CANDLEMASS Mainman Discusses KRUX Project

Lords of Metal e-zine recently conducted an interview with CANDLEMASS/KRUX mainman Leif Edling. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Lords of Metal: In the interview on the KRUX DVD you were saying that you were pleased by the amount of sales of the KRUX album. I know that the most popular albums of CANDLEMASS sold more than 100,000 units, but I can't believe that KRUX will sell this many albums.

Edling: Oh no! KRUX do maybe a tenth of what a CANDLEMASS record do. But I'm glad what KRUX do. I think somewhere between the ten and twenty thousand. If it was beneath 10,000, I was probably a little disappointed, but now I'm pleased with these sales. Of course you can hope, but you have to be realistic. Remember: KRUX is NOT CANDLEMASS. CANDLEMASS is a very pretentious project that HAS to sell, it HAS to be successful and has to sound in a certain way. KRUX is very spontaneous and not pretentious. It's probably a bit more laid-back and relaxed than CANDLEMASS.

Lords of Metal: What's the input of your new label GMR in all this? The first album of KRUX was released on Mascot.

Edling: GMR is the label that put out all the double disc remasters of the CANDLEMASS back catalogue. They've done a really good job with that and they've got a really good distribution: you can see those records like everywhere. So I'm sure this new KRUX album will be out everywhere in Europe in every shop.

Lords of Metal: You put your faith in GMR, but what happened with Mascot?

Edling: They offered us to do this second KRUX album and we were about to record it in May 2004 (!),but then they wanted to postpone the recording to the autumn of 2004. I'm not sure, but I've heard they wanted to postpone the recordings because they just signed MICHAEL SCHENKER and JOHN NORUM. These investments cost a lot of money, so they hadn't any for a KRUX album. But that screws things up for me, because we had been planning this recording with the producer, the studio, the band members etc. etc., for the entire spring of 2004. We HAD to do it in May, because we began with the CANDLEMASS album during the autumn. So when Mascot suddenly postponed my recording, that wasn't very cool. I said to them: "Well, let's split it here. I can't work like this, I've got schedules as well."

Lords of Metal: So eventually it took not one season, but two whole years to finish the KRUX album.

Edling: Yeah, because we did the CANDLEMASS thing, of course! I knew this beforehand, that's why we HAD to do it in May. Otherwise it'll cost me at least eighteen months. That's why it pissed me off and that's why you torn a contract into a million pieces.

Lords of Metal: Unlike the first album, you didn't wrote this album all by yourself. Jörgen [Sandstrom, guitar; ex-ENTOMBED, GRAVE] used three old songs from the band that could be regarded as the embryonic phase of KRUX, namely DEVIL SUN.

Edling: Yeah, that's right. We did rehearse one time back then and he had those songs. He wrote them together with Lord K (Jörgen's bandmate in THE PROJECT HATE). We rehearsed and we thought they were pretty good. Eventually we didn't do the DEVIL SUN thing, because Peter [Stjärnvind, drums] and Jörgen were very busy with ENTOMBED then. After 'Krux I', which was completely written by myself, I was writing the stuff for the second album, and I remembered those old DEVIL SUN songs. I really liked those songs, so I thought we should use them for 'Krux II'. It's a shame that DEVIL SUN didn't come together, but with these songs and especially with the song 'Devil Sun' on the new KRUX album. DEVIL SUN will always be remembered. … And we are playing together anyway, so it's okay.

Read the entire interview at www.lordsofmetal.nl.