NAMM Interview: Mats Levén
You may know Mats Levén from Candlemass, from Trans-Siberian Orchestra, from Yngwie Malmsteen, or any of the multitude of projects he’s been involved in, but you may not have known that he’s also the face behind the solo project known as Skyblood, on Napalm Records. I sat down with him at NAMM for an interview about what’s behind Skyblood, as well as some insight into his songwriting techniques, and NAMM 2020 goings-on.
How are you doing, enjoying your day at NAMM?
I’m fine, I’ve only been here for two hours, so I’ve only been to the Marshall booth and Gibson, but it’s great so far.
So far, so good, then. So the main focus that I want to jump right into is, of course, Skyblood. Now, a lot of people might expect a solo venture from an artist to be named after themselves, but you did something a little different there, but I think it’s a unique name that seems to fit the sound of the record.
Thank you, cool. Yeah, I mean, the whole point was that, I’ve been doing many albums through the years, 30 years, and I’ve been doing different genres in Hard Rock/Metal, I’ve done Classic Rock, Power Metal, Doom Metal, Symphonic Metal, and I just felt that I want to have a fresh start with a solo thing. And I’d rather call it something, and as it turned out, when I saw the painting for the cover, I had this Skyblood thing in the back of my head as one potential name, and when I saw that, I thought, “Yeah, that guy is my alter ego, he’s another part of myself”, and I started to build a story around that guy in my own head, almost like a TV series script or a movie script. And it was easier for me to write all the lyrics and stuff, pretending to be someone else, like you’d put a mask on your face, you become someone else. You almost talk like someone else, you know, because you have a different face. So, I was never really interested in calling it Mats Levén, and the record company would call it that as well, of course, they used that in the marketing, that it’s my album, but I just wanted to be a fresh start.
Well, your voice is still yours, though.
Yeah, it is! But I mean, also there are a couple of songs where I might sing it different to how I’ve sung on albums before, so I guess the voice is there, but the genre is a bit different to what I’ve done before.
You were saying that it was after you’d seen the artwork that you realized you were taking on this alter ego, so the artwork and the music were coming about around the same time?
No, the music was done way earlier. All the demo lyrics, I kind of changed them a little, even though maybe I kept like 70-80% of the lyrics, I went another way with some of the lyrics when I had this guy to go through. So the music has been there for a long time, a lot of it, and when the split happened with Candlemass, I didn’t know what to call it, but when I got the deal with Napalm, I started scanning the internet for picture to get inspired by, and I happened to stumble upon this painting that we changed a little afterwards. But I was lucky, the guy lived in Stockholm, where I live, so I could have a coffee with him and say, “Hey, man, I got this idea, are you up for it?”, so I was really lucky with that.
Seems like it was meant to be. I heard that you actually recorded the majority of this in your own studio, including various instruments, not only your vocals, right?
Well, yeah, when I’ve done the demos, I’ve done everything in my studio, I got like D-Drums to do the drums, and I played the bass and guitar and everything myself. But then on the album, obviously, I brought in different drummers, friends of mine, a bass player who did all the tracks, the majority of the guitars are my own, but I brought in some guys to do the solos because I can’t play as well as those guys can, and I wanted to have a couple of solos that were really good solos. But then, I’ve done all the keyboards and orchestration myself. Only time I’ve been in a real studio has been the drum recordings.
Tell me more about your actual studio itself, when did you first acquire this studio of your own?
I mean, when you say “studio”, you might think that it’s like a big studio, but it’s not really, I had my studio in my living room at the start, and already from the beginning, I’d been recording my own vocals in my own studio, because it was convenient, and that’s basically a computer and microphone, a keyboard and some guitars, you know? It’s not more than that. And nowadays, since we bought the house, I’ve got a bigger room to keep everything in, but it’s still about the computer, the microphone, the keyboard, and the guitars. So it’s not like a big studio, I barely record anyone else there, it’s just for my own stuff. It’s really good for me to have the studio close to myself because I’m so busy, we’ve got kids and stuff, so I can go, “Okay, I have one hour here, now I can work this vocal”. So pretty often, I actually have the studio on all the time, it’s ready to go, because when I get up to the studio, I don’t want to have to wait ten minutes to switch everything on. I got inspired by a book by David Lynch, the director, he wrote a book about, create your own work environment, so you enjoy sitting down in your work environment. And so that’s what I’ve done. I’ve always got a guitar at arm’s length from myself, the piano, everything is close, so when I have an idea, I can just start recording it right away. I got inspired by that and that’s how I try to do it.
Perfect, that’s what I was going to say, it’s a great idea to have your own setup, because ideas do hit you, and by the time you get everything set up and plugged in, you’re like, “Wait! What was it?”
Yeah, that’s the way it is! I mean, many times I record on my voice memos on my phone, because I’m on the wrong floor, I’ve got the kids, I’m fixing food or whatever, and suddenly it pops up. It’s always the voice memos, and in the old days, when you recorded stuff on a voicemail, afterwards you couldn’t understand anything, it was like, “What the fuck is this?”, so nowadays I’m a bit better at naming every idea, so I can understand afterwards, “Oh, okay, yeah, that’s the vibe I was thinking of”. Actually, I’m pretty good at going through my ideas, my voice memos, and throwing stuff away that I don’t like, and trying to do something with it. Because a lot of ideas come up, in my head at least, when you’re out walking, or whatever, you know?
So when you find that these kinds of ideas hit you, you are primarily a vocalist even though you do play instruments as well, in what way do you find they hit you, will you think of a melody line, or will you think in terms of a specific instrument?
I mean, sometimes it’s just about a drum beat. Almost every time, you record that, and then your brain starts to do something else in the same beat or whatever, and then I’ve got to record another part, and then suddenly you come up with a melody that you’ve got in your head and it’s, “Okay, I’ve got to record that as well”. That’s the way it goes normally, it could be a guitar riff as well, sometimes you might watch a movie, you’ll hear a piano line and then you come up with something. And sometimes you don’t use it in the end, but sometimes, that will be the basic thing of a really, really good song that turns out to be something else later. So yeah, you’ve got to take care of those ideas, don’t think that you’re going to remember them in 30 minutes, because you’re not. Or, if you do remember it an hour later, then it was probably really, really good. But yeah, I tend to forget pretty fast.
I think that’s normal. *laughs*
Yeah.
So outside of songwriting, and even outside of Skyblood, something I wanted to ask you about – I saw something recently about the King’s Call Cruise, reflecting on the music of Phil Lynott, how was that?
It’s some friends of mine, they celebrate the memory of Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy every year in Stockholm, so I normally try to do that every year. As a bunch of friends, we don’t make any money off it or anything, it’s just a cool way to start the year, because everybody had the Christmas and New Year thing, and then they get to meet each other again and have a beer, and just play Thin Lizzy music, which is cool. And people buy tickets to see it, but this year, they did a cruise, a four-hour cruise to Finland and back, with some more artists as well. That was awesome, it’s great. We have so many local musicians, friends in Stockholm, and we get to meet and actually sit down a talk a little, which we don’t have time to do normally. So King’s Call is really close to my heart, it’s a cool thing.
Glad to hear that. So, this week, tell us what you’ve got going on at NAMM, I know I heard from Gus G., he said you’re going to making an appearance on Friday at his show, but aside from that, what else have you got going on?
Yeah, I’ll just do a song with Gus for fun tomorrow, and probably on Sunday as well, at the Whisky, and I’m not doing any more shows, but I’ve got some guys that I’m meeting that I’m interested in some business opportunities with. I want to check out some products that I’m really interested in, and also just to come here to network, and since I’ve got a new album out, I told Napalm, I’m going over to NAMM this year, because I just want to network with people and just hang, you know? Because I’ve been so much at home this year, recording the album, so I haven’t really had much time to meet people. And between 2016-18, I did Trans-Siberian Orchestra every year, which, the whole November/December, you’re out in the States touring, and then when I come back on January 1st, I won’t go back to NAMM one week later, you know? I’m back with the family. I didn’t do Trans-Siberian this year, so I was like, okay, I’ve got a new album out, I haven’t done Trans-Siberian, I’ve got to go to NAMM this year, I haven’t been here since 2014. So it was good timing and a lot of friends of mine are coming here as well, and like I said, Gus was playing, so I contacted him, “Hey, man, we should hook up”, and just have a great week of music and hanging with people, which is awesome.
Awesome, that’s just what NAMM is supposed to be all about.
Yeah, it is, and this time I had my own album out as well, so it’s easier for me now to meet some of the companies when it comes to endorsements, because I can show them the album, I can tell them that I’ve done Trans-Siberian Orchestra for three years, so they know that I’m kind of legit. So it’s a good time for me to be here.
It is going to be a good time, so I’m going to let you get to it! Thanks for sitting down to talk with me today.
Thank you!
For more on Mats Levén, head to: https://matsleven.com.