I know the band was forced to change it's name because another group had the same name, but why did the members of the band choose to change their monikers?

It's not really like we changed everything at the same time. We just went through a period of development where we just took the concept a little bit further and we wanted to have a more individual approach with the whole band so we just, during the last one or one and a half years, changed to our "alter egos" if you will. So we didn't really do everything at the same time, we just went along the way and changed some stuff and developed some stuff, so there's some small changes there, but we just felt that, in the new direction we were going we wanted to have something which could be more representative of what were doing instead of the old stuff.

Did you set out to go out in this new direction or was it just a natural progression?

It's both, you know? I mean, it is a natural progression, for us at least, to develop into new areas and stuff, but at the same time we were conscious upon what we are doing. We are quite self-aware. We just decided to follow our instincts and the same time we wanted to possibly break some barriers and move the whole genre into new directions. Basically, we could have done anything. We could have done the same old stuff what we did or we could have done something completely different so it's always a matter of what you want to do, but at the same time we wanted to realize more of our ideas than we had done in the past and not stick to any categories. It's not like a major scheme to take over the world or anything, it's basically us following our instincts and just going with our ideas.

Some people say that your new image and sound are similar to that of Marilyn Manson. Do you take offense to this?

I'm not offended. I think the whole thing there is that it seems that we do not have a fascination with Marilyn Manson but the world has a fascination with Marilyn Manson. That seems to be the problem. Let's do it like this. Coming from the black metal scene, you pretty much have billions and billions of bands who say the same thing and dress the same and basically is the same and as soon as someone tries to break out of that mold and go in a different direction then it's suddenly catastrophic. Of course we didn't invent makeup. Marilyn Manson didn't invent makeup. But I think everybody sees Marilyn Manson everywhere. It's their problem, not ours. I'm not offended if someone would say that, I really don't care because everyone is always going to compare you to something but it's just a little ironic, I think, that people are putting you down for doing something different when everyone else is doing the same and that's accepted. As soon as they see you doing something a little bit different then they want to compare you to death with the big bands, but from a personal point of view, I'm not really being inspired by Marilyn Manson. As a band, we may be influenced by the whole gothic industrial scene that is going on. The look and the ideas that a lot of these bands have. It's not trying to be like Marilyn Manson. If the world wants to be in love with Marilyn Manson they can be in love with Marilyn Manson and I guess you just realize that they are instead of blaming everyone else.

I notice that a lot actually. When a band breaks the typical black metal mold, they often get criticized. I think they should be praised for trying something new.

Exactly. That's my point of view. There will always be a certain amount of criticism towards anyone that does this. It's the oldest cliche in the metal scene, I think, with all these die hard conservative fans putting down a band for doing something new. There are more bands than us who have heard that. My point of thinking is that when a band does something new and tries to develop the whole scene in a way, then people should praise that as you say and really look to the possibilities for what direction the music and whole scene can evolve. But in the end it doesn't really matter because we do what we want to do when it comes to this and we believe in the band really strongly and we know where we want to go and what we want to do so if people want to criticize that, that's ok. I must say though that the amount of criticism hasn't really been as much as I would have thought it would be. Initially I thought the finished album now and the whole band approach together would be quite too much for a lot of conservative metal fans, but it seems that, at least in Europe, after the release and after everyone got into the album that people are really enjoying this. Even the ones that we thought would freak out, really scream bloody murder, even those people have seemed to settle with that. It's quite cool actually. There will always be a couple people screaming really loud, except for that the reaction is really good so I'm not really too concerned with those issues right now.

Do you have any US tour plans?

Yea, definitely. We do have tour plans for the States. Right now, we are trying to work out some tour ideas with Amorphis for April or something. But at any given time, there are like ten different tour plans so what will happen in the end, I have no idea, but we will definitely do an American tour this time. That's one of the goals of this album is to do a full American tour and to get more attention in the States than we have done in the past. We will definitely work hard on getting that right.

I heard you guys were scheduled to play on a late night tv show, but you were cancelled last minute by the show's producers. What was that all about?

That's a good question actually. They freaked out. Basically, someone in the top management of the television channel looked into the plans of the show and found something they didnt like, which was us of course, so they stated that they felt it was too violent and inappropriate for the television show so they just basically told us to fuck off. That was quite weird but it proves that there are a lot of forces and a lot of people in the Norwegian media that are fighting really hard against us and the whole movement we represent. It was no surprise. The media seems to be afraid of the message we are transmitting. It's interesting. It just proves our point that we are right in what we are saying so in the end, we are the one who is laughing last. Still, it was quite bizarre. Television is a big bunch of bullshit. We have done a couple of television stuff before, nothing like talk shows or anything, but we've done some before from documentaries to bullshit comedy shows where they just make fun of you and make you look like an idiot. Television is not a media that I necessarily like, not something we really enjoy, but if we get the opportunity, we will do it because we want to spread our ideas and our music. But in the end, I think television is a horrible media and hopefully people will get cancer from watching too much television and die soon. (laughs). But it is really terrible and the people who are working with the television media are just really disturbed, fucking pathetic people. We also attended the grammys over here in Norway in February of this year as a nominee for the hard rock category. That was like a major tv event here and that was really fucked, you know? Getting to see how the music media tv industry works was really appalling in many ways. In the end it was quite cool because we won a grammy, but still there was a lot of fucked up people there who should find something better to do.

Who were you up against for that grammy?

Dimmu Borgir and the band called Mundanus Imperium.

That's cool.

Yea, it was really weird and surprising. Especially since we got that grammy, it was quite surprising that the talk show in question would ban us from playing. A couple of years ago it would have been ok for them to say "Fuck you, we don't want you on television" but now you have a band that has a grammy. In many ways, when you have a grammy, you can get places and get on different stuff that you couldn't if you didn't have it. People have to take you more seriously when you have a grammy, that makes it even more weird that they blew the whole thing off. But, you know, fuck off to them.

Who did the female vocals on the new cd?

Actually, it's a German opera singer that we hired in from an opera in Germany. She's called, I don't know exactly how to pronounce it, but she's called Eileen Coburn. Obviously a German name. We had a female singer in the past who was like more on an amateur level. She had a good voice but didn't really have the techniques to fulfill all our ideas so this time we realized that, fuck it, we dont want to have someone with a good voice who can't use it so we basically said we wanted someone really professional who uses their voice as a professional instrument so we basically, through our producer, got in touch with her and that was quite strange because she never listened to anything that even resembled pop or rock or anything. She was totally classically trained and had no idea about commercial music like pop and rock and of course not metal so it was really weird but she enjoyed it. I think she found it interesting to do something like that. Actually, I think, if I'm not mistaken, she also appears on a former Therion album, but I'm not sure about that. I think she has also been in some other different projects before.

I was going to ask if she was in any other bands or anything.

No, like I told you, she's not a musician into rock or pop or metal or anything, she is like forty years old and working daily singing in operas, but I think she's been doing some vocals for Therion in the past. I can't really say what album, but I think it was one of their more recent albums, and of course The Kovenant. She is really cool and really professional and it was really interesting to work with someone with such unique capability of using her voice. We definitely would think about using her in the future if we can.

How does being a three piece affect your music writing?

Well, basically, before this album, we wrote songs normal meaning it was mostly me and Lex Icon basically writing all the material. The lineup reductions happened gradually but it didn't really affect us in the song-writing process because it's always been the same people writing the music anyway. It makes some differences in the studio situation because now we are three people doing everything instead of five or six so that was quite different. But in the end, we had no problems recording this album with three people. We can do everything ourselves except the female vocals of course. For us, it's really a more relaxed and creative atmosphere for the studio because we are three people and this is the people who create the music and write the stuff so we can use more time realizing all of our ideas and getting them right instead of worrying about other musicians changing your stuff or doing something different than you want to, which can be both good and bad. You get the advantage of making everything the way you want it, but at the same time when you have more people you get different impulses and different ideas when you are recording it, but at least for now, for us, it's a good thing. The stuff we are writing now, the music and stuff, doesn't need a whole bunch of people involved. We arrange a lot of stuff with computers and electronics. It doesn't really need six people involved with writing it anyway.

Do you plan on playing older songs at your shows?

We are playing a couple of old songs, but we found a combination that works best so we can have a show that is not fragmented within the different styles. We found a setlist that works pretty good with some old songs, but mostly new songs, that work together and can build on the atmosphere of each other. It's not really like two or three different bands, it's like a red thread going through the whole thing. It's quite cool actually. Of course, a lot of people know the old songs, but now I think a lot of people know the new songs too so it's going to be pretty cool to go out touring again.

What bands are you and the rest of the band influenced by?

Obviously, I'm personally influenced by the whole growing up with metal thing. Obviously influenced by Iron Maiden and Megadeth for instance. Probably some old death metal and stuff too. It's a little hard to put your finger on because that's the issue that we are always confronted with. We constantly try to consciously push the influences away because we don't want to be compared to other bands. We don't want people to say "They sound like a bad copy of Nine Inch Nails" or something even if that's a bullshit comparison. It's a little bit difficult to answer stuff like that, but I guess we are influenced by everything we like and enjoy since we started listening to music, which is a lot of course. Everything from Iron Maiden to Rammstein and whatever else has come along the way. It's not like there is a major artist or band that we want to be like or that have influenced our sound. We really want to have our own sound and go in our own direction so we try to push away obvious influences and focus on our own sound, at least that's what we are trying to do.

Your album is doing well on the Norwegian charts. Is it common for metal bands to do well over there, because here in America you never see "metal" bands on the charts unless its Metallica or something (editor's note: I do like the first few Metallica releases, I just wanted to use them as an example).

I haven't really been paying too much attention to how that stuff has been going now. Previous album releases we were really on the telephone every fucking day to hear the sales and the charts and all that stuff, but this time around we really have a more relaxed attitude. We are not stressing about all that stuff because we will get to know eventually anyway. Whenever you call a record company they will tell you ten different figures from ten different days so there is no point. Yea, chart-wise is a little different. Europe, in general, the charts are a lot moreto rock and heavy metal and metal in general than it is in the States unless you are Korn or Metallica. We had chart entries in Germany and Norway and Finland, a bunch of countries. It's a bit different from country to country. In general, Germany and the countries around Germany is the strongest place chart-wise. It's usually where you chart the highest and sell the most albums, at least for us. That's a strong territory. Norway is a little bit more conservative with rock and metal. In general, Western Europe is quiteto all those different styles.

I've read that the band calls their first two releases "progressive space metal". Do you feel that "Animatronic" also fits this title? If not, how would you classify it?

Space metal, that was like an idea taken out of a concept on our last album but I mean, yea, we do try to have a certain amount of futuristic and spacey themes and feelings in our music. We have a lot of interest in science fiction and a lot of futuristic ideas and philosophies. I feel that the description "progressive space metal" is a little bit cartoonish. I wouldn't really say that we played that. I don't think we would use it to define the new album and the direction we are going in now. People always confront us with "Do you guys play black metal or industrial metal or whatever" but I don't know, it's obviously like every other band says. We don't really care about genres. Genres are there to be broken. We wouldn't really think about it like that.

I know what you are saying. The bands don't usually classify themselves. It's the fans who feel the need to classify everything.

That's true because people want to know what they are getting and the fans want to know where to have the band and what they represent. For us, from an artistic point of view, the whole point of genres is to break them and mold them together and sort of make something new. When people want you to describe your band and put it in a category it's the opposite of your intentions. In general, society wants to categorize you. Everyone wants to know where to have you and to put you in place and they want to relate to you as that category or description. That's the way everything works, so we aren't too comfortable with situations like that. We are trying to "break on through...to their other side" as a famous man once said.

I know, for myself, I try not to classify the music I like unless I'm trying to describe it for someone else. But I know a lot of people who won't listen to something if it doesnt have the label "black metal" or something like that.

Exactly. Black metal or not black metal, it doesn't really matter in my ears. If it's interesting, if it's good, if it has quality and interesting ideas then I'll listen to it. If you are interested in music because of the ideas behind the music. If you are interested in black metal because of it's ideas or it's concept, that's ok, but then you are not really interested in the music. I mean, I'm not saying lyrics and themes are not important, but the category doesn't matter. I don't see too many people listening to pop because of the pop thematics. I listen to rock and roll because I only want to hear about this rock and roll concept. If it's interesting then it's interesting. There seems to be a lot of narrow-minded ideas in the black metal scene which we really just want to get away from...well not really get away from. We want to take people and lead them in different directions and more directions and try tosome doors because stagnation is death. You have to progress and you have to go into new territories to stay alive on every aspect on everything basically.