Interview date: 01.05.2008
Interviewing Jaded Heart can seem pretty far-fetched, since the guys mostly play places that are a long way from Slovenia. Sure, you can always get around it by sending questions over email, but it’s just not the same. When the guys got back from dinner during their tour stop in the little town of Arcole near Verona, Italy, the band’s friendly tour manager Mike Moeller tracked me down, as we’d agreed beforehand, and invited me straight onto the tour bus. As the man to sit across the table from me, he picked guitarist Peter Östros. Peter joined Jaded Heart for the album “Sinister Mind” (2007), replacing his predecessor Barish Kepic two years ago.
When I stepped onto the tour bus, the band members greeted me in unison and sarcastically told Peter that he’s not really the right guy at Jaded Heart for doing interviews anyway. But it didn’t stop there, because singer Johan Fahlberg and the band’s boss, bassist Michael Müller, joined me for the interview later on. The feeling of being right at home was incredible…
RockLine: Hi Peter.
Peter: Hey.
RockLine: First off, how are you Jaded Heart guys feeling about the way the current tour is going?
Peter: Very happy. As far as Italy goes, we feel great here. Today is our third gig in Italy, the previous two were outside the big cities, and we got to admire the beautiful landscape and all the greenery. We’re really glad to be out on tour as the headliners (“headliner tour”), especially because we get to play much longer and show off more of our music. Three weeks ago we toured with The Poodles, we were the support act and had a set of only about an hour, no more. As a headliner you’ve got a lot more room to move, you set the rules of the game, you’re not tied to anyone else’s rules, and that feels really liberating. You can basically do whatever you want.
RockLine: The tour with The Poodles was mostly focused on western Europe?
Peter: Yeah, pretty much. We mostly played in Germany and had one show in Italy too, right here in Verona (Arcole is very close to Verona, editor’s note.), and that was followed by four more shows in Spain.
RockLine: Did The Poodles take good care of you on that tour? Did everything go smoothly?
Peter: Honestly, it was my favorite tour I’ve ever done. The vibe on the tour bus was great. The two bands were a perfect match. The Poodles are Swedes, I’m a Swede (along with Johan, editor’s note.). We really felt at home.
Meanwhile, bassist Michael Müller, singer Johan Fahlberg and keyboardist Dimitri Keiski, who got stuck with the role of the extra, join us at the table…
RockLine: Johan, how did you fit into the band after vocalist Michael Bormann left Jaded Heart?
Johan: No problems at all. We clicked right away. It felt totally natural. We had a few beers at the audition and got along great.
RockLine: Love at first sight?
Johan: Actually, yeah. Love, yes!
RockLine: When I heard your new album, oh, by the way, I think it’s an absolutely excellent album…
Johan, Peter, Michael: Thanks, that’s great to hear.
RockLine: …I got the feeling it’s quite a bit darker than its predecessor “Helluva Time” (2005), and at moments it even sounds heavier. What can you tell us about the new album?
Johan: That’s true. It’s darker and it sounds heavier too. The album is a lot more direct. The lyrics are heavier too.
RockLine: You mean more personal?
Johan: A little, yeah. About 80% of the lyrics on the new record are my own personal confessions. As for the sound, we consciously decided on a heavier sound.
Michael: We like a heavier sound, alongside AOR.
Johan: Absolutely. We like to play harder and louder, alongside our love of AOR and melodic rock. The material for our new album came together totally naturally. You just let yourself go in the studio, no matter what the result ends up being.
Michael: Can I offer you a little wine?
RockLine: Absolutely.
RockLine: “Sinister Mind” came out half a year ago, in the fall of 2007. Have any new ideas piled up since then for its follow-up?
Michael: We’ve already got some new ideas, fresh ideas. But we’ll get down to serious work as soon as we finish the current tour. That’s when the new ideas will take real shape.
Peter: We’ve got a few basic ideas that still need a lot of work.
RockLine: Are you planning to release a live CD or a live DVD in the near future?
Michael: We’re planning a live DVD. This year we wanted to film our show at the Firefest festival in England for it and put it on the upcoming live DVD, but sadly the festival isn’t happening this year. Right now we’re choosing between recordings, there are a few from the tour with The Poodles,…
Peter: Last fall we played Firefest. We were the very first band on the bill. We started at 12:30, and the festival doors had only opened 10 minutes before our set. Between the first and third song we played, the hall filled up to the last corner.
Michael: Obviously we’ve got a good fan base in England.
Johan: Yeah, people were even wearing shirts with prints from the “Trust” tour. I was really surprised. In the middle of our set the whole hall got really loud. Even the people up on the balconies were screaming. It felt absolutely amazing, because it’s obvious people in England love us.
RockLine: Your original keyboardist Henning Wanner is currently touring South America with White Lion. How quickly did you find a replacement, and did you have any trouble with it?
Peter: Dimitri (Keiski, editor’s note.) is an old friend of mine.
Michael: I gave Dimitri just seven days to learn the songs.
Johan: Henning is a great musician who plays with White Lion too, and right at the time of this tour of ours, White Lion were heading out on tour as well, so we were forced to look for a new solution.
RockLine: But you obviously sorted it out without any big problems?
Michael: Yes. Within a week Dimitri was ready. Without us having had any rehearsal beforehand. Dimitri played live with us for the first time two days ago in Bologna.
RockLine: How do your songs come together in the studio? Do you record together, or separately and then put the different parts of the songs together?
Michael: Usually we’re in the same room together when the songs are being written. Everyone brings their own ideas and then we try to piece something together. Most of the ideas come from Peter…
Peter: Sometimes, when I’m inspired, I send Michael as many as three songs over the internet, three fresh ideas,…
Michael:…which I then wipe out with a press of the “delete” button, ha, ha, ha…. All these ideas get played when we’re together at rehearsals, where we try to arrange them further. It’s not like only one of us dictates what gets played and how.
RockLine: What can you tell us about your musical influences, the ones that inspire you and have had a major impact on Jaded Heart’s music?
Michael: It started with Kiss.
Johan: We’re all Kiss fans. Then there was Iron Maiden, Judas Priest. Everyone in the band is around the same age and we’ve got similar role models. Personally I listen to Pantera and Slayer too. Our new album “Sinister Mind” brings together lots of different influences. The heavier sound that comes from, say, Pantera crosses with a softer, funkier sound, or a Korn bass groove, and so on… whatever pops into our heads and we like, we try to work into the songs.
Peter: There really are a ton of influences to be found in Jaded Heart. For one idea that we then didn’t put on the new record, I could say it came from something like Children Of Bodom. It was a lot of fun to try out.
Johan: In general we don’t like being boxed into one musical genre. Then a down-tuned D chord shows up from somewhere and suddenly everything’s wrong. I mean, suddenly you’re not a hard rock band anymore. We hate that. We don’t want to stick to just one genre, we like trying out different things.
Michael: The people who liked Jaded Heart from the era when Michael Bormann was still in the band, who is by the way an undeniably great singer, may have been hurt by this shift. When Bormann left, we decided to bring more dark atmosphere into the music, and the new sound is heavier too. Of course AOR fans don’t like that, meaning everyone who swears by the old tradition.
Peter: But when we shape the final form of the songs, we stay focused the whole time on keeping things melodic. So no matter how cranked the guitars in the riffs are, no matter how fast the riffs, the end result has to be catchy and melodic.
Michael: So it has to be hard and melodic at the same time. In other words “heavy”, but with big melodies.
RockLine: There’s a lot of interest in hard rock among young people these days, and especially a lot of new bands from Scandinavia and Germany are choosing to play hard rock. Do you think times are getting better for hard rock? Is hard rock coming back?
Peter: Definitely. It all started with HammerFall.
Johan: Yeah. We have HammerFall to thank for that.
Peter: The eighties have actually come back. Especially in Italy. You can tell just by looking at how people show up to the gigs dressed. Hairspray, studded jackets, badges, patches…
Michael: When we played Sweden Rock Festival some six, seven years ago, HammerFall had already broken through by then, and we noticed all these young kids wearing Iron Maiden shirts,… I thought: “Kid, you weren’t even born when Iron Maiden were already playing The Number Of The Beast…”
Peter: As a guitarist and a guitar teacher, I see that young people today are interested again in great guitarists like Yngwie J. Malmsteen or John Petrucci. 15 years ago their number one guitar idol was Kurt Cobain. Today it matters again that you can actually play guitar, and the role model is the one who can play guitar.
RockLine: What musical direction will you take for the next album?
Johan: We haven’t seriously thought about that yet. We’ll probably stay within the direction of the current studio album “Sinister Mind”.
Michael: Maybe we’ll make an album called “Operation: Mindcrime III.”, who knows? Maybe we’ll call it “Operation: Sinister Mindcrime”, ha, ha, ha….
RockLine: Is a breakthrough in the USA possible for Jaded Heart?
Peter: Actually, “Sinister Mind” is the first album in Jaded Heart’s career that has been officially released in the USA too.
RockLine: Really?
Johan: Yep. Not just imported into the USA like it used to be, but officially released there.
RockLine: Apparently the USA is centuries behind Europe.
Michael: That’s why we sent our keyboardist Henning Wanner over to White Lion in this period, so he can create some favorable conditions for spreading the Jaded Heart name in the USA too. “Sinister Mind” came out all over the world, in Europe, Asia, Japan, and finally in the USA.
Johan: And South America?
Michael: I’m not totally sure, the label Locomotive Records should be taking care of that…
RockLine: Are there any goals left that Jaded Heart haven’t reached yet?
Peter: A tour outside Europe would be fantastic.
Michael: Actually, we got an offer from a Japanese label to record an album in Tokyo on a five-week contract. But since we were bound by our contract to another label, it wasn’t possible.
RockLine: How happy are you with your label Frontiers Records?
Michael: Very. It’s a good label.
RockLine: I think they’ve made a big contribution lately to the renewed flowering of melodic rock?
Peter: Frontiers Records has absolutely every hard rock band…
RockLine: And even Toto.
Michael: Yeah, them too. And lately even heavy metal bands. Primal Fear, for example.
Johan: Frontiers Records are heading in the right direction.
Michael: All the bands go to Frontiers Records
Johan: All the bands have to go to Frontiers Records.
(everyone: laughter)
RockLine: What do you expect from tonight’s show?
Johan: You saw the place, right, ha, ha, ha…?
RockLine: Lots of young people showed up.
Johan: Yeah, the whole thing feels more like a high school party. Peter, actually all of us, came up with the idea a little while ago to write a song called Party School, kind of like this: “Pa-pa-pa-pa-party School…”, ha, ha, ha….
RockLine: What’s the difference between crowd reactions when you play stages in different corners of Europe?
Peter: In Germany the average age of the people who come to our shows is higher. Somewhere between 30 and 40. Here in Italy it’s 11 or 12, I don’t know, ha, ha, ha… Well, I thought there’d be more young people. Today we’re playing a small club, there aren’t many people, but it’s important for us to show our music to younger people too.
Johan: In Germany people stay still during the show, focused on listening to the music, and when a song ends, they start applauding. In Spain, the moment you announce a song everybody goes nuts with excitement, and that craziness basically lasts through the entire set.
Michael: I recently saw the great Marilyn Manson live in Germany. And it was weird. You could feel a negative attitude from the crowd toward the performer in the air the whole time. Even though he was trying to get something out of the audience, a bit more noise, they stayed completely quiet the whole time, even at the ends of songs.
Johan: Well. Depressed people listen to him anyway: “Mom, I’m so depressed, I’m gonna cut my heart out, awful, I hope I don’t accidentally look happy?”
RockLine: Maybe Manson banned them from clapping and making a racket at his shows.
Michael: Weird…Can you imagine “stage diving” at a Manson show, ha, ha, ha?
RockLine: Guys, I’ve run out of questions. It was a real pleasure and an honor to chat with such fun people as you, I wish you a superb show, plenty of fun and a safe trip for the rest of the tour.
Peter, Michael, Johan: Same to you.
But our hangout was by no means over there. Tour manager Mike and the band’s drummer Axel Kruse joined us as well. We swapped contacts, and the conversation was of course full of jokes and juicy humor, a sign of the band’s great mood. When I was leaving the tour bus to catch the Italian opening band at the Stonehenge club, who were in the middle of their set, Mike sent me off with encouraging words of sarcasm: “Enjoy listening to the big girl band?” You can read how the Jaded Heart concert went HERE.
Photo Gallery
