MANTICORA: Two CDs for one Circus

If you happen to think that this second interview with Manticora comes too soon after the previous one, then you should definitely know that it’s their fault, not ours. They released two albums in less than a year’s time, as the second part of the concept album The Black Circus came out this may. And we thought it was so great, that we felt absolutely compelled to summon them once again for a chat. Since it is Lars Larsen’s wish that these two CDs be seen as one single bigger album, so we do wish that you see these two interviews as one single bigger interview. Having said that, here’s „Spiderman” Lars continuing to answer our questions:

Metalfan: Hi there, you've just returned from your second trip to Romania, right? How was Oradea?
Lars Larsen: Oradea was a very cool place for us. We were treated with kindness from all sides. The stage was at a market site, but with professional sound and light system. The crowd of approximately 2000 people were extremely enthusiastic towards our music, so a lot of people headbanged and jumped around in mosh-pits etc. We wrote autographs for 30 minutes after the show, so I guess that means we did an ok job, hehe.

Metalfan: Your European tour with King Diamond has been postponed to November, until then is the band set on holiday mode?
Lars Larsen: The tour is postponed until 2008!!!! We will definitely not go on holiday mode. We are always active and can’t afford to just sit and wait for these things to happen. We have a show in Copenhagen on October 26th, and our management is right now trying to find us additional smaller shows in Scandinavia and Europe. We might begin writing some songs for the next album, but that’s not our main priority now, since we just released 2 albums within a year.

Metalfan: That’s right, you released a new album earlier this year, while the previous came out last September. Wasn't that a bit too much too soon for the fans to absorb?
Lars Larsen: I don’t think so, since the albums were connected. We still see them ourselves as 1 album that needed to be divided into 2 because of the length. It was deliberate from the beginning that the albums should be released with 9 months in between (go figure what we mean with that… hehe). If the fans can’t absorb two 45 minutes albums within a year, then they shouldn’t buy the album, but I do think that all the Manticora fans will like these albums as 1 album.

Metalfan: How exactly was this album recorded? There were some parts that there were done at the same time with The Letters, what parts were recorded later, why? And how was it, for an experience?
Lars Larsen: We recorded and mixed everything for part 1 in April 2006, where we also recorded the drums, bass and vocals for part 2. Then we spent the fall 2006, recording guitars and keyboards in Martin’s small studio in our dungeon. We also added some vocals and we wrote the Intuneric that were present on the 2nd part. We mixed this 2nd part in Jailhouse studios in January 2007. It was a matter of having the same feeling to the recordings on as much material as possible for us, when we decided to record the extra things in April 2006. It also made it more convenient that we didn’t need to travel all across Denmark 2 times with full equipment. Since all the songs were written, we might as well record anything we possibly could at once. I must say that it was very hard, but also a good experience to be at the studio for such a long time.

Metalfan: What are your all times favorite concept albums? The ones that inspired you to attempt this ambitious project.
Lars Larsen: King Diamond: Them and Abigail. I wouldn’t say that they inspired us to do this, as we have done concept albums before and since we are intrigued by HP Lovecraft and his sick way of writing. That, and other novelists like Stephen King and Dan Simmons are more of an inspiration to us than King Diamond, but of course you tend to look at what the masters of the genre are doing.

Metalfan: What is your favorite Lovecraft novel? What other horror writers would you recommend?
Lars Larsen: I don’t really have a favorite Lovecraft novel, as I simply like everything he wrote. It’s so sick and twisted that it gives me goose bumps just to think about it. To recommend other writers: Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Dean R. Koontz, Clive Barker.

Metalfan: Every band says that their latest album is their best, would you say the same about Disclosure? Because I personally think it's a great album, but I like The Letters just a little bit better. I think it has a greater atmosphere. How do you see it?
Lars Larsen: I still think that “Hyperion” is our best album, but that is my personal taste, since I like the harder thrash parts that are so present in that album. Having said that, I believe that “The Black Circus 1 and 2” is overall a better product, because the production and the possibilities of us, doing what we had in mind from the beginning is/was so much better than back in 2002, when we did “Hyperion”. We have better equipment, better ways of recording and much more time in the studio these days. It is my hope that people would see “Letters” and “Disclosure” as one big album, as it is just “The Black Circus” to us. We wrote all the songs at the same time, so they should have the same feeling to them. However, “Letters” do hold more emotion (including a ballad), whereas “Disclosure” is the more aggressive part with a LOT of balls. So, I think you might be right about the atmosphere.

The Black Circus

Metalfan: Beside being more agressive, I would say that for this second part of the Circus you focused more than before on complex song structures, sacrificing whatever chances you still had left of going mainstream; would you agree that the new songs are even more complex than the ones on Part I?
Lars Larsen: Yepp. The funny thing is that we wrote 80% of the new album, before the first song for the 1st part came up, so we obviously must have spent a lot of progressiveness on the 2nd part, hahaha. I don’t see it as sacrificing the chances of going mainstream. We’ll never take the path of throwing our self-critique down the drain in order to break into the market, so to speak. We will stay true and loyal to our own ideas. If people like this, then I’m happy. If they don’t, then I suggest they go buy the new Hammerfall album in stead. That is as mainstream as you get. I think that in 10 years from now, when people are putting our albums on, they will still be interesting to listen to, whereas a lot of the left-hand crap that comes out today might sell more now, but will be easily forgotten. For us, it’s about leaving a stamp that says quality every time. People will remember us for that. Anyway, that is just my opinion. There might be other people with other views on this.

Metalfan: Your music is anything but an easy listening. Do you think that is wrong to care about the accessibility when you write music?
Lars Larsen: Yepp. As written above, I think it’s important to stay true to yourself first. If you begin writing music FOR someone else, it’s not the real you, and the fans will detect that easier than scratching their own balls (or female genitalia, if they are girls, hehehe). Dream Theater have sold 5 million albums, and their music is FAR more progressive than ours. I think that speaks for itself.

Metalfan: Regarding vocals, I think they favor the high register a bit too much; there is just not enough variety. But I already said that in the review, not I would like you to give me an insider's view. What do you think about the vocals of Disclosure?
Lars Larsen: I personally think that the vocals on “Disclosure” are better than on “Letters”. I have done the best vocals ever in my career on “Gypsies’ Dance 2”. I was actually surprised over myself, as I didn’t think I could do such vocals. But yeah, the tone of the vocals are a bit higher. The funny thing is that people have always complained about me, not singing high enough. With age, I have learned to sing much higher, with balls at the same time, and now they are too high? Hehehe. I don’t really know. I just compose my singing melodies according to what comes into my mind, when hearing the music. I don’t really think that much about it. It’s a matter of getting the feeling that is supposed to be in the song, and I do believe that I have managed that. Since the rest of the guys in the band and Tommy Hansen agree, that is the quality stamp for me.

Metalfan: There are some guest artists performing on this album, how did you decide you needed their skills?
Lars Larsen: We decided to have some guests on this album as we had some character roles to fill. The head of the Gypsies and the Soulreapers needed another voice than mine, since I am the storyteller with my vocals. So, we got both Jacob Hansen (Anubis Gate, Invocator) and Teddy Möller (Loch Vostok) to do some singing/growl. It turned out that we simply couldn’t choose which one we wanted to use, so we used both of them in the last “Intuneric”. The keyboards was a matter of having solo’s done, as we can’t play key solo’s ourselves, so we had Andreas Lindahl (Wuthering Heights) and Finn Zierler (Beyond Twilight) compose some solo’s, and we also used our new session keyboarder Ronnie Claesen for some parts as well. We didn’t record these things with them. They simply sent us the files through computers, so that was easy to do.

Metalfan: You have speeded up the tempo of the songs in order to fit the pace of the story, but what does exactly happen, tell us about what is it that is disclosed?
Lars Larsen: After discovering that the Gypsies have summoned evil creatures (Soulreapers), our main character is forced to choose between fighting the Soulreapers/Gypsies or joining them in their quest for gold and human souls. A lot of bad things are going on during this album… It all ends up with the main character being totally and utterly mad – though, he is not aware of it.

Metalfan: Gypsies play a central part of the story. How much do you know about gypsies, have you studied their history, their traditions and practices? What do you think about gypsies?
Lars Larsen: There’s always the “mythical” stories about Gypsies, which is the trail that we followed. I am aware that the normal Gypsies are not the beautiful and glamorous people that we portray in our story. I have been surrounded by them for 2 hours in Rome’s central train station, where they tried 7863412764 times to steal the cream out of my coffee, so to speak – so I know about them. We also have them driving around in our country, trying to trick people into giving them money and stealing from anyone they can. I think I have summed it up very good in the lines from “Gypsies Dance 2” “If your eyeballs were purely made of gold, we’d rip them out of their filthy, bleeding sockets” and “We’d steal the whole world in the blink of an eye”.

Metalfan: I think that one could easily make a horror movie out of The Circus, have you ever considered this idea? Have you at least thought about filming a video for one of the songs?
Lars Larsen: I’d love to see this transformed into a horror movie, but I think there are already some movies done with this kind of theme. We wanted to do a video for an edit version of “When The Soulreapers Cry”, but since our record label didn’t want to contribute to it, we stomped on the break. It’s impossible to keep on spending money in the band, if we don’t get any help from labels etc.

Metalfan: Now that you finished this substantial double-CD conceptual album project, what are your conclusions?
Lars Larsen: I think we reached our goal with these albums. Things turned out the way we wanted them to, though we would have liked it to be a double album and not 2 separate releases. It has been difficult to keep track of so much music, but it has taught us that we are capable of it, so that is the learning experience from that. I still think it’s cool to do concept albums, so we might continue with that, but I don’t know yet.

Metalfan: Maybe push it even further and go for a 3CDs conceptual album maybe, hahaha? How do you see your next album?
Lars Larsen: No one knows, hehehe. We have talked about doing a normal album next time – maybe with an overall theme instead of a concept, but you never know. People are asking us if we will ever do the sequel to “Hyperion”. I’d personally love to do that, but it demands that we get the permission from Dan Simmons to do that (www.dansimmons.com). We need our fans to convince Mr. Simmons that he should let us do it.

Metalfan: Thank you for your time, I hope you’ll enjoy the quick quiz.
Lars: Best regards and thanks for the interview.

Lars Larsen

Last cd you’ve listened to?
Dream Theater: “6 Degrees Of Inner Turbulence”.

Last site you’ve visited?
www.progpowerscandinavia.com

What’s to drink in your fridge?
Beer!… and Apple Juice – for the Vodka.

Best Danish metal album (not by Manticora)?
King Diamond: “Them”.

Worst Manticora song?
“In Silence” from the Mini Cd “Dead End Solution”.

Coolest place you’ve been to?
On skiing Holiday in Ischgl (Austria), or the backstage Jack Daniels bar at Wacken Open Air 2000.

Last time you went to the circus?
Never been there.

Your lucky number?
I don’t have that, as I don’t believe in those things.

Your worst nightmare?
Spiders in general. I hate those creeps.