Mjollnir: First off, what has happened with your vocalist Darren White?
Danny: Well, it's a long story... But.. Before I tell you anything about what happened, I must say that it's a good move. It's not a mistake, and it's the only way that the band could carry on, otherwise we would split up. Like this now we're gonna be better than ever.
It was all to do with a complete clash of ideas, in terms of lyrics, the vocals, and everything. Videos, basically his attitude towards the band was very different to ours, and we couldn't carry on with it anymore.
On the last album we gave him ten days to record some vocals, in the studio, and we didn't like any of the ones he'd done. In ten days he couldn't get any vocals down that we really liked, and we thought, this can not carry on. It's been a problem for about the last year, ever since
'Pentecost III', just before that was recorded, things started to change. All that I can say now is that Vincent [Cavanagh, ed] is an excellent singer, cos he really can sing notes as well, and he has better ideas for lyrics, his lyrics are less about... There are no 'mountains', 'valleys' or 'gods' anymore. It's more real...

And you are now finished with the recording of 'Rise Pantheon Dreams'?
Oh yeah, it's finished off. Sounds OK, sounds good, yeah...
Anything about the release? September?
Yeah, probably something like that. You can never tell with labels like Peaceville. Like 'Pentecost III' should have been out a long time ago, but now it's on Music For Nations, so maybe it's going to be a little bit quicker.
It's still Peaceville who is in control of everything?
Yeah, well, not everything...
But Music For Nations just does the distribution?
Yeah, that's right... It's like Music For Nations has loads and loads of small companies as well, and Peaceville is now just another company for Music For Nations.
And there still are the moneyproblems from Peaceville?
Yeah, still, but hopefully that will change... Like at the moment we have no money... No money at all, except to come here... But hopefully things will change as time goes on. Of course we have to sell records first...

Are you going to do any live gigs?
Yeah, we've got some gigs coming up.
That's a small tour?
Yeah. We'll we wanted to do festivals. We told our manager to please get us on festivals, the Dynamo, Roskilde, the one in Germany, Wâldrock, we would do any... But we're not on any of those festivals... It's just bad luck I suppose. In a way it's OK, because it means that I can come to the Dynamo, and I don't have to worry about anything, don't have to worry about guitars, just come here and get really drunk....
What do you think of it here?
It's so big man! And I didn't know...

(conversation drifts off at this point...)

The new album is easily the best we've ever recorded...Easily...
Musically it's going to be more or less the same as the older stuff?
Of course it's not going to be the same... Different songs, two years later... You can tell it's the same people, but it's a little bit more intense now, and a little heavier. But we still have the melodies and the harmonies. The vocals are different this time. They're very different.
Is it going to be just 'normal' singing?
No, not just... He does like.. uhm, do you know Tom Warrior of Celtic Frost? More like
"I said hey!", all that... And he also does things like, he sings 'normal', harmonies and things like that. It wasn't possible before, but he can do it. So it's good...
Well, I'm looking forward to it...
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to playing the songs live...
When we went into the studio we only had three or four songs and we had to invent the rest in there. Maybe we had some riffs, and that was all... We managed, we did it. We only had four songs, but we came out with eight. Yeah, I'm quite pleased with it, it sounds all right, it's a better studio this time, we recorded it in Newcastle, in England, it's the same as, you know the guys from Venom?

You mean the Lynx studios?
Yeah, that's the one...

(Here the interview comes to a halt when everybody realises they have things to do, bands to see, beers to drink and to be a rock star :-)

Is that it now? Ok, cheers, thanks a lot! See you around...