Interviews May 2025

Progressive rockers Elder is out on the European leg of the 10th anniversary Lore tour, and as the band made a stop in Stockholm, Metal Covenant was given some time with main songwriter, guitarist, and lead vocalist Nick DiSalvo.

Tell me about the 10-year anniversary of the Lore album.

Well, that just kind of crept up on us actually. I know, of course, when all the albums were made, but our booking agent approached us with the idea, like, “Oh, how would you feel about doing a 10th anniversary Lore tour?”, and we were just kind of like, “Oh yeah.”. That was 10 years ago. That’s an album where we kind of came into our own as a band. And those are some songs that we really like playing live actually, ‘cause, you know, some of the catalog isn’t as fun, or doesn’t feel like it really even has much to do with what the band does these days. And yeah, so here we are now doing the second of two tours. The first one in North America, and now the European leg of the Lore anniversary shows.

And might this 10-year anniversary continue into 2026 if things go well and there’s a demand for it?

For this album, no. It felt like the right place, right time scenario to do a special kind of tour. Elder is a band that does tour pretty frequently, and we’re always working on new music. And right now is no exception. We’ve got a new record that we’re close to completing, and we’re really hoping to finish that before the end of the year, so that by 2026 we’ll be touring off of new material again.

So there won’t be any 20-year anniversary since the band’s inception now when you have a new album out next year?

Probably not. But yeah, a few people did ask if we’re gonna do a 10-year anniversary of Reflections Of A Floating World. That was the next one, that came in 2017. But I don’t know. We don’t usually do gimmicky sort of things. Hopefully, people don’t perceive this as a gimmick, because we don’t want it to come off that way. But if you start doing that for every album, it might. (Laughs) Well, hey, never say never. Ask me again in two years, you know. Maybe in two years we will be doing something like that.

Tell me something that the Lore album has that the other albums don’t.

Well, Elder did start off primarily as a stoner doom band with some psychedelic influences that crept in by the time the second record was released, which was Dead Roots Stirring in 2011. And Lore is our third full length record, and at this point we had started to really incorporate a lot more influences from what we were listening to. More progressive rock stuff primarily. So that’s the first record where we started to combine, and really combined, in my opinion, successfully, these different elements, and make our own kind of subgenre within this stoner doom niche. Well, maybe it sounds big-headed to think that we’re the first people to do this kind of progressive thing, but it feels to me like that’s a unique record, and compared to the Elder since then, you know, it’s still very riffy, it’s very heavy, and it feels like it’s got one foot in kind of both worlds of the band, and I think that’s what makes it a special album. A lot of people seem to really like it. You know, it’s hard for me as an artist on one side of the aisle to see how other people perceive something you’ve made. But a lot of people seem to enjoy it, so something to celebrate there.

Left to right: Jack Donovan (bass), Nick DiSalvo (guitars, vocals), Mike Risberg (guitars), Georg Edert (drums)

Most bands have a tendency to play a lot of songs from their first couple of albums. But it’s totally the other way around for you. Does it feel a little bit strange to leave those albums out nowadays?

No, it feels very natural actually. Certainly, yeah, a lot of people probably would like to hear older material, because as with any band that tries to progress and do different things with every record, you’re going to have people who wanna hear, you know, something from a particular era of the band, and you can’t please everyone. The best you can do is try to put together some setlists that take bits from different eras, and hopefully please everyone. But I mean, we’re also trying to do music that’s true to our own artistic vision and ambitions. Yeah, you can’t make everyone happy all the time.

Regarding setlists and the length of your songs. How hard is it nowadays to make a setlist? You play seven songs tonight. This tour is obviously special, but generally, is it very hard to pick a setlist because you have so extended songs?

It can be very hard, yeah. When we play our own headlining concerts, you know, we can generally determine the set length ourselves within given parameter from the venue, and curfew, and whatever. So there it’s a little bit easier. But if you’re playing a festival or something, and you get a time slot, it’s not always easy to fit everything you want in 50 minutes or something. We did a support tour with Tool last year, and there at first, they gave us 30 minutes for a set, and we were like, “Okay. We can’t even play three songs.”. So we had to make a medley out of it, which is the first time we’ve ever done something like that. It can get difficult, yeah.

And this fall you’re going out with All Them Witches. What songs are gonna be included in that set?

We’re not even sure, to be honest. It might be some new stuff, which we don’t usually do, or it might be some stuff from the more current catalog. We haven’t even actually discussed that yet, so we don’t know. Sometimes we end up having just like a catalog of some songs that we know will fit into the set and then switch it out night to night. But usually, you know, we’re pretty prepared. But we haven’t even gotten that far.

From where did you originally get your musical influences to play this kind of music that you do?

The first influences for Elder were very much like straight up hard rock, heavy music, stoner rock, doom, fuzzed out kind of psych rock. I started listening to that stuff relatively late in life. I was probably around 16 or 17. Maybe not late in life, but late in my teenage years, because I was more into extreme metal before then, like I listened to a lot of death metal, and black metal, and that kind of stuff. So at first, when we formed the band, you know, I was even shrieking, and it was like much more sludgy. So yeah, those influences definitely came from the heavier side of the stoner doom world. But like you can hear if you listen to every record, the older we got and the more we played, the more those kind of super heavy influences fell away and gave way to more, you know, psych rock, kraut rock, and psychedelic music in general.

From a musical aspect, if we concentrate on the music you play with Elder, would you rather have been born, like, 30 or 40 years before you were?

I mean, yes and no. It’s hard to say. I mean, there’s so much that’s, like, totally fucked up with the music industry these days, and there’s so many things that make it strange and difficult as an artist. Let alone the fact that this music might have been much more successful in another era. But I wasn’t around in the ‘70s, so I can’t judge. I can’t even imagine, but if we could take, you know, this band and transport us back 50 years, I would love to see if people would actually be into it. Not to mention seeing all the bands that are the cornerstones of what we do today. But I have a feeling we’d end up being one of those funny footnotes in rock ‘n’ roll history. Yeah, like Focus. You know, with the yodeler. Like, they were cool, but no one really listened to them because there were fucking Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple instead.

I was thinking, actually on my way to here, those bands, will people even know about them in 50 years, or will they be gone? You know, I don’t care much for jazz music from the ‘20s.

I worked briefly at a high school in Germany, and this was already 10 years ago, and those kids had no idea who Black Sabbath was, for example. They might have heard of Led Zeppelin. And that kind of blew my mind, and made me feel already like, “Oh yeah, everything will become obsolete after a while.”. Yeah, hard to know. I mean, The Beatles seem still as relevant as ever, but obviously that’s like the top of the top of artists with staying power. I assume, yeah, that the winds of time will erode us all. But I mean, at our shows actually we noticed that there’s a fair amount of younger people, at least in certain places, and that makes me very happy to see. Of course I’m happy to see people from any age group, but when you see younger people, I’m kind of like, “Oh wow, that’s interesting.”. I always assumed this was only going to be people my age and older, because, yeah, it’s just not music that a lot of younger people seem to be playing.

Ever since I was around 30, I thought that I’d soon be the oldest one in the room, but no way, there are always people that are a lot older than I am. So no problem still hanging out.

And that’s cool. I love that too. I know I’ll have a community, if I get that old, you know, when I’m like 70 years old and going to shows. We even have some people who become friends, like really older people like a 70-year-old dude I can think of who goes to some of our shows in the States. He’s become a friend, and it’s just like, “Man. This is badass that you’re out here rocking out, and taking LSD, and keep watching these shows.”. (Laughs)

Left to right: Mike Risberg (guitars), Nick DiSalvo (guitars, vocals), Georg Edert (drums), Jack Donovan (bass)

Your songs are long, as you know, in comparison to most bands. Where did the idea come from to make such extended songs?

I honestly don’t even know. I’m not a trained musician. Like, I just started playing instruments because I was really into, like, punk rock. Very basic music that I thought I could play myself. So I got a guitar, and I’d bang away at it. And, you know, such was my approach to making music all my life. Just kind of learning by doing. And when it came time to, like, writing songs, I was just writing the songs, and they became as long as they felt like they should be. And of course, I listened to, you know, plenty of bands that did make longer songs, but it was usually these kind of droned out, like sludgy, doomy things, very repetitive, and sometimes they’d go on for 10 minutes, but that didn’t bother me. But oftentimes I felt like, “Well, that’s cool, but what if you made a long song and you trim the fat? Keep the whole thing interesting and always moving and changing.”. And that just became kind of like the signature for this band. Unfortunately, I’m kind of unable of writing a song any shorter, because I’ve got a couple other bands I’m playing with nowadays, and they’re all in this kind of unrestrained long song format. I wish I was able to actually make more diverse music in that way. Like, also make really compact things, but it’s just not the way I operate somehow. I mean, the reason you make music is to make something that’s enjoyable to listen to and perform. You know, it speaks from your soul, and whatever, and not to just like, “Oh, we need to fill 50 minutes. Let’s just throw some trash together.”. Like, that’s not what it’s about. It always used to frustrate me, that you’ve got a great record, especially if you’re listening to vinyl, and then there’s like two or three shit songs on it. Of course, some people probably, you know, have their Elder songs they hate, but I’d always be like, “Man. Why didn’t they just listen to this a little? Why didn’t they trim the fat?”. You know, make a record that’s great from start to finish. And that’s what we try to do as much as we can.

Hypothetically, and pretty much a crazy question, I guess. If you would make an album with four-minute songs, what would an album be like for you then?

I don’t even know. I don’t think it would work for Elder. I really don’t think it could. The new record we’re working on, some of the songs are a little shorter. Well, like nine minutes, you know. It’s really hard for me to get ideas where they don’t feel strangled if they’re cut short. I like these kind of evolving and reoccurring themes, and that kind of stuff. Four-minute songs? I have no idea. I’ve never written a four-minute song in my life, you know.

In comparison to the music, how important are the vocals to you? I know they are important, of course, but in comparison to the music you’re writing.

Well, I guess they have sort of like a lower priority for sure. Vocals are always the last thing that I write for a song, with few exceptions. But they are very important thematically and to tie everything together. Like, if an Elder song didn’t have any vocals at all, it would feel like something was missing. It’s something I have been trying to actually incorporate more and more into the songs as the albums progress. But undoubtedly, I much prefer playing instruments and writing music to writing lyrics and singing. It’s just not as natural to me.

But it’s not a necessary evil to you though?

No, not at all. I mean, I like words and language and literature. I play actually in a couple of instrumental bands as well, and when it comes time to naming things, I’m often struggling a little bit because I’m like, “Well, what is this song even about? How do you give it a name?”. Sometimes it feels a little bit emptier, you know.

In November last year, a project you are a part of, Weite, put out a new album. Tell us about that project and that album.

So that’s a band that a couple of friends and I started in the pandemic when a lot of the cultural funding agencies in Germany were, like, giving more money to artists because, you know, artists needed it. So a friend of ours got a grant from, like, a royalties collection society, and he basically just wrote me and the other Elder guitarist, and was like, “Hey. Do you guys wanna record a couple songs? I got some money from this funding.”, and we were like, “Sure. We’ll meet up and just jam and see what we can do.”, and within a week, we wrote and recorded a record, which was mostly heavily improvised stuff. And we had so much fun doing that, that we decided to make it into a proper band, so to say. There wasn’t a band. It was just, “Hey. You wanna meet up and jam and record some songs?”. And we did that, and we were like, “Okay. This is cool. Let’s make a band. We’ll name it Weite.”. And so the second record, that was actually a proper thing that we more composed and definitely properly, you know, recorded, and properly fleshed out. It felt like more of a musical collective, and everyone has their fingers in different, you know, instruments, and everyone kind of plays a little bit of everything. And there, I’m just playing the drums now. And there’s a lot of great songwriters, and I’m so happy to not be the main songwriter.

Tell me what you find important with having different outlets.

Well, it’s nice to play with different musicians, even though there are a lot of recurring musicians within my projects. It’s just also nice to get away from some of the pressures that come with playing in a band that’s got, like, an established fanbase, and some legacy, or at least a bunch of records. Sometimes when I’m trying to make music that I intend for Elder, I try to get myself free of all those expectations. But it’s hard, and it’s frustrating sometimes because you feel like you’re not being true to yourself. So getting those new projects was a nice way of kind of like restarting the creative process for me and just being able to make music with absolutely no expectations again, and also, you know, bounce off of some other people with different chemistry. In retrospect, it was a very important thing to do because I’d only ever played with Elder basically my entire life. You know, we started the band when we were like 17 years old, and, you know, now we’re in our mid-thirties, so.

Quickly about the album you are working on. Do you in some way now with the new album see several paths that you wanna explore, or do you try to stay as true to the band Elder as maybe the fans would want you to?

Yes, there’s always, like, many paths to explore, but at the end of the day, I think that all happens subconsciously for me. When I’m writing a song, I’ve got no expectations about where it’s going to go, and I think that oftentimes leads to the nature of these Elder songs, that they are kind of like rolling compositions that might take you to a lot of different places within one song. And I can tell you from the music that’s already been written for this new album, that it definitely does go to different places, and there are some crowd-pleasing moments hopefully too. The intention with this band really is to always offer something new, while staying in, like, the guideline where you think it still sounds like Elder. You know, we don’t want to turn people off or alienate anyone. Well, we still like playing this music too. It’s got to fit into the concept of the band. But nothing is off the table. I mean, if anything, I wanna get, you know, more out there with every release and explore more.

So my final question. The band name, Elder. Tell me about where that name came from.

Yeah. Well, when we started the band, I was a lot younger and really into fantasy, mythology, Conan The Barbarian, Magic: The Gathering, just kind of like nerdy teenage boy shit, and I was really into, like, medieval and even like, I guess, pre-medieval history. I was reading a book about Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, and the word Elder kept coming up in the text, like “Genghis Khan’s father was the elder of his tribe.”, or something. And it just struck me as a word like, “Oh, that would make a badass band name.”. And also, I guess you could read it as a Mormon word or something, because that’s what they call their proselytizing missionaries or something. But it was just like a word, “Oh, that would make a badass band name.”. It kind of conjures up this idea of, like, old sages sitting by the fire, or, you know, epic landscapes or something. And a good band name is hard to come by. You know, sometimes there’s nothing more to it than that, really.

By Tobbe – Published May 21st, 2025

German metalcore unit Caliban put out the new album Back From Hell on April 25th. Metal Covenant met guitarist Marc Görtz and bassist Iain Duncan before the band performed in Stockholm, Sweden on May 4th.

Tell me about the new record Back From Hell, which was just out.

Marc: Yeah, we’re very proud of the record. It’s three years in the making, and for me at least, it had to be, like, a groundbreaking record, because I was very unhappy with the previous one, Dystopia, and I wanted to change a lot. I don’t know how to say that, but I didn’t wanna do compromises somehow, because I did too many compromises, in my opinion, on the previous album. That album died for me very quickly after the release, you know. So this is a very important album for me, and we wanted it very heavy, very straightforward, and not too playful, and stuff like that. So yeah, that’s something I can say about the album.

Iain: Yeah, I can tune in there, absolutely. The goal was quite clear from the beginning. It was, “Let’s be straightforward. Let’s not take the listener on crazy journeys. This has got to be the most straightforward thing we can possibly do. Serve the song, serve the record.”. It came together very naturally though, because that was the outline goals. We made logical decisions throughout the whole album process. I think this will be an album that we’ll be able to listen to in a long time, and that won’t lose its relevance for us as artists, you know. So it’s something we’re all very proud of.

And can any of you guys tell me something about the lyrical content on the album?

Iain: Yeah, well, I suppose we all can. Back From Hell itself, coming from the title first of all: I think everybody in the band has a similar vibe about how the evolution of the band has waves, ‘cause there’s ups and downs, and there was kind of a down phase before this album came together. There were a lot of personal issues that were in all of our lives, various different things, a lot of stuff in private life. There were suicides, breakups, deaths in families, and many different things that made life feel like a pretty dark place when we got together and started. I can’t remember. What was it, Marc? You told the story before about when the album was meant to be called Back From Hell, but it was really early in the process.

Marc: Yeah, it was very early. When the first one or two songs were written. We were writing on this material. It was pretty rough and edgy, and stuff like that. I think Matthi, from the band Nasty, was one of the vocal coaches for Andy at that point. He came up with the idea because it’s a part of the lyrics in that song. That was the first or the second song which was written; not fully produced. But then he said like, “Isn’t that matching perfectly? Because you with your band were going through bad times.”. We didn’t know if we wanted to continue or not. We had, like Iain said, issues. We were not happy, and stuff like that. And then we sat down and said, “You know what? Now we go full force.”. Instead of the opposite, and not put our heads in the sand or something.”. Then he said, “Isn’t that a good title, Back From Hell? Because it matches all kinds of things, lyrics-wise up to that point, musically, what you wanna do, personal issues, and what you wanna achieve with this album.”, and, “Oh yeah. That’s actually perfect.”. I remember that I was saying that to the band right before we were about to hit the stage. I think it was at Summer Breeze Festival, so it was very long ago, almost three years, and we had, like, five or ten minutes time, and then I got a message from Matthi, and I said, “Hey. What do you guys think about that title?”, and they were like, “Well. Let it grow on us.”, and a day or two later we settled for that, and it didn’t change anymore.

Iain: That was cool, because knowing that the outlines were so clear, and knowing where we were going with this, “Back From Hell”, we started writing different lyrics, different materials, and had this big pool of content, of stuff. I sat down a lot with Andy for conversations, just like, “What are we feeling? What do we actually wanna be singing about here?”. ‘Cause I got some baggage, and he was like, “So do I.”. And we kind of put our baggage in a trolley. You know, there’s songs like Insomnia, which are literally from a place of not being able to sleep for months on end because things are going on. Songs like Overdrive, that deal with this whole headspace of not being able to stop obsessing over something that’s not important anymore, but keeps bothering you. Till Death Do Us Part, also one of these songs. You know, “My heart is burning, and my rage takes me higher. Feels like I’m walking on fire.”. Everything deals with a great plethora of emotions that you’re kind of stuck with. So it’s a real release to be able to put these things into songs, and to be able to tell the story like I am now. So that’s exactly what it’s about, you know. So yeah, there we are now with the record, where I could probably write you an essay on every single song, because that’s just what it is. You know, there’s no sugarcoating anything.

I was thinking about the length of the songs. The longest song isn’t even four minutes long on this album. How come you’re not writing a little bit longer songs, and prefer to stay within four minutes and shorter?

Marc: Like I said before, we wanted to get straight to the point, and leave out somehow unnecessary things. We are not this kind of band with a tradition of opuses, of huge songs, and huge build-ups. That’s not who we are, that’s not what we do. We wanna get straight to the point. We have this kind of energy in the songs. Some songs could have been a bit longer, but then on the other hand, “Why?”. I’m not gonna say who said this, but we had this discussion also, some of us, because of traditional ways, or if we should do it longer or not, and then someone said, “If they like the song so much, they can listen to it again.”. Why have four choruses in a song, instead of two or three, to just make it longer with parts which have been there before one, two or three times, you know? It’s essential, we wanted to cut the bullshit, get straight to the point, and don’t bore the listeners, and stuff. Of course some songs are quite short. I agree with that. But yeah, I think it felt somehow natural to do that, and the energy of the songs is this way also higher. This is why we actually put one or two extra songs on the album. I think most bands these days put, like, 10 songs on the album, maximum, or maybe 11, so we thought, “Let’s at least give the listeners the value in a way of more songs.”. Instead of 10 songs, which are all four minutes long, we just do 12 or 13. They have the same value, but more variation.

Left to right: Denis Schmidt (guitars), Iain Duncan (bass, additional vocals), Andy Dörner (lead vocals), Marc Görtz (guitars), Patrick Grün (drums).

You have a couple of guest artists on the album. Tell me a little about those appearances.

Marc: Well, we’ve known some of them for quite a long time. For example, I and Joe (Bad) from Fit For An Autopsy have been friends for quite a long time. And we always said in the past that we at some point would do something together. Until now it wasn’t really working, and then I met him when they played, I think, the Impericon Festival in Germany or something. We were talking already, and then we said, “All right. Let’s do something together.”, and then this song (Dear Suffering) matched perfectly. Jonny (McBee) from The Browning was more a spontaneous thing. We were thinking that this song (Back From Hell) needed some extra special kind of thing, and then we were thinking about it, and they are at the same management company, you know. I know Jonny also from a long time ago. He’s also streaming on Twitch, and I do that too. We watched each other’s stuff, and we were chatting a little bit, so we had a little bit of background somehow, and then we were asking, and he actually sent the tracks, like, two hours later. Around noon we talked to him, sent him the files at one, and at four I had them in my mixing session.

Iain: I think, like, with these feature guests in general, what you always wanna do is you wanna try and elevate the song. It was the same with Guilt Trip, with Lukas (Nicolai). Nahuel (Lozano), who plays guitar for Mental Cruelty, was also involved in various parts of writing this Back From Hell album, because he’s a bro, and they speak a lot, and do a lot of stuff.

Marc: Yeah, we were producing together, and he added some stuff to that song.

Iain: We keep joking about this goblin vocal, which is this whole (Makes various noise.) thing, and then it just so happened of course. He plays for a band called Mental Cruelty, and they’ve got this vocalist that can do this. So on a day in December when Lukas was on tour with Cradle Of Filth, they went around to the venue and recorded his vocals downstairs in the bus. And, you know, that’s actually a really funny story. Took an hour, and, “Here’s the stuff.”, right? Mixing session, same evening, done, you know? You can, of course, as a band always do your thing, but I think for Caliban it’s always been cool to just get a different sound of voice and pitch and color involved, and I think it suits the album perfectly. I’m really happy we did it.

And nowadays, when you don’t hire a studio for millions, of whatever currency, in which places do you record stuff? Home studios?

Marc: Yeah. I mean, I’m moving soon to an official studio. The room which I use as a studio is in my apartment, but soon not anymore. But yeah, we did it this way, and I also do other bands there, you know. Our recording, mixing process, and producing flow so much together. It’s not like you can finish writing, and then say, “Now we book a studio to record.”, because it all flows together, and it would cost hundreds or thousands if you would write down every day we are recording, mixing, and writing. So we did the vocals in a different studio, in Cologne, with a friend of ours. I took the tracks with me, and the rest we recorded in my studio.

Iain: There were a few things that were, like, changed around. So a demo would come from Marc, and then we’d bring it into the vocals booth, and end up chopping things around, making suggestions. I live in Berlin, right, so I’ve got my home studio, so I’ll throw down an idea there, “What do you think of that?”. We’re sending things back and forward. It’s all very digital, of course, these days, but at the end of the day the result speaks for itself, I feel. It’s all about good file management, you know. I mean, if I were in Marc’s position, I would go absolutely fucking crazy.

Marc: Next time we don’t use Google Drive. I have to make a statement here. I’m not using Google Drive anymore.

Iain: Yeah, Google Drive is fucking shit. Fuck Google Drive, man. It just fucks up your system. You know, if you’ve got your own account, or sharing accounts.

Marc: I just saw, like, a post from Christoph (Wieczorek) from Annisokay. He was also recording. He said to all bands, “Don’t send me your shit in Google Drive anymore.”. (Laughs) It was like an Instagram story. But yeah, we were sharing files, and then I had to somehow organize it again, because we had been working with different producers, and not just with one or something, you know. We co-produced many things, so I had files from all over the place, and put them in the system, and record them again, and make everything. It was very, very chaotic in a way. It worked out, but it was very annoying. But yeah, the mixing thing, and stuff like that, we do ourselves. I mean, the mastering I give out to a friend (Olman V. Wiebe) who’s, like, mastering all my mixes I do. You know, for all kinds of bands, and he’s always doing that. So this is how we do it, yeah.

Iain Duncan enjoying the moment at Kollektivet Livet in Stockholm on May 4th, 2025.

And what’s it like for you personally, Iain, to come in and record songs for an album when it’s the band’s 13th full-length album?

Iain: There’s a lot of history to respect. It’s a walk on thin ice, first of all, and you kind of need to claim your space. Not that I was trying to take any space away from anybody else, but you as an artist wanna put your footprint on something. I think, in the midst of it, it was always very exciting to try to bring everything up to a new level, and just try to improve everything. I didn’t have to say about the old stuff, “This isn’t good, that’s not good.”. It’s not about that. It’s about how can we put all these things that happened, that Caliban has created over the years, into one album without destroying what these things are, and kind of referencing the old material, and give it a new polish, and throw it together? So it was a challenge, but it was also an opportunity for me as a vocalist, obviously, because I’ve never recorded that many songs on an album in my life. I’ve never sang so much in the studio ever, you know. But it all came very naturally at the same time, so for me personally it’s a perfect match. So, happy about that one.

As I said, the 13th album, Marc. Could you ever imagine such a number when you started out 27 years ago with the first EP?

Marc: No, not really, no. It was like a fun-project in the beginning. It’s actually a school band, to be honest. I and Andy, and in the past other students from that school, formed a band, and later it outgrew the school kind of thing, and then members changed, and yeah, we never thought about doing even two or three albums. We just lived for the moment somehow. And actually, I still don’t think about these kinds of numbers. For many people, even for my wife, it’s not understandable that I’m not nostalgic somehow. I don’t cling to things. I don’t even have all our CDs. I just don’t. Because I have recorded them, they’re out there, I can listen to them, but I don’t need to have them. I know for many people it’s hard to understand. I don’t have that. I don’t have this kind of feeling. So that’s also the reason that I don’t think about, “Oh damn. 13 albums.”. I just make music as long as I like it, and if it’s 5, 15, 50 albums… This is not really occupying my mind somehow. It’s hard to understand; I get that, but I’m a little weird when it comes to that. But as you see, the last albums took a little bit longer to write and to make, because we didn’t wanna take any chances or something, you know. It was a bit more focused. And sometimes we have, like, turning point albums in our career. We did, like, two or three of those, and they always took a bit longer. You know, like three years, or three and a half, or something. I know many people hate me when I say that, but for example, albums like The Undying Darkness, I could release one of them each year. It’s to me very easy. It was very easy to write, and it came out very easy. Like, I think it came out a year and two months after The Opposite From Within. (Editor’s note: It was 17 months between the release dates.) And this came somehow naturally. But if I sit down and think, “We have to change something. I want to be more creative. Not just do what we usually do.”, then it takes longer, and that’s why this album, and also I Am Nemesis took longer.

Guitarist and main songwriter Marc Görtz live on stage in Stockholm, Sweden.

You were mentioning Caliban being a school band. Do you remember how you got into playing metalcore in the beginning?

Marc: I was a metalhead in school. I was pretty much an outsider. Pretty much like everyone else in this band was somehow, because metal at that time wasn’t really popular, at least not in my hometown and in my school. So we got laughed at because we were wearing Morbid Angel t-shirts and stuff like that. Any shit like that, you know. And in the very beginning we mostly just covered songs. We had, like, two or three songs, and the rest were Metallica, Machine Head, later on some very early Korn stuff. That is how we started, and then there came along this kind of school contest where we had this newcomer contest where only people from schools could participate, and we were like, “We might not be as good as the others, but we are louder than the others.”. And the whole audience was shocked, you know. Because the rest were, like, pop and grungy. You know, the heaviest other band sounded like Nirvana. That was the second heaviest band, you know. Of course it wasn’t as heavy as it is nowadays, but it was in the vein of, let’s say, older Metallica, but just not as technical, and not as fast maybe, but a bit more screamy. We actually won the audience prize. Not the jury prize. Yeah, they were completely shocked. But we won one of the two prizes, and then we continued from there. And we actually went back 10 or 12 or 13 years later. We got contacted by our old school, if we could play kind of a comeback show, like, “The big band touring the world coming from our school. Can you play here?”. So what we did was we played again on the newcomer fest, but as special guests. It was like the school kids did their thing, the newcomers, and while the jury was, like, judging the songs, we played. So in the break of an hour. I don’t wanna get into it; it was very chaotic. Because the show was just five or six or seven Euros, and we had like a really big following in this area at that time, especially, and it was overly, overly, overly, overly sold out. They didn’t expect it because this festival is never sold out. Because it’s in the school auditorium, and usually its capacity is about 800. They made some pre-sales, but usually they don’t really do much, because it’s, like, the parents, the school kids, and then 500 people or something. Yeah, and they didn’t check the pre-sales, and it was 1400, and that doesn’t even include the parents and the school kids, you know. It was very wild. The show was really chaotic, because our fans came there, and then when we finally played the place was packed to the roof. There was no security, because they didn’t know, and then there was stage diving, a wall of death, circle pits, and stuff like that. And the teachers were like, “Oh, my God. What did we get into?”. We got banned from the school. But it was funny somehow.

And how did you get into this heavy music in the first place, Iain?

Iain: By listening to Caliban. (Laughs) No, not really. I started when I was 13 or so. I’ve been playing guitar and piano for as long as I can remember. Mostly piano. But the most notable thing happened when I was, like, 13. Somebody gave me an Ozzy Osbourne CD. It was a bootleg, and it was Ozzy Osbourne stuff, and it was like, “Okay. Heavy metal, that’s my thing.”. Started playing with a band, then came Slipknot, then came Korn, nu-metal. Fast forward, three years later metalcore happened, Caliban, Killswitch (Engage), Heaven Shall Burn, God Forbid, Himsa, The Sorrow, Do Or Die. And that happened really quickly. Like, metalcore was everything and everywhere, and it felt like the scene I was in was really big, and every band I’d play with would be metalcore, clearly. Started with one band, then the other one, then the next, then the next, and now I’m here today. You know, I’ve always played metalcore, and it’s the genre that I feel at home in. That’s where I function, you know. Without getting too theoretical about it, if another metalcore band asked me to join, it would be the easiest thing to learn, because it’s just the genre that I’m at home with. Compared to if someone said, “Hi. Do you wanna join a death metal band?”, then I’d be like (Breathes out). Technically, yeah. I’d have to sit down and practice for nine months beforehand and probably move to Finland to get the vibe or something. But now it feels right at home. It’s right where I sit. So a perfect sweet spot for me.

Left to right: Iain Duncan, Patrick Grün, Andy Dörner, Marc Görtz, Denis Schmidt.

You guys both mentioned some early influences. Iain mentioned Ozzy, and Marc mentioned Morbid Angel. Those guys have long hair, so how come your generation does not have long hair, but is still playing heavy music?

Iain: Some people’s hair if it’s long doesn’t look good at some point. Let’s just put that out there. (Laughs)

Marc: I, Andy, and the rest of the members at the beginning, were very quickly transitioning from this traditional metal. When the band actually was becoming more serious, we were in this new-school hardcore. You know, not metal. We were not playing metal shows. We didn’t play with other real metal bands, especially in the old days. That was really like, you know, “Metal hates hardcore.”, and the other way around, and stuff like that. I don’t know if you’re familiar with bands like Earth Crisis and Snapcase, but those were the bands we were playing with and looking up to. All these kinds of bands which had a little bit of metal in their music. So this is actually where we are coming from, you know. So it was a bit of a different scene. Even though I still listen to metal stuff, like straight up metal stuff, I was more influenced by these kinds of things, you know. That’s probably why we didn’t have that kind of hair. But I mean, actually when I was 12 to 16, and I was going to death metal shows, I had long hair. Like, somehow long hair, you know. My very first concert was Asphyx, Benediction, Bolt Thrower, in Essen, when I wasn’t even living in Essen. I was telling my mom, “I’ll sleep at a friend’s house.”, and the friend said the same thing. We actually took the train to Essen. It’s like half an hour on a train, and then after the show I remember there was no train, and we walked home, like, for four hours in the middle of the night. If our parents would have known that, like, 12 or 13-year-olds walked, like, four and a half hours in the middle of the night back to the home city, they would probably have been pretty mad. But yeah, at that time, I, and also my friend, had long hair, at least to the shoulders.

Iain: I keep thinking, “Should I do it once more in life?”. But I don’t know. I’m just not a long hair guy. It makes me look like someone from Hanson or something. I can’t get it to sit right, so it doesn’t suit me.

Marc: I would say it’s a hassle. If I see my wife always dealing with her hair, and what she needs to do, and whatnot, and then, “I can’t go out. My hair isn’t dry, and it takes another hour.”, and I say, “Oh, fuck that.”.

I took a peek at your setlist from the other day, and looked up what songs you’re playing on this tour. From the new album, including the intro Resurgence, there were six songs on that list, and those were the first six songs, and none of the last seven songs on the album. Does that mean that the first half of the new album is much better than the second half?

Marc: That’s straight up a coincidence. We all have different opinions on which are the best songs. For example, my favorite song is even number 10 or something, you know. It just happened to be that we chose those songs because those were the ones which got released up front as singles. The album dropped right at the tour start, and we didn’t want the songs for half of the set to be completely unknown to people. I mean, one of them, Insomnia, is new to people, but all the others were singles. So we wanted people to have something to listen to upfront, and not that half of the setlist is completely new to them, you know. That it got to the point in this kind of order is really a coincidence, because the second single, Echoes, is the last track on the album, because it has this kind of ending. It was a good ending track. And the intro is written towards the opening track, Guilt Trip. It was just fitting somehow. It’s a real coincidence.

Another question about the setlist. You’re not playing any songs from the first three albums or the early EPs. Are these albums not the same to you anymore? The Beloved And The Hatred from The Opposite From Within is the oldest song in the set.

Marc: Even with this one, The Beloved And The Hatred, it gets tough, because our audience is not as old, I think. If you choose the album from ’97, that is so long ago that most of the people on our shows weren’t even born. If you find that sad or something, I don’t know. But many years ago we did a medley of very, very old tracks, and the people were staring at us and, “What is that stuff?”. I mean, of course, if you go through the history of the band, from album to album, you see the progress, and you can see it’s the same band. But if you jump from the first album to the last, it sounds of course like a completely different band, you know. So the band was very different on the first couple of albums. Especially, if you get to know us with the last four or five albums, and then you listen to the very first, it’s like, “What is that?”. We had that, we tried that, and it was real, because there are so many people that scream for that old-school stuff, and then from a thousand people like 20 were going nuts and 980 were like, “Huh? What is that?”. We might do, we might do… This is maybe a little spoiler. We got an offer from some friends of mine from the past. They always do kind of like old-school revival shows in my hometown, and they always get bands which have been existing for a very, very long time to play an old-school set. A straight up old-school set. You don’t play any new stuff, you know. It’s like you play 10 songs from the first albums. And this is quite successful, but the audience is also very different. The promotion is very different, because it goes to some message boards where, like, the old-school fans are, and stuff like that. I can see us doing that, because I know that people who come there just come specifically for that. It’s not that many. It’s a smaller show, like 500 or something, which for our home area is kind of small. So these people will be into it, you know. But if you would just randomly play the song Assassin Of Love live now, it’s like, “What?”. People will not understand that, I think.

Iain: What we’ve realized now with the way our show is set up right now is that The Beloved And The Hatred is absolutely the furthest possible that we can go back right sonically and still sound like the same band on the stage. Like, I know some of the old stuff as well, and it is doable, but…

Marc: Shadow Hearts might be. There’s one or two songs which might be possible, but before that, it’s just not possible.

Iain: Yeah, there’s maybe one or two things on Shadow Hearts that’s doable. So, The Beloved And The Hatred is the best step further back. I Will Never Let You Down off The Awakening is great. It’s just nice to get these songs involved to be able to present the evolution of where this band has been, you know.

Marc: That’s much further back than we usually go, because usually we just skip everything before I Am Nemesis, you know. Because that was kind of a little bit of a turning point in the band. So we usually skip everything before that. So on this tour we implement stuff like we just do on this tour, you know.

By Tobbe – Published May 13th, 2025

Metal Covenant was given some time in Uppsala, Sweden with vocalist Mike Tramp, who is out celebrating the old classics with his latest outfit Mike Tramp’s White Lion.

The last time you and I talked, you told me that the door to playing White Lion songs was closed. So things change pretty quickly, right?

Yeah, you know, you have a plan, and then you change it. And listen, it’s much easier to be honest about it, because there are multiple times in a day where I say, “When I broke up the band in ‘91, it was because I was done with it.”. It wasn’t for any other reason, you know. I mean, it just felt like it wasn’t in my heart anymore. And the couple of times that I’ve sort of been called back in, I’ve gotten into it for the wrong reasons. You know, the first time was when I was doing a promotional tour in Europe for my third solo album More To Life Than This. And then this record company guy and a promoter say, “Oh, man. If you put a new version of White Lion together, you could be playing festivals and stuff like that.”. Not that I would put White Lion back together, because they already knew it was not gonna happen. And I’m sitting there, “Well, you know, I got my Telecaster, I got my acoustic guitar, but I’m on this path now. I’ve ended Freak Of Nature. You know, this is it.”. And then, bit by bit, you sort of get talked into it. And then the band that I put together is just for the completely wrong reasons. It’s not the right thing. And I feel that the second I start playing with the band… They’re all my friends, but it doesn’t feel like it. I’m partly also to blame because I wanted to change the sound, and then what’s the point of doing a new version of White Lion if you’re not gonna sort of play almost as close to the original as possible? So that eventually ended in the beginning of 2009. I had recorded Return Of The Pride. Which is another sign, you know. Those were songs that I already was working on as a songwriter for the next solo album and things like that, and they were not written towards that. And then Claus, the bass player, and I started working on these songs, and saying, “Okay, well, listen. We’re gonna make it into a White Lion album.”, and already there you go, “But that’s not what it’s about.”. I love the album, and I’m gonna remix the album, and it’s gonna be released as a Mike Tramp ‘whatever title’ album, because it cannot be released as a White Lion album. And it also has nothing to do with White Lion. So you go out and do that, and then there’s just one sign after another. It’s like one of those houses where it says, “Do not go in there.”. Then you open the door, and then there’s another door saying, “Do not go in there.”. And every time I did it, it broke my heart. I wasn’t mentally ready for it. Then came Band Of Brothers, and I started doing solo albums, and playing around, and so on and so on like that. And then one promoter says, “If you guys are gonna be playing Broken Heart, can you film a video in the rehearsal room?”, and instantly they take that video and they promote the band sort of like that. Broken Heart was just sort of like a tribute, and it was played Tom Petty / Springsteen style. You know, as an interpretation of the song. Not as a new version of White Lion. And in every place that I’ve toured in America, “The voice of White Lion. The singer of White Lion.”. I mean, I can’t escape it. So Marcus and I had done a tour, a duo tour together, where we were playing a couple of the White Lion songs and things like that. And he started playing them almost note for note, and I started saying, “Okay. It’s a different feeling when somebody plays them note for note.”, and at that time I said, “Listen. I’m 62 years old. I can’t sound like I’m 28. It’s simply just impossible. Can you move those songs to another key, but keep the original version?”, which to most people would say, “No, forget it. Fuck it.”. But he spent a whole year doing that. And when we released the first Songs Of White Lion, I also thought it was just gonna be one album. Then we started touring, and then I said, “Well, we might as well do number two.”, ‘cause now we’re already playing half of the songs in the set, and they were already brought down in a different key. And then, of course, once we started doing Volume 2, we said, “You know what? We’re gonna do Volume 3 and close it.”. So now we just finished Volume 3, and it’ll be out in September. It’s sort of like, you know, a refurbished version of how White Lion would have sounded today, because if the band had continued, we would have had to do this naturally. Also, in having all the knowledge of the past, and more today, you’re more calm. Now it’s the music, and it’s a tribute to the songs, and you’re playing the songs with respect. You’re not out there, you know, doing all the other stuff we had to do in the ‘80s. So I actually walk off stage saying, “I’m enjoying this.”. I’m enjoying that I actually in reality can go out with a better feeling than when I broke up the band.

Current lineup of Mike Tramp’s White Lion. Left to right: Kenni Andy (drums), Mike Tramp (vocals), Marcus Nand (guitars), Claus Langeskov (bass).

Ever since you put Freak Of Nature to rest, I’ve seen you live as White Lion, I’ve seen you live as Mike Tramp solo, I’ve seen you live as Mike Tramp – Songs Of White Lion, and tonight you’re playing as Mike Tramp’s White Lion, and then also Band Of Brothers. Are you always looking for some kind of change in music as well?

Yeah, but like I started saying: if I had a strong enough record company, if I had a strong enough manager who believed in me, then White Lion would never have come up, and just, “No, no. You can’t go back. You’ve been there.”. And I already have a new solo album ready in my studio and stuff like that. But to answer your question, not really. It’s not my wish. The answer really is no. I’m the kind of guy that sort of, you know, especially later in my life, has stuck to, like, one look, one wardrobe, one image, that I am the same person in everything. It’s sort of just like, you know, “Today it’s raining so I have to put the raincoat on.”, and so you have to change all these different things. But I am playing my songs. So if I have to defend it in any way, at least I’m playing my songs. I’m not one day in Megadeth, and then the next day in Testament, and stuff like that. I am doing what I started. I started White Lion. I’m the founder of White Lion, founder of Freak Of Nature, and of course, I’m Mike Tramp, the solo artist. So it’s just one of those things. And it’s not always a pleasure. A lot of artists: like for example, I grew up with Bowie. You know, I love Bowie. He just had to change in every album. He’s an artist. He can’t paint the same picture. When it comes to my solo albums, I’m a little bit more AC/DC because I write the songs sort of similar, and the songs are sort of the soundtrack of my own life. It’s a story of my life. Everything is a chapter. And I’m not gonna reinvent the wheel. It’s just the way it is.

As you said, a third Songs Of White Lion album is coming out in September. It could also be a fourth album, but then you’ll have to pick the eight to ten last songs.

I can tell you: if there’s a fourth album under Mike Tramp’s White Lion, it’ll be a live album. We decided that.

Personally, I would pick a lot of songs from the first album. But do you think that the first album to you is a little bit immature nowadays?

Well, why don’t you wait for Volume 3? (Laughs) Then you’ll see what songs we’ve brought along from the first. See, this is one of the things. What I know now, having just recorded Volume 3, if I felt like that when we recorded Volume 1, Volume 1 would not have been a sort of Greatest Hits. It would have been a much more mixed collection. But it has worked itself up. You know, I have always said that Pride is the White Lion album, because that is when we were a band. We played the songs for almost a year and a half live, so we knew the songs so well. We actually recorded the Pride album one time earlier, and canceled it, and re-recorded it. When we went to record Fight To Survive in 1984, we were four guys, and we weren’t even a band. Vito (Bratta) and I were of course, but the bass player (Felix Robinson) and the drummer (Nicky Capozzi)… We had never become a band. We’d never even had a live show. And I think actually on Volume 3, where we are bringing four or five songs from Fight To Survive in, I think we’ve almost made them more White Lion than they were on that album. But that’s only with time.

In a couple of months, I will hear the result. But the reason I mentioned the first album is because it was the first White Lion album I heard, and it has that youthful, playful sound over it.

For me, going back 41 years, and when we were sitting and rearranging the songs a little, and listening to the original version, I’m like, “God. This is like the moon landing. It’s that far away.”. But of course I remember. I remember us in the studio. I remember us traveling. Four guys alone in a studio in Frankfurt, Germany.

You mentioned playing the songs pretty close to their originality. But you have done it in different ways before where you have changed a lot. (Mike laughs) What is the hardest part with keeping the integrity and the originality of the songs?

I’ve learned to control a little bit more, but I think what happens is you get tired of doing it in the same groove. I know from a lot of my solo albums, which I’ve never played live before I go in and record them, that the second I start playing them live, I become much more loose with the vocals. Two of my favorite singers are Bruce Springsteen and Phil Lynott, and they just have a phenomenal tendency of being able to move away from the beat and the groove, but still be there, and that’s called freedom. It becomes really knowing your songs, and I don’t get that before I start playing the songs live. So now with the White Lion songs, I know these songs in my sleep, I have a lot of freedom to sing them off the groove and more emotional. I think a little bit more about what I’m singing, instead of just reading the lyrics like I did when I recorded it. There are a lot of other artists out there that are in their mid to late 60s to early 70s, and I think it’s important for an artist to show growth even though they’re playing Stairway To Heaven, or even though they’re playing Run To The Hills. It doesn’t have to be a jukebox. You can show a few little things here and there. There’s a few singers that for some very godly reason are almost still able to sing the songs the same way. Great for them. But I don’t sound like I did on Fight To Survive, and I’ve grown, so I also don’t look like I did on Fight To Survive, and I also don’t talk and say what I did in 1984. So I think it needs to go together. And the fans also don’t look the same. (Laughs)

About changing the songs. I was thinking about Broken Heart from the first album, and then you redid that song about six years later on Mane Attraction.

Vito and I were really against doing that. We really did not feel that on our fourth album we needed to redo one of our own songs. We had plenty of great songs. And we weren’t missing a track. So there were several versions already in the pre-production of that album. Vito and I were rewriting the song really much, and the producer didn’t like that. He just wanted to redo the song.

And then you have played that song in kind of different melodies live as well. Some people like it, some people don’t. What would you like to say to calm people down a little bit?

Go see Bob Dylan. You can’t change how people interpret things. If you now were coming here tonight and I was down in the jazz club with the acoustic guitar, well then obviously I’m not gonna perform Lights And Thunder. That requires a lot of band changes. A lot of the White Lion songs, when I started writing them on acoustic guitar, they sound like the way I play them acoustically, and then we turned them into the band version. So I really wouldn’t know what to tell them. I’d say, “It’s your choice. I’m gonna play it my way.”.

Are questions about Vito coming back ever gonna end?

I don’t think Vito will come out of his house. You know, the thing that irritates me most is that Vito doesn’t talk to his fans. It’s always me who has to say something. I know the truth, but I’ve also said, “It’s not for me to tell the truth.”. I can tell the world, one way or another, “There is no way he will ever do anything in music.”.

But do festivals and promoters still bug you about that? Like, “Try to bring back the original guys.”.

Well, I’ve always started saying, “Show me the money. Show me the money, I’ll go knock on his door. But you’ve got to show me the money first.”.

Well, we’ve all got to survive, right? Earn a living. But still, how many bands have kept all their original members for years and years and years?

How many football teams? You have an English football team and there’s not one English player on, you know. It’s all just commercial. No, there’s not that many bands who have kept the original players. You know, it’s fair when somebody dies, like in the Rolling Stones. You know what? I take things very seriously. And then I just realized most of the business is not serious about it. They’re in it for the money, and any trick goes. So it’s just the way it is.

Of course, Vito is a great guitar player, and he wrote great songs together with you, but it’s always talk about him. Why doesn’t anyone ever mention other guys like Greg (D’Angelo) or James (LoMenzo)?

Yeah, exactly. And James is happy in Megadeth, James has played with Ozzy, James has played with Fogerty. James is my great friend. But I don’t know. Because in reality, and we have talked about that as a band too as the four of us on the Pride album, especially on the Pride album, we had a sound. And the Beatles had a sound. If somebody said, “If the Beatles had had a John Bonham on drums…”, and you go, “No, no. That’s not how music works.”. Everybody has a little bit of a part, even if they’re not the songwriters, in creating that sound. But we only realize that when it’s too late. It’s also, “Oh, we’ve got a better drummer now.”, and, “Well, did you need a better drummer?”. We were not prepared for the success. We were not prepared for the business. You use so much energy getting that first album together, and fighting your way through it, and everything. You know, we have all the answers today.

But isn’t it fantastic that you can sit here 40 years later and talk about a record you did in your youth? Who gets to do that?

I know, yeah. And sometimes remind yourself that you got a chance to do that. And you got a chance to tour with AC/DC, you got a chance to tour with Aerosmith. I became good friends with Steven Tyler, with Ozzy, et cetera, et cetera. It wasn’t supposed to last forever. You just want it to last forever. Because it’s the best job there is. (Laughs)

And a lot of the fans, for good or bad, think it’s always a great camaraderie in the band.

Impossible. It’s a human nature. It’s just like a marriage. There’s nothing that comes closer to a marriage than being in a band. Something happens. It’s very interesting that music can make you wanna kill someone. The guy you wrote the songs with.

I wanna talk a little bit about your solo career. Your two previous albums were sung in Danish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that time came too. And, you know, interesting enough, doing the first Songs Of White Lion album made me really feel like there are walls that separate Mike Tramp solo and White Lion, and then there was suddenly space for that. One of my best friends (Lars Daneskov), who also wrote my biography (The Vagabond), one day sent me a text during Covid, and I looked at the lyrics, and I go, “I wrote those lyrics.”. And then I realized, “No, I didn’t write those lyrics.”, but it was my story, it was my life I was singing. You know, I’ve never written… Well, that’s not true. Only two songs, and that was in Freak Of Nature, have I written music to lyrics. I always write my lyrics last. Suddenly I had the lyrics, which makes you have restrictions. So I said, “Okay. This is a whole different world. This cannot be the Danish version of Mike Tramp solo.”. So I started writing with the piano, and a couple of hours later, I had this song, and I was in tears, because I had never heard myself sing those words, and that sound. And then I sent it to him, and he wrote back, and he says, “Are you also crying?”, and I said, “Fuck yeah.”. And then the following week, another lyric came, and then I did the song for that, and sent the demo back, and then he wrote back, “Are we starting what I think we are? An album.”. I said, “Fuck yeah.”. It just felt like going on vacation. Away from everything. There were no guitars. Everything was written on piano. Everything was just completely different. I said, “This album is a story of Mike Tramp’s youth in Copenhagen in Denmark in the ‘60s and ‘70s.”. My mom, single, working in a bar. Everything, the streets, the small shops, my friends, the church, everything. I said, “It needs to remain there.”.

Will you ever go down that road again and continue that path?

Yeah. And then of course, when we knew I was gonna tour on it, I wrote some more songs for the set. So I wrote four more songs, and then I go, “Okay, well, now we’re halfway through album number two.”. So we did number two.

And number three?

You know, I’ve already done the first song to number three. The question is just: I’m about to move back to America, and when the fuck am I going to…? Because, you know, these days recording an album is more about going out and playing the album. There’s no record stores left. I sell all my albums on tour. So it has to coincide with that. So we’ll see. At least a third Mike Tramp Danish album doesn’t have to include long hair and leather. I could be 70 years old, and the songs would fit.

Are you moving to some place warm or some place cold?

It’s gonna be New York, where I started in ‘82. I don’t have a choice. That’s where the woman I fell in love with lives.

Well, you’ve been there before. For how long time did you stay in the US the first time?

20 years, and then I went to Australia, and then to Indonesia, and then back to Denmark. I have a big farm there. And now it’s almost like it starts over again. But this time I’ll stay in one place. But my wife and I have talked about it: if we move, it’s gonna be a warm place, all year. But I mean, I do love being in the studio and working, and having the fire going. I have a big studio, and I have a fire going, and stuff like that. You know, the feeling of winter. I just don’t wanna fucking sit in a cold dressing room.

You still put out records frequently. Does the flow of writing music ever stop coming to you?

Well, I’m not the kind of songwriter that constantly needs to write. I take a long break from writing. I like to write when I’m doing an album. So once I start writing, and I feel that I’m clean, I have ideas, then I will write towards an album. You know, when Vito and I wrote an album, we only wrote the album. We didn’t write 20 songs and picked the best. We felt we were writing a book chapter by chapter by chapter by chapter. And that’s just the way it is. You know, the rest of this year is White Lion, and I’m just about to get married in the US. We have the house there, and I’m already building a studio there, and I’ve already started getting the next thing together. We’ve got a lot of White Lion shows in the US, but I’ve also got some solo shows, which is also me seeing, “If I still have to play music at 75 years old, well, I’m gonna be Johnny Cash.”. I’m not gonna be out there doing Lights And Thunder and Lady Of The Valley. So I’m designing that, so that I can perform those kinds of songs. And so I think even the solo albums will go more towards that, and follow my age, and follow my voice, so it fits together. You know, I made this sort of joke, but it’s sort of the right thing: “You know, if you go back to the first Indiana Jones movie, and then almost 30 years later, guess what? There’s a new Indiana Jones.”. You don’t want him to be the same Indiana Jones as in the first. Now he’s an old Indiana Jones. He’s not gonna jump as far. He’s gonna fall. So they have to create the story. I mean, they just keep changing James Bond. James Bond never gets old. They just get a new one, just like they change the football players. We get a new Zlatan, we get a new Ronaldo, we get a new Messi. The team never gets old. But Rockstars get old. And we don’t have substitutes.

When you are in the early stages of writing a new album, do you have a vision about what the album is gonna sound like when it’s finished?

No. Because when I wrote Capricorn… The whole point after Freak Of Nature… Actually there’s a couple of songs on Capricorn that I had written in White Lion time. And Vito even played on it. We had a very short time where we were not really talking that well. And I brought that song down and he was trying to sabotage it. So when I recorded Capricorn, I just wanted to sound how Mike Tramp sounds when he writes songs for himself. So I never had any other vision. Except that in reality, I can only be me. I mean, I couldn’t go in and be a singer in somebody else’s band, because I’m good at being me. I’ve never played any cover songs. Well, Radar Love is the only one. There’s a lot of people that are really good at just singing a lot of people’s songs, but Mike Tramp’s strength is being Mike Tramp. That’s the role he plays.

Okay, Mike. You’re playing the Skogsröjet festival in August. Maybe we can talk about the third Songs Of White Lion album then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. August 2nd. Skogsröjet. I’ve played that twice before. No, three times I’ve played that. Two times acoustic and one time with Band Of Brothers. (Editor’s note: It’s probably two times. No history about a Band Of Brothers show at the Skogsröjet festival is to be found.) Now they’re getting the lights and thunder.

Yeah, I watched your soundcheck. That song (Lights And Thunder) sounded fabulous.

But you know what? I enjoy playing that song much better now. You know, a lot of times I think that both Vito and I were maybe a little ahead of our time, because with Mane Attraction, we already wanted to go Journey, Kansas. We wanted to have a major keyboard player come in, that was going to be part of taking us away from, like, a Van Halen clone. Things like that. That’s where we were going. Not to compare, but you know, where Europe had been. You know, playing homage to Deep Purple, and early Whitesnake, and, like I said, Journey, and the big bands where the keyboard is a really big part of the songwriting. So we almost moved quicker than our fans could follow. And like we were talking about early on: when you get tired of playing your songs, “No, no. We wanna do something different on the new album.”. That worked for Led Zeppelin, but it was not allowed for an ‘80s band. An ‘80s band has to sound the same on every album. You know, you couldn’t change your hair. It’s very strange. The ‘60s and ‘70s were inventing, developing, trying new things, and stuff like that. Queen, one of my favorite bands, they don’t have two of the same songs. They go from there to there to there. Have you seen the Becoming Led Zeppelin documentary?

No, I haven’t.

Okay. But, for example, the manager says, “No record company can come to the studio.”. The band was in the studio to do music. They didn’t think about radio singles. They wanted to create their art. When we went into the studio with White Lion, it’s all everybody thought about, “We got to get a single for MTV, we got to get one for the radio, we got to have a ballad.”. You can’t be in the studio like that. So, at least, going in and recording Volume 3, it was like, “There’s no rules. It doesn’t matter anymore.”. There’s some nice, interesting versions of the songs on that album. I’m really proud of it. Really proud. You got the heavy songs. Also, me now singing them down there makes it feel more together.

By Tobbe – Published May 5th, 2025