KN: No problem!

If I was gonna play an instrument it just had to be the guitar. It just seemed like the thing for me, and I was never into singing or playing drums or any other instrument. When I started I figured that the fastest way to improve would be getting someone to show me the basics so I hooked up with a good guitar teacher for lessons. Studied with him for a few years and then in ´94 I enrolled at GIT in Los Angeles. That was a great experience cause you´d meet all these killer players that are a million times better than you and that environment just inspires you to practice and improve. Other than that, I just picked stuff up from records of my favorite players and I also played and gigged with lots of different people.

Guitar influences? Hmm...I distinctly remember buying the first Paul Gilbert instructional video when I started playing and being totally blown away so that was most definitely an influence. I listened to Joe Satriani´s Surfing With The Alien a lot at that time too and then Dream Theater released When Dream And Day Unite and that was also a major thing, the whole band and the music, not just the guitar. Tony Macalpine´s Maximum Security album....and Yngwie Malmsteen's Marching Out too. I´d say those were my earliest experiences with real kick-ass guitar playing. From there, LOADS of other guys has inspired and influenced me: Shawn Lane, Allan Holdsworth, Greg Howe, Uli Roth, Eric Johnson, Jason Becker, Michael Lee Firkins, John Norum, George Lynch, Steve Stevens, Jeff Tyson, Dave Gilmour, Steve Morse, Brett Garsed, John Sykes, Derek Taylor, Reeves Gabrels, The Edge, Tom Morello, Zakk Wylde, Marty Friedman....the list is endless!

Amp-wise it´s the Mesa/Boogie Triaxis preamp and their 2:90 power amp for 99.9% of all the guitar tones. We miked a regular Marshall JCM900 300W 4x12" cabinet with a Shure SM57 for the rhythm parts and went with a Marshall Vintage cabinet for solos. Some of the weirder stuff was recorded direct through various funky effects, such as the DigiTech Spacestation and the Korg Pandora.

All of the chunky rhythm guitars and most of the melody lines are recorded on a new Les Paul Classic and we used a Fender Strat and a Gibson ES-335 for some other parts. The Strat is prominently featured in Dreams of Swedenborg, on the Hendrix-y "uptempo" parts BTW.

The acoustic was a Takamine steel-string.

All solos were done on my Ibanez 540P2 with a Tube Screamer pedal for added gain.
We use pretty much the same stuff live: I use two Ibanez guitars and a Marshall JMP-1 preamp going through a Boogie 2:90, and Marshall cabs. Christofer uses Gibson Les Pauls, a Triaxis preamp and a 2:90 poweramp so our tones live are very much the same as the records. If it isn´t, blame the sound guy!!!! :-)

I definitely prefer touring and playing live. That's just pure fun (unless you hit on that nightmarish moment when your gear malfunctions or something of course!). I just wish we did more live playing with Therion. I love live playing so much! Interacting with an audience is what it´s all about. The studio can be great fun too, especially if you´re recording your own music that you (hopefully!) love but it can also be a bit draining sometimes, mostly because it usually can take a long time for me to get performances down onto tape that I´m happy with.

I love playing Raven of Dispersion because it´s so moody and heavy and with the right light setting to go with it. It´s damn cool! The other favorite has got to be To Mega Therion because the crowd goes completely nuts on that one! I guess that would be the ultimate crowd pleaser then!

Yes, I sure do. We haven´t really decided if we´re gonna do it on this tour or not but Kali Yuga would be very cool to play. Also, Blood of Kingu and Typhon would be great fun! Generally the heavier, uptempo songs are my favorites. On the last tour we did a medley of older Therion songs from the first three records and that was really cool because that style is very different from the newer material on say, Deggial.

I met him through drummer Sami Karppinen, whom I had known since before he got the job to play on the Vovin tour. We used to jam on more jazz/fusion oriented stuff. I think he got recommended to Christofer by his friend Lars from Tiamat and then when guitarist Tommy Eriksson quit after the tour, Sami mention me to Chris. First time we met was actually at a fusion gig of all places! I think me, Sami and Chris went to see Vital Information or something. We hit it off rather well and I auditioned for the gig and got it.

Joining Therion sort of got me back into metal again after about five years of playing and studying mainly jazzy, fusion-y type music. Since joining the band I´ve been exposed to just more cool, different music than I would have, had I not joined the band and I started listening to a lot more Black and Death Metal. Y´know bands like Dimmu and Cradle and via them into Thorns, Satyricon, Nile, Death, and Dark Funeral. Now I´d say my musical direction is just one big mess! Nah, I dunno....I like a lot of different types of music and I just want to continue to progress as a guitar player as well as a song writer, in whatever styles or mix of styles that I find myself in.

As far as my writing on the new CDs goes I wrote everything on Typhon except the vocal melodies, lyrics and the classical parts. On Son of the Sun, I wrote everything except the vocal melodies on the verses and the bridge, the lyrics and the classical stuff. Four other songs are written by Chris and me together. So I guess the writing process has changed a little bit; a) me and Johan are writing more material for the band and b) Chris seems to like it and has no problems fitting his concept and vision around our songs.

He has a lot to do with how the records sound. He made sure everything sounded as great as it could, especially drums and solo vocals. He knows the studio inside and out and he´s always helping with things even if he doesn´t have to. For example, on the night before Chris and I had to leave for Denmark and mixing, there were a SHITLOAD of files that needed to be "bounced" in order to work in ProTools (the mixing format), so he and I sat through the whole night doing that, taking turns sleeping for a few hours, and trying our best to OD on coffee and Red Bull. He really didn´t have to do that, but he did it anyway. He´s great.

Oh thats a tough question! We have loose ideas and concepts for the next record but you can never be sure how it will turn out. Personally I wouldn´t mind branching out in all different directions; make the heavier parts REALLY heavy, the softer parts REALLY soft and so forth. To try to take advantage of the dynamic possibilities of this band, and also incorporate ALL the different influences each of us band members have even more the next time. If you´d look at our CD collections and you´d then try to meld all that different stuff into one album, what you might end up with is a very schizophrenic collection of music! Somehow how it still needs to sound like Therion you know? Thats a challenge. Make no mistake, I really love the two new records but there´s A LOT more left to explore.

Well, I don´t spend that much time on the forum I think! I usually surf around while I´m eating so.... But it´s fun posting stuff there and see peoples reactions and if I can make somebody happy by posting an answer to a question or something, I feel thats the least I can do. Hell, these people buy our records and help pay our rents! It's also cool to see the honest reactions on the albums, live gigs and so forth. Sometimes I see "The new album SUCKS! What the fuck were you guys thinking? Assholes!" All feedback is very much appreciated though, positive and negative. It´s very amusing to read. But yeah, I also post some really silly stuff there sometimes. You can´t take yourself too seriously!!

The four of us basically came to the conclusion that it would be great fun to do a really ass kicking heavy thrash/black/death metal-style record together. Something very different from the Therion of today. We had some time before we were supposed to start working on the new Therion records so me and Johan wrote the songs, Chris wrote the lyrics and then we just went in and started tracking. It went very smoothly, and it was a total blast to record! The music is influenced by just about everybody; from Slayer to Deicide to Pantera to Satyricon to Dimmu to Nile and beyond. Chris is growling his ass off on the whole record, so if you´re expecting it to sound anything like Therion you´re in for a major surprise!! No choirs, no orchestra, no synths. Just lots of fast heavy guitars, bonecrushing bass, and killer drumming! If that sounds like something up your alley, you should definitely check it out.

It´s very cool. I really like his playing and I respect him as a musician very much so there are only positive sides to it. We listen to and enjoy pretty much exactly the same type of music so communicating musical ideas or the like are usually astonishingly friction-free. Socially outside the band, he´s probably the person I see most often so I guess we just get along really good!

Oh, LOTS of different stuff!! In my CD-player the last week: John Coltrane, Shawn Lane, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hendrix, Meshuggah, Neurosis, Yngwie, Racer X, Kent (swedish band), Dillinger Escape Plan, Toto, Strapping Young Lad, Thorns, Sneaker Pimps... and more!

Yes, that is definitely the plan. Don´t know when but it will happen. Probably toward October/November. I hope!!!!

Thanks for listening! Hope to see y´all on tour very very soon. Don´t hesitate to come up and say Hello! We love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks man! You too!