New Interview with The Great Discord!
Photo Credit: JPS Media
Interview with The Great Discord
Hello Mayhem! With the start of the Autumn season, we enjoy the crisp fall scents in the air, the changing of the foliage, and football season of course. We also get to enjoy new music from some of our favorite artists! One of my favorite bands, The Great Discord, released their new album, ‘The Rabbit Hole,’ on September 8, 2017. This is an amazing album, their best by far (in my opinion). So I wanted to reach out to Fia Kempe and Aksel Holmgren to talk to them about the process of putting this wonderful album together.
LSS: First of all, congratulations on the new album! It’s absolutely incredible! This album the successor to ‘Duende’ and the EP ‘Echoes,’ both release in 2015. Did you have a clear path or direction that you wanted to take with the creation of this album?
TGD: “Thank you very much, and thank you for having us again! Yes, considering our first effort was somewhat experimental for us, this time around we definitely had a clearer direction and focus on where we wanted to go, both musically and conceptually. I think this is just the natural way things develop the more you work on them. A lot of fun and definitely a learning experience for us.”
LSS: When listening to this album, there are still metal aspects and rock that can be heard. But you can almost pick up a bit of pop in the music. I think with that slight added flavor to the music, perhaps this album will appeal to a wider audience. Is that something you wanted to implement into this album?
TGD: “Honestly, both yes and no. I think the biggest factor for the album sounding the way it does is because we know more about what we are as a musical collective now. This helps us crystalize our ideas better, making them more effective and to the point. It's kind of like chipping away at a statue, first you get the rough shapes in place, the contours start to appear. The more you work on it, the more details appear. When you're “done” (there is no such thing as finished of course), you start with the next one, and this time it's a faster process and maybe a little more clear, and hopefully you've developed your skills with the hammer and the mallet.”
“The pop thing is probably because we love a lot of pop music as much as we love a lot of metal, rock, indie, prog, classical, film scores or jazz. It just naturally finds its way into the music. It's also an interesting challenge to write somewhat simple melodies that stick with you without resorting to banalities.”
LSS: Each of the full length albums portrays a different character. With Duende, we are introduced to ‘Fia.’ She seems to represent darkness. Perhaps that calm before the storm (in this case the storm being ‘Ire.’) In listening to ‘Rabbit Hole,’ you definitely pick up Ire (anger) in the vocals and in the music. But there is some balance to it. ‘Dimman,’ reminds me of an opening to a Tim Burton film. It’s dark, but absolutely stunning. The vocalizations gave me chills. ‘Red Rabbit,’ kick ass plain and simple. It’s a power song. But…’Neon Dreaming…’ this is the first full ballad from the band. It carries a circus-like waltz time signature. The song is again dark lyrically, but beautiful. It shows a sense of vulnerability within the anger. Could there be beauty and vulnerability in anger? Can you explain to us a bit about who Ire is, and the story behind some of the songs?
TGD: “Fia is an ambivalent character. She's a grey area where the dark meets light, and in the end shapes up in a similar way that life does. I think that because you're so used to black or white (good /evil) characteristics in popular culture, she's probably perceived as “evil,” or rather more darkness than light. To us though, she's just as fucked up as the rest of us, not more nor less. She is also a guide through the ten stories of the first album, and beyond really. She is the inhumanly human companion of our storytelling.”
“Ire is exactly like you say: a more deliberately one-dimensional character. It acts as a vessel, bringing anger, hate, passions, blind love, a lot of the extreme emotional expressions.”
“There is definitely vulnerability in anger. Anger is an emotional response to something you feel is wrong, unjust or malicious, or dangerous, and why would you get angry if something hasn't gotten to you in some form? This would imply that you are indeed vulnerable.”
“At the end of the day, all these things we write about in our music and our lyrics and stories, all relate back to emotional states and psychological phenomena.”
LSS: The theme for the album is a dark version of Alice in Wonderland. Why did you go with that theme? Is there something that inspired you to go in that direction?
TGD: “Since we love the story, what it represents, and what you can twist it into, we felt it was the perfect fit. Someone is taken from their usual environment, gets enveloped by a new, surreal one, and presented with options that might have been unthinkable in a different scenario. It's both a very gratifying and a malleable story to work with, being a story that's both very surreal and imaginatively inspiring. It's also a somewhat sad angle into humanity and how we can function, if we're presented with the right circumstances. No one is perfect and you fuck up, what truly matters is if you learn from it.”
LSS: A band question! For each member, what is your favorite song on the album, and why is it your favorite? Was there a song that was more challenging to play and why?
Fia- “Always such a tough question! Gadget was a fun song to write since we wanted it to portray pure madness. So we wanted that kind of limitless feeling when we wrote it. We just had fun with it and I really like how it came out, and that feeling of reckless abandon you get while listening to it. It is also a delightful song to play! Looking forward to playing it live so much!”
Aksel- “The Red Rabbit is a really fun song to play, and easy to lay in to. Noire feels like a great live song as well. As far as writing for this album I really love the way Omen and Cadence turned out. Gadget is also a lot of fun because it's a little more physically demanding than most of our other songs, and that just makes you go harder.”
Rasmus- “I really like The Red Rabbit, a really groovy and straight forward type song, really fun to play live. Also Noire because of the slightly different bass patterns.”
Gustav- “The Red Rabbit is a definite favorite in terms of performance. I also really like the bridge in Darkest Day, a highlight for me.”
André- “Tell-tale Heart, because it is a fairly simple song, yet really intricate at the same time. And it’s really fun to play live.”
LSS: The artwork is intriguing and well done! I have to say I’m not sure how to interpret it. Ire at the top of the ladder with the red bunny (ok, bun-bun) at the top of the ladder. I’m waiting for her to either help him off the ladder (a way of finally emerging from the darkness of the cave/hole he was in), or…she’s going to toss him back down the hole (embrace the darkness). What did you want the art to represent?
TGD: "The artwork is both presenting Fia being lured by the initial form of Ire, the cute little rabbit. I guess you could say it's Ire's Siren form. The bottom half if the actual rabbit hole, sprawling, chaotic and maze-like. Its supposed to represent the choices you make, and the impossibility of truly understanding the ramifications of those choices. You end up lost and confused, not really knowing where you are or how things happened the way they did. Perhaps you end up in a mental cage, desperately trying to pick the lock before you get too acclimatized to this new reality and accept it.
LSS: You released a book with this album. What inspired the writing of a book?
“We wanted a direct link to the story telling this time around, other than the lyrics and the music. So Fia wrote the book as a companion to the music, the make things clearer. Also because we love bands that do things like this, we feel it really adds something for people, like us, who like to dive deep. It was a massively rewarding experience so we'll probably keep doing stuff like this.”
LSS: We have seen that the band has been touring Europe recently. What are the plans for touring for the remainder of 2017 and into 2018? Would the band tour the US?
TGD: “We have a few shows lined up for this fall, the first one being Damnation Festival in Leeds, UK. Should be a really fun one, and it's going to be great to come back to the UK. We have plans for the fall, but none we can talk about just yet!”
“The US is definitely on the to-do list for us, but we need to find the right opportunity that makes it viable for us. Working on it though and it's just a matter of time! Stay vigilant, as we tend to say.”
LSS: Are you planning on any more video releases or new merch being released?
“We have released four videos for this album and we feel that as far as music videos go, we're pretty much done. We do however have some other stuff up our sleeves. We might pull a fair few rabbits out of our hats in the near future!”
“Thank you for the interview, as always, it was a pleasure!”