It's time to focus on Swedish Death Metal again, but not your average melodic stuff from the Gothenburg area. No, Theory in Practice are playing technical and complex Death Metal with lots of cool riffs and memorable moments. Henrik Ohlsson answered the questions.

Interview by Whodan

 

Your last album "The Armageddon Theories" was released through Pulverised Records in 1999, but has now been re-released through Listenable. Why did you decide to leave Pulverised and sign to Listenable instead?

 

Our cooperation with Pulverised didn't work out too good, so therefore we decided to search for another label. We didn't get much promotion or anything when we were on Pulverised records, they had constant delays with payments and releases which made us pretty frustrated of course. After we signed our project Mutant to Listenable, I figured it would be a good idea to ask them if they would be interested in signing T.I.P aswell. And it turned they were! Since Listenable had done a fine job with Mutant we knew that it would be better for us to sign for them instead of being stuck on a dead end street on Pulverised.

 

Will you stay on Listenable for future releases as well?

Yeah, definetly. We've signed for three albums.

Were there no problems in letting another label re-release the album since it has only been one year ago since it was originally released on Pulverised?
Well, Laurent of Listenable Records loved the album so much that he agreed on doing it. Pulverised withdrew the album from their catalogue one month after it had been released, 'cause by then they had agreed to sell the master tape to Listenable. So the Pulverised version is not the "real" version of "The Armageddon Theories" as far as we're concerned. It was more like a pre-pressed- ugly-as-hell-version. The Listenable version is the version that you should own if you have any respect for yourself! So, we didn't really have any problems re-releasing the album on another label.

"The Armageddon Theories" was recorded in the Abyss while your debut album "Third Eye Function" was recorded in Sunlight. How are these studios in comparision?

It's such a huge difference! I mean, Sunlight was a great studio when I recorded there in the beginning of the 90's with a death metal band called Adversary. But when we came there in '96 with Theory In Practice I saw a deterioration that was horrible. The place had turned into a punkrock kind of studio, Tomas explained that he would never use the modern equipment that was available on the market and so on. Fine with me, but I think that he has stopped developing. It's like he doesn't enjoy working like a producer anymore, I don't know. The Abyss studio is something totally different, the Tägtgren brothers are cool to work with and mr. Tägtgren himself is spending all his money on new equipment, that's the feeling I get anyway. You can hear the difference between the studios yourself, just compare the production on "Third Eye Function" with "The Armageddon Theories".

It's quite an odd name, "The Armageddon Theories". Where did you get this title from?
When we decided to do a concept thing I immediately started the hard work of getting the main story together, I didn't have a title for it until I was finished with the whole thing. I just tried to sum up the whole story with a relatively short title and after playing around with some words I came up with "The Armageddon Theories". I wanted to use the word "theories" to make the title a link to our bandname in some way.

As one could assume, the album has gotten very good reviews in some famous magazines. What do you think about it yourself?
I think it's a good album. Maybe we got a little bit carried away with the technicality at some points, people in general may not be able to grasp what the hell we are doing on some of the songs. But the reviewers listen to hundreds of CD's, and they can hear that we are different from the majority of bands out there. That's why we mostly get good reviews I think.

Are you going to play at any festivals during the Summer, or will there be any tour promoting the album with?
We have just found a couple of session musicians that will join us for live shows, I've told Listenable that we will be ready to play live in a couple of months. We'll see what they come up with, I don't think there will be a tour but hopefully some shows abroad at least. We'll rehearse with these guys for some weeks and then we'll play some local shows to begin with.

You are undoubtedly very skilled musicians. For how long have you been playing your instruments?

For a long fuckin´time! Nah, I've been playing drums since I was thirteen and I'm twenty-five now, feel free to calculate... Peter is thirty years old and he's been playing since he was a teenager, Mattias is twenty-seven years old and he started playing keyboards in his teens aswell. Bass is something he picked up when we formed T.I.P as a matter of fact, although he had been playing that instrument at home before that of course.

I think you are playing a quite untypical type of Death Metal, atleast for being Swedish. Is this something you fous on, to stay out a bit and not playing like everyone else, or are you just playing the music you want?
You know, we're not "trying" to be different. This is just the kind of music that comes out when the three of us get together and play. Straightforward stuff is O.K, but for us it gets boring to rehearse stuff like that week after week. We need some crazy shit to keep our interest at a reasonable level.

"The Armageddon Theories" was recorded in August 1998. What have you spent time with since then? When do you for instance think you'll record again?
We took a break with T.I.P after we had recorded "The Armageddon Theories", we were so sick of dealing with Pulverised and their delays and so on. Peter and I started working on a side project called Mutant and the demo we recorded lead to a deal with Listenable, that was unexpected to say the least. We just started this project for fun, but it was nice to see that labels were interested in it. So the whole year of 1999 was spent writing and recording the debut album for Mutant. It was only when we signed Theory In Practice to Listenable that we managed to find strength to continue with this band, that's how hopeless our situation with Pulverised were... So we started creating new material for T.I.P this year and we plan to record in the beginning of 2001.

You mentioned Mutant, which is said to be more Black Metal.

Exactly. Mutant is based on creating eerie feelings with lots of harmonies, rather than messing around with time signatures the way T.I.P does. Mutant is more black metal, no doubt about it, but it's a kind of extra-terrestrialized black metal totally devoted to the Aeonic Ones. So therefore you never know what to expect from Mutant since we lend our bodies to the Aeonic ones to serve their purpose. No rehearsals or anything, we're in total possession of the higher developed beings out there.