Talking with Mechina’s Joe Tiberi is always entertaining, because not only are interviews with him basically late night brodowns, but there are no time constraints, no PR people or next interviewers interfering. Time is never of utmost importance with Joe, which is suitable for a guy whose band is still woving together a colossal space epic that is nowhere near completion, and also ironic because the guys in Mechina seem to run into time-related freakouts year after year due to Tiberi’s self-set, merciless schedule, where he will release an album on the first of January, with a lengthy single bridging the wait in summertime. When we had talked for about three hours with Joe, and I had just declared that I had asked all the questions I had written down for the interview (and more), he said that hey, he’s got another 15 minutes before he has to go anywhere, so naturally we talked on for about another 45 about both important stuff (for how long could Mechina really go on for, or how, being a sound engineer, Joe has worked with hip-hop artists, about which not many people knew of) and thoroughly unimportant stuff (my aspiring lyric-writing, for example, or how robots could be a viable alternative to pets). So how did 2015 turn out for the Chicago-based space lore weavers? Where did Mechina go to and where do they plan to go to? Read on to find out.

First of all, I don’t think that Acheron earned an olive branch anywhere, but it was my album of the year, and I bet it was for a thousand or so people across the globe as well, so for all of us, thanks for all your hard work, Joe. With that said, what was your own favorite album from last year?

I’ve been listening to some of the stuff that David Holch (vocals) has turned me into. Cattle Decapitation, who I wasn’t into before, but Holch was showing me some of their new stuff, which was cool, and even Thy Art Is Murder, which he listened to quite a bit. Tesseract as well, I was getting into that – I like the atmosphere that they do. But 2015 for me was more about catching up with older stuff versus keeping up with specific releases.

But what did you listen to in 2015, that you really enjoyed, that wasn’t necessarily from that year?

I have been catching up on Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack stuff. Also, I have listened to a lot of Ludovico Einaudi. He makes single instruments sound very symphonic in a way that I haven’t heard before. He can take a piano, and make it sound like there is a band, and a melody section, and a singer. It’s very interesting, and I love the laid-back ambient vibe that he creates. A lot of the music that I listen to nowadays is very chill. Of course I love my brutal shit too, but still, the music that I get the most joy out of is atmospheric, orchestral, cinematic music. When you have studio speakers two inches from your face all day long, you need a bit of relaxation. But yeah, my music listening, I wish I kept up more, but it’s more like a “I’ll listen when it’s around me” type of situation. A lot of it is due to me doing a new Mechina album every year. When you are demoing out a song, or doing pre-production, and deciding the structure of a song, sometimes you have to listen to your own music even in your leisure time. An album we pretty much do top-to-bottom in the span of a few months, so a big part of my year is just sitting back and listening to my own stuff, analyzing it, evaluating my mixes, while also trying to learn from other people as well.

So in general, a lot of abstract stuff, a lot of non-metal things are what I have been listening to, but Dave’s always there to show me some crazy, technical death metal stuff, which you need every once in a awhile.

 

So it’s another year, another Mechina album, and another cycle where I notice people saying stuff like “I mean it’s good but it’s just more of the same” about your new album. Does that bother you at all, that however good an album you release there are always people out there somewhat discarding it because it’s nothing revolutionary, or are you unphased by that?

I would be lying if I said that I was unphased by it. That’s a trait that you have to acquire, I think, and I haven’t. But yeah, we do get that reaction quite a bit, and when you see stuff like that, you want to have a debate about it and explain yourself. But they (who say that it’s more of the same) aren’t technically wrong: in a way it is more of the same, especially because the pace is so fast in regards to the project churning out an album each year. The next release that we will do will be a multi-album release, and it’s going to be designed in a way, where it is going to be one fluid song for about four hours (editor’s note: we were talking about the upcoming boxset featuring already-existing Mechina albums, not an entirely new four-hour release). All these albums are connected in a way, and I never write a lyric, without understanding the context of what came before it, and where it’s going within our story. So with that said, are there similarities between Acheron and Progenitor? Yeah, big time, but then again I think people who are saying that our albums sound the same, with a negative connotation, aren’t understanding what we’re going for here. You just have to accept that you are never going to please everyone. We have, ironically, been having a conversation about this over the last couple of days, because the response for Progenitor was overwhelmingly, even suspiciously good. Dave and I knew that we had a good album, where we cut off a lot of the fat and stuck with our basics, instead of trying to capture peoples’ attention by doing really crazy stuff, but the feedback was crazy good – the amount of comments, the response on youtube, e-mails and messages that we got etc. It became suspicious because it was so overwhelming, we were like “what did we do?” because we saw this huge spike in response. As an independent band who doesn’t tour, you gotta gauge where you are at with your career from online response.

Some people take our albums and say that it sounds like more of the same, and it’s not up to me to say that they are listening wrong, because everybody’s different. It gets a little weird though when people are not just liking it because of taste, which is ok, but trying to be aggressively depressing towards your music, saying that you are wasting your time making music, that it’s garbage. On the other hand, when you get a message from somebody, who says that they are dying of cancer, and your music is one of the things that keeps them optimistic, and give you a heartfelt thank you, it kind of blows your mind. So you are left sitting in the middle, reading both ends of the spectrum and wondering who is right. It’s a weird place to be, and it’s something a lot of musicians don’t talk about. Musicians in general are very to themselves people, who are very skeptical and hard on themselves. When you get pulled on both ends, that skeptical part of you gets worried. Of course a logical person will say fuck the negativity, embrace the good message, but it’s hard to do that as a human being. Still, when I look at it, people have been pretty happy with Progenitor, and I’m stickin’ with the ones who like it!

It needs to be said though, that when you get negative comments, you can very much learn from them: you take them and use as energy for the future. When there are consistent opinions, grievances, or compliments online, that tells you something. For example, Empyrean and the production conflict with that album that we talked about last time. Considering what I knew in 2012, when I wrote that album, versus what I know now – there is a drastic difference in understanding of production in regards to Mechina. I have learned a lot how to sculpt our sound and what we do. When we got a lot of “cool songs, production is lacking” messages with Empyrean, and you can see that consistent comment thread, then you know that those are the comments that you have to listen to. Constructive criticism, I’m all about that stuff, because that’s how everything gets better. When you look at these trends throughout albums, you will know where you did good on, and where you need to work on.

The trend with this Progenitor album is that it has been so well-received, and I’m vibing that at the moment. After four or five years, it seems that we have finally figured out how to do this thing efficiently and in a way that it doesn’t kill us physically and emotionally. The last two albums before Progenitor were so detrimental to my health and how I felt. Xenon and Acheron, those were really tough on me. This time around it was a lot easier. During the last week or so before the album launch, everybody were saying how calm Dave and I were. I even shut down my little production suit area and I didn’t work with anybody the whole month of December. I think the calmness was on show this time around, because the chaos revolving around Acheron and Xenon – you can hear that on the albums, you can hear how I felt during the months leading up to them. Same thing with Progenitor, actually – you can hear how I felt on that album as well, it’s just a different feeling this time, and it’s an attitude thing. There was a moment where I panicked, that I was going to run out of time again, and all that I needed to resolve that was four hours of sleep. I woke up and was OK again. As long as you stick to your guns and are good with your time, it will work out, which I think it did this time.

Do you have a dynamic with David as well in the sense that you’re like the one who spazzes out at some point, and he’s the calming force who comes in with a joint, or are you the same, that when you start to get nervous, then he will get nervous, and you will both have to sleep it off?

I have known Dave since the freshman year of high school, and ironically enough, about 80% of us are totally different people. He’s way more structured, he’s got a normal 9-to-5 job, he’s married, and I’m the eccentric single dude who sits in the studio, in the dark, all day long, which I enjoy, and also know that he wouldn’t. But with video games and Mechina, we can kind of turn into the same person, and we work together really well. We are similar also in some regards. For example, we would both much rather game online all night, as opposed to going out to a bar or stuff like that. We don’t do that, we don’t care, we are way more laid-back. Now in regards to the studio, we never get hostile at each other. There are disagreements, but you just gotta talk those out logically, and you never have to fight. Once you get into the groove of not taking anything personally, it’s real simple that way. He also understands that I am faster at and more knowledgeable about the technical stuff, and leaves that to me, although we kind of produce our albums together.

The last month and a half (of finishing the album) is about that crazy technical grind, and he understands and is ok with everything when I say something like “I need to run dynamics on these violin patches, it’s gonna take me about eight hours, can we get together another day.” We are very pragmatic about the process, and the process is a marathon, especially if you do albums so often. Your memory hasn’t died off yet, so you will have moments like “whoa I remember this feeling, it wasn’t that long ago.” It’s like post-traumatic stress disorder in the studio, and they should create a name for it. There is a term that I use, which is “post-album depression,” which is very real. If you have worked on an album for a very long time, and you wake up the next day, realizing the album is done, it will feel like “but what will I have to look forward to in life?” PTSD in the studio is very real! But of course it could be worse.

I think you are exhibiting classic symptoms of the disease and that’s why you can’t stop making these Mechina albums.

Everybody says that I have a mild form of Asperger’s, and not to be offensive to anybody, but they might be on to something! I can just sit there and click away on a computer for 20 hours straight, without talking to or looking at anyone. People in the studio will be like “what is he doing?” and somebody will say “don’t worry about it, he’ll figure it out, just wait until he presses space for playback, it will make sense somehow” and that’s how it goes.

When you were moving forward from Acheron, what were the main points you focused on this time? Were you trying to key in on anything specific, change something up, or were there any such thoughts at all? If you moved from Empyrean to Xenon, it was plain to see what you needed to do better, but Acheron, at least in my eyes, was well-produced, so did you have any qualms with that record when you looked back on it? Was there anything you wanted to do better this time, or were you just going with the flow?

I knew right away that Mel Rose (female vocals) was going to be on this album a lot more. I phoned her in March or April of 2015 and said that I will put her on at least two songs on the upcoming Mechina album, which weren’t even written at that time. So that was one thing, I wanted to bring her into the fold more, because she works really well with what we are doing. Other than that, I wanted to smooth out my work flow in regards to mixing and layering. I learned time managing from Acheron once more, and this time I went in with the idea to do the best sounding orchestra I could on a metal album. And once we got through Progenitor, I of course learned more – that’s a part of this Mechina experiment. With every album, you try to learn from both the good and the bad, and just keep going with it.

One thing that I noticed when browsing your facebook is that people really wanted there to be more clean vocals, which you actually delivered this time around. Was that a natural progression, or was it partly because you read the comments and you wanted to entertain your fans?

It’s a bit of both really. A lot of times in the studio, when we were writing lyrics to the songs, we had these discussions over in which manner a certain part was going to be performed, was it going to be aggressive or clean. We actually always joke about making an ’80s styled power metal album, just to get it out of our system. Iron Maiden and Blind Guardian – Holch loves that stuff, and I said “hey, if you don’t know if this part is going to be clean or not, then just go in there and think or dragons and mountains.” That’s our way of saying “go in there and get cheesy with the melodies.” If you listen to anything previous to Xenon, Dave’s vocal style is very safe. He sits in the pockets of the notes provided by either the guitar, bass, or orchestra. If you listen to Conqueror’s cleans, they are very much note to note to note on time, almost like what they call Mickey Mousey. But when you get in the booth and get cheesy with the melodies, perform these lyrics in an R’n’B style or whatever, you might actually stumble across a really cool melody by accident, that you can then use. That’s a part of why there were more clean vocals on this album – because we freed ourselves from any expectations and just went with it.

On the other hand, it was also very much due to a consistent demand as well. When we brought the clean vocals back on “The World We Lost,” (the single between Acheron and Progenitor), people were very enthusiastic. We didn’t have any (male) cleans on Acheron, and a lot of people were saying that we should bring them back, so we thought of ways how to construct an epic chorus or how to introduce cleans into longer songs. We definitely took people’s opinion into consideration, but freed ourselves up to different possibilities in regards to the types of songs we were writing. We didn’t sit down and map everything out on paper, that we’re gonna have so and so many clean vocal-dominated songs, because that would be a waste of time. You just gotta go, try things, and see what happens.

 

You mentioned before that you knew straight away after Acheron that you needed to have more Mel on this new album. In regards to that, this new album starts with some heavy female breathing, as the character is waking up and obviously escaping a cryopod or something like that. Since I am definitely not giving up on making sense of the whole Mechina universe, who is she and what is her role in Progenitor?

The female character in Progenitor is connected to “The World We Lost.” That song is the absolute beginning track of the entire story. If this story was to begin in any other medium, it would start with “The World We Lost,” which directly blends into our first album, Conqueror. Progenitor is happening during Conqueror and extending about a hundred or so years during the playtime of the CD. It’s a very fast change in time. We call the female character, who we want to kind of guide the listener, Andara. This character is the mother of the main character of the entire story, which goes through Empyrean, Xenon, and Acheron. So Progenitor is hundreds of years prior to the last few albums.

There has been a lot of talk about interplanetary travel the last year or so, and it’s on peoples’ mind now, which I like. Optimism is brewing that it might actually be somehow possible, and I wanted to encapsulate that with this character, who wakes out of cryosleep after traveling from our solar system to Alpha Centauri (the closest star system to our Solar system) for about 110 years. She wakes out of cryosleep, and right at the end of the first track, there are like blinds opening, and she is seeing the two planets that have been on all of our album covers in the past. I tried to encapsulate that moment in a way that would make you think if that was you, seeing that for the first time, how would you feel, would you be scared etc. We explore that character for the first four songs, but instead of prolonging her, she will die out of cryoshock, before ever setting foot out of the room she was in. It’s all about making you think about seeing something amazing and awe-inspiring, and then having it taken away from you very quickly.

There was a heavy presence of trying to think about death with Progenitor. That’s very much a rooted thought with this album. We kind of approach it in a way that we’re dedicating a little too much time into trying to figure it (death) out, what it all means, and eventually finding out that there isn’t a lot of meaning behind any of it. It gets really dark and weird, but we wanted to make people think about how quickly all this can go away, and that we shouldn’t take certain things for granted. There’s a lot of human things that we like to talk about in the context of the story; masking them with the story.

In the trailer for Progenitor there were too planets abnormally close to each other, and on Christmas Eve you declared that we become planet bound. What does all of that mean?

Those two planets in the trailer are what will become planets Acheron and Empyrean. But in the trailer, and since Progenitor is so far in the past, those planets don’t have rings yet, I’m trying to encapsulate what Andara saw when she opened those blinds – the ship that she was on finally reaching its destination. Planetbound is a term based off the song “Anagenesis,” the single that we released, which is right before the song “Planetfall.” Between the song “Cryoshock” and “Anagenesis,” forty-to-fifty years passed in a period that can be described as a waiting game. “We will become planet bound” is pretty much the optimism of finally being able to set foot on another planet. The whole essence of the entire story is us talking about the titans, these big machines that are capable of terraforming entire planets in one way, shape, or form. On board that ship where Andara wakes up, there are thousands of people, some waking up, some not, and also a titan machine that leaves the ship in orbit. It goes down to the would-be Acheron planet to terraform it, but goes silent for about forty years. We don’t describe the titan terraforming the planet, but during those forty years, a new generation of people are born on the ship – children of hyperion aka children of the sky.

We talk about death a lot in Progenitor, and what it would be like to witness something on this scale (witnessing a new planet and the possibility of setting foot on it), but we also wanted to talk about what kind of a society would grow up and evolve off earth. Whether we like it or not, I think that’s a question that has been asked in real life and will continue to be asked, because eventually there are going to be (real) people who are going to be leaving our planet. Whether that’s in our lifetime or not is to be seen, but that happening in general seems more plausible every year. So I spent a good amount of time thinking about what could happen to a few thousand people, aboard a vessel, oribiting a planet for tens of years. What would they do? In the story, the titan comes back online during the song “Planetfall,” but before that I examine what society would do, and what kind of divisions would form between groups of people, in a confined space, and in a totally different location than anyone’s used to. I think people would still branch out, and as they wait, they begin to build the Cepheus ring, that wraps around the would-be Acheron planet, which was on the cover of Xenon. That was their way of not just sitting and waiting, and it’s very human to not want to just sit and wait, but to grow, in a sense.

I am going to try and specify one thing now: people arrive at the two planets, and the titan is sent down from the ship, right? What is the exact reason why people can not go down to the planet right away, why do they have to wait 50 years? Is the problem with the landing, with the atmosphere?

The titan is a single machine that has to augment the atmosphere for life to exist as humans know it. We base life off of certain rules, chemicals, combinations. When you hit another planet, that doesn’t mean the rules will have changed for us, so with the titan going down to terraform the planet, the first issues would be water and air. In the future of this story there actually is another titan that controls the atmosphere, since certain titans develop that get really good at specific tasks, but the first titan is a universal titan that has to be able to do everything, so the process of terraforming is really long and arduous (note: in the story, once humans can utilize the titan again, a reign of technology will start, colonizing will get exponentially faster and easier, and other titans will be constructed). We haven’t really filled in the blanks about what that titan actually does on the planet though, and focused more on the human aspect and the society on the ship, whose numbers quadrupled (from around 3000 at the start) during the fifty years that the titan was offline. And you just know that there would have been some hostility and falling into different groups on that vessel, there always is. For that population, once the titan came back online, it was like a green light was lit. That’s why “Planetfall” is such a fast, heavy song, because it is implying a mass descent from orbit, almost as if different factions were pre-planning land grab, or control over certain areas. They only had fifty years to sit up there and advance (as a species). Within the next single and album, we are going to address that conflict, how people got onto the second planet, the ensuing conflict that elongates between the two planets, and that will catch us up (story-wise) to our older albums. That’s about 250 years worth of story.

 

To leave the lore for a bit and go back to the sounds, Progenitor sounds more upbeat and not as heavy as past offerings, although as far as I can tell, similar themes (compared to past albums) are still at play. Is the interstellar conflict a bit milder this time around?

The whole upbeat sound of the album comes from that sense of awe and discovery, which is something that’s harder to achieve in life in general. I wanted to have something that can drive optimism via that sense of awe and wonder, and I think everybody needs that. The optimism won’t last very long though, because I do enjoy writing heavy songs a lot more than upbeat songs. Upbeat songs are easier for me, but for example I enjoyed writing the song “Planetfall” more than any other song on this album, and “To Coexist is to Surrender” (the single between the albums Xenon and Acheron) is my favorite song that I’ve ever done. So the optimism will be replaced soon, with some heavy stuff I’m assuming. That’s how stories have to be – they have to be rollercoasters. If I made the next album with the same vibe as Progenitor, that’s when people saying “it’s more of the same” would be right.

I really get what you said at the start of your answer, that people, both in life and via music, need that sense of awe and positive discovery. For me, the new Enya album provided that sense of overall positivism and awe, for example. Albums like that seem to be so few and far between, so it’s an overwhelmingly positive feeling when you do hear something like that, something larger than life.

Today’s world is so crazy. On one hand you have a lot of people who are suffering, and on the other you have ones saying “I kinda have everything that I need” and who have a really high sense of complacency, which is a bummer for me. If you have the luxury of internet, you can probably find an answer for any question you might have. Or find one of many answers, which is also a problem. And so, where do the explorers go now? To the bottom of the ocean? Listen, I want to see some new stuff as well, but I don’t want to see what is at the bottom of the ocean. Being at the bottom of the ocean, you can’t see anything until it’s up close, and then it’s too late anyways, so fuck that, stay out of the ocean, it’s an awful, scary place.

I think a lot of people feel like “well, what else is there to discover?” Google has the whole world mapped out – I can zoom all the way down to a street nowadays. And Google Earth is wonderful. Every time I am on it, I find myself going to places that I could probably never actually go to. The first time I went on Google Earth, I zoomed into North Korea, because I had to see what’s there. It was pretty weird to watch, because it was all just purple buildings, and I was like “wow, North Korea might actually be like what they say, that’s fucked up.” Then I zoomed into the Northern, Arctic parts of Russia, finding little islands, where one of them had a note on them that said “this is a crater from one of their giant nukes, fired in the 1940s,” which was so cool. Google Earth can blow your mind man, you gotta be careful.

I think one of the few things that can provide that sense of wonder still is technology, but it’s kind of depressing as well, because you look at that technology and think to yourself that you can never afford it – usually only the rich, and companies, can. The public will get the watered down commercial version, if they get anything at all. I do love keeping up with technology though. One of my good friends actually got one of the new Star Wars robots that you can buy, the little, round BB8, which was like 200 bucks. It’s really small, you can fit it into the palm of your hand, but it’s cool, because you can turn it on “mapping mode” via your phone, which is amazing, and the robot will start going round your room and mapping it out, bumping into everything and making weird noises in the process. Once it’s done mapping, it can move around the room without hitting anything – it’s learning about your room, and my friend said that it’s crazy to watch this little machine running around. I want one of those, but I would have no use for it other than entertainment, plus the chances are, I would step on it anyway. I live in the dark, I enjoy no lights, it’s great, and with that BB8 going around, I would probably hit it at one point or another, and that’s when that 200 bucks becomes a problem!

At least morally, it’s a lot less sad to step on your BB8 model than to step on your cat, for example.

Oh yeah, you can go to jail for the other one. If you step on your robot toy, you just throw it away. Can’t do that to your pet. But yeah, technology in general is always a hoot, and I’m a big gamer, so I keep up with that world a lot. Going way off-topic, but speaking of games: when we are talking about the sense of awe and how it’s something that needs to be always watered and kept growing, the game Star Citizen is something that definitely provides in that regard. Even if you are not a gamer, you should look into it, and just see what they are trying to do with a gaming engine and a whole living-breathing galaxy. It’s quite literally a galaxy that you, can everyone, can go into and just exist in. It got its start from GoFundMe or Kickstarter, and apparently it’s made over 100mln dollars up to this point, making it the highest grossing Kickstarter game ever. The amount of what the people behind the game are trying to do is honorable just as an endeavor. Honestly, I think that Star Citizen has more cultural pull in regards to getting people excited about space exploration than NASA does at this point, which is weird to think about. NASA has always been the organization doing things, and they still are, I would never downplay what NASA does, but young generations have to be inspired by something, and NASA’s motion on show is a room filled with 150 older people clapping about something that isn’t even noticeable by eye.

Games are just as inspiring as music, to me, maybe even more, because music is a stimulant to one sensor, but in games you can not only hear, but also see things, and they are more visceral in taking you to some place. You have to rely solely on imagination if you are trying to go some place else with music; games save that energy and provide that for you.

I absolutely understand your point about younger people needing visual stimulation in regards to exploration and advancements, and relate to that myself. We had our own thing in Estonia, where we sent our first satellite into space, which was a huge deal in the local media, and they even made a movie about this in 2015. It has been up there for about three or so years by now. At the start I was really thrilled about the proceedings and the idea of us sending our first satellite into space, but when I saw the finished product, which was basically the size of a Rubik’s Cube, my enthusiasm kinda fizzled out. So this was the big thing that we devoted so much media time to? And it does almost nothing up there? It was kind of disappointing for me.

I’m not a motivational speaker by any chance, but a lot of societies that flourish have to have something that can both inspire and encourage the younger generation and the generations to come. We need to give younger generations reasons to go into school and learn about math and sciences. I grew up watching Die Hard and Braveheart, got a Nintendo when I was around six, and just stuck with that. You’ve got to keep people wanting to better things. How do you do that? All I know is that the rules have changed over time, but you would need like the capabilities of pop culture to be used for more staying things as well, not only for momentary satisfaction which breeds stagnation.

Since you are both a big gamer and a musician, is there a recent game out there that you would have liked to do a score for?

Probably Shadows of Mordor. What they did with their sound, and how they synced orchestra music with fight sequences, it was brilliant. Every time you would strike with your character, there would be an orchestral percussion or a quick crescendo to accentuate the fight scenes. The music wasn’t something akin to Skyrim (or any of the Elder Scrolls games) though, for example, and because Shadows of Mordor was such an epic game, I think it could have benefited from those grandiose orchestral arrangements a la Skyrim. It was a lot darker than Elder Scrolls, but I liked that game a lot and would have had fun doing a score for that.

Since we’ve been talking about escapism and soundtracks and all that, then I must say that each new Mechina album seems to be more cinematic-sounding than the last one, like a score to a movie. With that in mind, and in your own words, what do you wish to offer to people with Mechina? What is it that you wish to achieve for other people with this project?

That’s a good question, I don’t even know what I’m trying to achieve, other than learning how to do more with the tools that I have. One of the nice things about writing often is that you never feel out of it for too long, which I find to be detrimental to a musician, because the more you’re out of writing mode, the harder it is to keep going. In regards to the story and the music itself, the pinnacle would be to release a huge compilation of songs together; a multi-multi-multi disc edition – a kind of an experiment, if a story could be told through an X amount of albums. I believe it can, it’s just something that I’m still learning how to do, which is also inspiration to keep writing, filling in the blanks, getting everything organized, and keeping the cinematic element in the metal genre, while branching out often enough and far enough into other realms to keep the body of work cohesive and make people think “that’s something different.” In regards to the story, I would like to complete it. I could finish the story in maybe two more albums, if I really rushed everything, but if I wanted to drag it out and get into specific details with certain things, then this could go on for another ten to fifteen years.

 

Yeah, I was just thinking that since you guys don’t play live, then you won’t have the “old guys performing really energetic music” conundrum coming your way; you won’t get to a point, like Lamb of God are headed for example, where you couldn’t eventually perform your music live anymore. And since you are not that old in general, there’s potentially a good forty years of Mechina still left in you, if you wanted to.

Maybe, I should quit smoking if that’s the case haha. But it will go on for as long as it needs to and I plan on finishing the project. Also, just being analytic about it and watching what’s happening, the amount of people hearing about Mechina grows each time we release an album or a single, so there is still a fanbase to be tapped. I think it’s worth it in a realistic sense as well, where I can do what I’m doing now (with Mechina) and also be able to live and pay bills. As long as I am capable of doing that, I will continue on with this experiment-project for as long as I want to. I like using imagination and creating things, so if nothing drastic happens, I’ll keep going with it.

With all of that said, I have enough notes mapped out to know that if I wanted to, I could probably do six more albums, and then the story would be done, tastefully. Of course, if I wanted to, I could always fill in between these lines. There have also been a few people who I have talked to, who have said that they want to write stories (based on the Mechina world), and to them I have told to wait for me to get my own story down in proper form, so that the term extended lore could be used. You know, people writing totally new stories that are connected to the “main story” only by association. I was talking to one guy recently, and he told me how he wanted to write about a family who was trying to escape the events that happened during the song “The World We Lost.” He said that he wanted to talk about the human condition on earth, which was surprising to me (in a positive way), because we are so sci-fi, that you’d expect people to come to you and say “I want to write about spaceship stuff.” I like that idea of someone writing stories that are somehow connected to these albums. It’s cool to see someone take a piece of what you do and put their own spin on it. For me it’s also pretty unique, because we’re doing this all via audio, and that expanding out to a book format is both a weird and compelling idea. That’s one of the motivators to keep going as well – that I don’t know yet how far this thing could develop, and in which direction.

The last time we talked, we ended up going totally off-topic, discussing all kinds of different things, from space travel to out of body experiences, and I think we could end this interview on a similarly non-music related note. So with that said, what are you looking forward to in 2016, besides dealing with Mechina? Are there any scientific mysteries that you’re looking forward to being solved perhaps, or something of that kin?

I’m excited to see how far virtual reality will develop, because I’m noticing, even in my gaming world, that a lot of these games are starting to introduce the prospect of using virtual reality. I got to try out a form of virtual reality about a week ago, and it’s weird how much it can change your perspective on what you are doing, when your head is locked in a monitor, but the process is free-flowing. You match that up with where the graphics and the physics of these games are going, and that will branch you out into amazing escapism. I don’t think it will be huge yet in 2016, but the year after that, probably. I know XBOX released some info recently about a project, where they can make your entire room into a new area. I don’t know the specifics, but it would make the whole gaming experience very physical, which is somewhat unappealing to me, because no one wants to get up and exercise when they are gaming haha. Gaming is for relaxing, and the virtual reality stuff is perfect for that, because you can just sit and chill – you just got to make sure you can take the motion sickness.

Outside of the virtual reality stuff, I’m excited to see if anything ever gets announced about Mars. I wouldn’t be surprised if they announced a man mission to Mars this year for like 2025 or something like that, because space travel is a hot topic at the moment. Of course dates wouldn’t mean anything, they could always be pushed back or scrapped, but still. And I’m just saying all this based on a hunch, I don’t have erased documents or anything, but it seems that the private sector is interested in making space travel available for non-astronauts and non-professionals. You know, like Virgin trying to get their rockets into space. In general though, I’m looking forward to whatever, really. I’m not really excited for any one thing, and I even told Holch that I’m ready to start with the Mechina box set, because I’m already bored of not being in the studio (editor’s remark: he said in January), which is kind of my problem, that I’m already ready to go back there and work.

But it’s really cool that you have found your passion! I, for example, am very unfocused in my undertakings. One day I’m practicing drums, the other day I’m doing this music journalism thing, and on the third day I’m researching anthropology. It’s very scattered, and I envy people who have this one thing that they can put all their inspirations and thoughts into, and see tangible results.

It’s both a good thing and a bad thing. What you are doing, learning multiple things, is ironically something that you should always be doing, because if you only have one thing, and something external (from you) happens to that passion, meaning you can’t rely on it anymore, you can become a very, very sad person. I know what you mean with what you said, but you should always have more than one passion. One passion should make you money, and the other should be something that you enjoy while you waste time. Everyone needs downtime, and it’s important to enjoy it, either by doing one thing or multiple things that make you happy. Having a passion that can actually pay your bills, that’s where it gets tricky, and you gotta have a strong attitude for it. For example, like I talked about that post-album depression shit – I woke up, and I felt good, because I finally slept for more than four hours, but I didn’t know what to do. Day one I went and gamed the whole day, because I hadn’t done that for a while, but when day two rolled around I was like “fuck, I’m bummed, do I have to go back to normal life now, what is this?” So that’s the downside of having your ultimate passion as your job as well.

Finding your passion, it won’t hit you immediately, there won’t be any balloons and trumpets announcing that you found it. It’s more a cycle and a rhythm that you will fall into, and you don’t even realize it’s a passion of yours until you’ve given it up almost half-a-dozen times or so. You do something, reach a point where you say “fuck this, I’m done,” but then you won’t quit, but just do it again, and again, and again. When you really want to say “fuck this,” but always go back to that thing, that should be the definition of passion. Even in the times that you hate it, you don’t give up on it. Nothing is ever perfect and you can’t be happy about one single thing all of the time, life is too dynamic and up-and-down for that to happen.

https://youtu.be/sbsseEWDQkM