Peter Tägtgren – Pain

Peter Tägtgren is a name synonymous with metal music. The mastermind behind such bands as Pain, Hypocrisy, Lindemann (with Till Lindemann), and a top-tier producer for countless metal records, Peter Tägtgren has pretty much done it all. 2016 sees the multi-talented Swede return to the music of Pain, a solo project he first began back in 1996. Having released his eighth studio album, Coming Home, with Pain earlier this month via Nuclear Blast Records (Pain’s first in five years), Jonathon Besanko for Metal Obsession had the pleasure to catch up with Tägtgren and discuss the new album, its many diverse influences and guest spots, and whether coming to Australia is on the horizon.

Kicking things off, we jumped right into the thick of it, with Tägtgren offering insight into how Coming Home came about and what the concept behind this record is. “I think after this intensive promotion that me and Till did together, after that in September, we figured out that Rammstein is going to do festivals next year, so both Till and I knew that time was up for us. So I just really started brainstorming what the hell I should do; how should the next Pain album be? Should I stay where the last one ended up (should I keep going the same way?), or should I develop myself? I mean, in the end, I just don’t like to stay in the same place and do the same thing. So I really needed to just push myself forward, taking in everything I’ve been doing for the last 20 years or whatever, and try and inspire me to move forward. Therefore I really started to write music in a different way, in a different type of thinking. I don’t know if it paid off or not [laughs], but it took a while to start thinking different every time you wrote a riff and stuff like that. Because usually when I start with one riff or melody, I’m in a hurry to just know how the whole song is going to end before it’s even written. So for me, it was really to hit the break and think about parts in a song and really think carefully and not rush what’s coming next after this riff or that riff. It took a long time. My brain wanted to go one way, so then I tried to create it in a different way. If I wanted to go right, then I had to go left, you know? So it was like trying to do the opposite.”

Having begun something with Lindemann so vastly away and taboo from what he’d done in the past, it was mused to Peter Tägtgren whether he found it difficult returning to Pain again? “I mean, it was kind of confusing. Not everybody in my kind of genre gets a chance to do a huge album like the Lindemann album, [Skills In Pills], became. It puts a lot of pressure on yourself, and it was just like, ‘Where do I take it from there?’ Do I try to copy Lindemann, no. I wrote all the music in Lindemann, so of course it’s going to show off that I’m in Lindemann. It’s impossible to do a hundred-and-eighty turn around and start writing totally different; it’s impossible for me. As I said, my style of music is always going to shine through, no matter what I do.”

It had to be asked: Tägtgren’s collaboration with Sabaton’s Joakim Brodén on the track, “Call Me”. How did this meeting first come about? “Well, it’s more simpler than you think,” Tägtgren explains. “I started with the Pain album in the end of August – to write it last year – and I went full force all the way to April, ‘cause then I had Sabaton booked in my studio [Abyss Studios] for two months. So I took a break from the making of the Pain album, which was really good, you know, so I could breathe. It gave me something to focus on instead of the Pain stuff, so that was really good and it helped me. And, of course, since I was singing on Sabaton’s Carolus Rex [2012], I told [Joakim], ‘It’s pay back time!’ [laughs] No, but I asked him, ‘Would you like to sing some parts on the song?’ and he went, ‘Yeah, of course!’ So it was very easy and I had the lyrics — I’d already sung the parts — so for him, it was a no-brainer. He just puts his touch on it and it works fine.”

The “Call Me” music video is also home to one of the more stranger music videos of Pain I’ve seen, with Peter, Joakim, and all of the band posed as these bizarre caricature-style puppets. My curiosity was peaked as to what inspired the direction for the music video? “It was actually the director’s [Ville Lipiäinen] idea. He’s from Finland, so he discovered someone in Finland that was making puppets, and he was like, ‘Hey, let’s do a puppet video!’ and I’m like, ‘What?’ I only know Genesis, you know? And he’s like, ‘Yeah, we can do it a bit like Genesis, but do the story from the 70s where the managers are the real rock stars, and the rock stars are just getting whatever’s left of it’. So I said, ‘As long as it’s brutal’, so he sure put in all the things for that.”

‘Coming Home’, out now via Nuclear Blast

There are a lot of interesting new musical elements Tägtgren has brought to Pain for this album this time round. From the heavy symphonic elements included on “Black Knight Satellite” to the trumpets and acoustic guitars used in “Coming Home”, you are exposed to a smorgasbord of sounds and styles with this record. It felt fair to assume he allowed his creativity to run wild, and all without staying too closely to convention. “Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if it’s too schizophrenic for people to listen to. I have no clue. But for me, it feels like a good rollercoaster that’s not too stressful, I would say. But I always wanted to try to push the boundaries on what I can do myself and what I can’t. That’s really the only thing that’s stopping me from putting weird shit in there. Only when I don’t know how to do things, do I usually then become determined to fix it. If I have an idea, then I’m like, ‘Oh shit, how am I going to pull this off?’ I just try and try and try. Mainly for the acoustic parts on the album, I went into my friend’s studio because he’s renting a room beside me — Jonas Kjellgren from Scar Symmetry, he used to play guitars in Scar Symmetry and he’s also a producer — and I found an acoustic guitar. I was sitting there and just by accident, I started playing acoustic, and I was like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute… what about if I put some strings on this and that and you could make it really naked and bold?’ For me to sing with just an acoustic guitar, that’s a pretty scary idea for me a year ago. You push it and try to do it so you’re not ashamed, you know? [laughs] I think you will win some and you will lose some, but hopefully it’s for the better. For me, it’s not really for anybody else. I really want to try all these things, and I know sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I am totally aware of that. No matter what happens, as long as I’m happy and I feel like in my heart that this is an honest thing, then I think other people will see it as well and can relate to it.”

Coming Home also saw Tägtgen adopt orchestral elements for the album with the help of Carach Angren’s Clemens “Ardek” Wijers? I was curious to know how it was working with Ardek? “Oh, it’s great!” Tägtgren enthuses. “I actually started working with that when I mixed the last Carach Angren album, and that’s what triggered me, and I was like, ‘Holy shit, man!’ I asked him, ‘where do you get all this… did you go to Prague or some Phil-harmonica orchestral shit?’, and he’s like, ‘No, no, I did it myself.’ I was like, ‘What!?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, normally I do movie scores.’ I asked him, ‘Hey, can you do something for me? I can send you some files with melodies and stuff like that.’ And he says, ‘Yeah, no problem!’ So I sent it over to him and a very simplistic orchestra part that he totally picked up and it just blew my mind. From then on, it was easy. Then for the next song, you can always imagine what it will be, and that inspires you also to write these kind of songs where it will fit in them. But I didn’t want to over do it. So if I put a little of this and a little of that, it will give a new dimension, I think, to my stuff, so it was really great to do these things and it actually works out and it sounds actually professional.”

Coming Home further added the talents of Peter’s own son, Sebastian, into the fold to perform drums for the record. Did he naturally step into the role, or was there a bit of easing into it? “Yeah, definitely,” Tägtgren responds. “He did drums on the whole album, including drum loops that you think are drum loops that is actually him playing, as well. He’s a really good drummer. Over the last year, he really stepped up and it was easy for me because we live seventy yards from my studio, and sometimes when you’re writing — as sometimes I use a drum machine — it’s very simple programming, so it’s just like a straight beat and stuff like that; just to sit and write on. Sometimes you get stuck and you need inspiration, so I asked him to go down and put some drums on there so it feels fresh and then you keep on working on the song. In the end, I just said, ‘Hey, here’s ten songs, can you put drums on them?’ And he just says, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ It was no big deal for him. Now afterwards, I can think about it and I’m really proud of it: that we do something together, you know?”

Of course, it had to be asked whether any new Hypocrisy material is currently being worked on? “Nothing right now,” Tägtgren states. “I’m still in the Pain bubble. I mean, this is almost the end of the promotion for the album, so now I have to concentrate on the live stuff and then we go out in one month — exactly, I guess — on tour, so there’s a lot of shit to take care of. Anything from the stage set: what is going to look like, and how are we going to do this? Which songs are we going to play? Then someone comes up and like, ‘Hey, you need some t-shirt designs.’ Shit, now you’ve got to go through those things, as well. [laughs] I mean, there’s a lot of shit on the table right now to even start thinking about writing a riff or whatever, you know? But it will come: when my brain is dry and I’m hungry, then things will go faster.”

Could we ever hope to see Pain or Hypocrisy — perhaps both at once! — come to Australia any time soon? “I would love to come to Australia. I mean, when we did the Lindemann thing in Australia, it was like, ‘Wow!’ Because, I mean, we were supposed to go there a couple years ago, but this knucklehead (he didn’t know what he was doing)… but since we were on the other side of the world, we had no clue who we were talking to when eventually we see flight tickets not showing up, there’s no Visa, or nothing. I’m just going, ‘What the hell is going on?’ And all of a sudden, the guy disappears. I heard he screwed out a lot of people by that, you know? I’m really sorry for that, but I had no clue either, you know? When you get invited to a country you’ve never been to, you have no idea how it works, so you fully trust the person that tells you: ‘I’m going to bring you to Australia’. You do the deals; everything is good, everyone is happy; and, we were just waiting for Visa applications from Australia and also wait for flight tickets and it never shows up, what can you say, you know? We still have our hopes to go to Australia again, it’s not over. We just have to find a good booker, and right now, I have no clue. But hopefully we can find someone to bring us down there. I’m looking forward to it.”

Before we wrapped, I asked whether Peter Tägtgren had any last words for his fans? “Yeah, I just hope everyone can enjoy the new album, and I really hope to see everybody there!”

To follow everything Pain, and to purchase Coming Home in a number of formats, check the link below!

http://www.painworldwide.com/home/

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