By Andrew Bansal
Swedish metal band Katatonia just concluded a North American tour with co-headliners Cult Of Luna and support acts Intronaut and Tesseract, their third North American tour within a period of one year. In my humble opinion they blew Opeth off the stage when they opened for them at the Roxy Theatre earlier this year, and this time they played at the El Rey Theatre and put on an even more powerful show, undoubtedly enhanced by the excellent sound quality and the atmosphere of the venue. In my experience, this is a band that has been better with every performance in recent times, and they played a great mix of old and new material at the El Rey last Sunday October 6th. Before the show, I sat down with drummer Daniel Liljekvist for a candid conversation about touring, the remix album, and more. Check it out below.
Daniel, how are you doing today?
I’m good! It was a bit warm today and it’s not what I’m used to, but I had a nap so I’m doing good (laughs).
It almost feels like the beginning of winter here already, but it’s still too warm for you I guess.
Really? No, this is too hot for me. I need to stay indoors!
Well, this has been a pretty short tour for you, with just 12 shows. It’s almost over before you even realized it, right?
Yes, it’s been a short tour and that’s both good and bad. We just started to feel warmed up to it now, knowing the set list and the songs, and tomorrow it’ll be over. But it’s good because I can go home and see my kids again. I miss them a lot.
So, the best shows of the tour should be tonight and tomorrow then, since you said the band has just begun to warm up to the set.
Well, yeah. But my best show so far was the second show of the tour, and that was in New York. But if tonight is good, it’s probably going to be better than New York. Personally, I know after the end of the first song itself as to whether the show is going to end up as a good one or not. All the other shows have been pretty average. I’m hoping for a lot of people tonight, loud crowd and warm stage, so I can get into it from the first song in.
Your co-headliners on this tour Cult Of Luna haven’t toured the US in a very long time. It’s a good tour for you to be on in that sense because people are coming out to see them even though you’re on tour here a lot.
Yeah, they haven’t been to the US in seven years, and we have been here three times in one year. So I don’t know if we have overplayed in the States. We’ve been bouncing this question back and forth. Are we overplayed? Have we been here too many times? But I don’t think you can be here too many times. The more you play in the States, more people will come to see you and the bigger your band will be. The lesser you tour, the more you lose the States I think. We should be here more on longer tours.
I think if you take a break, it ends up being a long break. Cult Of Luna for example, it’s been seven years for them. TIme just flies by when you’re not touring constantly.
Exactly. You need to be here at least once a year on a long tour with a big band. A band like Queen for example, they toured in America for eight years before anything happened, and then they just stopped doing America and they lost it here totally. But that was in the 70s and 80s. I don’t know how it compares to that now, but bands from Europe should definitely tour America more.
You’ve made a habit of it. You put out ‘Dead End Kings’ last year, then you came on tour with Paradise Lost and Devin Townsend, and then with Opeth again earlier this year. This now is the third tour on this cycle. Even if people are wondering why you’re touring so much, it’s just that you have to these days, isn’t it? It’s not like you have a choice.
That’s pretty much it! When we released Dead End Kings, we started touring America. That was the first thing we did, and then we toured Europe. We’ve only made one tour for this album in Europe, so we should definitely do another tour over there instead of coming here again. But I don’t know how it works. Touring nowadays is what bands do to get money, to sell merch and stuff. Selling albums now, forget it. It doesn’t happen.
Exactly. So, is this tour still focussed on the Dead End Kings material? How much have you changed the set from the Opeth tour?
We’re still on the Dead End Kings cycle, and almost to the day last year, we played at this same venue with Devin Townsend. There’s still a lot of Dead End Kings songs in the set list, but being here so much we figured that we need to mix it up a bit, so we’re playing songs that we never played live before or played just once or twice before, plus some of the so-called classics.
Just to clarify, you’re still not ready to promote the remix album ‘Dethroned And Uncrowned’ on the stage yet?
Oh no, that’s going to be completely different. I don’t even know yet what it’s going to be. The plan for now is just an intimate tour in Europe. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the States.
How did the concept for that come about?
It was basically Anders and Jonas, when they were writing Dead End Kings and I think the idea came when they were writing ‘The Racing Heart’. It sounds so good even without drums and with acoustic guitars and stuff, they figured that if we are releasing a single for Dead End Kings we should have a B-side. So they were talking about doing Racing Heart acoustically as a B-side, because it’s easy to do. Just take the chorus parts away, and there you have it. The idea was, couldn’t we do this with all the songs then? Then we put the pledge thing into it. Obviously I wasn’t really involved in that album, as you can tell when you listen to it (laughs).
Right! It’s not unplugged then. It’s just stripped down and more atmospheric. That’s the main difference between the standard versions and this, right?
It’s stripped down and rearranged. It’s nothing majorly different except for the acoustic guitars and stripping all the heavy musical instruments, the distorted guitars and heavy drums. You have a lot of percussion on it still. The main idea is to have it really stripped down, open and atmospheric.
And it’s not an indication of the future musical direction of the band, but rather a one-off remix thing.
Exactly. Next album is going to take off where Dead End Kings ended. So I figure it’s going to be heavier, more technical and more progressive.
I have just one more question. Since you tour so much around the world, on some days do you wake up and feel bored? Does it happen sometimes when you’re not excited about a day, regardless of where it is?
It happens a lot (laughs). It sounds weird but when you do this as much as we do, in the end it turns into a job. I’ve had a lot of jobs before this one, and of course you get tired of it. You’re like, oh no, it’s the same bullshit again. Groundhog day. The venues look the same. Same fucking drumsets, same people, same colleagues. Everything is the same. You just want to get out and do something else. But you feel that only on some days, and most of the days are fantastic. People might say this is one of the best jobs in the world, and may be it is, I don’t know. It gets boring too. It’s not all glamour and high life every day.
Related – Gig Review: Katatonia & Cult Of Luna Co-Headline The El Rey