May 2016
by Evan South
Originally published by side-line.com
The new album “The Undoing” is already technically 2
years old. What was the reason for the
delay? Were you trying to do a
self-release and it fell apart?
Skold: Yeah, that’s what I did. I listened to some people that had some
advice, and as we pursued those avenues I came to realize that it was not the
way I wanted to go, and many moons later I am very fortunate and happy to be
back with Metropolis. The 2 year thing,
and I understand that, especially to young people, seems like a very long time,
and it can be. I made records for a few
different scenarios and setups, and working with major labels, there is no way
you deliver a record and it’s going to come out within 6 or 9 months, that’s a
minimum setup time for any of those labels.
So it’s not unusual at all for them to take a year, or a year and a
half, maybe 2 years, it’s not really that strange. Today, with the internet, it seems bizarre,
but it’s kind of cool, too. At some
point I decided this record was done and I’ve been hanging on to that ever
since. It would have been really easy to
start poking around, do little tweaks.
As time goes along you hear things differently and you figure out
different ways to do things but I swore a sacred oath to myself not to do so. The problem with the rabbit hole, once you
start doing that, it will never be done again, and you have a Chinese Democracy
scenario. I’m kind of proud of that.
You were disciplined enough to not touch the
record and leave it alone for the most part?
Skold: Disciplined or pig-headed? There’s a fine line. I was doing other music and working on other
things, Motionless in White being one of those things. To me, the piece, it’s like a painting, it’s
dried, it’s cured, why should I mess with it?
I went back with an inner dialogue debating this a few times, but I
decided just to stick to it.
In that time frame, were you able to start on
another album?
Skold: No. I
was able to work on other music and in other concepts and different formats. I’ve been more or less writing, but I haven’t
started work on a follow up or sequel.
This record feels very pivotal for me on a personal level, whether this
is something I should really be doing.
It sounds funny, but I’m pretty serious.
I’m not necessarily a youngster.
I’ve done it a few times, the weird part about it is it’s still magic to
me, it’s still really cool, I really like making and working with music. I understand that’s just fantastic, it’s a
blessing! It’s all of those; I don’t even
have words for it. To still be able to
do that, and I think that’s because I try to treat the whole process with the
respect to make it special and keep it special and not go down certain roads
that are quick and easy and streamlined and sold or presented to you. I try to avoid all that stuff and go my own
little side path down the maze.
All of a sudden with this album you have a
tour. How did you come to the conclusion
that not only were you going to put this album out but you were going to tour with
this?
Skold: I started toying with the idea, and thinking
that this actually could translate... I even did so previously with the Anomie
album in 2010, thinking that the music I make should work in a live
setting. The music I make as Skold
should work, at least theoretically in a live setting, and I’ve messed around,
I’ve been with people in rehearsal rooms trying out things, and when it really
came together was with Tiffany Lowe and Eli James. And we said “We’re going to have to do this!” Do I, at my age, a man of my stature… I’m not
here to compete with 21 year olds, I can’t do that, I’m not going to pretend that
I can either, I do something else, and I
have a bunch of catalog that I hope a bunch of people might want to hear
presented again and in a different way but still true to the originals. I have a curious little set I hope people
will get off on and I have fun playing the music, and that’s what it comes down
to at the end of the whole debate and analytic dissection of the proposal… It
is fun to play music!
You mentioned wanting to tour for Anomie, but
you did not actually tour for that album, correct?
Skold: Correct.
I had read a lot of interviews around that time
that you were really excited to tour.
Was it just not the right time, the right album, the right lineup?
Skold: Yeah, not the right people.
That’s a big reason.
Skold: And I know I take ridiculous liberties with
these things. I’m in a luxurious
position when I can do that. I mean who
the fuck can entertain the notion of sitting on a record for two years? So I’m going to do that. It’s not a guilt thing, I owe that to having
been given that success, I kind of owe it to the art itself, to treat it with
that respect. That it was enough to turn
my back on it, and sell-out, so to speak.
How did you come to work with Tiffany Lowe
(keyboards) and Eli James (drums)?
Skold: I knew Tiffany socially for some time, we
were introduced by mutual friends, and we started talking about it. She provided a lot of fuel for that fire,
spurring me on and bringing an enthusiasm.
Together we started looking for drummers, and I think she came up with
Eli. She told me to check him out. We talked to a few different drummers, then
we talked to Eli, and then we stopped talking to other drummers. I make it sound like it’s all complicated and
convoluted, and some of it is, at the same time it’s really not. I’m fairly pure when it comes to that stuff. Some people you want to work with and some
people you don’t.
How did you determine the band was going to be
3 people, and not your typical 4 or 5?
Skold: I really like to play guitar, and I really
like to try to sing… I have a hard time calling myself a singer. I’ve worked
with Peter Murphy, what gives me the fucking right to say I’m a singer? I wanted to see if I could do that, if I
could play and sing at the same time.
And going back to the competing with the 21 year olds, doing things in a
different way, what do I have to offer in this big picture? What could I possibly be bringing to the
table? And maybe that is some of the
chops that you’ve earned over a longer period of time… It also makes the song sound
a little different then if you sit down and just play the guitar take, and get
that done, and then you stand over there and record the vocal, sometimes it’s a
little disconnected, sometimes the disconnection is a really good thing, but
sometimes it’s rad to have it feel like it’s connected. There are some fantastic people that have
done that stuff very, very well in the past.
Jimi Hendrix hated singing, but can you fathom Jimi recording without
singing? Sometimes things make sense
even though you can’t justify them on a technical level. So that’s my excuse, Jimi fuckin’ Hendrix!
You talk about competing with 21 year olds, but
flipping that around; Don’t 21 year olds think the same thing? “How are we going to compete with Tim Skold? Look at his credentials!”
Skold: I didn’t say it was a fair fight! If you show up to a fair fight you didn’t
bring enough shit!
Continuing with the tour and you singing and playing,
how is it different when you are at the forefront of the attention compared to
when you’re part of a group?
Skold: I’m not sure how to answer that. I think I just focus on the task at hand, so
to speak. That dimension of it kind of
fades away and becomes non-important.
When I’m playing a song, I’m not really thinking about how that person
over there is interpreting the song; I’m just playing the song. I don’t have time to take it to that level of
analysis. My approach stays the same; I
try to do it as well as I can. And I
dedicate myself fiercely.
Something you mentioned before our interview,
and I have to follow up on this because you brought it up, what was this
incident with you and Sascha (KMFDM) being escorted out of the TVT building?
Skold: It was just vicarious; Sascha’s had some
issues with that record company over time.
By now, me and Sascha had been working for some time and we were in New
York and we went down to TVT and within mere minutes of our meeting escorted
(out), friendly but briskly, by security.
You know you’re leaving and your feet aren’t touching the ground
anymore? No, it really wasn’t that much
of an altercation. It was peculiar. It wasn’t about anything besides the beef
between Sascha and Gottlieb. I was
really just the third wheel.
Back to the current album “The Undoing”, are
there any plans for any singles, EP’s or remixes?
Skold: We haven’t talked about anything. I said that I should tour for this, and they
said “Fuck yeah, do that!” and that’s really all I’ve been concerned with for
now. I haven’t thought much about it,
really. We’re leaning in hard trying to
put a cool set together and there’s a plethora of material, but there’s also
songs I don’t think I do well, and I’ve been trying to give a lot of material a
fair shake, but you come to a point where you decide that this not a song we’re
going to play and you have to nix it, and then you look at what else should we
play, so that process becomes arduous.
What do people have to look forward to on this
tour as far as your set list? Any
surprises?
Skold: I think a lot of people who are going to show
up, hopefully, to see this are somewhat familiar with my catalog, so I don’t
know if they will be all that surprised.
But maybe some of that stuff will still be surprising; it’s surprising
to me actually! It might be
surprising. It’s weird, there’s songs I
wanted to play and I thought should translate well, but when we were playing
them, we don’t do them the way I wanted to do them. Then there were songs I tried almost like a
joke, “let’s try this and see what happens” and it came across quite well, so
we pursued those.
Going back again, with your KMFDM vs. Skold
album, I found it interesting with the notable absence of guitars. Your thoughts on that?
Skold: It was very much a conscious decision, up front,
and it was part of the agreement of making the record, and it was my request
that we don’t put any guitars on it, make it purely, strictly an electronic
record. I think at least in part was I
came fairly recently off of a guitar playing gig. So I was… I don’t know if I was overplaying
guitar, I was very enthusiastic about working on all electronic. Its super cool to be able play both sides of
the fence, and to be able go back and forth.
And it goes in cycles, I’ll be really into guitar stuff for a while, and
then 6 months later I’m all into electronics. I don’t think about it, I just let it
happen. And Sascha was willing to do
that. However, there is guitar on that
record. There’s some sneaky guitar on
“Alkohol” I think.
There were a couple tracks where you hear
something and you think you’re crazy, “That could be guitar, but…”
Skold: It is.
I grew up on the new wave of British heavy metal, to a large
extent. I think it was Iron Maiden had a
disclaimer on their records that said “Absolutely no synthesizers were used in
the recording of this album.” And it
came from back in the day; there’d be a bit of a pop-synth vs metal and guitar
scenarios, so you couldn’t be into both. And as a youth I was fairly one sided,
and there was a lot of music I missed out on that I’ve been lucky enough to
experience later on in life, but if you would told a 16 year old me that Human
League had cool songs I would have slapped you silly! Your ears aren’t necessarily ready for
everything all the time, so there’s a time and a place for everything, and at that
point I wanted to make a record that was purely electronic and Sascha was
willing to go down that road.
Did that allow you guys to experiment since you
knew you were doing 100% electronic?
Skold: Yes.
But it’s also a bit of a challenge.
I’m not giving away any secrets here, but a lot of industrial bands use
guitars as a fall back safety net type of thing that saves the day and it’s
fairly generic in its approach. That
doesn’t make it bad, but it also makes it something that sometimes you should
try to avoid, those standardized pitfalls. Try to do something a little
different!
Shifting back again, do you own the rights to
the Shotgun Messiah catalog?
Skold: Nope.
I have inquired about “acquiring” said catalog, which seems like an
incredibly daunting task. So unless you
know someone who knows someone, and I’m talking about lawyers, than you’re
pretty much shit out of luck.
Damn!
Skold: It’s just buried
so deep into the catalog vault that it isn’t worth anything by itself, it’s
worth something packaged with hundreds and thousands of other recordings.
I think there would still be a demand for that
third Shotgun Messiah album “Violent New Breed” if it was remastered,
reissued. To this day it’s still ahead
of its time, very influential!
Skold: To pull that catalog from the deep, deep
vaults of the people that own that seems just incredibly impossible.
That’s unfortunate.
Skold: Yes and no. As much as I appreciate what we might have
done, and what that led to back in the day… Sometimes people like to show me
old pictures and expect me to cringe, and to some extent I do, but one thing
led to another, and if it wasn’t for some of those photos I wouldn’t be here
right now today, I wouldn’t be able to have done a lot of the things I’ve
done. All that shit goes hand in hand
and you can’t really pick and choose that.
If you’re not making a few mistakes every now and then you’re not really
pushing any boundaries or envelopes or trying to do anything different, you’re
just playing it safe and that’s fucking boring!
What is it about Sweden that they consistently
put out some of the most incredible music?
Skold: I think ABBA broke the dam! And from that it just inflated the ego and
self-esteem of the average Swedish musician and for some reason there were 8
million people who thought they could do no wrong and they just went full on
with no holds barred and they did some really cool shit! Now, they’ve done some really fucking awful
shit too, it’s just in the mind of the Swede.
Because you have that mental situation, it puts you in a different seat
where you might go further and try a little harder.
The ABBA effect. Is there something in the water?
Skold: It’s an old Viking curse… I don’t know!
Another recent project, Doctor Midnight & the
Mercy Cult was a very straightforward rock/metal project…
Skold: Yeah, it’s funny, that record got a couple
reviews that said it had an industrial sound to it, and I thought “What fucking
record are you listening to?” I think
it’s just my name on there made people listen to it a certain way, and I might
have been to some extent a blessing and a curse for that band because I
provided a curious angle and a nice fuel for those Norwegian guys to do music
in another realm. It’s metal, but it’s
metal with a very melodic singer and a really unique approach, it was an
interesting super fun project to make, and people didn’t get into it at
all. On a personal level as a musician,
producer, writer, any of those things, I even did the artwork. To me that all makes perfect sense, and I’m
still super proud of what I did.
I had to give props to the guitarist from
Doctor Midnight & the Mercy Cult, Anders Odden (Apoptygma Berzerk, Magenta)!
Skold: Yeah!
I’ve been listening to him for a long time with
his Magenta project, which I think is a severely underrated project.
Skold: She (Vilde) has a great voice and together
they make a really nice team.
It’s another band that I think if they had been
in the right place at the right time…
Skold: It’s tricky stuff… But Norwegians are a
little bit like Swedes that way, there are some really talented motherfuckers!
Talking about being in the right place at the
right time Tim, your observations over the years in the music industry, how
much does that play a factor? Regardless
of how good you are…
Skold: That still
matters, but it’s still not fair, because there’s a very large amount of super
talented people doing incredible shit that just falls by the wayside for
several different reasons. It’s not fair
to say that (right place, right time)… It’s an important factor, and to some
extent a determining factor, but it’s not the only factor, there’s more to that
than just the right place at the right time.
I wanted to touch on a question you’re asked
all the time, about the so called “Dead God” EP, which I’ve re-named as the “Beating
a Dead Horse” EP because it has been asked so many times.
It was supposed to be part of what was going to
be the “Disrupting the Orderly Routine of the Institution” album…
Skold: It got a ridiculous amount of downloads, and
it was never released. It was a
leak. It was material I was working on,
I made about 6 cd dupes, and I handed them to trusted friends in the industry
who I thought I could rely on to keep it to themselves, and maybe give me
feedback, point me in the right direction, connect the dots, all that
stuff. None of that happened, but it
found its way on the internet.
For me to try to sell
that to a record company, or promote that in a sales world is completely
impossible because it was already free for everyone, so I was forced to abandon
the project.
Was it a full album that was sent out and only
6 tracks were leaked? Were there only 6
tracks?
Skold: There were a couple different versions; there
were some people I trusted more than others.
I was going to
watermark them, back then there was no proper way to watermark them like there
is these days. I was messing around with
super low and high frequencies and doing a very rudimentary barcode type system
that I could see on a computer display but wouldn’t affect your speakers or
ears.
But it was pretty
cumbersome in its implementation, so I did not pursue that. I still to this day do not know what copy
actually leaked!
But one person ruined it for everybody…
Skold: As doom and
gloomy as that might be, at some point you have to let go, and laugh at it,
what are you gonna do? It got out, it
got away, it’s the one that got away! Move
on!
Just my personal opinion, but it’s been so long
now, I think if those tracks were remastered, or remixed and re-released, your
fans would buy it! There are still
possibilities…
Skold: Thank you, and I
appreciate that as a positive criticism, but you don’t know that you’re dealing
with a temperamental motherfucker who long ago deleted all that shit. There’s no way to remaster or fix those
files. That hard drives been shot
repeatedly with a high caliber rifle! I
went looking for those files; I go looking for those files every so many years,
like “Maybe they’re in that box”, and I’m talking about boxes of floppies, but
no. I think they’re a moment lost in
time.
Lastly, back to the current tour, it’s about 3
weeks long. Is this a way to “test the
waters” so to speak, and if all goes well you’ll be looking to do a bigger tour
later?
Skold: To be brutally
honest, which is something that’s kind of rare these days, I don’t have a
“name” to sell tickets and put people into concert venues. I have a track record
in the studio; I have a track record in a few outfits that can do this. I, by myself, have no track record to do
this. So when I talk to promoters or
bookers or all the people involved in this scenario, they ask me “So what do
you normally do?” And I have no answer.
“Well, what did you do last year?”
And I have no answer. “Well, what
did you do back in the day?” And I have
no answer! Because you never really
existed (solo), right? So this is not a
repeat of something, but it’s definitely testing the water, and yeah, if people
don’t come out and see this, if this run is not successful… Let’s phrase it the
other way. I’m hoping this run is really
successful so we’ll go on and book more dates and do more touring. See, I’m learning to be more positive in my
outlook!
