MAJESTICA INTERVIEW
Twinmusix got to speak to Tommy from Majestica.
TM - Hi, This is Amelia and Elizabeth from Twinmusix, we are here with Tommy from Majestica. Thank You for having this interview with us today.
MA - I'm Glad to be here.
TM - How have you been?
MA - I've been good, all good here despite the situation in the world.
TM - Not touring, must suck hey.
MA - Yeh it sucks, with Sabaton we had a lot of touring plans that we had to cancel this year. Almost three weeks in Russia and the festivals in Europe. We were planning on going to America together with Judas Priest. We were the planning to go to Australia as well but that was postponed till next year. We had some shows with Majestica planned that we needed to cancel as well, that sucks.
TM - Yeh that sucks, well hopefully we see you next year.
MA - I hope so too.
TM - You just bought at your new album A Christmas Carol, how did fans respond?
MA - surprisingly good actually, when you add doing something like this it's can be good, it can be bad as you are doing something very specific. I mean we cannot release a Christmas album in the summer. When we release a Christmas album close to Christmas it is good. The fans have been fantastic of course, there will always be people who don't like Christmas and anything that has to do with Christmas. It's cheesy and if they don't like it well maybe this album is not for you. I know there's a lot of people who love Christmas and love power metal and now they have the best of both world's, Christmas and power metal in one package. People seem to enjoy that very very much and that makes me very very happy.
TM - What made you want to write a Christmas Carol album?
MA - I always wanted to release a Christmas album for many years. For at least 10 years. I wanted to release a Christmas album because I love Christmas and I love everything around Christmas. I love the music the atmosphere and the Christmas spirit. It's like cleaning your soul, you get to feel like a child again even if your grown-up. It doesn't matter how old you are, at Christmas, you can feel like a kid again. I'm bringing that feeling into the music. It is something I've always wanted to do because music is all about feeling. When you listen to music you feel something, you can feel like wow this reminds me of that or that makes me happy or sad. Music is about a feeling and Christmas music when you listen to any Christmas song you feel ok this is Christmas and Christmas is different for everyone. For me, Christmas is a time of happiness and a time of joy a time to feel like everything is fine, everything is perfect and life is good. whatever has been bad this year or any year is going to be good because it's Christmas and that's the feeling I wanted to bring into the music. I want to share a message, like that because I'm telling a story that people know about, so that's nothing new.
It has been a horrible year, we all knew it was going to be a bad year when this started. As a new band, well we have been around science 2002, 2008. We released our first album, two years ago we changed our name to Majestica and our fans have just been wonderful and supporting power metal genre. that isn't as big as it used to be but still hardcore fans and we wanted to give something back. We wanted to make a Christmas album, many people have been talking about for years like a natural thing for us to do. Plus it was a fun challenge to write Christmas songs.
TM - I also love how you took old Christmas carols and made it heavy and added different lyrics, can you tell us what inspired that?
MA - Well, I've done a lot of covers in my days. I love to do covers, I love to change Melodies that aren't metal and turn them into metal, especially power metal and Christmas sounds. To put power metal into these Melodies in the songs that wasn't hard. As long as you have the tempo right, you hear right away. Ok this Melody could fit here and "The Herald Angles" what can I do with that song, well it's a wonderful song, I could do an entire verse with that Melody. That's how the ghost of Christmas past came up actually. The first one I started with "The Herald Angles", I needed to use that and it was written in the fifteen hundreds so it's public domain. I can use it as much as I want I can change the lyrics if I want to. I figured out a Tempo and listen to it. I know you as like yeah this works let me add this type of drums, that was the most fun part to try and find Christmas Melodies.
I also had a list of songs, of very old Christmas songs of very well known Christmas songs. I used different melodies here and there, like can I use this one here no it doesn't work, maybe this one works here, so that's how I work. Listening to Christmas songs, watching Christmas movies, that's how I get inspiration for songs and movies. Of course, the melodies they are very happy and should be in a happy song. There are melodies that are a bit darker, like Carol of the Bells, that is a very dark Christmas song. That fits perfectly for the song the Ebenezer Scrooge goes into the future the Dark part of the story.
TM - If you could have any band play one of your songs what band would it be, what song and in your style or their style?
MA - Twilight force, I love Twilight force with all the symphonic parts. I think they would do this perfectly. It would be cool to hear someone like Avantasia do something like this. I don't know you know there are so many bands I listen to. Actually what I would love to hear is a real Orchestra doing this, that would be the most awesome. If Alan Sylvester's Orchestra would do this album that would be so cool.
TM - That would be so awesome.
MA - Yeh John Williams or Danny Elfman, that would be awesome. If any of those guys would do this with an Orchestra, wow, that would be so awesome.
TM - I would like to hear Apocalyptica, do it to that would be awesome.
MA - Yeah, I think they would pull it off.
TM - Do you have any plans to create another Christmas Album?
MA - Of course I do, I have already started but we are taking it easy. We can't deliver albums to soon because as soon as you release a new album the previous album dies a little bit. I mean it doesn't die but the focus around that album dies so if we were going to release a new album right away or maybe next year then this album would only live for one year. Mabey if we were to release another Christmas Album in 2 years. A Christmas Carol could become vocal but from outside if we were to do a new Christmas album people would focus on the new one. We have plans that we will do with this album next year and we will see what happens or what we can do about it. Maybe we can release it in a new way so we can keep the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge alive for one year that would be cool.
TM - How about a non-Christmas album do you have any plans for bringing one of them out?
MA - Yeah, absolutely we have already written a second regular album. The plan was to record that album this year but a Christmas album sounded more exciting and more fun to record a Christmas album than a regular album so that's why we did that.
TM - Is there anything else you want to say to your fans?
MA - Thank you for being the best fans. I didn't know the positive reactions that we would receive for this album. It is amazing, especially when it comes to the ballad. I thought maybe, people would think that a Christmas ballad is too cheesy or what's going on here is not metal. It is just piano and vocals it belongs on a musical stage, but people seem to enjoy it very very much and I'm very very happy about that. I am very very proud of the ballad and I like to sing that older stuff. I never really get the chance to play that type of stuff because I am in a power metal band. You don't do many ballads and this was a great opportunity to do a ballad to do a Christmas ballad is perfect so that's what I'm most happy about.
TM - Thank you so much for this interview today we appreciate it.
MA - Thank you to and Thank you for having me.
iTunes Link: https://music.apple.com/au/album/a-christmas-carol/1533955619
YouTube Link for online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_RKRbA9gRY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ol8DlEPEaM