

Lineup:
Daniel Gildenlöw: Lead Vocals, Guitar
Johan Hallgren: Guitar, Vocals
Johan Langell: Drums & Percussion, Vocals
Kristoffer Gildenlöw: Bass, Vocals
Fredrik Hermansson: Keyboards & Samplers

PROG POWER V - USA
Pain of Salvation
9/25/04
Interviewer: Karma E. Omowale

Pain of Salvation’s mastermind, singer/songwriter/guitarist, Daniel Gildenlöw has been a busy man as of late. In between headlining this year’s Prog Power V USA with his “brainchild”, PoS, he phoned in from Sweden right before he embarked on his European stint with yet another full-time project, The Flower Kings. Join me as Daniel discusses his writing process in grand detail, the band's makeup and the meaning behind the ever elusive 12:5.

Karma: Greetings Daniel! How are you?

Daniel: Doing well and yourself?

Karma: I am doing well! How is the weather there [Sweden]?

Daniel: Um, well it’s getting cold, winter’s slowly creeping up on us. We don’t have any storms but we don’t have warm weather either.

Karma: Please describe Pain of Salvation to someone who has never heard of your band before.

Daniel: Oh wow! Just imagine a combination of your favorite bands really!

Karma: Okay

Daniel: The reason I say this is because so many people have come to us either after a show or after listening to our album and they’ll say, ‘'Well you know, I heard a lot of different bands and influences in your music'’, and they will mention at least 2-3 that we never heard of before but it just so happens to be the favorite artist or band of the guy coming up to us. Apparently, people seem to hear the most diverse artists and bands in our music or maybe they don’t hear any of it all!

Karma: Oh, okay.

Daniel: [laughs] I have no idea!

Karma: [laughs] Tell me a little bit about your side project with The Flower Kings.

Daniel: Actually, I was on tour with TransAtlantic with Mike Portnoy [Dream Theatre drummer] Neal Morse [TransAtlantic] and Pete Trewavas [Marillion]. After that, I guess I must have made some kind of good impression because [he then starts to snicker] Roine Stolt [veteran guitarist] asked me to be on the Flower Kings Tour doing basically what I did in TransAtlantic which is to fill in on all the stuff they don’t have enough hands and arms to do. So I was on tour, then I was on another tour and I was doing some vocals on an album and then I made another tour… Now I am like...a new member, a full member of the band. You know as long as I want to; as long as it doesn’t affect my time with Pain of Salvation too much because that is always my top priority and my brainchild.

Karma: Well congratulations!

Daniel: Thanks!

Karma: I was reading your bios on your website and you guys are a VERY interesting bunch of fellows indeed!!

Daniel: Well thank you! [laughs]

Karma: Please tell me more about your "mano depression" [we both laugh]

Daniel: I wouldn’t say that its mano depression really, but I get that feeling some times but always when I’m interacting with other people especially [with] people I don’t know. I tend to be very…kind of…too much. I’m really talkative and I tend to laugh and joke a lot. The other side of that probably finds its outlet in the music that I am writing which is on a different level really, more about philosophy in depth and stuff like that. Of which is difficult to throw into just any discussion! [we both laugh again] Just talking to whomever that comes up to you; a philosophical discussion is not the first thing you want to go in to!

Karma: You may have a point there. [laughs]

Daniel: [laughing]

Karma: Considering Kristoffer was described as “having a hot temper” how does this affect your band? And as far as Johan [Hallgren] was described as a “restless vagabond, how does his restlessness add to the bands' mix of eclectic personas?

Daniel: I think every band that I’ve seen up close has a different kind of structure depending on the different personalities of the band. Always that special mixture of different personalities makes the band unique and special. So I think that usually when you travel around with a band sometimes you just can’t help but think, 'this is a really odd mix of people,' but it is always said with that warm kind of feeling that you’re looking at the band as an interesting combination of people…definitely! When it comes to Kristoffer’s temper, which is probably a bit more noticeable than the other guy’s tempers, I mean sometimes it comes in VERY handy. He’s the one who will never back down from conflict whether we play some where and you don’t get your money, he’s the one that will go, "I’ll talk to them!" [Said in a gruff voice and as his voice trails off with a snicker]

Karma: [laughing]

Daniel: Where the rest of us would just be like, "Ummm, huhm, that’s just too bad" [Said in an ineffectual intonation] We're just the type that don’t like to argue too much about stuff, I guess. [voice trails off with laughter]

Karma: [laughing] How does your writing process go?

Daniel: I usually write all the stuff simultaneously, maybe change the lyrics but when I’m writing music, I very seldom have a guitar riff at the point of departure it’s more that the music comes, not already written but almost already written music. I then turn it around for a long time in my head and try different solutions, different variations before I finally put it on paper, or put it on tape, or however I decide to store this information in order to able to present it to the other guys.

Karma: Oh, okay

Daniel: That’s usually how it happens and when it comes to the concepts I usually have an idea what I want to work with and usually I have a firmly good idea which songs are suppose to be about what certain parts of the concept. Then not that long from that I start developing the songs again kinda knowing the idea of what they are suppose to be about even though I don’t have the lyrics, as long as I have the plot or the storyline on a more abstract level. The final process is usually doing a little bit of the lyrics then injecting the music and then adjusting the lyrics until everything is kinda done.

Karma: Wow! That’s awesome!! [amazed at the comprehensive answer given I start to laugh]

Daniel: [laughs] I don’t know how other people usually do it but that’s more or less how I do it!

Karma: Well everyone has their own methods that work for them…

Daniel: I guess so.

Karma: What’s your musical background? How did you get started Prog Metal?

Daniel: I don’t think that we made ever made the decision to be a Prog Metal band, basically I’ve always written the kind of music that I want to hear myself to bridge the kind of music that’s missing out there, for myself. Then whether it’s labeled prog or rock or whatever it’s labeled, it’s basically up to the listeners and labels and magazines. You don’t have much to say about what style of music you playing. I mean we could say, ‘‘We’re Pain of Salvation and we play Country & Western!’’ People would still label us as progressive metal. I guess in a way we’ve suffered from that because I wouldn’t object to fact that we’re playing prog metal but I would say that we are more than prog metal. And I think a lot of people would never pick up any of our albums maybe because we are labeled Prog Metal. I mean I would never pick up an album that was labeled Prog Metal!

Karma: Really?

Daniel: Yeah!

Karma: Why is that?

Daniel: No, I don’t think so because especially today there’s such a small fraction of it that’s interesting. I think most of it has started to become very repetitive. They have a lot of common denominators and the same points of departure, the same recipes, the same old icons and symbols. It’s kinda tiresome; but I think there is always good music in every style of music if you can find it, that’s my motto I think! You can make bad music and good music in every possible music style.

Karma: So true! So who are some of your biggest influences?

Daniel: I have no idea! I mean I know when I was a kid at that point I could EASILY pick out my influences because I was so much more into bands at that point than I am now. So I could say, "Well I’m a Kinks kind of man!" Well I guess I wasn’t really a man at that point! [we both laugh] Nowadays, I have no have idea. I mean I don’t have heroes or favorite bands really. Last thing I listened to was the soundtrack to Kill Bill: Volume 1.

Karma: What a great soundtrack!

Daniel: It is a great soundtrack!! It is an extremely interesting mixture of different kinds of music but it still manages to breathe the same air in a way. Then there are 2 Swedish bands called Ritual and Pathos. Both of those bands I have been positively surprised by. One has a lot of folk music influences and the other has…I don’t know but someone called it Trip-Hop or trip-jazz?

Karma: Oh, it’s called Trip-Hop.

Daniel: Oh, okay but it has jazzy influences with a depressive almost kind of folkish kind of tone in there. I have no idea what to call it but both of those bands are really hard to label. And that always interests me. The most boring thing is when you hear and band and you can directly pinpoint, ‘Oh, that’s Jethro Tull Band or Pink Floyd’, or whatever. Sometimes you can hear a band and they sound exactly like someone else. Now that’s not very interesting!

Karma: Good point! [laughs]

Daniel: [laughs] If someone says, "Hey, you should listen to this album it’s really good", and I would say, "Oh what kind of music is it?" "I have no idea!" …Then I would definitely be interested in it! I would!! [laughs]

Karma: What was your inspiration behind 12:5?

Daniel: We were asked if we wanted to do an unplugged show in which we had done one unplugged show already. We really liked it; it was interesting but the thing is if we were going to do it, it was going to be recorded. I felt if we were going to do that, we definitely were going to play and do another type of unplugged album. It’s not going to be another one of those, 'we play the ordinary songs that we just play on acoustic guitars even though they are plugged' kind of album. So I sat down and really worked with the songs and the material to “dress them for the occasion” so to speak. I think there is something called a music soul that a song can be played in many different ways but at ground level there will be a soul to that song regardless of how many alterations there are of the song, the soul of the song will remain the same.

I try to really listen to the ground level of the song or the idea of the song then adjust that so that it would be the right version for this specific context of the situation instead of just playing it the metal way without the metal because that just wouldn’t make sense at all to me!

Karma: So are you ready to discuss the meaning of 12:5 because the last I read, you were enjoying your fans' interpretation of it. [laughs]

Daniel: [laughs] I just think it is… Yeah, I think it’s time! [laughs]

Karma: [titters with mounting anticipation] Okay!!

Daniel: You know we only have 30 minutes total [for the interview] right? [laughs hysterically] Focusing on the things that really matter! [we both laugh loudly]

Karma: Okay! You got me!!

Daniel: I can just say right off 12:5 is referring to the date it was recorded! It's actually the 12th of May! It's that simple!!

Karma: [laughs] Wow!!

Daniel: But we really have enjoyed seeing a lot of those analyses and Bible quotes. I know that some guys were really making a huge effort to find out the meaning behind it. To me, it was a conceptual idea that just happened to come up because mixing those particular songs somehow it turned out to be a story about a relationship to me. So that was what Brickwork, Pt. I & II became in the end. A two piece story of a relationship with an intermission with some ordinary songs where you can have some time to digest what’s going on and what was happening in the first part.

Karma: Well thank you for that!! Wow!!

Daniel: [snickers]

Karma: Are you planning a US tour soon with PoS?

Daniel: Sometime within the next 10 years! [we both break out in hysterical laughter] It depends on the situation with what happens with basically, everything. There are so many parties in the world that cries for our attention so we don’t know what to do. The only thing I feel personally is that you can still enter the States without getting your fingerprints and snapshots taken like a criminal! As far as it’s like that I would coming over but as soon as you have to leave fingerprints and take snapshots at the border… I don't really see a point nor do I feel welcome, to be honest!

Karma: I can understand that!

Daniel: But so far its okay, I mean as long as you have a working visa you don’t have to leave your fingerprints and take a snapshot, if you go into the States today and don’t want to feel like a criminal more than usual… [laughs] then you should really avoid making money over there you have to go [as in exiting the country] with one single cent then its okay!! [cracks up laughing]

Karma: That’s great!

Daniel: Yeah! [still laughing]

I'd like to thank Daniel & Eric Corbin of Inside/Out Records for making this interview a possibility