Interview with: Matt Crooks and Lars Larsen from FOOL'S GAME

Matt: I am really glad that you are enjoying the album! With DIVISION it really was just a matter of wanting to go in different directions. I wanted to spend more time working on new recordings, and I felt that they wanted to spend more time playing live. I really enjoy playing live, but it had been several years since we had worked on a new album, and I felt that we kept putting that off to do live shows with questionable benefit...I mean, it's not like IRON MAIDEN asked us to go on tour with them! Trinity, the last DIVISION record, was completely written by early 2001, so when I left in 2005 it was already four years old, and that was just not what I wanted to do. I am still friends with the guys in the band and I see them pretty frequently.

I formed the band that would turn into DIVISION in 1993 with Chris Welborn, who plays bass on half of the first DIVISION disc, and two other guys. When they left, we auditioned and found a drummer. We later auditioned Mike Blevins for the second guitar slot, and he's been in DIVISION ever since. Before that I played in a high school band called CHERRY LANE, and we put out a 6-song cassette in early 1990. When that band broke up, I formed a band called BLACK REIGN with Scott Stewart (the original DIVISION singer) and Dan Plunkett (DIVISION bass player on the 2nd and 3rd albums). That band did a few shows and then broke up. We made a demo on a four track, but never released it, and I don't think any of us have a copy anymore.

In 2003 I filled in for Scott Waldrop from TWISTED TOWER DIRE for their 'Metal Bash' and 'Wacken Open Air' shows. I am also now the touring second guitarist for PHARAOH. I played with them at the Keep It True and Alehorn Of Power festivals, and will be playing with them for any shows in the future.

Matt: The music for The Field Of Dreams Was Abandoned was written in 2003 when I first thought about doing a side project with some friends. When I decided not to do that I presented the music to the DIVISION guys. They decided that it wasn't appropriate for the band, so it wasn't used. Other than that, everything was composed the first month after I left the band. I wrote 12 songs in total for the album, and leaving the old band was very cathartic for me; I think I wrote 4 or 5 songs in the recorded 9 (if you count the instrumental as part of She Moved Through The Fair). One song didn't come out as well as we had wanted, so it was not included on the album.

Matt: I have known Matt Big Johnsen for many years, we first met in 1997 at the 'Powermad' festival in Baltimore. In 2004 his band PHARAOH was looking for a place to record their next CD. I gave him a copy of the TWISTED TOWER DIRE material (Netherwolds) I was recording at my studio. He played that for the rest of his band and they decided to record The Longest Night at my studio. It was at the same time that I was recording this album that I quit DIVISION. Since Matt was in the studio a lot at that time I played him some of the new material. Once I finished The Longest Night, I spent a good deal of time writing for FOOL'S GAME, and I kept sending the songs to Matt to critique. Eventually it just seemed like a good idea for him to write some melodies and play solos on the album. As it turns out, I was recording PHARAOH's Be Gone at the same time that Reality Divine was ready for guitar solos, so Matt pulled double duty.

Matt: Matt Johnsen and I communicate pretty much daily through instant message, so we talked about other people for the album a lot. We discussed a bunch of drummers, but John was the one that we both thought would be the best fit. Matt was going to a party where he knew John would be, so he took a CD to him. I called John the next week and he agreed to do the album. For the vocalist, I didn't have a specific sound in my head, other than I wanted someone with power. Since I had been in an underground Metal band for a long time, I started sending emails to everyone I knew. Claus from Intromental Management suggested I talk to Lars. I sent a couple of demos to Lars and he said he would be interested in doing it.

Nick Van Dyk and I had been friends for several years before I started the FOOL'S GAME project. I am a huge fan of his work with REDEMPTION, so when I decided to add some keys to the album I asked him if he'd play on the disc. He said yes, and the rest is history. John and Nick were the only people I talked to about playing drums and keys on the album, and I found Lars with my first round of emails. I think in all, it took two or three weeks to put the line up together once Matt and I started looking.

Matt: Coming up with a band name was harder than finding people to play in the band! I had some really terrible ideas at first, and no one liked them. I was recording the SUPERCHRIST album Headbanger and Chris Black the singer said to me I'm done singing tonight, any more would be a Fool's Errand. This made me think of the MORDRED album Fool's Game, and I thought that would be a cool name for the band. Once we had the name I contacted Mattias Noren about coming up with an icon for the band; MAIDEN has Eddie, we have the jester. I don't have a name for the jester yet, so if you have any suggestions, let me know! There's really no deeper meaning or irony to the name, it would make a better story if there was, but sadly it's just a name I thought sounded pretty cool.

Matt: Thank you for the compliment. I own and run a studio called MCR Studios, so most of the recording was done there. Lars recorded in Denmark with Tommy Hansen, and Matt and Nick did some of their recordings at home, but all the drums, bass, rhythm guitars and most of the lead guitars were recorded at my studio. The recording process took a very, very long time, mainly because I was too busy to finish it.

I had scheduled John to come into the studio and record drums in November of 2006. I was building a new studio, but I figured I would have it completed well before John got there. As it turns out, I was up until 5AM finishing the wiring of the new studio the day John was arriving. I picked him up from the airport about five hours after I had completed the construction of the new studio. He recorded for four and half days, and what you hear on disc is what he played. A lot of discs these days have a ton of drum editing done to them to make the drummer competent, but with John I had to fix only one drum hit on the entire album! He is by far the best musician I have ever recorded. Those four days were a lot of fun, we'd record drums during the day and then go out and drink beer at a local bar until closing time. John is a great story teller, and hearing stories about Yngwie and James LaBrie tours was one of the highlights of him being down for the album.

Once he was done, I had to put the project on hold to record SUPERCHRIST's Headbanger. As soon as that was done, I recorded the rhythm guitar and bass so I could get that over to Denmark for Lars to do his vocals. As soon as that was done, PHARAOH was in the studio recording Be Gone. Once the basic tracks for that were done, Matt recorded his solos for both FOOL'S GAME and PHARAOH. I finished up Be Gone at the end of that fall, and then got back to work on Reality Divine.

I got that pretty much finished up in early 2008, but then Intormental needed to shop it to the record labels. In the interim I mixed REDEMPTION's live DVD/CD Frozen In The Moment. Once we had signed with Cruz Del Sur, we needed to get it mastered and then into their release pipeline. So the album took a long time, a lot longer than I hoped, but I am very pleased with the results.

Matt: Some of the lyrics on the album deal with the evils of organized religion and blind faith in religion. So the cover to me is an innocent girl about to fall victim to organized religion. The artwork originally had the red sentry on it, but Lars had the idea of replacing the sentry with the little girl to fit the meaning of the lyrics more. The back cover shows the sentry, which to me symbolizes that the little girl has gone in and fallen victim. The artist is Michal Karcz of Michal Karcz Design.

Lars: The reality divine is a play of words that refers to the fact that the lyrics more or less are based upon religious madness. I believe that religion is absurd and grotesque, and I ask the question: Why do you have to believe in a HUMAN CREATED god, instead of putting a little faith in yourself? Why is it that a lot of people can't live and get their shit together, without having to use their little imaginary friend to help them get through the day? If a small child has imaginary friends, we contact psychologists and other learned people, because we consider it wrong and the child must obviously have a mental disorder. When 80% of the grown-up population of the world prays to their imaginary friend, everyone considers it ok - coz that's religion and that's a personal thing. It's all a load of BS in my mind! Reality is what world I live in and that's divine for me...!

Lars: Well, I had the poem The Wild Swans At Coole in my mind for a long time, and since it's limited how many songs you can write about the absurdity of religion, I got the idea that we could do a kind of poem-trilogy and call them the poem-sessions. Matt liked the idea and he chose The Conqueror Worm as his contribution. The third poem was one our manager at Intromental chose. I didn't know which one I should use, and he told me about She Moved Through The Fair (thanks, Claus). I liked it instantly, so it was decided on the spot to use it. I had to re-write the poems a bit to make them fit into the song structure, but it's almost the original poems in there.

Matt: I didn't pick The Conqueror Worm for any reason other than I really enjoy the poem. I have always enjoyed darker art, whether it was a movie, a poem or a song, so I was naturally drawn to Poe's work. A lot of his poems could be the inspiration for a song, but this one was an appropriate length to turn the entire thing into a song.

As to the philosophical questions...I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about them. I would like to think that this life is not all in vain, but it's certainly hard to have faith in that isn't it?

Matt: We have not played any gigs yet. We've talked about it, and would like to do them, but the right opportunity hasn't presented itself. It would really take a festival setting for it to work for us. If we play live it will be the same lineup as on the disc with the addition of a bassist. The only question would be Nick as his work schedule is pretty hectic, and he tries to save as much vacation as he can for REDEMPTION related tours.

The music is pretty complicated, but I think we'd be ready for a live show with just a few rehearsals. Everyone involved has been playing for a long time, so it would really just take a few runs through each song to get them ready. The bigger challenge would be to figure out how Matt and I could play all of the guitar parts between just the two of us. On the CD there are places where there are five distinct guitar parts, so boiling that down to two parts would take some work, but that would all be done ahead of time, so we'd be ready for rehearsals.

Matt: I have about four songs more or less ready for the next FOOL'S GAME album. I have started on a fifth one that I wrote with Nick. I plan on getting together with Matt and John later in the year to write some songs with them as well. For the future, I really hope we get the opportunity to play these songs live. They are really fun to play and I think they'd go over really well in a live environment. I am also hopeful that we'll be recording the follow up album next summer. I am not sure about the exact timing, as I want to block off time at my studio for this album, and I already have bookings for next year.

As for expectations, I don't really have any. I don't really have any expectations as to how well the album will sell or anything like that. When I left my last band, I knew I wanted to continue to make music, so I just started writing whatever came out without any expectations or really even knowing what I would do with the songs. I am just happy that the disc is out now and people can hear these songs. I have been working with Cruz Del Sur because of the PHARAOH albums for a while now. Enrico has always done everything he has promised he would, so I am quite happy with them. The current deal is for one album, though I certainly plan on making more.

Matt: Thank you very much for your kind words. I really put my heart into this disc, and it's rewarding to hear from people who enjoy it. Cheers!