Mercenary interview

(Originally from 3/15/05)

Mercenary is a type of "hybrid metal" band that takes elements from rock, death metal, power & progressive metal, opera, classical, and tons of other music styles, combines them, and forms something unique and impressive. Our interview is with guitarists Jakob Mølbjerg and Martin Buus. Join us as they give us a look into the history and the creative process of Mercenary...

For those who haven't heard of Mercenary before, can you give us a brief description of the band and how it came to be? 

Jakob: The band was actually formed in the early nineties, as a death metal band. Only Kral (bass/vocals) remains from the original lineup, and there’s been a lot of changes in the history of the band. Many members have come and gone, and the style of the music has also evolved constantly. When we released the debut album First Breath in ’98, the style was a sort of melodic death-thrash. For the next album Everblack, we changed our sound drastically, by recruiting a permanent keyboard player (Morten) and an extra singer (Mikkel). So far, Kral had handled all vocals duties alone, and created a lot of variety by ranging from screams, to a sort of melodic shouting, to brutal growling. With an extra singer we could take the musical variations even further. I think Everblack got a touch of something new, an epic dimension using Mikkel’s heavy metal style vocals in a perhaps unusual contrast to the rather dark and heavy background/atmosphere. With our new album 11 Dreams, we’ve written all the tracks with all the new possibilities in mind, it’s allowed us to take our expression a lot further. Check it out, I’m sure you’ll find it very diverse…

Your latest album, 11 Dreams, is quite unique and diverse musically. Is there anything that helped to inspire this diversity and approach to the songwriting? 

Martin: I guess it’s the result of six people’s different approaches to creating music. All of us are into a lot of different genres and bands and this affects the music. The six of us contribute with our different ideas and we work on them until we have something solid that we are all satisfied with.

What creative process usually goes into making a Mercenary song - from the music to the lyrics?

Martin: Usually, somebody has an idea; a riff, a theme, a groove or whatever and we’ll just jam on it until some solid ideas start to happen. Then Kral, who writes most of the lyrics, tries to capture the mood of the song and begins to jot down some ideas for the lyrics. After a while, we have a Mercenary song.

Do you have a favorite Mercenary album so far? Favorite song? 

Jakob: That’ll be the new album for sure, and the song’ll probably be “Firesoul”.

What kinds of musical and recording equipment were used on the production of 11 Dreams? 

Martin: Jacob Hansen (Producer) uses ProTools and bunch of different outboard gear. I don’t remember exactly what kind of mixer and different outboard gear we used, but take a look at www.jacobhansen.com and find out for yourselves. As for guitars, we used Ibanez, Schecter and Fender guitars…

Jakob: As for amps and so on, we used a combination of a Bogner Überschall and a Mesa Boogie Rectifier for rhythm guitars, a Bogner Ecstasy for leads, and erhm, some amp or another for clean guitars, I can’t actually remember the model, haha! We’d actually borrowed a lot of different gear and only ended up using some of it, which is probably why the details are a bit hazy…

Can you tell us who some of your inspirations and favorite musicians/bands are? 

Martin: The first time I heard Steve Vai I was blown away and he’s still one of my favs. As of now, I listen to a lot of jazz. Especially Joe Pass...that guy was amazing! Some years ago, I was very much into Pantera, Dream Theater and Death and I still listen a lot to them but I’m into so many groups now that I can’t really think of somebody that I particularly like more than the other.

If you could form a band out of any musicians, live or dead, who would be in the band and why? 

Jakob: Chuck Schuldiner, Dimebag, Simen Hestnæs Sverd and Gene Hoglan...badass metal band!

And lastly, do you have any advice for aspiring musicians or bands that you wish you'd have known when you started out? 

Martin: Practice, dammit! Seriously, you have to practice a lot in order to develop as a musician. In my opinion, you shouldn’t limit yourself to playing and listening to only one type of music. Expand your territory! Even if you don’t like the music at first, there’s, most likely, a lot of cool things to discover and learn if you dig a little deeper...so challenge yourself and play as much as you can.

I would like to thank Jakob Mølbjerg, Martin Buus, Heather Smith at Century Media, and everyone else at Mercenary for making this interview possible. Again, the new album is titled 11 Dreams and is out now in stores and available online. Visit the official Mercenary website at: www.mercenary.dk.