Interview with PelleK | Dioses del Metal

«PelleK is full of catchy melodies that border on becoming somewhat cartoony and quirky, but with the heavy bass, thick guitars and power metal drums and vocals it’s 100% metal nonetheless.»

Hello PelleK, and welcome to “Dioses del Metal” Webzine.

PelleK: Thank you! Glad to be here.

A few months ago we interviewed Damnation Angels, your other band. But I imagine you’ll be more involved with PelleK, your own personal project.

PelleK: Damnation Angels and PelleK are my two main priorities and fulltime gigs, so I guess I spend the same amount of time on both bands.

I think it shouldn’t have been easy to work at the same time with both projects. If I remember right, your first LP with Pellek: «Bag of Tricks», was released a few days after «Bringer of Light» in March 2012.

PelleK: Tricks was released in may 2012, but that was only because the label pushed the release-date for a long time. It was actually done like a year before that. I started writing the new album «Ocean of Opportunity» about 6 months prior to the first one being released actually. I worked with 3 other bands in 2012 as well, doing vocals for some bands from France and Italy, so yes, it was a crazy year.

In this second CD you manage the composition, the vocals, keyboards, production… Congratulations, you have done a very good job, but I guess it was a tough road.

PelleK: I’ve had a lot of help to be honest. I wrote all the songs, played a few instruments, did some orchestration and sung all the vocals, but the mixes really came from Scott Atkins (producer) and Patrick Fallang (PelleK-guitarist) also did alot of the mixing and most of the orchestration after hearing my violins and brass etc.

You have been surrounded by a lot of great musicians in this new album, how important was to have them in “Ocean of Opportunity”?

PelleK: Very! Very important. After I’d written the material I spent many months auditioning and finding the right people to join the PelleK-band. This isn’t just a soloproject anymore now, so I needed to find cool, nice, talented people with the right attitude and personality. I feel very lucky, still, to this date, to have gotten Ingemar Bru, Stian Warlow and Patrick Fallang as my band-mates in PelleK.

I must admit I was shocked with the sound, every detail is treated very carefully, instruments, voices, design …The contribution of both Scott Atkins (Sylosis, Cradle of Filth…) mastering the CD and Jan Yrlund (Manowar and Korpiklaani) working on the design is awesome.

PelleK: Thank you. Yeah we didn’t cut any corners, I wanted this to be miles better than the debut, and the only person who could make it good enough the way I saw it was Scott. Patrick mixed the songs with me, then we sent all the tracks (there were a ton) to Scott, who re-amped, re-did a lot of the EQ and ultimately stem-mastered the whole album. I was shocked myself to a certain extent, because when I listened to the masters and compared them to some of my favourite albums I thought our mixes sounded thicker and heavier. Thank god for Scott Atkins!

Why have you chosen to distribute the album independently?

PelleK: Simply because this isn’t just for fun anymore, and I’m turning this into a fulltime thing. Thousands of people buy the PelleK music and they deserve the best. Then I have to be able to give some music out for free, tour when I want, say what I want and make the videos I want etc etc. My current label couldn’t let me do what I wanted to a certain extent, so I had to let them go, even though I am very good friends with Tommy and Christian from the label who are great people. We didn’t even want to send this to any labels because we were so eager to get it out and start playing, but for the next album we will look into signing with a bigger label.

Tell our readers how can they get your new work, both in digital format and physically?

PelleK: Physically it’s available signed from PelleK.com or at selected big metal festivals. Digitally it’s everywhere like iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby etc.

“Ocean of Opportunity” has received good reviews from the specialized media, but I don’t know if you agree with the fact that probably the CD won’t have the reception it should if it was released with a big record label as Massacre Records for example.

PelleK: That might be, but we’re doing it for the fans, and for the love of metal. People hear it and love it and that’ the most important thing in our opinion. We’ve read magazines and webzines already saying it’s in their top top 10 of 2013-releases so in a way I guess that if we released it through a major label we’d get much more of that, but again; It’s about the fans when all comes to all.

I think your music is quite hard to define into a music style, I don’t personally like musical tags, but I’d like you to tell us what would you like to transmit with your songs.

PelleK: Inspiring, melodic and fun. A big emphasis since it carries my name, on the vocals. PelleK also is full of catchy melodies that border on becoming somewhat cartoony and quirky, but with the heavy bass, thick guitars and power metal drums and vocals it’s 100% metal nonetheless.

We would also like to know which other musicians or bands have influenced you, but also which bands do you like.

PelleK: I find it hard to answer that question lately, because I’ve changed so much through my life as I’ve sung and worked with so many bands through my time, but my all time favorite band would have to be Angra, and my all time favourite singer would be Jørn Lande (Jorn, ex Masterplan, Avantasia, etc). I listen to a lot of old classic: Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, etc, too, and I think that’s where I get the element of fun and games from.

Is it hard for a musician to create original music, totally different than the rest as there are so many other bands playing similar styles?

PelleK: Not for PelleK necessarily, because we have a niche of making extremely melodic and vocally varied music, and the vocals especially go over 4 octaves which you rarely hear these days. You can still hear a lot of bands going really high but we try to get it all in throughout the album, from the lowest notes and darkest moods to the happiest you can imagine with insane highnotes. I’ve read a lot of people say it’s easy to hear when a PelleK track is starting on radio, so I can’t say that it’s a challenge right now. The first album was more generic in a way but with this one we’re not really sounding like any other band in my opinion. Especially the deeper in to the album you get you’ll notice it’s very different from normal power metal.

Have you thought about doing a presentation tour of your new album? What are your plans from now on both with PelleK and Damnation Angels?

PelleK: will be touring and recording and doing a LOT in the future. We’re relying on management to do it, but we’re working on a Europe tour, or at least a Norway-tour to start with. Damnation Angels will be playing on the ProgPower USA Festival this September, so that’s a big thing for us and we’re all very excited.

It has been a pleasure for us to interview you, and we’d like you to dedicate some words to our Spanish readers.

PelleK: Hey Spain! I’ve noticed the Spanish metal-community is really tight knit and devoted to the metal and the metal lifestyle, so believe me, we can’t wait to come and play for you guys. It’s on the top of our list over things to do in the future with PelleK. I appreciate all the support with the new album, and I wish you the best summer possible with lots of sex, drugs and rock and roll haha. Norway loves you guys.

I wish you luck in your projects, have a big hug!

PelleK: Cheers man! Thanks for the interview, it was a pleasure.