Hello

Jakob, how are you? Congrats on the new album, it's sounds amazing!

Hi Fede and thank you, I'm very pleased to hear you liked the album,  I'm very proud and happy, as usual after so much work it's a pleasure coming out on the other side of it and find you still love the material and what come out of the exhausting process and everybody's contribution of it!

It was a natural development of writing that brought us very we are with "Performocracy", no master plan really. I'm constantly working with writing and I really enjoy writing with various people too and on this album there are mainly some all timers like Jonas Reingold, Johan Lyander & Matti Alfonzetti and Mats Valentin of course, but also Pontus and Henrik has four songs on the album. I have 2 songs, "I Want It All" & "Love As All", that I wrote with a new great talent by the name of Leonard Johansson, you will hear of this guy in the future…

I would say it's a mix of both. I have always been interested in the more epic suits in which we dress the songs, like intros, outros and orchestrated parts and that is something that to me adds the drama that I like. This I share more or less with the other guys and definitely with Mats. I love working with him, a great man, a magical musician, and a close friend.

The big difference is that you get better and more secure of what you want and how you want it, and the way of getting there is getting shorter the longer we go along. Also who to work with and what is important and what's not.

Well it's nothing that I had in mind writing and co-producing this but I guess Mats and Tobias Lindell has the responsibility for this. It's a question of the production in general and the mixing. I think they both hold the American Rock sound ideal very high.I'm really happy with Tobias work on "Performocracy" and would love to have another go with him in the future, a true pro!

To me it's very important to have a wide prospective of songs, both in moods and tempos  on an album. Most of my favorite albums are very varied. We write around 40 songs for each album and then pick 12-14 songs, so it's a choosing process that is heartbreaking every time… killing your darlings, you know, but the result is great albums, and that's the most important thing for us. This time it felt right to do a more up tempo album.

Thank you, I'm mainly in charge of this but Mats and I work very close and hard together on this too. If the vocals aren't good enough the whole song is wasted in my world…

Yes you're right, it can be seen as a bit "left corner" on the album but it's absolutely one of my favorites too. It's very epic and it's mainly a song of hope and an appeal to coexistence in the world. All different cultures and religions must find a way to except one another, and after all… Love is all.

This is the brilliant work of Pontus and Henrik and it feels very good to have them included on the album. They were just obvious and natural choices to have on the album.

To tell you the truth I don't spend much time doing this, the other guys are more into this than I am. It's a matter of time and priorities for me. I rather spend time with my family than in front of the computer but on tour we usually blog and do all other net activities and I'm involved then too. It's definitely a part of the future way to promote music and artists though.

Album release, promoooooooooootion, summer-festivals in Sweden and Europe, European in the fall, then we'll see, we are releasing in the States this time so we are hoping to break some new ground here and there.

Yes well there is a lot ahead of us that we would like to do but I think we start with WORLD-DOMINATION!! 😉

Thank you!