To be honest, I only know the album The Artist In The Ambulance well. I just had a quick listen to your latest album Vheissu. It sounds great, really. But it’s a bit different. Why?
Yes. I think we felt less pressure. When we wrote The Artist-, which was a major label release, we were afraid to change our sound. We wanted it to be heavy and experimental but we kind of held back on some of the experimental stuff. It was a new record released on a new label. We wanted to make a record that we would enjoy but also wouldn’t freak out the kids that listen to us.
But with this new record we wanted to do whatever was in our brains. We didn’t want to think to think of who Thrice is as a band or what scene we’re from or anything like that. We knew that we were making this new weird record with totally diverse feelings. It’s almost like it travels. It goes from lighter moods to heavier and gets really dark. I’m proud of it, you know. It was kind of scary for us to do this cause we didn’t know how people would react.
Well, how did the label react on this album?
They were like; Hey, were’s all the metal stuff? But I think a lot of people have the same kind of questions in their head. But we had to write this album. Lately I was listening a lot to Jeff Buckley and stuff like that and I love the quality in that music. I wanted it to be able to pull that kind of stuff into our music. And I think we did that. There are still heavy parts in it, because we enjoy making heavy music. But there’s also a lot more out there that we wanted to explore.
So this album is exactly what you wanted to do?
It was an experiment to see what we could do.
No concessions.
Nope.
How did you came to that decision to make this album different then the others?
I think it had to do we us being upset of what we didn’t do on the last record. We had ideas with piano and stuff but thought that it wouldn’t sound like Thrice or that it might freak people out. We finished The Artist- and when it was done we were kind of frustrated of the chances we didn’t take.
Do you really have that feeling that you have to write music that people can expect from Thrice?
I feel that from people that listen to us. I mean, I hear it. They ask us to play songs from three albums ago or whatever. I understand. But people also expect something new and fresh in each record. We’ve always been in the progression and pushing music for ourselves. I know that it’s not groundbreaking music, but it’s groundbreaking for us. If I look at bands that I love and look at their career you see that each album is different and pushes them into a new state. Look at the Beatles or Radiohead. Though we are nothing compared to those bands but they’re definitely a model to us.
The experimental stuff, was that difficult to put it into your live-set?
There is this kind of dark thing when we are thinking of playing our songs live. I play keyboard now and Teppei (seconds guitarist of Thrice) got two or three keyboards on stage, depending on…and our drummer uses samples. It’s tough for us. It’s totally new and we are just starting with it so I’m are very excited about it to see how far we can go with it. Of course some of the parts aren’t there live. But I think we took the essentials. We have extra drumsamples and shynths and stuff.
I didn’t got the chance to look at the lyrics yet, but when I look at the cover it looks like there’s a special message behind it. Well, is there a message you’d like to share?
Kind of. We always try to keep it a bit mystic so people can find their own meaning in what it is. On the cover it’s said ‘what are you called’ and more stuff like that. It’s sort of a search for meaning…in anything. For us this record was huge. We were going back to our roots you know. With basically writing the album of who we are. With what was in our heads, what we’ve listened to and stuff like that. The lyrics that Dustin (singer and guitarist of Thrice) writes are mostly about finding your spiritual selves, messages of hope, finding truth. The actually title Vheissu is from a book Dustin is reading. It’s called ‘V’ and the author is Thomas Pynchon. I think when Vheissu is broken up in German it means something like: Wie heist du?
I’m not sure were I have read it but I thought on your website. Is it true that you mostly written Vheissu while you were touring?
A lot of the ideas were created on tour. Once we were finished touring we got down and started to put al the ideas together which created the record. A lot of what we wrote on the tour bus was on the computer.
Was that one of the reasons that brought all the samples into your music?
Yeah. There’s actually a program called Reason. We used that a lot. Not on the record but while touring. We did use on of the original Reason files on the song called ‘Stand And Feel Your Worth’. You can hear it in the beginning of the song, in that section before the song actually starts.
I saw you play at Groezrock last Friday.
Ow yeah, Groezrock. We had lots of problems there, haha.
Yeah, what happened?
Something happened with the microphone cables. It was all mixed up. I think it also happened to Taking Back Sunday.
You've last about 15 minutes. With a delay of 20/30 minutes you only had 8 minutes extra.
Indeed, we had to cut four or five songs from our setlist. But it happens sometimes. Not much you can do about it.
This is a question that we always find interesting to ask bands. Is there a special goal you’d like to achieve with this band?
I don’t know. Main goal is always to have fun and be creative and never falling in to a set of doing things. Keeping it fresh and experiments with sounds and challenging our selves. The challenge and the experiments keep it fun for us. We are like family now which is also very special. Things don’t get boring but you have to find creative ways to make it fun again.
That’s a question that always crosses my mind when I think of bands who are touring for quite a while. Doesn’t it get boring together with the knowledge you’re far away from home and knowing your not going home for months. I did an interview once with Coheed and
I know what you mean. I don’t know, we’ve known these guys for a long time. They’re all amazingly talented musicians. If you are listening to the same song over and over again…well, you have to find new ways to enjoy the song. That can be by adding something to the song. You don’t want it to be robotic.
After this we talked a little while about this and that. All together it was a great conversation. An awesome guy, Eddie. So thanks again for your time and your words! We wish you all the best!
Love,
Maurits