Scott Leach
Crystal Ball
The pleasure is mine. I'm doing great, thank you.
To be honest, not at all. We planned a tour and festivals in 2020 which had to be postponed and postponed again. And in the end it didn't make sense to do it at all, more than two year later. So we moved on the new album.
No, I don't think so. But maybe I will answer this question differently 5 years from now. Time will tell if this nightmare will be completely over then and how it affected all of us. We try to focus on the positive side of it. It gave us the chance to write more songs. And it was also some kind of break and we were able to spend more time with our friends and families.
We organized an online meet & greet to keep in touch with our fanbase during the pandemic. We did that already twice. It was fun and very cool to see your fans. We also thought about doing a streaming show, but decided against it. Playing live is one thing. Watching a streaming show is just not the same. So we wait until it's possible again.
It was our bass player Cris, who came up with this title in the rehearsal room. We all laughed really hard. But after a while we thought, there's something to it. It's an artificial word, which is always good, and it relates to Crystal Ball. Hysteria for Crystal Ball in one word.
Awesome … we got so many great reactions. Fans sent us so many pictures of the CD and the limited box set edition und social media. They are really happy as far as we can tell from their comments. And we hit the official Swiss album charts on #9.
We are full of energy, that accumulated over the last couple of years. I think the lyrics reflect what is in the music already. The urge to go out there and rock. That's the overall narrative, even though that was never a plan and we never agreed on such. It just happened. Of course each song has a story of its own. And since there's more than one lyric-writer, we have different influences.
It was nice to have a goal; we could work towards to. The good thing was that we had plenty of time. That resulted in more than 30 songs to choose from in the end. After the first shock of cancelled show and tours, we were quite relaxed and took it day by day. We couldn't take any influence on the situation, so why bother about it. That doesn't mean we were happy with it. We just focused on what we COULD do.
One reason is certainly that we took so much time for the writing process and had some many songs to choose from. Another one is, that our new guy Peter also had plenty of songs and ideas lying around. In combination the Crystal Ball sound, it crystallized into the fresh approach you can now hear.
We are obviously all children of the 80s. But of course we are open to other influences too. I like classical music and movie soundtracks too, for example. Sometimes it's hard to tell where some things / sounds / melodies come from, because it feels like they come from the inside. But I know that's because I put it there by listing to other music for a great part.
Steven did an awesome job on this album. He always does, but this album was special. Because we didn't know exactly how his voice would work after the Covid infection. But it worked out brilliant, even better than before (also according to our producer Mr. Kaufmann). We all love great and big vocal harmonies like Queen or Def Leppard used to do. If it reminds you of Uriah Heep, that's cool. It's a great band but was never a big influence to us.
During each production I learn a lot of things. You might think after so many albums and recording everything is routine, but that isn't the case. Of course, certain things are save and easy, others aren't. We challenge ourselves to always go further, try some new or different. So I didn't just repeat what I had played before. Especially the solos were really composed and thought about.
Peter brought in a lot of great songs and ideas for the new album. Some were already finished, others we finalized together. It's great to work with him. He's open for new ideas and always put's the song itself in the center of attention, like I do. We can exchange ideas and inspire each other.
Yeah, I feel like it's a logical continuation of the path that we followed with the last couple of albums. Especially the 2020 album. The sounds of the drums, the bass and guitars are based on that album, but the overall sound is even better than on that last one. We were really happy when we heard the first mixes. Still each album captures a certain moment in time. And it has to fit the songs and the mood.
Very interesting to hear your thoughts. The song is also one of my favorites. When I came up the guitar riff to "Undying" I immediately knew that I had something really cool. Actually I laid in bed one night and was "composing" in my head. All of a sudden I had to get up a record it. Because it was in the middle of the night I didn't play it on the guitar, but programmed it on the keyboard with headphones. Later on, I realized that it was played different on guitar than I thought it would be, haha. Also it was one of the songs that were written very early in the process of the new album.
There's way too much bullshit going on in the music business. We're all in the same boat. The bands have known each other for a long time. When the tour plan was made, and it was clear the Jaded Heart would be our special guest, our singer Steven had to idea for a band duet. We really wrote that song together. I got in touch with the guitar player Peter Östros and we sent riffs and parts back and forth until the song was finished. Everyone contributed their parts.
"Crystal Heart" was a working title at first. But after a while it became clear, that this is the perfect title for the song. The lyrics reflect that too.
We would have been on tour already, but unfortunately we had to cancel the it, due to the circumstances of Covid. We hope that we'll be able to do it when it's safe again. Safe to plan it and safe for the fans and the bands. Of course we will play many of the new songs and of course the classics. We'll also have some specials in the set.
Thank you very much for the interesting questions. I can tell you really took your time to listen to the album and prepared very well.
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