Considering that we're halfway through 2024, I think it's safe to say that this year is doing great with all the albums that came along the way, especially in June which was packed full of them. I really admire what these bands had to offer for the masses, and so is the case with the international death metal band Darkened, which had a very strong impact when they returned with their third album "Defilers Of The Light" that got overwhelmingly positive feedback from fans and critics. I thought this was a great opportunity to share some words with their bassist Tobias Cristiansson, whom I greatly admire for playing in other great bands such as Necrophobic and In Aphelion, while also having a musical background of being the member of legendary Swedish death metal bands like Dismember, Grave and Entombed as well. During our conversation, we covered multiple subjects such as Darkened's latest album, a brief talk about his experience at the Kilkim Žaibu festival in Lithuania with Necrophobic, his phenomenal contribution to all of these aforementioned bands, as well as other things like how social media affects on the mystique behind musicians and bands. Please join me on this journey, as we dive deep into the extreme metal background of the awesome Tobias Cristiansson.

Vladimir

The melodies fit well together, it's not like when a melody kind of thins out the extremity of the performance of the songs, it's well put together. It's important to note that a solid material such as this doesn't exactly come from "anybody", but from people such as yourselves who are veterans in this extreme subgenre, especially you who already played in tons of other Swedish death metal bands like Entombed, Grave and Dismember and you were also briefly playing in Nifelheim. I guess a lot of people envy you, I can imagine people going "Damn, I wish I was that guy".

It's funny that it turned out like that, I used to listen to all these bands when I was a teenager, like they were my favorite bands and I played with a lot of them, it's crazy and I don't know how it happened really, but I had a great opportunity to join Dismember when I was 27 years old and doing world tours, and I think that opened up a lot of doors, because Dismember is a big band and I had to tour around the world and meet people. Well, I think this wouldn't happen if I was an asshole, because you always have to have a good attitude, you have to be willing to devote, to really put some time and effort in to what you are doing and to be dedicated, it takes a lot of dedication, talent and also to be a good person, because travelling around with people, it's good if you can get along and not to be an asshole.

Yeah, or to be pretentious and everything. I agree because you have a lot of optimism in yourself, not just as a musician but on a personal level as well. I recently watched that Under Blood Red Skies documentary, and I saw you guys having fun and you cosplaying as a typical 70's hard rock roadie with a mustache and a Black Sabbath cap. This is one of the things I really like about my favorite bands, they don't just go on tour, do the job and go home, or talk about wanting to go home as fast as possible, what they do on tour really shows that you need to have fun in order to do everything great all the way through. You really did fit well with the band, even though you are currently not playing in Dismember, but you made a good point as well saying that it opened new doors for you, because you are now in Necrophobic as an official member, whereas you were a live member before, but now you are more involved with the band.

Oh yeah, with Dismember on that DVD, when I joined the band I bought this little camera, back then you had a cassette, and I wanted to take the opportunity to film everything, because I didn't know if it would end after these first tours, maybe it will end, so I will document as much as I can, and then it just continued, we were filming all the time that it ended up on that crazy documentary that is really fun to watch, it's like a party with a lot of goofing around, we wanted to make like a fun thing, not super serious. But I like that combination when you are out playing, I mean it's super serious to take the show, it comes firsthand to really play well and do best you can, but offstage it's about having a good time, enjoying the time when you are there, because you have a nice opportunity to go to another country so it's always fun to take advantage of that and do something out of it and not just hide away, at least I want to meet new people, have fun together with the band and that's really important. That's also the case with Necrophobic, which I am happy for, it's a great bunch of guys and when we are out playing we are always having a good time together, like when we played the other day at this Kilkim festival in Lithuania, we had a super nice hotel, it was located next to an outdoor Zoo, so the day after the show we went on hiking and watched some funny animals and stuff like that, so it's good to do that as well.

I hope that someday we will also get this like a tour video of Necrophobic on a DVD, maybe like on a re-release of "In the Twilight Grey", along with this mini documentary, that would actually be cool to see.

Yeah, it would be really fun, but I don't know if bands are releasing DVDs today, it's like a different market, because everybody has an Instagram account and you put out stuff like continuously as you go along, but back when we did the Dismember thing, it wasn't like that, we had Myspace I remember at that time.

Yeah, and other forums as well, so you wouldn't come across such stuff easily like nowadays.

It's both good and bad, you lose a lot of that mystique surrounding bands today, because as soon as something happens it's out on the internet, and people show what they are doing in their private life, there is no mystique in the music scene anymore. On the other hand, it's nice because fans can connect with musicians if they want, because you can write something directly and ask something to a musician, that's really cool and it's nice to have this communication nowadays, more so than before.

I agree because if that wasn't the case, it would be harder for us people to contact you guys, because it would take two or three guys to get your contact to do interviews and stuff like that. I also agree on that part if you want to keep the mystique of the band and everything, then you shouldn't follow those musicians on social media. Sometimes, you are maybe kind of split because you have mixed opinions, you don't know exactly what to think, but on the other hand it's nice to see musicians posting stuff like where they go and what they do in private life, because it reminds us that we are all normal people, that we are not gods or above anyone else. Plus, nowadays I can see Rob Halford post a lot of funny stuff, whenever he comes up with a cool new shirt to wear and those leather jeans with his revealed butt cheeks, so it's cool hahah, because it's the kind of guy I expected him to be.

Yeah, it's fun. Also, I think nowadays it's harder for people to be douchebags, because they would be exposed on the internet. A lot of people wanna show a good side, so if you are an arrogant person, it will show much more easily today than before, because you are more in contact with people on social media today.

It's true, and on the other hand you can get a nice insight into the process of recording an album. Aside from "Defilers Of The Light", you also contributed your bass skills to other great releases of this year, the new Necrophobic album "In The Twilight Grey" and the new upcoming In Aphelion album "Reaperdawn". I really have to ask you, how the hell did you manage to do all of these albums around the same time, because it seems like you've been pretty busy lately?

Yeah, it's crazy, like this year it's three bands that I am in various releases, but I have to tell that I am not playing in the In Aphelion album, because I joined the band and Sebastian had already had recorded the bass parts, but I will be on the band photos, I am also in the videos and I am doing the live shows, but there wasn't any time for me to do a bass recording there. I am a full-time member of In Aphelion, and I have to learn the songs because we will play them live. So, yeah, it's pretty busy, but I like that. I do one thing at a time, otherwise it would be impossible, like if I do a Darkened thing, I am just really focused on that and do only that, because if I wanted to record Necrophobic at the same time, it would be crazy, so I had to plan my time really well. Those two recordings weren't done at the same time, I don't remember how it was but there was some time in between, so I had time to learn because it takes a lot of time to learn like ten songs and do something out of that, and not just learn and record them. I want to do it really well and come up with cool bass parts if I can, and all of that. Yeah, I am pretty busy, been doing other things in between, I play with an Ozzy Osbourne cover band and I also play in a Latino jazz band which is totally different, and that takes a lot of practice because it's a lot complicated at times, but I really enjoy it. The time I have right now with all the bands and all that stuff, I really like that, I truly enjoy it. As long as it's not stressing me, but it takes planning to do one thing at a time, and it's fine.

Since you mentioned playing in an Ozzy Osbourne cover band, I actually wanted to ask you this because I watched a lot of your cover videos on YouTube and your live performances also. Personally, I actually really like Bob Daisley a lot, and also Phil Soussan who was an awesome bass player in the band, but who is your favorite bassist in Ozzy's band?

Bob Daisley, absolutely, the bass stuff that he is doing there is really cool, especially on the first two albums. He played on more albums than you think really, but yeah, the bass lines that he's doing are really cool. When I started to learn "I Don't Know" from the first album, I wanted to learn it exactly like he does, but there are more licks here and there, and it's not always the same lick, he's doing a lot of different parts, it's cool. I think he does a lot of octaves, almost like disco bass stuff, it's a bit tricky to get that but it's fun to play it, it's really fun.

Yeah, the disco thing, he does that on some Rainbow songs as well, on the Long Live Rock and Roll album. You wouldn't actually believe how much of a great bass player he is, of course he was in Rainbow and Ozzy's band, and he was briefly with Black Sabbath doing the bass parts for Eternal Idol, even on that album he has such great bass lines that sound as if Geezer Butler could have easily come up with them.

Yeah, exactly. He's a great bass player and also a good songwriter, I mean they wrote Ozzy's songs as a team in the beginning, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley, and it's really well put together, it's fantastic.

I have to say that you really do a great job on all of the latest albums, but I have to ask you this of curiosity, because I am also a bass player: What basses did you use on all of these albums, because I know you have the Fender Precision and the Fender Jazz bass?

On Necrophobic, I am using my Precision bass, we're tuned to D standard, so I have my Necrophobic bass that I am doing there. Darkened on the other hand is very down tuned, it's tuned to A, so it's very low. Before this, I used my Fender Jazz, but this time I wasn't really satisfied with that, because even if I intonate it's a bit floppy and it's hard to get a good tone out of it, because it's so downtuned, so I actually bought an Ibanez five string bass, the fifth string, the low string is B, so I only had it down tune it one whole step to make it to an A, and it's a fatter neck and everything is more stable, and the tone is really good. So that's what I used for the latest Darkened album, the latest five string bass, so I bought it just because I wasn't really satisfied with how the feeling was when I was playing on the four string that low, so I had this new Ibanez and it's really good. So that's what I've been using for that, but mainly I play Fender basses. I am not an expert; I don't know much about this stuff. I like to play, but I am not collecting instruments or anything like that, for me it's like to have them to play on, and not to hang them on the wall and look at them.

Yeah, Sebastian on the other hand, he collects a lot of guitars. I mean dude, first he's collecting Jackson guitars and then Gibson and Fender guitars, and I am like "Oh my god, this guy could open a fucking guitar museum".

Yeah hahaha, he's crazy with that and he has a lot of knowledge about that too. Sometimes he sells away a lot of guitars so he could buy a new one, so it's like a constant movement there.

I mean what can I say, he is also very dedicated to what he does, as much as I was very excited with the new Necrophobic album and came out very pleased how it turned out, I have to say that am really looking forward to the release of the "Reaperdawn", because I was listening to the new single 'A Winter Moon's Gleam' constantly on repeat for these past couple of months and it got me even more hyped to hear the new album.

Yeah, the new In Aphelion is really cool, the whole album will be released on August 9th. We played a couple of weeks ago and we played that song 'A Winter Moon's Gleam' for the first time. We haven't even rehearsed it as a band, because our drummer Marco lives in Holland, and he's super talented, he's such a good drummer. So, everybody was learning the songs at home, then we met and played it perfectly. If you do the homework good enough, you can do that.

What can I say, this is the next album in line I am very excited for. I listened to the previous album Moribund a lot last year and I was thinking "Wow, imagine what could this band come up with next", and of course the new single that came out before this one was very good, I forgot the name of the single that came out at the beginning of this year, maybe you remember.

No. Fuck, I forgot hahah. We played it live just like I told you, like a few weeks ago. I am sorry, I can't remember now, too many songs.

It's okay hahah, but the second single was so surprising, it's like one of the best black metal songs I heard lately. It's got everything that I loved about the genre itself, because I haven't listened to black metal that much for a whole year, I got so sick and tired of it, but this brought me back to the days when I first heard Bathory, Immortal and Necrophobic, this is like all in one. I don't know what can I say, not everybody such as yourself can take their time to contribute their skills to excellent albums which gained such momentum, that are all released in the same year. How do you personally feel about this?

I think, especially the newer In Aphelion songs, are more progressive than before. It has more parts, more diversity which I really like and more complex as well, it's difficult to play, you really need to focus on that. It's nice to play with a band, everybody is like on top of the game, like I told you Marco is an excellent drummer, he has his band Cryptosis, but he's also been playing in Flotsam And Jetsam and he is also with Ross The Boss at moment, so that's some cool acts. The album is mixed by Tore Stjerna, he has this Necromorbus Studio, he's doing Watain and a bunch of others, so the sound is really good, bombastic and it has a really wide range sound. I also think that the new album is really more set apart from Necrophobic, so that's cool. Sebastian is such a talented songwriter and guitar player, it's really fun to play with him. He always wants to get better like myself as well on my bass, we always strive to top what we did before, learn something new on your instrument and try to nail that technique that was difficult or whatever, so it's inspiring to play with him.

Yeah, the guy is a genius. The funny thing when I got to know better what's his taste of music, apart from what he does, I was actually surprised to see him being into Ratt, Dokken, Cinderella, Poison, Motley Crue as well, he even mentioned that he was Motley Crue and Iron Maiden in 1984. Imagine if a guy like that didn't make the great music that he does today, it's impossible.

Yeah, he's very diverse in his taste, but I think some of these bands he had discovered a bit later on in life, like Cinderella, I don't know if he listened to that when he was young. I don't know, I shouldn't say. That goes for myself as well, I like a lot of AOR music, like Survivor, Boston, and all that melodic stuff. I think if you wanna develop your playing, it's good to have different influences. You can pick up stuff here and there, and put them in what you are doing, it's good, because you will really develop.

Man, I have to thank you so much for taking your time to do this interview. I really have to congratulate you on your excellent musicianship and I am really hoping that I will get the chance to see you live on-stage someday. Are there any final words you'd like to say?

Yeah, I just remembered that In Aphelion song is 'When All Stellar Light Is Lost' hahaha, it fucking came out right now.

Yeah hahaha, that's it.

Thank you so much for this interview, it was really nice talking with you, relaxed and good. I hope you will get to see Necrophobic live, or whatever band I will play with. Thank you for promoting the bands I am in; I am really humble and I appreciate that a lot. When people say that they like what I am doing, I am always like "Wow, are you serious really?". It's really nice and it warms my heart that people actually take time. Today there are so many bands and so many new songs coming out constantly, so it's easy to get lost in this constant flood of information and new music, so I really appreciate that.

In this day and age, there is always some everlasting quality and excellent songwriting to be found amongst many traditional heavy metal bands that left a big mark on the world. Out of all these bands that were formed in the early or mid-2000s, one of the undeniably best examples is the Swedish band Portrait. From their early beginnings all the way up to present time, they certainly have come a long way, especially with their latest album "The Host" which marked the band's first official concept album and it's by far their most complex work yet. As I've said before, this is a very long and broadened album which contains a lot of ideas that stretch from their 17th century inspired storytelling towards the darker and more atmospheric moments which are cemented in their so called "heavy metal darkness".  Three days before the official release of "The Host", I had the pleasure of talking with the band's vocalist Per Lengstedt, where we discussed about the work on the new album, from the songwriting to the recording process, while bringing up the idea of doing a proper concept album, as well as some key influences in the lyrical themes and musical ideas. If you wish to dive deep into the blood-bathed and God forsaken world of "The Host", then feel free to join me on this journey, because I believe you will find it incredibly exciting and engaging.

Vladimir

Hi Per, how are you doing man?

All good, all good. A little bit hectic nowadays, but it's as it used to be, just always hectic times in May and June with daytime work and other things, I got two daughter's birthdays as well, and on top of that a new album release.

Yeah, I can't believe it's in three days, it's finally out on Friday.

Yeah, that's cool, I am really looking forward to it.

I am really happy man, because I have to say that I personally enjoyed "The Host" a lot, I always thought that Portrait's songwriting is unmistakable and incredibly imaginative after all these years, but now you really took it to a whole new level. On top of that, this album is also quite complex and more musically layered in comparison to "At One With None" from three years ago. What was the band's primary goal while working on "The Host"?

Well, the whole idea for Christian started right after we got off our tour with Satan, and he just had this idea for a story of a soldier in the 17th century, dealing with occult stuff and revolting against the church. The church was the big authority back then, nowadays, there's other types of authorities. I think he wrote the whole concept like in two weeks, with the finished story and context, he had a bunch of riffs and when he had led the path towards the story, the songs more or less wrote themselves this time, because I think it was easier for all actually. And then Anders, I think he's written two or three songs, and also our new guitarist Karl, or our latest because he's been with us in a couple of years now, but it's his first song that's been put on an album, and it fit the whole album concept very well and made it even more diverse, I think. Christian had to change the lyrics just to fit some songs which is normal, but this time maybe even more just to get the drama in the story, write together with the riffs and so on.

I really couldn't overlook the fact that the album is also atmospherically darker than some of your previous works, even the eerie blood bathed cover art by Niklas Webjörn perfectly captures that essence, it almost feels like a real dreaded world that lies beyond the frame of the painting. This is also your first concept album and it was inspired by 17th century Sweden, both partly inspired by historical events, as well as fictional. When and how did you guys decide that it was time to do a full-on concept album for Portrait?

Well, it was never decided in that context, like I said before, right after we got off the tour with Satan, Christian had this idea and he just had the inspiration, wrote it and then he presented it like "Guys, I think our next album is going to be a concept album, because I've got this cool story going on here", and we're just "Hey man, go for it!". I myself was blown away the first time when I read the whole thing, the first draft for the story.

Did you guys have any authors or other sources that inspired the album in terms of the lyrical subjects, as well as the overall songwriting?

It's really Christian's thing to ask, I cannot speak for Christian here, but I know he reads a lot and there are some certain books that he has drawn much inspiration from, picked up many references in the story, both real historic events and also occult tales from that time being.

You can basically direct it and make a movie out of it, based on the overall concept, and even how the album transitions as a whole, it basically is like a storytelling pattern from start to finish. There is a track that was a big personal highlight for me, which is the ballad 'One Last Kiss', because it has some elements that lean towards Judas Priest ballads and some Iron Maiden/Bruce Dickinson ballads as well. Can you tell me a bit more about the story behind the making of the song?

That's really Portrait's first effort going towards a more ballad style, but in the vein of 80's. Myself when I heard it the first time, Christian had done the demo for it. First, I had some Scorpions reference to it when I heard the chorus, and then the last part when it takes off, it goes more up tempo and it is just like 'When Death Calls' by Black Sabbath.

Oh, I love the song, it is one of my favorite songs of all time.

Yeah, I am actually gonna do a demo of 'When Death Calls' with another guy, we're gonna do a split vocal thing just as a tribute to the Tony Martin albums being re-released.

Yeah, that box set is one of the biggest blessings we've received this year.

Yeah, definitely.

For years I couldn't stop listening to those Tony Martin fronted albums, when I saw that they are finally on streaming platforms and that they are getting more attention than before, I could not have been happier. To me he is an incredibly underrated singer, but he was always up there with Dio, because he's a great vocalist, plus he's a great guy overall.

Yeah, definitely. Have you seen me doing the vocal exercise? I actually uploaded a video when I did a vocal warm up for "Anno Mundi".

Maybe I did, possibly if it was on social media.

I am not sure, but yeah, it's on YouTube.

I think I did see it, but you will have to excuse me because I constantly interview a lot of musicians and listen to a lot of albums, so I lose track of what I saw and what I heard, and sometimes I am like "Oh yeah, that did happen!". But once you mentioned "Anno Mundi", I think I did actually see it. Honestly you should definitely go for it, because a lot of people would cover anything from the 70's Black Sabbath, but Tony Martin, dude that's amazing.

Yeah, it is.

And the fact that this ballad 'One Last Kiss' was so well-written, it doesn't sound like a made for radio hit, it's not a radio friendly song at all. Even nowadays people would criticize a band for including a ballad, but here it's all following a concept. This album is also pretty long as well, with a total of 13 tracks, with the closing track 'The Passions Of Sophia' being the longest one with its 11 and half minutes of runtime. However, no matter how long the album is, it successfully manages to keep your attention from start to finish, plus you get more invested and immersed during the second half. Was it challenging for you guys to make The Host so structurally complex and rich as it is?

Well, I am very pleased that you said that you find it interesting throughout, because personally it's a very long album. In my opinion it's too long, but as I produced it, you work with it so intense that the last couple of days before you have to leave it to the printing, your mind is so exhausted after that and you don't even know if it's good or bad. The only thing I can say is that we had just one rehearsal where the whole band played the album from start to finish as it was more or less, I don't think we changed a lot after the arrangement. I think it was more or less written, no rearrangements or so. But then, it was the first time I sang the whole album from start to finish, and I got the feeling for the story and I got in the mode for every song, it took me deeper and deeper, and I got really struck by it. I told the others "Man, I think we've got something here", because it got really emotional with the story. And after that, the way you work in the studio, you're pushing yourself just to lay down the best vocals, and after that you put on your producer hat and you just blast your ears for several days trying to make the best out of it. After that, I was totally exhausted, I didn't know if it was good anymore hahah. That's why I am so glad to hear that you find it interesting throughout the whole record.

Yeah, but for me personally, there are albums that are just way too long that I can't stand listening. For example, I don't know how you feel about it, but the new Metallica album "72 Seasons", really isn't that interesting. First of all, it's way too long, and it's so lifeless and uninspiring to listen to. When I got to the last song 'Innamorata', I was like "…Really?!". And this isn't like with 'The Passions Of Sophia', even though it's the same length, but the song still keeps your attention constant, it's not like "Oh my god, this song is going on for so long". The part where you said that you don't know whether it's good or not, I remembered when Tobias Forge of Ghost said when he was working on "Impera", after re-listening to the album so many times, he didn't know if it's good or not because he got "hearing AIDS" so to speak, he lost track of it. So, I understand completely.

Yeah, you do, when you listen to the songs too many times, you just listen to the details when you are in producer mode, so you just lose track of the whole feeling, the feeling that you want the listener to catch, you don't know if the music brings it or not. And definitely with the latest Metallica album, there are some quite good tracks, but way too long like you said. I think there's always some guys out there on the internet that cut down the songs to much shorter and it's much more interesting to listen to actually hahah.

Yeah, because that's one of the biggest mistakes that happen during the songwriting, when you want to keep the album as long as possible, and that's one of things that Iron Maiden does too. There are lot of long songs, the only difference is that Iron Maiden has some sort of entertainment, whereas with Metallica it is the complete opposite. It goes on for way too long and you're not even hearing melodies, you are not even hearing guitar solos or rhythm changes here and there, but in your case, you do much of a good job that people don't give you enough credit like "Wow these guys really know how to put on a very length album and still keep it strong all the way through".

The last song 'The Passions Of Sophia', it was actually one of the songs that was intended to be on the last album "At One With None", it was written during that time, but in the last minute we felt there was something missing and it was the intro. We didn't have the soft intro and it wasn't arranged then, and Christian wrote that part and he felt that this will fit perfectly as an ending for this album, because the rest of the song is more or less exactly the same arrangements as we had before. For the lyrics, he just had to actually change very little in the lyrical concept, because 'The Passions Of Sophia' are the soldier's last thoughts, it's the aftermath of all he's been through, and it fit perfectly.

Really great job done there. I also wanted to bring this up, I heard some black metal influences on the album as well, like blast beats and tremolo picking riffs, and this was a real pleasant surprise for me because it blended wonderfully with your dark and theatrical heavy metal elements, somewhere along the line of Swedish melodic black metal bands like Dissection and Sacramentum. Can you tell me a little bit about the decision behind this inclusion, because I know you guys fancy some black metal?

Yeah, definitely. We listen to more or less everything, we are very varied in what we listen to, but I think that at least from the "Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae" album, already there was some kind of small black metal elements in our music style of heavy metal. We've always called it "heavy metal darkness", that's what it is definitely, and I think it fits kind of well. It is heavy metal in that sense with that type of darkness, so I think you can say that for each album we sneaked in more and more black metal influences underneath it all, and we're maybe kind of unique in that sense, I don't know.

Yeah, and it works so well, that's one of the things that I mentioned before how strong the songwriting is after all these years. Talk about the years, the band's 20th anniversary will be next year, and looking at your entire journey, you certainly have come a long way and you have really progressed and developed as a band, but also as musicians and as excellent songwriters. How do you look back on these years in Portrait and the achievement of keeping the band on the pedestal for so long?

We've never lost focus when it comes to what Portrait is and what our musical goal is, it's to maintain the core, to never be afraid to broaden the horizons and I think we managed to do so in a good way on this album, there are a lot of elements. But like I said, I am a guitarist myself from the beginning, and during these years that I've been with the band, sometimes I've just told Christian "I think I'll skip the vocals now, I'll take the guitars, we'll get another guy for the vocals", because I found myself in that position if I hadn't been in the band, I would be the biggest fan of the band hahah, because the riffing is so intricate and I think it's really good craftsmanship when it comes to riff making and songwriting. And I think that Anders as a drummer, he has also developed into a really good songwriter as well. That's very piecing as well. Me myself for the style I use, I wrote some riffs here and there, but never a whole song for Portrait. I did an instrumental song on the "Burn The World", that's my composition, but apart from that, it's mostly work of Christian and Anders. Yeah, I think that's one other reason why we never lost track and why we keep focusing on what's best for the band, keeping the core, and we have no intention of changing styles or anything like that. You are always going to hear that it's Portrait in the sense.

It will be very difficult to top this album if you manage to do a follow-up, because every time when you come up with a very strong album, people will always think "Wow, this is so good. How are they gonna make the next one?". That's one of the things that happened a lot with classic metal bands, a lot of people thought that it is probably the best they will ever go and that it will definitely be very difficult to write the next one, and it turns out to be the opposite and it's actually even more interesting and even more expanded. Like you said, it broadens the horizon and everything. I am really looking forward to the release of this album, I can sense people will definitely like it, and you are just couple of days away from the official release. I wanted to ask you are there any talks to do shows in Europe to support the new album?

We had a plan to do two release shows next weekend, two special small club gigs just to celebrate the release, so those were supposed to be very special shows and we were to play a lot from the new album, but actually the news got out today that it had to be postponed until the end of September, and we're working on doing a bit longer run than before. We are playing one festival, that's going to be the first show when the album is out, the Time to Rock festival in Sweden, and after that it's Wacken, we're gonna do our first gig at Wacken, I am looking much forward to that. We've got very good spots on the first day, after that we've got couple of shows down in Germany and in a French festival as well. But we're working hard on locking in a longer tour as well in Europe, we very much want to go to Southern Europe because it's been way too long, to play in Spain and Italy. For instance, we never played in Portugal, but that's what we are talking about, and east also. We are also working on our first South American tour, so I hope it becomes reality.

Yeah, this is great news. If you guys ever want to come in Hungary, Croatia or Serbia, I would really love to go and see you guys, wherever it is. Even if it's in Austria, I'd love to go there because you guys put on a hell of a show. Since you mentioned Wacken, I hope that the weather will also be of good use, because I know that there are always talks of heavy rain there and the mud of course, so hopefully that goes well.

Yeah, I hope so too. We haven't been to the festival, any of us in the band, for a long time. I was there in 2003 I think, it's been over 20 years since I've been there, and the other guys were there in 2005 or 2006, and we just made the pact that no one visits the festival before we play there, so it's gonna be a lot of fun. I hope the weather will be good, not too muddy. But seriously, we very much want to come out and play as much as we possibly can. Sometimes it feels like there are too few people that know about Portrait, that we exist in the sense and that we do put on a good live show. We need to get out there and let people know we're here, that we're not a force to be reckoned with.

Thank you so much for doing the interview, Per, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. I am really looking forward to the release of "The Host" and like I said, hoping to see Portrait live in the near future. Are there any final words you'd like to say?

Spread the word and if you want to see us live, just tell the promoters that we're here and that we're more than glad to come and play for you guys. We want to get out and play for as much people as possible, and there is plenty of countries where we haven't played as well. Of all the countries you mentioned, we played in Austria, but we haven't been to Hungary or Serbia or any of those, we are looking forward to come and play to places we haven't been, in these several countries.