Thy
Majestie
I follow Thy Majestie throughout
their career and I've realized that from their previous album and on they
have made a turn and deal with interesting historic themes and features.
A thing that suits their music perfectly and offers them more depth. "Jean
D' Arc" is an exceptional album that all the power metallers should obtain.
So, read the interesting things we found out about this release and the
band's future plans...
1. HELLO! CONGRATULATIONS ON “JEAN D’ ARC”!
IT IS AN ALBUM WORKED IN EVERY DETAIL, SO HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO COMPLETE
IT?
Thank you for the compliments! Well... it
took quite a lot to record it, recordings kicked off during September 2004
and the final mix was sent for mastering in June 2005... that’s almost
9 months!
2. A LONG TIME HAS PASSED SINCE THE RELEASE OF
YOUR PREVIOUS WORK AND FROM WHAT I KNOW THE BAND HAD SOME SERIOUS PROBLEMS
TO CONFRONT. CAN YOU TELL US A FEW THINGS ABOUT IT? DID YOU EVER THINK
TO QUIT?
I suppose that the reasons that made the recordings
last for so long are mostly related with the situation regarding our singer...
Gabriele Grilli left the band basically when Claudio had already started
to record the drums, so we were in a great mess!!! Giulio was great, but
it’s not easy for anyone entering a band and having to record an album
with songs you have never heard. So he spent a few weeks trying to properly
enter the band and the mood of the songs. You also have to consider that
this was basically our first self-production, and we wanted to make sure
the album sounded like it was the best thing around!!!! But no, I can’t
say we actually thought to quit at some point. There was a bit of discouragement
as Gabriele left the band, but we were conscious we had already gone too
far to stop at that moment!
3. SO HOW DID YOU DECIDE TO SIGN AGAIN WITH SCARLET
RECORDS? DO YOU BELIEVE THAT THIS DELAY OF RELEASING YOUR NEW WORK MIGHT
HAVE HARMED YOUR POPULARITY? CAN WE SAY THAT THE ALBUM “JEAN D’ ARC” IS
A NEW BEGINNING FOR THE BAND?
When we left Scarlet the situation was extremely
different from the one that we have now. We had just finished “Hastings
1066”and you could say we pretty much were in the “top of the wave” regarding
power-epic metal, and at that time we were in touch with quite a few labels
who were willing to offer us a contract. It turned out that none of the
offers was fully satisfying, so we decided to go through the hardest way..
self-producing the album and signing a deal with Scarlet for promotion
and distribution. I must say that this was the best choice after all, since
we could spend all the time we wanted in the studio to come out with the
best product possible, and the guys at Scarlet are fantastic for their
distribution channels worldwide. To reply to the first part of your question,
I don’t think the delaying has hurt our popularity that much, since the
works we made are still there and people appreciate a good album whether
it’s released one year after the last one or 3years later, like this one.
4. EXCEPT FOR YOUR FIRST ALBUM WHICH WAS INSPIRED
BY A HEROIC FANTASY BOOK, THE OTHER 2 ALBUMS YOU HAVE RELEASED ARE BASED
ON HISTORIC EVENTS. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS TURN OF THE BAND TO HISTORIC
THEMES?
I think that actually the answer relies in
the general mood of our music. With Hastings 1066, we made a more or less
conscious turnabout from the fantasy themes, but that was simply because
we felt like they didn’t fit the atmosphere of the music. With respect
to The Lasting Power, the atmospheres were a lot more elaborated and obscure,
so we felt like a true piece of history would have better fit the thing
instead of the usual tales of unvincible knights and dragons. I guess you
could say that with Jean D’Arc we moved along the same line, except that
we focused a bit less on the parts that in Hastings 1066 felt a bit
like “laying” over the other ones, like orchestra and chorus, and we sort
of minimalised the compositions and made them harder and straighter. So
even there, a fantasy theme wouldn’t just have fit.
5. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE A CONCEPT ALBUM
BASED ON THE LIFE OF JEAN D’ ARC? WHAT KIND OF PERSON DO YOU THINK SHE
WAS?
Well, I suppose it’s got something to do with
heroism... Jeannette was a true hero that fought a war way beyond her forces
and basically won it... and like all the heroes she was exalted and then
thrown in the dust by the very same people who had exalted her. I think
people are too used to hear her story to actually realise how miraculous
it was, and I don’t necessarily mean in a religious sense. Come think of
it. A country-raised teenager that leads a whole nation’s army to a glorious
victory... she is one of the most symbolic figures of the whole modern
history in my opinion. So I guess this was the reason. Plus as I already
stated, we had already moved on from the fantasy themes since Hastings
1066, so we thought it would have been coherent if we kept moving along
this road.
6. WILL YOU CONTINUE TO WRITE CONCEPT ALBUMS OR
YOU MIGHT RELEASE IN THE FUTURE A CD THAT WON’T BE A CONCEPT? FOR WHICH
OTHER HISTORIC PERIODS OR PERSONS WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMPOSE A SONG?
Generally, the mood of our compositions is
such that the concept idea definitely always seemed a better idea than
all separate songs. We always tend to think about the songs we make like
they were somehow linked to each other, so it’s pretty natural for us to
create a concept out of them when we approach the lyrics writing.
7. IN THE PAST YOU HAVE DONE A COVER VERSION OF
STRYPER’S “IN GOD WE TRUST”. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO COVER THIS ONE? DO YOU
PLAN TO COVER OTHER SONGS AS WELL IN THE NEAR FUTURE? IF YES WHICH BANDS
WOULD YOU CHOOSE?
The choice of “In God we trust” was uniquely
due to our musical tastes. It has nothing to do with our faith or religious
beliefs, as many think. Most of us are catholic, but this has nothing to
do with that. The real story is that we all have a thing for 80’s metal
and we always felt curious as to how this particular song would sound if
played in Thy Majestie’s style. It almost all started as a joke when Claudio
once suggested that we played it as one of the covers for one of our shows
in Palermo, our hometown. We rehearsed it and it seemed to work, so we
played it live, and it actually had great success, far beyond our expectations!
Later on, when we were thinking about bonus tracks to include into the
Japanese version of Hastings, it was almost a natural choice to pick that
one.
8. BECAUSE OF THE MUSIC STYLE YOU PLAY, I BELIEVE
THAT OFTEN PEOPLE COMPARE YOU TO RHAPSODY. HOW DO YOU FEEL WITH THIS COMPARISON?
DO YOU THINK THAT IT’S UNFAIR TO THE MUSIC THAT THY MAJESTIE PLAYS?
I guess this is kind of unavoidable. Unless
you’re not very well into a particular genre, all the bands that play that
genre sound the same. I mean, someone who’s not into metal will probably
tell you that Thy Majestie will sound like Dimmu Borgir or something along
that lines. Because the “unpracticed listener”, as you call him, only listens
to the guitars and the bass drum and comes to the conclusion that, no matter
what’s over them, it’s still metal and it’s just noise.
Since you asked me about Rhapsody, maybe you
could tell me why we don’t sound like them! Personally, I think there are
a lot of differences... but I suppose that, as someone I can’t remember
said, you can sum them up into this: we pay more attention to the song,
while they pay more attention to the arrangements. I guess their music
is just more baroque, more fast-paced, maybe a bit more joyous than ours.
Then there are differences in the sounds, there are big differences in
the themes we choose for the concepts and hence in the overall atmosphere
of the albums, there are differences in the way we deal with the compositions,
there are just too many differences. Although they’re one of the best metal
bands ever out of Italy, I honestly don’t think we sound like them. We’ll
leave these comparisons to listeners... and to critics as well!
9. WILL YOU DO ANY VIDEO–CLIPS FOR YOUR NEW ALBUM?
LET’S SAY THAT YOU HAVE THE MONEY TO DO AN EXPENSIVE VIDEO-CLIP, WHICH
SONG WOULD YOU CHOOSE TO VISUALIZE AND HOW DO YOU IMAGINE IT?
Personally, if we had a high budget to shoot
a video, I’d love to see “Under siege” (from “The Lasting Power”), it’s
a song to which we are all ‘tied’ for some reason so it would be the most
significant to see on a video! As to how I imagine it to be, I don’t really
know, but I know that we would probably use lots of comics-styled pictures
rather than hired actors and stunts to do that.
10. I THINK THAT YOU LIKE HISTORY AND I WOULD
LIKE TO ASK YOU IF YOU BELIEVE THAT HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF AND WHICH IS
THE REASON THAT THIS HAPPENS IN YOUR OPINION? DO YOU THINK THAT PEOPLE
ARE UNABLE TO LEARN FROM THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST OR WILL SOMEDAY HUMANITY
MANAGE TO BECOME WISER?
Yeah actually you’re right, most of us love
history and yeah, we do believe that the human kind always repeats the
same mistakes, what changes is only the way we make them. Some thousands
year ago men fought wars with maces, now they do that with nuclear weapons,
so I suppose that not only men don’t learn from their mistakes, they make
even bigger mistakes and don’t realize it until it’s probably too late.
Personally I’m a huge Star Trek fan and I somehow envision the future of
our world like the creators of that series do... the human kind will probably
learn to cope with each other and to respect better the world in which
they live only when they will be faced with something or someone that seriously
threaten to destroy or to somehow change for good their lives, like the
contact with alien life forms or some gigantic natural catastrophe. Other
than that, I don’t see a lot of space for improvements.
11. IT WAS A PLEASURE DOING THIS INTERVIEW! THE
LAST LINES BELONG TO YOU AND LEAVE A MESSAGE TO THE READERS OF BEHIND THE
VEIL WEBZINE…
The pleasure was entirely mine! Thanks for
your attention and stay true!!!!
Nick “William_Kidd”
Parastatidis
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