THE HAUNTED Guitarist Talks About Playing In WITCHERY

Christine Carney of MP3.com recently conducted an interview with WITCHERY guitarist Patrik Jensen (also of THE HAUNTED). An excerpt from the chat follows:

MP3.com: I know that THE HAUNTED is extremely popular and that you guys have been touring like crazy, and in THE HAUNTED you play a little different style of metal than WITCHERY. What is the passion, really, that keeps you guys going in WITCHERY versus the other bands — highly successful bands that you guys are all in?

Jensen: "Maybe THE HAUNTED is a bit more contemporary, maybe we try to...ah, I don't know...maybe we try to stay on the cutting edge, so to speak. WITCHERY...we indulge ourselves into playing, I mean, the old style of metal, if you want. Even though just from blending all the different styles that we do — I mean, thrash, black metal, whatever, heavy metal — that we might have come up with something new, but we, we really enjoy playing the old (old is such a negative word),but it's kind of hard to describe. It's not that we have any kind of strategy or so, when we write for WITCHERY, it's just...happens. We have a good time together. We rarely see each other, so when we get together and we play the old WITCHERY songs, it's just all, you know, smiles and laughs and we just start writing stuff. This is what happens, the result is what you hear. We have a very tight schedule when we write an album — it's done in a month's time, and whatever we come with is what we, and sounds good of course, is what we will use. So I guess this the spontaneous me."

MP3.com: Well, I know a lot of my friends tell me that even when they come out to see THE HAUNTED they're throwing you the "W."

Jensen: "Oh, yeah. Wherever we go, Japan, Australia, U.S. or Europe, it's, you know, somebody screams WITCHERY song titles, and you know, sometimes I just give a little teaser. But you know, it's cool that you can really tell who's the real metalhead. I'm not saying that someone who only likes THE HAUNTED and ARCH ENEMY is not a real metalhead, but people who listen to WITCHERY tend to have a very diverse taste in metal. They have a very good knowledge of different styles of metal and [they're] very passionate about it. I don't know how to express myself. But a WITCHERY fan seems to be very into many styles of metal and very loyal to the bands that they like. I mean, even though we haven't put out an album in many years, they're still as diehard WITCHERY fans as ever."

MP3.com: We were all anticipating this record and really excited that it came out. Another thing I notice about that album is it's about 45 minutes long, and most of the tracks are about two to four minutes. That's the kind of metal I like, and I'm one of those people that you, you know, you were trying to define earlier about the WITCHERY fan. The short, kind of catchy song is rather a trademark of Witchery's style at this point. Do you really think about that, or it is just really organic like you mentioned earlier? Are there some songs that might not...you might write for WITCHERY, but then they end up not fitting for WITCHERY, or...?

Jensen: "There's...I do like the three-and-a-half-minute songs. I'm very much for the catchy stuff 'cause I have my roots in AC/DC and that is very simple, catchy stuff. And I've never been, I mean, I know the twins in THE HAUNTED, they're big into KING CRIMSON and RUSH and bands like that. That's never been my thing. Of course, I can...I understand that they're great musicians and everything, but it just hasn't been my thing. And I'm more focused on you know, writing a song that has a catchy beginning, it has a, you know, catchy chords, or whatever and I don't mean catchy in a BACKSTREET BOYS kind of way, but it's just that it sticks when you hear it, like any good metal song. I don't know. There's...I always tend to, when I write music, I tend to think of it as meant for WITCHERY because it's just easier. And then every now and then there's a riff that sounds more [like] THE HAUNTED, so THE HAUNTED gets a bonus riff kind of for free. Sometimes songs get given to the wrong band, like the intro song for 'The Haunted Made Me Do It', 'Dark Intensions', was a WITCHERY song. I rehearsed it and wrote it for WITCHERY. We played it for months until I said, 'Guys, I think this is more of a HAUNTED song.' And now it's probably one of the most classic HAUNTED songs we have. But needless to say I don't think the WITCHERY guys are very happy with me calling that...taking that song to WITCHERY to THE HAUNTED. I'm sorry. But then sometimes it works the other way, too, like, 'Crossfixation' on this new album. That was a song I showed THE HAUNTED but they didn't like it for some reason, so we put...you know, that's cool, I'll just use it with WITCHERY."

Read the entire interview — or download it in audio MP3 format — at MP3.com.