{"id":13760,"date":"2014-10-10T01:00:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T05:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=13760"},"modified":"2014-10-08T22:46:21","modified_gmt":"2014-10-09T02:46:21","slug":"blowin-wind-with-thomas-of-jess-and-the-ancient-ones-im-sure-its-going-to-be-an-interesting-combination-with-king-diamonds-sound-and-our-sound-i-think-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=13760","title":{"rendered":"Blowin\u2019 Wind with Thomas of Jess and the Ancient Ones: \u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s going to be an interesting combination with King Diamond\u2019s sound and our sound. I think it\u2019s a perfect mixture actually. There\u2019s a certain kind of dark vibe and atmosphere going on in both bands.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jatao1\"Finland\u2019s Jess and the Ancient Ones very quickly became one of my newest favorite bands. Like most of the great bands I love the most, I found them while on a quest to find something that was just a change from the roster of bands that are driven down my throat on a daily basis. You can call them occult rock, you can call them psychedelic rock, and according to guitarist\/songwriter Thomas Fiend, you can call them shit for all he cares but all he asks is that you at least give them a listen with an open mind before passing any kind of judgment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jess and the Ancient Ones have the honor of being handpicked by King Diamond himself to be the direct support band for his upcoming North American tour. On the night before their departure for the states, I had the opportunity to talk with guitarist\/songwriter Thomas Fiend. We talked about the upcoming tour with King Diamond, why he feels that sometimes less is more when it comes to occult rock bands, and what he hopes that fans will take away from seeing them for the first time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was a really great interview and quite an honor to be the first pre-tour US interview they were doing. This is a band that I am truly excited about and I hope you all will enjoy getting to know the greatness that is Jess and the Ancient Ones. Enjoy!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Thomas, thanks so much for doing this interview today. How are ya?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m good, thank you. Sure thing! It\u2019s nice to do an interview before we go on tour. Excuse my probably coughing. I\u2019ve been sick for some time but I\u2019m getting better now [laughs].<\/p>\n

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Well, I\u2019m glad you\u2019re getting better before your big US tour with King Diamond!<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs] Yes, I know.<\/p>\n

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First off, I have to say that I\u2019m a huge fan of Jess and the Ancient Ones. I actually found out about you guys from a list of occult rock bands to check out and you guys were the best on the list!<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs] That\u2019s great. It\u2019s always nice to hear that our music is appreciated and it really means a lot to us so thank you, Don.<\/p>\n

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Jess and the Ancient Ones have been on constant rotation and I have to say that I was surprised at how little I could find of you guys online in the form of American interviews. There really seems to be a lack of US press. Are we just slow getting to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

[laughs] It\u2019s all kinds of promotional hassle. It\u2019s been quite an issue for us. It\u2019s hard to reach new audiences when people can\u2019t find you but the internet as really been a great tool. I mean, look, you found us through the Temple of Google [laughs]. It does seem that the stars are aligning and things are changing for us. Our label has even let us know that they\u2019re interested in licensing our music in the US so we\u2019re working on that deal. I feel like we are getting that well wanted and well deserved visibility in the US. Things are changing and things are happening quite fast and it\u2019s quite good.<\/p>\n

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Bands seem to either love or hate technology when it comes to getting your music to people. Do you feel that the technology \"jatao2\"has been a good thing for Jess and the Ancient Ones?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Personally, yes. That opinion might differ inside the band though. It can be bit narrow minded now to think that you can\u2019t use technology to spread your message if you have one. I embrace all of that now but it doesn\u2019t affect the sound of our music. We just tend to dig into the past and incorporate things from the 50\u2019s and 60\u2019s and lots of American music from those decades. It\u2019s important to stay alert and to stay with the times a bit.<\/p>\n

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Jess and the Ancient Ones, unlike a lot of bands that are doing this kind of music these days, chose to record digitally as opposed to analog yet you managed to still capture the classic vibe of this kind of music without it sounding overly modern.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Exactly. We\u2019re talking in the future about experimenting more with analog things but we\u2019re really not extremists when it comes to that. It\u2019s not a matter of life and death that we do everything in analog. Yeah, nowadays there so many options that you can do things any way you chose. Thanks to technology, we are even able to really make proper demo recordings at the rehearsal space before going into the studio. You can get home recording equipment that is not so insanely expensive and you find that those tools are there to help you. We don\u2019t use them as computers that will help us modify everything. That\u2019s a whole other extreme. Technology offers us solutions and makes the workflow easier which is always nice.<\/p>\n

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Thomas, you and some of the other members of the band are actually members of other bands which play a much more extreme kind of metal. Why this kind of direction for Jess and the Ancient Ones?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I moved back Finland from Spain where I had lived for a couple of years back in 2007. I hooked up with Thomas Corpse who\u2019s a dear friend of mine and we were playing gigs and writing music. During 2008 we started to listen to more stuff like Roky Erikson, especially the Evil One Plus One album, Tom Waits, Led Zeppelin and that kind of stuff. We just started listening to this stuff and began to soak it in. I thought it would be fun to make songs like this that were a little more melodic and less heavy in that way. We\u2019ve been playing extreme metal for the bigger part of our lives and for me. It\u2019s not that I was bored with it. I just wanted to broaden my views and get a bigger perspective on music. The ideas we were having we knew we needed to have three guitars and clean vocals and the material started to sound like something we couldn\u2019t do with a metal band. We wanted to start a journey with this and in 2010 we started the whole thing.<\/p>\n

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Was having a female singer part of your initial vision for this band?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were just looking for a singer to sing with clean vocals. We managed to find Jess and it just felt natural from the start. She\u2019s a great singer and we really loved the sound and we knew that there was no need to keep searching. We just started rehearsing and recording.<\/p>\n

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All of the songs are written by yourself and Thomas Corpse but is there any other involvement in the process at all from the other band members?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Myself and Corpse write all the lyrics but the songwriting process really involves all of us. We will make a draft or a skeleton of a song with some different ideas that set the fundamental mood or direction of the song. Then everyone at the rehearsal place will work together to make different versions and little by little the song will start revealing itself.<\/p>\n

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There is a significant growth in the songwriting and performances from the debut album to the Astral Sabbat EP. I love that this growth is evident but the vibe that Jess and the Ancient Ones forged in the beginning is still very much there.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Songwriting is an endless ocean of learning. You just never get to become perfect in that art. The production, the arrangement, they are just such a fascinating thing. We try to evolve and do our best. The new material that we have sounds quite different from the debut album but you can still hear that it\u2019s the same band. It\u2019s all about evolving and embracing change on many levels. We aren\u2019t seeking to sound like anything. We just noticed that some time has passed, some stuff we\u2019re going to do might have some folk rock and surf rock elements. We just follow in the direction that the material takes us. It\u2019s not like a conscious decision.<\/p>\n