The reaction has been better than we could have even hoped for. People are showing up wherever we go, enough to make a good show. This makes so many things possible in the future like us coming back!

I myself have been hitting up a lot of the Hard Rock Café’s and buying their souvenirs (laughs). Today in the morning we actually stopped at a cowboy store and picked up some hats and shit, we picked up so much stuff that we need to get an extra suitcase.

Yes the record has the same name but it has nothing to do with the original idea [regarding the concept album]. I actually trashed the whole idea of the concept album. It wouldn’t have worked anyways and now that we have changed labels it would be very complicated business wise also to continue with that idea.

Don’t Say A Word was one of the songs and in the future there will be more on upcoming albums.

Technically it is really a great place to record, everything works one hundred percent over there. All their equipment is very good and everything runs great. Even though it is very expensive to record over there we sell really well in Japan and our label there really pushed us to record this live album there. This will be the last live album, DVD for a long time. When we do such a thing in the far future it will be recorded somewhere else, maybe here in the States. We have had some really great audiences in LA and it is definitely a possibility.

Dana. I’ve used her in two songs and everybody has been asking about her since the first album came out. The thing is those two songs came up as a joke when we were still a demo band and thought that if we put the name on two songs and someone noticed that and thought, “Oh wow that’s cool,” it would be good. The thing is that has backfired on us drastically because everybody is asking about Dana constantly. Every day I get an email. “Where’s Dana?”

Maybe one day she'll be back...

I hope that Jani will continue to write songs that we will use. That was the first song anybody has offered to put on an album ever, and we were really happy with it. It brings a different perspective and fresh ideas to the album. Even though Jani has a couple of projects he says he still has two or three songs that he would like to offer for the next album. I am totally down for that. The next album will be longer than the previous two, around an hour in length. The trend today seems to be releasing forty minute albums but the next one will be at least as long as Silence was.

We toured with them and Gamma Ray in Europe in 2001 and they became very close friends with us, they are our brothers from down under. We keep in touch and thought it would be cool to record one of their songs for a B-side. We are better known than they are and wanted to give them a little extra boost, get people interested in them and notice them more. They liked the version which is good, I’m glad they didn’t think we raped their song or something (laughs).

There are a few. We have started recording two of them already, half a year ago now. They are unfinished but they will be B-sides for the next album. You can ask who they are but I won’t tell you at this point! (laughs) They will sound like Sonata Arctica for sure though even if they are metal or “non metal” covers.

Actually Tallulah is exactly the same arrangement as it was on the demo. There are other songs such as Sing In Silence that we have re arranged (it was formerly under a different name). The chorus used to be different I changed it to what it is today.

Of course Nuclear Blast has more money to put into advertising and also we have had a hell of a lot more interviews and promotional things. When you are doing that that the band gets known more, we can tour in more places, sell more albums, and that is quite good! On a bigger label everything gets bigger as well. We are still not like the biggest band or anything like that though !

Not necessarily in America but Japan and Europe we do have to play a few more speedy songs, they will destroy you otherwise (laughs). They really want to hear the speedy stuff there. In Japan the label even insists that we should play this and that song, there are a few songs that they tell us to play because they are so huge in Japan.

Yes, I would really like to do that song but that’s one of the songs that we can’t really put in the set anymore, at least not now, because we already have two ballads in the set, Tallulah and Last Drop Falls. It is good to have a chance to change things up and in the future we will play it sooner and later. It is important to keep things fresh for ourselves as well. After this tour we will have played somewhere around a hundred and sixty shows for this album and sooner or later you have to change the set list, refresh it. Otherwise we would kill ourselves playing the same songs over and over without anything new. You tend to kind of build yourself a routine and not have to think anymore. You start to think about shit happening at home and still sing or whatever so when we change things up in the set it’s a good thing, it wakes you up and makes it interesting again.

(laughs) No, I have actually been in a very happy relationship for ten years now. I haven’t had any of those bad experiences in these past ten years. I use my imagination, see a lot of movies, and I also seem to be a very empathetic person. When I see or hear a friend having some personal problems I can understand them, I understand what they are feeling and I put that into songs. These songs get a very good response from people in the audience who listen to them and think ,” this is exactly what has happened to me in my life.” That in itself is very inspiring to me as a songwriter and makes me want to keep doing this. There have even been people that have said that some songs even saved their lives. When I hear that I’m just like, “Wow,” that’s some deep shit really! It is a high compliment but at the same time it is kind of scary. It makes me feel like I have an extra responsibility with these people and if I write a shit song they might kill themselves! If you can touch people on a personal level and give them something to look forward to such as a next album that has songs that helps them with life and give them happiness, that means a lot to me.