Music is more than a hobby or a job or some musicians. It’s their whole life. Pierre Tornkvist is one of them! We had the chance to talk to him face to face in Athens-Greece, a few days before the release show of the album “Songs For The Gothic People” in Temple club. An album that brought back to life SCHEITAN, with a completely different music orientation though. Below you may read the interview which was like a friendly chat with a really cool guy!
-Hello Pierre. We are glad to have you in our web magazine! It’s a great honor!
Pierre Tornkvist: Thank you. I am also glad to be here.
-It’s your first time in Greece?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes, it’s my first time and it’s amazing. I almost have tears in my eyes. So, most people in Sweden and in Scandinavia listened to the music back in the day, I started quite early to listen to the Greek stuff.
-So, you’re a fan of the Greek bands?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yeah, yeah, like, the first thing I heard was THOU ART LORD on a cassette from a guy in Italy. We did some trading back then. So, I heard THOU ART LORD. And then, one day when I came home from school, when I was around 16-17 years old, there was a letter from ROTTING CHRIST with the stamp and the guy’s name. And it was Jim Mutilator who had sent me the first CD from ROTTING CHRIST. And I was like, oh, shit, this is crazy.
-He plays in YOTH IRIA now, if you know the band.
Pierre Tornkvist: Yeah, I have everything from them.
-So, you still listen to that kind of music?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yeah, yeah… all the time. I love it. There are so many good black metal bands today. And there are so many people that do it with such dedication. And I wanted to do something else. I felt that If we had gone back to this, it would have been ridiculous. There’s sort of a path here.
-So, it’s not that your taste in music changed. You just want to take another path.
I just want to go on a different way. Try new things. You know, I always wanted to do that. And that’s what we did here. And we did this one, and people were mad because the first half of the album is obviously not black metal.
-Your new album has a lot of gothic influences, right?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes. We already had a road that started twisting. Oscar (Karlsson), who played the drums on all this stuff, is no longer with us. He passed away eight years ago. But he was the one that taught me. You know, we started listening to the SISTER OF MERCY and FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM very early.
-Since you mentioned Oscar, what do you remember from him, from back then?
Pierre Tornkvist: He lived in another town, Uppsala. It’s close to Stockholm in Sweden. But he had connections to the far north where we lived. His grandparents lived there. So he used to come up north. And then we started hanging out and he decided that he felt like home. So he moved from Uppsala. At first he started playing first with GATES OF ISHTAR. But he got tired of it. This didn’t work. There was something with the chemistry. He also played with me in HELLTRAIN. But back then we were all kids just playing our music. Just having a good time. Yeah, it was a good time. And Oscar taught me a lot. He was a much better guitar player than I am. Oskar plays the guitars on all the old albums. When we were recording and it was time for me to play my guitars, Oscar said, no, you’re too bad, you can’t do it. So he took the guitar from me.
-We are talking about the album “Poems – Burn The Past” (the band was called THE EVERDAWN).
Pierre Tornkvist : Yes, and these guitars are all recorded on roller, a real tape, you know. It’s not like today, when you have a computer, you can play the riff for five seconds, and you play something wrong, and then you play for another five seconds.In those albums you had to play the whole song.Not allowed to make a mistake.
-So, I have one major question. Why after so many years, about 22 years of SCHEITAN’S hiatus, you decided to come back with SCHEITAN, and with a different kind of music? What inspired you to do this?
Pierre Tornkvist: It was a long, long journey. One year before Oscar died, I started building my own studio in my house because I wanted to be able to record myself, and not have to book a studio. I wanted to learn the process and do the recordings. But then Oscar died. This was awful because we were going to have our studio, he also moved closer to where I live, so I thought, okay, this is going to be great. Moreover he was going to become a father and I thought that in the evenings he could come to my place and we could start working really hard on music. It would have been perfect to have our own studio and not have to pay anyone else. After Oscar’s death I kept doing it, I built the studio, and then I started a little project called DEVIL’S FORCE. So I started recording those songs, and went on with that for a while. I always wanted to try to record something where I could sing, clean vocals, not screaming, but singing. Back in the day that was impossible, because we always had to pay someone for a studio, and I couldn’t sing. I didn’t believe that I could, because I am almost deaf since my birth.
-This might be a disadvantage when you try to sing.
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes, it’s difficult to sing. And to realize what you are singing. You don’t hear your voice. So at that period, I would never have the time to practice in a studio for let’s say eight hours because we were paying by the hour and it was expensive. So it wasn’t just possible, but then I had my own studio. I started experimenting, so this whole thing was a long process, it took time to let it grow, and to trust myself. I knew that, obviously, I’m capable of writing music, but I didn’t know if I could sing. So I did the first song, the “Lost in Time” song, and then I thought for a long time what to do with it, but I have a certain style when I write music. It’s like, if you take away the screaming from “Nemesis”, then it’s almost like a gothic rock album.
-I was listening to “Nemesis” a few hours ago and that’s what I thought exactly.
Pierre Tornkvist: Yeah. I mean, the vocals are different, but there is a resemblance in style, yes! When I was a kid, my parents played ABBA for me. So, my style of writing music come from the opera or music like ABBA, Elvis. My parents didn’t listen to BLACK SABBATH or LED ZEPPELIN but they used to listen to pop, rock n roll. And this is how I learned the song structures. So, I love stuff like that, like Abba, I think it’s amazing. And when you listen to bands like GHOST, which I love, you can find a lot of ABBA in it..
-Well, it’s natural. All the new wave of Swedish death metal scene has many influences from the melodic music that comes from Sweden like disco or pop. For example, IN FLAMES nowadays play a kind of pop metal stuff.
Pierre Tornkvist: I think one of the things that is important to remember is that, in Sweden, when we grow up, we get music education from schools. If somebody wants to learn how to play an instrument instead of English, it is possible to happen. Drums, guitars. Whatever you like. When you get older, like 13-14-15 years old, you can go to cultural centers and play any instrument you want for free. There are fully equipped studios for free so that is why many metal bands starts in high schools. Almost everybody has a music degree so they have the incentive to play music.
-Let’s go back to your show in Temple on Saturday, it’s your first show, if I’m not mistaken, correct?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yeah, after 23. Actually we only did one before, in Germany.
-How did this happen. Why did you choose Greece?
Pierre Tornkvist: First of all, we signed with the Circle Music because, I sent them the first track and they loved it. So, they asked me if I wanted to record an album with them although it was at the early stages back then. They were very enthusiastic, and, it’s the first time I ever had a record label and they seemed to like it very much. So, they asked me If I wanted to play our release show here in Athens. It was like paying my respects to them for all the things they did for me. I understand that SCHEITAN is not a famous band in Greece. It’s hardly known in Sweden nowadays so I do not expect a crazy show like those we did in Russia or in Kiev, Ukraine. But this show is something special for me. As I told you before, I always wanted to visit Greece so it is very special for me.
-Are you going to play some of your older songs?
Pierre Tornkvist: We are going to play the whole new album but also a couple of our older songs.
-Do you still like the songs you composed back in the ‘90s?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes, I like those songs but this is going to be the release show for this album. Even if we played songs from our past, people wouldn’t recognize them so it would be better to play our new songs. It’s fairer to the audience. And also Oscar is not obviously playing.
-So now Satan is a solo project actually?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yeah, I have a drummer. So it will be me and the drummer Axel. He played with me in DEVIL’S FORCE when we played live. He’s a lot younger than me, he’s like 30 years old. He has played in a band called BENEATH MY FEET and they play more like hardcore metal. This new stuff that I don’t really like…metalocore. They’re great musicians, but it’s not just my style of music. They’re great but when I listen to metal, I listen to the old stuff and newer black metal stuff. But this thing in between that sort of started with KORN never really interested me. But new black metal stuff, like the Polish scene is great nowadays.
-Tell us a few things about your other projects. DEVIL’S FORCE and HELL TRAIN.
Pierre Tornkvist: DEVIL’S FORCEwas the same like SCHEITAN is now. I started it as a solo project. And then I got in touch with a guy called Jacob (Bjornfot). He has a band called KVAEN. And he asked me if we could play this stuff live. I thought we could do that. So we recruited one guy on bass and Axel plays the drums. I had just been releasing singles for that project.
-And about HELLTRAIN?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yeah, HELLTRAIN more or less died when Oscar died. It didn’t die musically, but we played one show after that with a new drummer and me and my brother wrote a couple more songs after that but I don’t think we will ever do an album again. We have songs for an album. We had the whole album ready and we were about to record it when Oscar died. So, it sort of stopped. It’s weird. It was one week before he was going to be a father, so it was the worst possible thing to happen. A lot of people from the scene of the Melodic Death Metal were really sad about this news. I was in a hotel room. I was working when I got the phone call. I remember that. I will never forget that day. And it was a heart attack, I think It’s called sudden heart stop or something like that. His wife went to see the doctors to check the kid. And when she came home, he was dead. So it was really out of nowhere. It was hard. I don’t know, you should never say never, but I don’t see it very possible that HELLTRAIN would go through this whole process of doing eight to ten songs and rehearse them, record them, find a record label. We had some offers to play live but at least my brother has no interest for that. Of course, If someone proposed to me to come to Athens and play with HELLTRAIN, we would do it probably. But it would take something special to get the band going.
-So your future is SCHEITAN now?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes!… And also one of the reasons for having only a drummer is because I want it to be easy. And I want it to be possible to go and play and don’t have to ask four or five people at a time. This time, I don’t want to have to call four or five guys and say, yeah, there’s a show, can you, can you, can you? So I thought that this time we will do it as simple as possible. Just to be able to go and play. And also, we live in the far north of Sweden around 1.000 km from Stockholm, in a city called Lulea, so it’s very expensive to just, travel and book extra flights.
-Any other bands from your city?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes, we have a very well-known hardcore band called RACEFIST but not any melodic death bands. When you live for far north you do not have many things to spend your time. Either sports or music. And I do not do sports. So, we played music. We had to set up shows in our area because it was too expensive to travel in the south of Sweden. We played with AT THE GATES and with THERION at their very first steps around 1991.
-Musically speaking, will SCHEITAN continue to be like your new album?
Pierre Tornkvist: We don’t know. You never know but I think more or less this is where we will land. I’ve experimented a lot and learned a lot, I think, with this new album. You know, a lot of electronical elements in the music I like to keep.
-How would you characterize the sounds? Gothic? Or gothic rock? I think it’s gothic rock. I don’t think it’s metal too much anymore.
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes, there are a few riffs here and there but in general it’s gothic rock.
-Why did you choose this title for your album, “Songs for the gothic people”? I mean, it’s quite straightforward to which people you refer to. What do you want to say with this album?
Pierre Tornkvist: It’s an album for the people that sort of follow their own path in the world and do not feel so attracted by this modern society. It’s not necessarily gothic like when you paint your face black. It’s for those who just don’t feel really at home in this crazy world. When I was about to finish the first song, that was when the war in Ukraine started and that felt just crazy.
-Is there a specific theme lyrically in the last album?
Pierre Tornkvist: This album is very dark. It has to do with a lot of things. With what happened with Oscar and my father who died. There is a lot of death everywhere. There is still war in Ukraine. It’s really strange when you have friends sending you messages and at the same time missiles are landing on their houses. There is a lot of darkness the last 10 years. So, you can see that in the lyrics.
-You mentioned before that one reason you keep SCHEITAN as a solo project is that you want to have the control, let’s say, of the music and everything.
Pierre Tornkvist : Yes, in a good way. The thing was when I started working again on my music, I decided that I want to be able to get up from my chair in my kitchen and go out in my garage and write the song, record it, master it and send it for a release without having to even make one phone call. But when I learned the working process I realized that some things are better to leave to other people like Daniel who did the mixing in the album since he is an excellent engineer. He has cooperated with MESHUGGAH or IN FLAMES so his cv is so long that I realized he could help me improve the sound quality.
-You are in music for many years now so I would like to know your opinion about the new developments like artificial intelligence. People say that in a few years you are going to listen to a song and you will not know if it’s written by a person, a musician or by a computer.
Pierre Tornkvist: I think it’s horrible. In my opinion, music must come from the heart and the same goes for every form of art. I just think it’s really ridiculous especially for someone like me that growing up I had to learn to play instruments, from the very basics of music. From the age of 14 to the age of 19 we were working really hard and rehearsing for five or six days, three or four hours each day every week in order to learn the whole process. As I told you before, my city is small, around 60.000 people and we did not do any sports. Especially back in the late 80s or early 90s there were not many things to do in my city. Not even concerts. Even the big Swedish bands did not come to my city when they were touring. I am in favor of the technical improvement in music. Now you can have a studio in your home. Back in the 80s that would have been really expensive. This has nothing to do with AI but with technology in general.
-I would like to ask you some questions regarding the old days. What do you have to remember from those times when you were playing with THE MOANING and THE EVERDAWN back in the ‘90s? Do you still have any connections with the Swedish metal scene?
Pierre Tornkvist: As I said we had a few connections. We were so far north but we had some friends. For example, VOMITORY played with us but that was even before the demo age. We were in contact with a lot of people but we could not meet them in person due to the distance and the lack of money to travel. I remember once AT THE GATES came to my home town to play. They had to travel with the train for over 24 hours. They slept at my home where I lived with my parents. They slept on mattresses on the floor. My mother cooked for them. And we played a show with them, I think in 1994. They had just recorded the demos for “Slaughter of the Souls”. Another thing I remember is recording an album in just 6 days. I did the vocals in just 2 hours. I told you we were well rehearsed back then and it was expensive to book a studio for many days. I remember Peter (Tagtgren) asking if we wanted to listen to each song after finishing it but I was telling him, no…move on to the next one.
-We are talking about Peter Tagtgren, right? He is the master!
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes, he is amazing. He is still recording good stuff with his band, HYPOCRISY. They are one of those bands that are getting better and better. Like ROTTING CHRIST that is an amazing band.
-Have you listened to ROTTING CHRIST last album?
Pierre Tornkvist: “Pro Xristou”, yes! But not so much because I had many things to do and for me ROTTING CHRIST is so special. I want to have time to listen to this album. Sit down with nobody disturbing me and listen it from top to bottom. As I told you before, I really like the Greek extreme music scene. For example, NECROMANTIA. Maria (from Circle Music) actually sent me the NECROMANTIA box and that was amazing.
-Is there any thought to compose again anything similar to your first songs, like melodic death or black?
Pierre Tornkvist: I have this band, DEVIL’S FORCE so I will definitely do some new death, black stuff.
-So, your other active project is DEVIL’S FORCE, right?
Pierre Tornkvist: Yes, correct! I think it must have been two or three years since I wrote a song but I have to record something soon because I promised that. But the main project is SCHEITAN. I think it takes time to do something if you want to do it properly and be very careful in the writing. You have to think about for one month for each song if you want to pay attention to details and focus really hard on it.
-What about your participation in the album “The Funeral Pyre” in 2020 by KVAEN?
Pierre Tornkvist: I did the vocals for two of the songs there.
-Are you going to participate again in the band?
Pierre Tornkvist: I don’t know. This is a great band. Jacob (Björnfot) asked me if I wanted to do all the vocals when he started it. He also plays the guitar with me in DEVIL’S FORCE. But I said no and I think he does some great vocals himself now.
-So, are you still screaming? Like the old days!
Pierre Tornkvist: It’s been a while since I did that but the technique is already there so it wouldn’t be too hard to start again.
-I think back in the 90s you used to make some covers. Were your paintings?
Pierre Tornkvist: No, I helped out with the layouts but I never did the paintings.
-The “Blood From Stone” cover from THE MOANING is not yours?
Pierre Tornkvist: No, this one is from Kristian Wahlin.
-Are you planning any more shows?
Pierre Tornkvist: As many as possible. I was in touch with a booking agent. We will try to find a good booking agency and I will also write a new album during the winter because it’s hard to get shows with just one album. We released this album on May so there was no time to book many shows since it’s already festival season. I will try to compose the new album during the autumn and hopefully with our new agent we will do more things next season. My phone is full of riffs for the new album. I record all the time. We target to specific people and see how it goes and what impact it has on them. The staff we write now is for anyone. Extreme music is more difficult. I remember when I was a kid and heard for the first time NAPALM DEATH I started laughing. We were used to listening to TWISTED SISTERS or IRON MAIDEN. But a friend brought one day a NAPALM DEATH album and at first, we could not listen to it without laughing. But after a week or so we thought that it was awesome. It takes time to absorb it and then we were always looking for something more extreme all the time. And then of course the black metal wave came so I took interest in what was happening in Greece or Scandinavia. Like ROTTING CHRIST. I traveled two times to see them in Finland and they were excellent both times.
-So, do you still listen to that kind of music? I thought that since your musical direction changed, maybe your taste in music also changed.
Pierre Tornkvist: No, it will never change till the day I die. There are so many excellent bands right now. Like the Polish MGLA or DEUS MORTEM and so many other.
-Pierre, I think we covered everything!! That was really awesome. I would like to thank you again for your time.
Pierre Tornkvist: I really enjoyed it too. As I said, I always wanted to visit Greece so my time here is really special!
Interview: Kostas Boudoukos, Alexandros Soultatos
Audio Transcription: Kostas Boudoukos
Design & Editing: Kostas Boudoukos
Date: June 13th, 2024
External Link: SCHEITAN – Official Page
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