Pain- Interview met Peter Tägtgren (vocals, guitars)
Peter Tägtgren: “’Go With The Flow’ is my therapy song: count to ten and go with the flow…”
Bezige bij Peter Tägtgren leeft voor de muziek! Al zolang we de sympathieke Zweed kennen is hij altijd wel druk in de weer met productiewerk, zijn bands Hypocrisy of Pain of andere projecten. Niet voor één stijl te vangen bovendien. Met Pain was het eerst de bedoeling om metal met techno te kruiden, maar daar is intussen een heel eigen hybride uit ontstaan die – meestal dansbare – songs koppelt aan electro synths en metal. Zes jaar na ‘Coming Home’ is dit soloproject weer aan de beurt om in de schijnwerpers te staan en het nieuwe Pain album ‘I Am’ stelde ons in de gelegenheid om bij te praten met Peter Tägtren.
Vera Matthijssens Ι 18 mei 2024
How are you doing?
Fine! How are you doing?
Fine too, thanks, always busy with music, as usual… just like you I guess…
That’s a good way of life.
Yes, that’s how we are. The new album is called ‘I Am’. Is the title coming from that perspective?
Actually the song came first, the lyrics for this song, but then management thought it would be a good idea to call the album ‘I Am’ as well, because this is what I was for two years when I was making it. On and off, I did not spend two years in a row.
Indeed, you always kept busy doing all kinds of things. The former Pain album ‘Coming Home’ dates from 2016, but of course in the meantime you did not rest on your laurels. Can you resume what you have been doing?
Yes I was actually looking ten years back and I realized I did two Pain albums, two Hypocrisy albums, two Lindemann albums and one Joe Lynn Turner album. So, it has been busy, plus touring with three bands over the last ten years. So that took a lot of time from create and also a lot of energy from being creative I would say.
Also in the meantime we had the pandemic. How did you cope with that? Are you a person who likes to be alone or did it drive you mad?
Yeah for me it was extra time, because it has been going really fast for me two years in a row with all kinds of stuff. So for me it was nice not doing anything for half a year. I just hang out. I just relaxed, ate and watched TV. And then I started working again.
I think that makes a difference. Then you are refreshed when you start again….
Yes, exactly.
When did you have the idea of making another Pain album, because it was about time?
(thinks) I don’t know. It is not really about being inspired, it is more that melodies come in my head. It starts bubbling up in your body when it is time, you know, but I think when I wrote ‘Party In My Head’, in the beginning of 2021, I also started writing a little bit on the ‘I Am’ song and also on ‘Push The Pusher’. We decided to release ‘Party In My Head’, because at the same time, later on, Hypocrisy released the ‘Worship’ album, so at least people got something.
And ‘Party In My Head’ turned into a hit in the charts!
Yeah! Crazy! Unbelievable.
I think people needed to hear something uplifting and cheerful in the darkness…
Yes exactly. I mean, I got a lot of comments from fans. The lyrics really guided them through life. So I had an obligation to give them some therapy.
Music can be a solace and a therapy, for everybody…
Yeah for sure. We need to escape sometimes. You also need to hear things that you feel, so you don’t feel like you are the only one who feels things like this. So I mean, I guess it is common feelings. Nothing extraordinary or complex stuff, just plain truth from me most of the time.
In Pain you can reflect on that in a different way than in Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is more harsh metal, for Pain you are even inspired by the radio let’s say…
Yeah anything, whatever I listen to, inspires me. If I hear nowadays top 40 stuff and I think ‘oh that’s a cool kick drum’ or I could use this style in my song on this part or whatever… It does not matter whether it is top 40 or if it is a rock station playing classic rock or whatever when I am driving. Anyway I get influenced in one way or another.
It makes sense that you work together with all kinds of different musicians in your studio as well…
For sure. It broadens your work skills to do different things. I mean, to be a producer is not only to try to get good sounds out of the things, but it is also a lot of therapy, because if you push too hard, then people break. If you don’t push enough, you don’t get everything out of them that you need to make this album for them. So it is a real balance you know.
Sometimes it must be difficult…
No, you have to get in their shoes. A lot of the producers are not musicians. I think that is a great benefit for me to read people. I am not saying anything wrong about producers that are not musicians, for example… shit what is his name? Who did Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash and Slayer? Rick Rubin. He does not play any instrument and he is a huge producer!
You hear all kinds of weird stories about producers sometimes…
Producers are people with visions as well. They couldn’t be a musician for some reason or did not want to be, they can create it through the band which can be good on some levels and sometimes it can be very bad. It depends on what kind of person it is.
You have made the album with your son, so I am talking to a proud father probably…
Yeah yeah yeah! Of course I am proud! I just wanted to do more stuff, because he has a lot of music laying around and he is working on his own solo album, but he has problems with his vocals and he is trying to find someone who sings for him, so time flies and nothing happened. His songs are amazing, things that people haven’t heard yet, so I want him to bring his stuff out as well.
Two songs are written by him on your album…
It is not for his solo album, but he wrote them for Pain.
The second one, ‘Revolution’ adds a modern influence in your music…
Yes, exactly, but if you listen to ‘Don’t Wake The Dead’, it is like eighties Depeche Mode, maybe early nineties. I mean, he listens to a lot of different stuff. It is good to keep your mind open I think. Nowadays people are listening to all kinds of stuff. It was more rare twenty years back or something like that.
Which new norm do you dislike? Because there is a song called ‘The New Norm’… It is something we have heard a lot of times during the pandemic: ‘that will be the new norm’…
Yes, I don’t like that though. Talking in general, I give you a good example. If there is a robbery, people are starting to film before they start calling the police or the ambulance. It is the new norm. It is all fucked up you know. There are no feelings or anything, just you and your phone. That’s really how I think about the new norm; that we are becoming selfish and have tunnel vision. It is crazy. Everything is happening on the phone these days. It does not matter if someone steals it, you have it in the Cloud anyhow, so it doesn’t matter.
And Big Brother is watching you, more than ever…
Yeah look what your government was trying to do to the farmers in your country! They want to control the food, because if you control the food, you can control the people and that is the whole point. They talk about all these fuckin’ 15 minute CD’s that I am singing about in ‘I Just Dropped By (To Say Goodbye)’, because watching you is watching me and that is the way they want it to be, but they are not going to get what they want and then there is ‘Revolution’.
It comes down on all the titles?
Not all, but some of them. A few ones. I don’t wish anybody a revolution – let me put that clear – but I can feel it in my guts. It is really boiling, the world… everybody is very angry on their own government, it doesn’t matter which country it is.
And that together with making the people poorer, is a very dangerous cocktail…
Yeah and their plan now is actually to take away middle class people. They push them down to poor people. So there will only be poor and rich people and the rich people will control anyone who’s in the financial sector, they are the ones that are controlling the world.
I have always said that Europe is becoming similar to the US, only ten or twenty years later… in retard…
America is going to shit right now I would say. Open borders…letting in 15 million people, they don’t know who is what and whatever, just because of their feelings and that is the biggest problem nowadays. Everything is about feelings, it is not about accurate facts and reason. It is only about these fuckin’ idiots’ feelings. They are going to destroy the western world and they WANT to destroy the western world. They want to make it weak, chaotic. In America they want to take away the second amendment which means that you have the right for having a gun. If they can get that through, it is much easier to get people paralyzed because they cannot defend themselves and that is the whole plan as well. Also, immigrants will work cheaper and they will do anything that the people want them to do. So they are trying to erase the population, no, ‘replace’ the population I would say, in a cheaper population. And votes of course. Anyone who brings me into a country, I will vote for them. That’s why the door is open. And they are trying to do the same thing in Europe. They are doing that for ten years, fifteen years… instead of helping people, it is about making themselves rich; that is my biggest problem. I stay optimistic though! I have said negative things, but I am pretty optimistic that people see through all bullshit and stuff like that.
‘Go With The Flow’ is a less dark song. Lyrics are a bit more uplifting…
It is for me as drama queen, that I would not get so upset every time things go wrong or whatever? I hear that a lot. People find my temperament explosive (laughs). Well, that is how I am. I have a lot of balls in the air and stressed and all the time ‘you need to do this’ and ‘you need to do that’ and I guess I have a very bad temper as well. So this is my therapy song: count to ten and go with the flow.
There is also a song, ‘’My Angel’, you sing with a woman called Cecile Simeone. Who is that?
It is actually a French woman. I think she is a TV host, actually. It is an old song. Ten years ago my friend from France, he asked me for any song leftovers because he knew this girl at the time, that really wanted to start singing. I said: ‘I have this song, but I think it is too poppy for me.’ So we took a weekend and fixed the lyrics and stuff and she sang her part. Then we released it on Nuclear Blast on ITunes and I guess it was there for just a moment and then it disappeared, because I did not pay attention to it at all. A year ago, I think management said: ‘what song is this?’ and they found it on YouTube and I said: ‘oh shit, I forgot about this song’. Then we checked with Nuclear Blast and they did not know either where it was gone from ITunes and things, so I emailed her and asked her if it was okay if I release it, a real release that people can hear, not only a handful of people and she said ‘sure, but no fuzz’.
Did you sing it again then?
No, I cleaned it up a little bit, did the mix and added a few things, but I still wanted to keep the feeling of the nineties as I did when I wrote it. I wanted to have ‘euro metal in the nineties’ kind of thing.
Talking about the video for ‘Push The Pusher’. That is made by two guys, but they used a kind of animation made by AI…
Yes, I guess they programmed the computer to do the moves and things if I understood it right. Yeah, AI and it took a long time. It took like two and a half months for them to get everything working, because I think they only did one or two videos in the same way before. So it was really tricky. We needed to start a year ago. Yeah I think AI could be good, but I think AI can be our death as well. It is scary, because you lean more and more to do things with AI. I mean, everything is computer run for a long time, but when the computer gets so smart and gets its own life, then you will have a problem, because it will control all the weaponry, all the airlines, everything that goes with the computer. And it is online all the time and that is really scary. Maybe it will determinate all human beings, because they are attacked by AI. Then we have a problem.
Maybe the movie ‘Space Odyssee’ was a prediction, because the computer HAL took over the ship…
And that’s what Elon Musk even wants. I don’t know that much about Elon Musk. Is he the false prophet that comes and saves the world? Is he the fallen angel? I really love to think about those things. About the Covid shit the same. But back to reality now: this can all be very dangerous. Control it from the beginning, so it doesn’t end into rampage. We are going very fast now. It is like a snowball effect and it is rolling faster now. We will find out. I think people are lazy, so they use AI. It happened just over the last year, AI goes faster and faster now. Whatever happened in one year, will happen in a week in development. So let us see how smart they are… we will find out if we see mushroom clouds everywhere…
What can you tell about the other videos besides ‘Push The Pusher’?
In ‘Go With The Flow’ my friend Peter Stormare is in. One month ago ‘Go With The Flow’ came out. Watch it, it is funny. We are associating with different kinds of movies in different parts. You have to see it, because it is impossible to explain.
I didn’t know until today that your Abyss Studio is called like that, because ‘The Abyss’ song from Hypocrisy was the first song recorded there, long ago….
Exactly. It was the same time when we were recording ‘The Fourth Dimension’ album, we built my studio. I wish we would have recorded that album in my studio, but that’s how it was then and that’s how it is.
You are a worldwide respected producer, but why did you give the mastering on Jonas Kjellgren at Blacklounge Studio?
Because I don’t master. I tried it a few times with other things, but no. It is better to have someone with fresh ears fixing all the things in the final mix. That is why most of the people go somewhere else and let someone master it for them. It is only about compressing the stuff and make it complete.
‘Fair Game’ is a lyric you have written together with Jonas I think…
Exactly. We had this song for a long time as well. I could never get the lyrics good enough to use it, so Jonas helped me to get started. Then, together, the ball started rolling and we both did the lyrics. It was cool to help me get going and finally we did 50/50 let us say. Sebastian, my son, he produced his own songs. He came with all the sounds and played all the instruments. I probably played a little bit guitars on it, but not much on those two songs. He also did drums and everything.
Indeed he is a drummer, also from Pain, but he doesn’t have another band at the moment?
No, He has his own solo project. He has 50 to 60 songs, but he is still looking for a singer, because he doesn’t like how it sounds with his voice. So he is looking for another singer.
Looking back at the previous album ‘Coming Home’, I read somewhere that you still like it, but that it was a little bit too much worshipping David Bowie. What about that feeling?
I think that album was the most experimental album coming from me. I really wanted to go all the way so to say to make it more… with the orchestral things and acoustic guitars… it was mainly just to push myself when it comes to song-writing and also producing. I did not really think about the songs themselves, it was more producing the sounds and things like that. So now when I listen to it – actually I listened to it before I started writing in 2021 – and I felt it was very sleepy. So I wanted to change that, that is why I wanted to go back to more industrial and a more distorted feeling to it.
There will be a lot of touring coming up for Pain…
Well yeah, first the Summer with festivals, you know. Summer Breeze, Wacken, Graspop… In October we go on a Scandinavian tour and then maybe in September the US, but we are not sure yet. There is still work to be done on it. Next year I hope more tours. I like to go with a big band and open up. I am talking about 4 or 5 thousand people at least, but it is not easy to get on the radar, so let us see what happens. You just have to play, so people can discover you.
Did you miss the concerts very much during the pandemic?
When I work too much in the studio, I want to go out and play. When I am out and playing too much, then I want to stay in the studio (laughs). I need changes all the time.
What are the plans with Hypocrisy?
We are starting slowly to write for the next album right now, so there will only be a few festivals this Summer to keep us in shape and there will be not so much with Hypocrisy this year, but I am sure we will come back later.
Thank you so much Peter for your time to answer my questions!
Thank you! And I hope we’ll see each other on the road. Stay safe and healthy. Go with the flow baby…
