Entrevista al líder y fundador de la agrupación danesa Evil Masquerade, Henrik Flyman.

Él nos habla un poco de los discos del grupo, su vida y la actualidad de esta banda que con apenas tres discos en el mercado ha dado muchísimo de que hablar.

APOLLO

11. Apollo and Thor arrive in their place. What’s been their contribution and how have they adapted to the band?
Apollo has done a great job. It’s not easy for a band to change the vocalist, but in this particular case it went smoother than one could ever imagine. I’ve always been comfortable to write for the more powerful kind of hard rock voices. In my earlier bands I’ve always had that, so it was kind of new and refreshing to try something else in the early Evil Masquerade days. Plus that it made good sense at the time trying to keep the line up within the limits of the city. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending how you look at it that wasn’t an option any longer. I also thought the time was right to return vocally to where I always felt most at home. That was probably what made the songs come easy for THIRD ACT - because now I could write stuff that wasn’t possible before. It was probably a dammed up need that finally was released. I’d say Apollo did a lot for Evil Masquerade, just being Apollo. He inspired my song writing, delivered some kick ass vocals and is just the kind of stable down to earth guy I like being around. Thor’s contribution was probably more noticeable within the band than to the public. I still write the bass lines, as I always did, since they’re important parts of the arrangements. Therefore I don’t think there’s such big change in the sound of the lower registers. The main difference was to have a bass player that wanted to focus on the band at the time.

12. We heard Apollo with the Spanish band Sandalinas in their debut album, as well as being a member of Time Réquiem, Meduza and Gardenian. Why did you pick him? Isn’t it complicated to have a vocalist that shares his time with so many bands when it comes to touring plans and things like that?
As I just said, he’s a brilliant singer with a good personality that allows for me to write basically whatever I like. It might seem like he’s involved with a lot of bands but I don’t have a problem with that since it’s all about organizing things properly. And besides that, he’s not been active with any of the bands you mentioned for some years. Lately he’s been seen with Firewind where he also does a great job. You should check them out.

13. You are the main songwriter as well as the band’s lyricist. Will there be any material by the other members of the band that will be used at some point?
You never know what the future brings. But as it is today, I think it might be a bit hard for the guys to focus a lot of time on song writing. It’s not just to write a song and expecting it to be included on an album just because it exists. If that was the case we would probably have released many more albums today. I always try to improve and write new material till there’s enough to chose from to be certain that a new album is the best possible at that time. I not only reject bad ideas but also the songs that don’t fit the others to make a homogeneous Evil Masquerade album. I spend a silly amount of time to achieve this and I would have a problem working with someone that didn’t come with a similar approach. The other guys also have other bands and social lives I could never compete with [laughing]. So far, they seem happy for the material I come up with. But as I said, you never know what the future brings. Certain are that our next album will be composed by me alone because that’s something I’m working very intense with right now. But the other guys contribute tremendously to the Evil Masquerade sound anyway by being such great musicians with distinct artistic identities. It would be impossible to perform this kind of music if we didn’t have that.

14. Besides everything you do, you are also a producer. Isn’t that exhausting?
[laughing] One could think so, but no. I’m not doing other album productions today besides Evil Masquerade. Occasionally some mixing jobs, theatre or film - but nothing that interferes with my main priority which is Evil Masquerade.

15.   The recording, mixing and mastering has been under Tommy Hansen and Steen Morgensen’s watch. How has this benefited Evil Masquerade when the time comes to make a record, to have the same production team?
Most recordings are done by me, but yes – Tommy and Steen have done their fair share. They are also responsible for mixing the music and Tommy mastered the 2 latest albums. They are both very good, experienced and nice guys that I fully trust. It’s a good thing to work with the same people, because you learn how the other think and this makes it easier every time to achieve the desired result. I’ve always wanted to keep a steady base in and around the band. But I also think it’s intriguing to add some fresh blood now and again. It’s all about keeping a good balance.

16. What is the band up to nowadays?
Primarily making more music.

17. You have released an album every year, Hill there be a new album for 2007? Can you give us any sneak peeks into it?
If creativity continues being as kind to me as it has been lately there’s more than a fair chance for that happening. But it would never happen just for the sake of it. It has to be as good, or better, than previous releases. Otherwise I see no point in doing it. It’s hard to tell the outcome in the middle of the process since I try to keep an open mind till the very end of the process. Who knows, I might totally change my mind about our fourth album later on and decide to trash everything I’ve written so far [laughing]. That’s for the close future to decide.

18.  Where do you see EM and Henrik Flyman in 5 years?
Either dead or finally making a decent living of what I’ve always believed in.

19. Will you visit Latin America at any time?
As soon as we’re invited and don’t have to pay for it.

20. Talking about something different, it’s been a few years now that some media has been trying to kill heavy metal and on many occassions, it’s been left for dead. Nevertheless, instead of getting weaker it’s getting stronger. What’s your take on that?
Oh, don’t get me started [laughing]... there are 2 kinds of journalists. First there’s the dedicated one with a sincere interest, who takes pride in the job - and then there is the other kind. I agree with you that there have been serious attempts to kill or ridicule the kind of music we love. They really gave it their best shot in the 90’s, and had almost succeeded if it weren’t for 2 very important factors - the primary being that metal fans aren’t metal fans because of some crafty marketing campaign. We are so because our brains are solidly attached to our ears and because we stand up for what we believe in. Secondly, we got god sent help in form of the Internet. No longer was it possible for an inbreeded money strong elite to single-handed decide what to publish. The ezines changed all that. It’s actually funny to see some of those second hand “journalists” today pretending nothing ever happened and trying to join forces with what they earlier rejected. But better late than never. Let’s try being nice to them, shall we? [laughing]

21. It is often spoken of how much the current music market it’s in a difficult situation because of illegal downloading on the internet. How do you see this? I s this a real crisis or are people exaggerating?
It’s very difficult. That’s no exaggeration. I think few predicted how big change the Internet actually would become, so no one was really prepared. In the long run I think it’ll all turn out fine. But many good bands will probably die before that happens. Hopefully the change come sooner than later - so that we don’t have to experience a long period of poor artistic quality, because too many of the really dedicated ones never got their well deserved break and were forced to change careers to maintain a decent living. That could be a catastrophe far worse than what we discussed earlier. If this happens it is likely to take a long time to recover, if ever. Let’s hope for the best and that more fans continue to recognize the problem. Some of the worst arguments spokesmen for the illegal market use are that the artists should be happy for it and that they will sell a lot of merchandise at their shows. Let us first just neglect the bizarre why someone should invest tons of money in making good album productions and give them away for free. It might work temporary for the already established main acts, since the tour promoters know their names and have filled clubs, venues, and stadiums with their fans before. The big problem will be to get new or semi new bands out on the road. You might have been ripped 40.000 times on some server, or your video is shown 10.000 times on You Tube - but no gig promoter that’s not completely insane would come up with a money guarantee for such a band to perform, if they can’t actually show some kind of album sales. And if you have already given away an expensive album production for free you are not very likely to spend even more time and borrowed money to pay for a tour. But luckily I think we can descry a new mentality about this and that people actually want to support the bands they like.

22. A message to our readers in Latin America and Spain…
First I’d like to express our gratitude for being so well received. Then I must take the opportunity to invite you all to our new Spanish Evil Masquerade Forum. We have good discussions going there about all kinds of different topics and I hang out there too even though I don’t speak Spanish myself. But we have several bilingual fans there that are happy to translate if you want to say something to the band and don’t speak English. Hope to see you around!

23. Henrik, thank you for your time. A very warm and heartfelt “thanks” and we wish you much success in the future!
Thank you very much. It’s really a pleasure to answer well thought through questions like yours. I wish you a continued success for METALICOS.COM as well. CHEERS!