Although they already exist since 1992, Swedish power metal act Morifade have never got more attention in Rock Report than a couple of reviews. Their new album "Domi<>Nation" was our perfect alibi for an interview with the band. 'The band' is in this case represented by long time bass player Henrik Weimedal, who greedily answered all our questions.

The band were founded in 1992, a short while before you joined, as Gothic. Why was the name changed into Morifade later on and who came up with it?
-We changed our band name to Morifade because people often believed that we were playing goth metal which we didn't. I think Kim (Arnell, SL), our drummer came up with the name Morifade, we had a couple of paper sheets with many names on them and we simply combined two words: 'mori' and 'fade'. The word has no meaning whatsoever.

What bands were Morifade's initial influences?
-There's a lot of them, but from the beginning we all listened to Helloween, Iron Maiden, Gamma Ray and so on. Also Black Sabbath, King Diamond, Merciful Fate, Queensrÿche and many more were influential.

Your first official recording was the 1998 released mini CD called "Across The Starlit Sky", which featured a certain Christian Stinga-Borg on vocals, who was replaced by current vocalist Stefan Petersson after the completion of this album. What kind of singer was Stinga-Borg and why was he replaced?
-Christian was a pretty decent singer but not what we wanted and that's one of the reasons why we replaced him. He also had some personal issues that he needed to deal with. His participation on "Across The Starlit Sky" worked fine and his voice fit the songs on that album, but it wouln't have worked for the songs that we were writing for "Possession Of Power".

During the writing process of the debut, also Fredrik Johansson, one of the founding members, quit for personal reasons, reducing Morifade to a quartet. I can imagine it's not very easy to record a full-blown power metal album with only four musicians?
-Fredrik (Johansson, SL) and the rest of the band sat down and talked about his lack of interest in the band and we came to the agreement that the best thing for him would be to leave the band. This was in the beginning of the song writing so we were prepared to be a quartet in the studio. However, we knew that we had to find a new guitarist as well as a keyboard player, otherwise it wouldn't work out live. The studio session went OK except for the engineers who didn't know very much about metal so they had to learn during the recording.

"Possession Of Power" was very well received. Do you still remember fragments of things that were written about the band at that time, positive or negative?
-Yeah, for instance, I remember one line in a review from a Spanish webzine; "In difference to other records, you only need to hear this once to love it", which is a pretty good opening for a review! We gained a lot of positive reviews but also some negative stuff, and that's how it goes. Not everyone in the world can be satisfied with everything you do!

After ex-Tad Morose keyboard player Fredrik Eriksson and guitarist Adrian Kanebäck joined, you were ready to do some live shows. Where did these shows take you?
-The first live performance after "Possession Of Power" was released we did at a festival in Sweden called Motala Metal Festival with Grave Digger and some other bands whom I can't remember right now. After that we went to play in Spain at the Rock Machina Festival and that was our greatest show so far, then we did a gig in France and some in Sweden of course.

Mid 2000, you started recording your second mini CD "Cast A Spell". Why didn't you invest the time and money spent into a second full studio album immediately? In other words, what's the purpose of these mini albums?
-We knew that we couldn't record a full album at that time, mainly because we didn't have enough songs and at the same time we were asked to participate on a tribute album to Helloween called "The Keepers Of Jericho Pt.1", released by Arise Records. That's when we decided to do a mini CD along with the recording of "Judas" for the tribute. We thought it was a great opportunity to tell the world that we still existed. However, this was of no use since "Cast A Spell" was only released in France! But fear not! The entire "Cast A Spell" tracklist is included on the limited edition digipak of our new album "Domi<>Nation".

"Cast A Spell" was the first release to be recorded in producer Andy LaRocque's Los Angered Studios, to which you stayed faithful ever since. What's so special about Andy and his studio?
-First of all, Andy is a great person both personal and at work! He's really easy to work with and we thought "why fix something that isn't broken?" So to speak. We really like the studio and know it well so we are not planning on switching to another studio or producer yet.

During the "Cast A Spell" sessions, you recorded Helloween cover "Judas" as you said, but also "Dance With The Devil", originally recorded by the all-star melodic rock project Phenomena. Why did you choose to do these songs?
-Well, we chose "Judas" because we all liked it and because it isn't the 'ordinary' Helloween song. I think we were talking about adding a cover to "Cast A Spell" and I believe Frippe (Fredrik Eriksson, SL) was the one to choose "Dance With The Devil". He used to be a fan of Phenomena and when he introduced the song to the rest of the band we didn't hesitate to record it.

After the release of the mini CD, you started searching for a new label. What went wrong with the co-operation with Loud N' Proud Records, your label since the beginning?
-We felt that they stopped doing things for us. They made many promises but nothing got done really. After more problems with royalty related stuff and so on, we decided to leave.

The choice fell onto Hammerheart Records, now operating under the moniker of Karmageddon Media, which is a Dutch label. What did they offer that other labels didn't?
-They had an easy to understand contract and they had the guts to give us a decent recording budget which we were thankful for, not knowing if "Imaginarium" would become a well selling album or not.

In the summer of 2001, you started recording "Imaginarium". Everything seemed to go well initially, but it turned out to be quite a hell of a job to get the album out. What happened?
-Oh man! I have lost the count of times that "Imaginarium" was postponed. First Hammerheart decided to postpone the album for some unknown reason and then when we got the finished master CD. The mix sounded like shit - us to blame - so we had to re-do the mix and because of that the album was postponed again. Then, Hammerheart received the promo CDs from the printing factory and all covers seemed to be wrong. Where it was supposed to be black, there was white instead! So the album was postponed once again...

"Imaginarium" was the first Morifade album to be released in Japan. How were the reactions of the public there?
-Pretty good I think! We have been in contact with King Records in Japan and according to them "Imaginarium" sold pretty good. That's all I know.

The new album "Domi<>Nation" has also been recorded at Los Angered, except for the vocal parts, which were done at Monogram Recordings studio in Stockholm. Is this because you weren't happy with the vocal sound on "Imaginarium"?
-No, not at all. We just wanted to try something different and the fact that Stefan lives in Stockholm and could go to the studio at evenings and weekends made it a lot easier. This way he could do the vocal recording at his own pace.

"Domi<>Nation" is the first album on which most of the band had input as far as song writing was concerned, while on previous releases, Jesper Johansson seemed to be the main man in this department. This obviously is a positive evolution, but was it Jesper himself who decided to balance this out?
-Jesper always used to have more ideas for songs than any of us, but I started to come up with some ideas as well and after Robin joined us we all had many great ideas! It worked out in this natural way by itself. We think it's a good thing. Secondly, there was a tendency that all songs sound similar and we wanted a broader mixture on our albums and I think it worked out fine.

Lyrics on "Domi<>Nation" are without exception written by vocalist Stefan Petersson, the brain behind the concept of the album based on the novels "1984" and "Brave New World". Can you tell me more about it?
-Well, in short, the concept is about mind control, submission to supremacy and our growing approach to the surveillance society. This album is our interpretation of how the world that we are living in could look like in the future. As you said, Stefan wrote all lyrics for the album. We thought that would be a good idea since it gives the vocals more emotion than when for example I would have written them.

The album is heavier than "Imaginarium", which in turn was already heavier than its predecessor. Where will this end if this will be the case for every of your future albums?
-Yes, where will it end? We have started working on new material for a future album and so far the songs are in the spirit of "Domi<>Nation", maybe slightly darker and... heavier!

I also have the idea that your songs are starting to sound more and more progressive. Is this Morifade's intention or is it thanks to natural development and new influences slipping into the band's song writing?
-It's sort of our intention actually. We all like progressive music like Symphony X and Dream Theater, but we will always keep the melody in our music. That's most important to us.

The album's release date has been postponed several times again. It seems Morifade's album releases are cursed. What's the reason this time?
-(laughs) Yeah, it seems like that. Well, this time it was because Hammerheart Records decided to call it a day and some people behind it started the new label Karmageddon Media. Because of that, they decided to postpone the releases that were supposed to go out at the end of 2003. Then there was some problem with distributors that wanted to postpone the release even more, but the final release date is February 9th.

Are their plans to go on tour to support this album?
-We are actually in the planning stage of a German tour for this spring. Other than that, we are booked so far for a couple of gigs in Sweden and hopefully there will be more when summer arrives.

Thanks for this interview, Henrik. If you've got a message for our readers, this is your chance.
-OK, remember February 9th and let's hope the tour will come about. If so, hope to see you there! Enjoy "Domi<>Nation"!