NOSTRADAMEUS: 'New Songs Are Stronger Than Ever'

Swedish melodic metallers NOSTRADAMEUS recently posted a brief band interview on their official web site containing information regarding their current activities. The short question-and-session follows in its entirety:

Q: It's been a long time since we heard anything from NOSTRADAMEUS. Cold you tell us a bit why?

Nostradameus: "We've been working all the time. Mostly with material for our future albums, but also some small gigs. And talking about gigs, we recorded some songs from a festival in Gothenburg to be released on a DVD sometime in the future. So we would say that things are happening even if it doesn't look that way from outside the band."

Q: The first three albums came in a quite short period of time, "Words of Nostradameus" 2000, "Prophet of Evil" 2001 and "The Third Prophecy" in January 2003. Why did you wait until late 2004 (November) with the release of "Hellbound"?

Nostradameus: "All the recordings and everything on 'Hellbound' were finished and ready for release in December 2003, but for some reason that we don't know, AFM chose to wait with the release until late 2004. You can imagine how it felt too have a finished album that everyone in the band is proud for and not be able to play it or let someone outside the group hear it."

Q: I know that a lot of people wonder why there wasn't a tour on the "Hellbound" album. Could you explain that for us?

Nostradameus: "There were plans for a smaller tour with U.D.O. in March, but it was delayed for some reasons that we don't know. And later there were plans for a small tour with MASTERPLAN, but this was something AFM didn't think was worth the money it should cost. And that's really a problem for us with lots of gigs; we would really love to play all over the world — Brazil, Chile, Russia, you name it — but at this point, the costs make it impossible for us. Maybe when NOSTRA grows bigger, we can do all the gigs we want."

Q: Now to some questions abort the direction your music has taken. "Hellbound" sounds a bit different from your earlier releases — harder [and] heavier and not so much power metal. Is that a conscious step?

Nostradameus: "We would like to call it a 'natural progression.' When we write our music, we don't try to turn it in a certain direction. Maybe we feel that we want to try something different from the traditional power metal, sometimes we write a song that fits that category and if we think that the song is good enough it will end up on the album. We also write songs in a different way today compared to how we used to do. On the earlier albums, Jake and Freddy used to come with finished songs, with their ideas for drums, bass and arrangements. Today everyone in the band is involved; we write the songs together and use ideas from all the guys in the band."

Q: What can we expect from NOSTRADAMEUS in the future?

Nostradameus: "As we said earlier, we’ve been working with new material and new songs for the coming albums, and we believe that the new songs are another step in the direction we took with 'Hellbound'. Hopefully our fans will like it as much as we do. We feel that the new songs are stronger than ever. And after the release of the album, we would like to go away on a big, long tour to meet all our fans that have been waiting for us."