THENCOMES SILENCE I read in certain interviews that you lived a few years in Spain.What do you remember of these years? I have many childhood memories. I moved back to Sweden when I was six. I went to pre-school in Madrid. My first friends were Spanish kids. I remember that the climate at the playground school yard was pretty hard for a silent and shy little kid like me, but no harm done. The jargon was a bit different than I was used to. My family followed my father’s assignments. He worked for a big Swedish company and since he spoke Spanish fluently, he was sent to Latin America and Spain. How did you get the idea, during the pandemic, of making a cover with friends of “All Tomorrow’s Parties”? It seems to be the perfect song for those days. You also covered Siouxsie and the Banshees’s “Christine,” right? Isn’t it just natural? I am surprised we haven’t seen others doing a cover of that song. The title says it all. It’s an old song, a classic. Some might have missed its existence.One of the artists that we asked to be a part of this didn’t know the song and kindly declined to contribute. We felt very early that the parties will be missed. The lockdown with closed borders wouldn’t just be a brief thing. It could take some time…We didn’t expect it to take so long thou. It felt like a good thing to do at the time. It was also a kind of rehearsal for the online event “Gothicat Festival” that was going to be launched a week after our version of “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” That’s where we premiered the quarantine live session of “Christine.” After the stream of “All Tomorrow’s Party”, the band recorded four Eps, where we can find covers of some classic Goth bands as Siouxsie or Sisters of Mercy, of some modern bands as She Past Away and Buzz Kull but also of some artists far from Then Comes Silence’s universe (at least according to me) as Grace Jones or Gene Vincent. How did you choose the songs? Have you thought of releasing these tracks on CD or Vinyl? It was mostly me who picked the songs. I was already the self-appointed producer for the project, so I wanted songs that could work well together in a wide range. Both lyrically and musically they had to feel they could have been our songs, too.Hugo picked a couple of songs and did a lot of the arrangements. One track we all, the band arranged together in the studio.And that track is one ofmy favorites, “Be-Bop-A-Lula”. The recording sessions were done in one of the tougher times during the pandemic. When we were still waiting on the vaccines. Back when you didn’t know what new restrictions would turn up the next week. Uncertain times.We had a chance to record the www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be - 22 - drums in a short period of time, so Jonas did all the drum takes in one day! Eighteen songs in one day, imagine… eventually we had to skip one song by The Doors, so we ended up with seventeen tracks. Jonas was completely exhausted. I was impressed. He is a professional. We won’t do any physical releases of the cover project ‘Horsemen’ EP. The flip side of a project like that is taking care of the approvals and the legal matters regarding copyrights and similar.We had to take out the Jimi Hendrix song last minute for the North American market.The ones taking care of his legacy threatened to sue our American label. The rest of the world works fine with the rights apparently. You have a new project called Neonpocalypse. What can you please tell us about this? It’s about the beauty of the downfall, the end and ruin. Mankind is a very interesting character. Sometimes a monster and sometimes a genius. I choose to see the beauty of the effects of human destruction. It helps when the world frightens you. What are the plans of the band for the future? Apart from returning to the US this Spring,we will pick up where we left and followout most of the postponed shows that have been haunting us.We want to play Germany and the rest of Europe again like we did before the pandemic. Onwards and forwards. Let’s go down the Autobahn again. In the first interview, we asked you about South America, have you managed to go there to play yet? We have been invited and there have been requests, but it’s unfortunately a matter about the budget. We have so much going on at the moment, so there’s no possibility to make a trip over there paying from our own pockets. But… of course we’d love to go there one day. In one of your streamings, you collaborated with Nicklas Stenemo, from Kite. He is playing at DarkMad too on the same day.Will we see you together? Me and Nicklas knoweach other from long before Kite and Then Comes Silence.A true professional.No,we don’t have any plans of playing together on stage, but you might see us socializing holding a beer in a bar instead. François ZAPPA © Published by the kind permission of El Garaje de Frank www.elgarajedefrank.es
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