ALEXANDER KRULL Says There Is 'Really Great Chemistry' With New LEAVES' EYES Vocalist ELINA SIIRALA

Planetmosh recently conducted an interview with LEAVES' EYES frontman Alexander Krull and new frontwoman Elina Siirala. You can listen to the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether the fact that since Siirala had already toured with LEAVES' EYES made the recording of the band's new studio album, "Sign Of The Dragonhead", easier:

Elina: "Well, how to say it now because that's the way I did it now, so I only know the way it is now? [Laughs] I would say that yeah, it's always good to play live to get the vibe of how the band works, what are the elements of the music and then, being familiar with the whole live performance as well, I think it's always good and it brings something to the studio. I mean, the studio is always different anyway. But yes, I believe it must have been a positive thing."

Alex: "One thing I have to say is that when we were doing the songs and trying Elina out in the studio and everything — I've worked with a lot of artists also as a music producer, I've worked with other bands and singers, but it was really a pleasure to work with Elina. It was great. It was really clicking. We worked on the vocal lines and everything; she was sitting at the piano and we just said, 'What about this?' There is really, really great chemistry when working on the songs and the music. There is one thing about playing live shows, but going to the studio and having this vital chemistry to work on music, then you could see Elina's perfect education with music. Not only in one way, but classical or pop, but a variety, where we could even go much more forward with LEAVES' EYES itself. If you have a song like 'Riders On The Wind', for example on the album, which is, like, 'Wow, how did this come up?' The label called me, 'Wow, wow! This song is amazing! How did you do that?' It's something new from LEAVES' EYES, it's in the style of the band, but a progression. It fits so well with the music and all the vocals we did together. Now the good part is, I think that's where Elina, if I'm right, a perfect situation to play songs from scratch that we did together. It feels probably like, 'Wow! Now we bring this to the stage what we did in the studio.' I believe it's the biggest production we ever did. Song-wise, it's, I don't know, we gave it our best like always, like we always did. Probably it's just like, 'Wow!' It's all coming together. All the experience from us and from Elina and from the live shows, it was actually really cool when we toured together for all these shows, we knew and we were talking on the tour bus that 'We could do this, we could do that.' It felt really great, although the tours we did were really quite demanding sometimes."

On the video for "Sign Of The Dragonhead":

Alex: "It took three days, but we shot some things at another location for another clip. The preparation [for the video] was a long time. Until we brought all those people together at the location, it's a fantastic location and we have only three or four minutes for a song, to bring it all together there and to show everything, it's quite hard. We tried our best and of course, Elina had one wish. What was that wish?"

Elina: "[Laughs] I wanted to ride a horse. I got a horse, so I was very happy. [Laughs]"

On the band's upcoming tour plans:

Alex: "I can tell you that the plan is that we go around April/May. We're setting up a tour with some bands. That's all what I can tell you right now because it's all in the making. There's some great bands asking if they could join us, so we'll go by ourselves first, but it could also be that we're touring with another band, so it's all a little bit open."

"Sign Of The Dragonhead" was released on January 12 via AFM Records. Produced by Krull at Mastersound Studio, the disc features cover artwork by Stefan Heilemann (LINDEMANN, EPICA, KAMELOT). The album is the the first full LEAVES' EYES album featuring Siirala, who joined the band in early 2016 following an acrimonious split with the group's original frontwoman, Liv Kristine. Liv was previously married to Krull.