Vampire Magazine Interview
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Answers: Henrik Weimedal

Morifade is a swedish metal band (from Vikingstad, what's in a name). They just released their second full length album "Imaginarium" worldwide on Hammerheart Records. From the bio of Hammerheart it says that Morifade makes epic, symphonic power metal with a touch of progressive elements. The band is very ambitious in a healthy way. Their drive is shown for example by the way they responded to our questions (fast!). The word is up to Henrik Weimedal; bass player, one of the main songwriters and already a member since 1992, the same year the band was formed.

First of all: the band is presented as "a new approach to melodic power metal". A promising slogan, yet it is an open invitation for the band to explain what they mean by that...
-Well... It means that we do not just play plain heavy metal or power metal, we also have parts/musical influences from all these styles. We mix a lot of different elements into our music.

Speaking of influences: I read an interview in which was stated that the band was mainly influenced by Helloween, and that Henrik's personal favorites were Iron Maiden/Steve Harris... Listening to the album I feel that that some melodic rock must have had some influence too. What do these influences come down to?
-The melody is really important to any music I think, I can’t listen to music without melodies, but I don’t know if we are influenced by any melodic rock, I grew up listening to Europe, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden and Helloween among others and there’s where I got my inspiration from in the beginning.

It is known that compared to other countries in the world, the Swedish government creates good facilities for local musicians, also in rock music. The Morifade-musicians, but also of other Swedish bands (for instance Silver Seraph, whom I reviewed in March too), sound very skilled at their instruments. To what extend can this be explained by that government policy?
-The musicians in Morifade are pretty much self taught and the only one that has been to a music school for instance is Stefan so it has nothing to do with government issues.

About the review on the Vampire site. Is there anything Henrik wants to say to this?
-Well I do think that our album is much more versatile and less standard than you (Vampire) wrote, for the rest it is quite positive, so no further remarks on that.

(well, that is the hard part about personal taste; I would advise everyone to make up their own mind and at least listen to the album, because, as I wrote, "People who are really into this sort of music should try this one out).

The title of that album is of course Imaginarium, a brand new word to me. There is also no song on the album which is called that way, so I went further into that. Lost Within The Shade seems to be the pseudo title track of the album; the word “Imaginarium” is used in this song. The song reflects the world of a drug user (and in my opinion that is what the word Imaginarium might mean): How did you come to this word (Imaginarium) to use it as the title for your album? And: In the respect of Imaginarium as being the world (imaginary aquarium?) for a drug user it might be a bit negative word (as a word in general, not specific to drug users) as a title considering the music you make; what is your opinion on that?
-If you look up the word Imaginarium” in a dictionary you can keep on looking forever because there is no such word, “Imaginarium” is supposed to mean anything. “Imaginarium” is supposed to have the listener make their own opinion about the title, just as you have and that’s why we choose the title so it couldn’t be connected with a specific song. When people use drugs, most often they are not in their right mind and they start to do crazy stuff and imagine things and so on and that’s probably why the word “Imaginarium” is used in “Lost Within A Shade”, we could have used it in every song but that would have been kind of boring. I can’t see why a fantasy word like Imaginarium would be taken negatively (by a drug user for example).

On the question whether Imaginarium was meant as a junction of the words "Imaginary" and "Aquarium" in case of the song "Lost Within A Shade" Henrik has to say the following:
-You may be correct on the "Imaginary aquarium" issue but since I didn't wrote that lyic I find it a little difficult to give you a deeper answer on that question (the lyrics on that song were written by band founder Jesper Johansson)

Speaking about that conjunction; In an interview with Metalfan (March 2000, a dutch site) bass player Henrik stated that the band name did not have a real meaning, but was made of two words that sounded good; could those words have been Mori (die in latin, as in Memento Mori) and the English verb to fade; like to fade into death?
-Ha, you couldn’t be more correct! Well, maybe not exactly “into death” but fade away or something, but really, the word itself doesn’t mean anything, it simply sounded good and was easy to remember for anyone.

Compliments on the artwork of the album and its layout (like spreading the special thanks of every band-member across the booklet to avoid an endless thanks list on the last page which is seen very often). What more can you tell about that?
-We gave the cover artist (Reload) some lyrics and some of the music on “Imaginarium” and then he started to create the cover and it turned out like we wanted actually. The cover has nothing to do with “Lost Within A Shade” or any specific song at all, it’s just the same as with the title, each listener is able to make their own opinion of the artwork, you can “Imagine” whatever you like when you look at the cover.

Producer of the album was Andy La Rocque (Kind Diamond, Death - personally, I did not even know that Andy had ever been in Death - John). Considering that background, what made him the right man for the job? (like I don’t see little resemblance with King Diamond, let alone Death).
-We first were in contact with Andy when we were about to record the MCD “Cast A Spell” and it was our former record label that contacted him and all though we only were in the studio for about five days we knew that we wanted to continue working with him, everything just goes so smooth Andy was a member of Death on the album “Individual Thought Patterns” from 1993. Well, you don’t have to play the same music as the band you produce to make it sound good. Andy knows what he’s doing and he’s been doing it for many years.

That previous label was Loud and Proud, with which they broke up immediately with that label after recoring their previous MCD Cast a Spell and a cover for the Helloween tribute "The Keepers of Jericho" ("Judas", released by Arise Records). Finally they signed a one record deal for dutch label Hammerheart. What can you say about that?
-Well, after the breaking with Loud N’ Proud Records we immediately started to send promotion letters and CD’s to record labels all over the world and we got many responses and Hammerheart was the label that gave us the best deal for the band and we are very satisfied with Hammerheart. We got what we wanted and needed concerning the recording costs, promotion and everything else. The deal with Hammerheart is for a total of 1 (one) album, this was the deal that both parts agreed on, both parts wanted to be a little careful, and if it works out fine we'll renew the contract.

The album has now officially been out since April 8th; How is everything going according to the expectations (sales, reactions from fans and press, etcetera)?
-I don’t know, it has just been 4 days since the release but the response that we have got from both the fans and press is so far what we’ve hoped for, we need to wait a bit longer then we’ll see what happens!

Apart from the artwork the band shows a lot of ambition, considering the ads in all important magazines (according to the bio from Hammerheart): What are Morifade’s ambitions, for now and in the future?
-Of course to do what we love and have been doing for 10 years now, playing metal! We will do as many gigs in the world as we can and get the chance to, and to record album after album, we take the future as it comes.

Marketwise?
-I think that southern Europe is very important to us like Spain, Italy and Greece but also parts of South America and of course Japan. We have some gigs here in Sweden and there is a tour in progress of negotiation in Spain/Portugal but nothing is for sure yet but we really hope that we can go through with this, and of course we hope that Hammerheart can do something in The Netherlands for us, that would be just great! (of course other parts of the world, like for instance Germany or North America are more than welcome too, should there be possibilities too - John)

And what about some new material?
-We have started to write new songs for a coming album and we have a couple of songs almost finished but no release date or anything is set.

If you could name three albums from the last year in the genre to which Morifade counts itself; apart from Imaginarium of course, which three albums/band from that year would you pick as the highlights?
-Difficult question…I don’t buy many albums anymore or even listen to music. Since I deal with music almost everyday I don’t have the time or desire to listen so I can’t answer that question. (Well, that is an answer too, it shows that he is spending all his time into his own band)

Thank you very much for your answers and time and good luck on Imaginarium and the future of Morifade? Any last words?
-No, just thank you very much...

Interview by John

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