Twisted Into Form feature interview with Kaj Gornitzka
(posted February 2007)
(interview by Andreas Schiffmann)
Twisted Into Form have released a very good technical metal album (Then Comes Affliction To Awaken The Dreamer) at the end of last year. The musicians behind this Norwegian outfit are not entirely unknown, as they have garnered considerate experience in bands such as Extol and especially Spiral Architect. Kaj Gornitzka, the driving force of Twisted Into Form and ex-guitarist of the latter, was an informative interview partner.
Great album after a few listenings, congratulations. It grew on me, while I had been confused at first, but that is obvious with this type of music. Anyway, what has vocalist Leif Knashaug been doing all these years since his departure from Spiral Architect?
First of all, let me clarify something: Leif never really "departed" from Spiral Architect because he was never actually a member of that band. His contribution to the 1995 Spiral demo was as a session vocalist, not a full-time member of the band. He did us a huge favour at the time, stepping in to help us out when we had no-one else to turn to, but it was never in the cards that he would be involved any further. I think there's been a bit of confusion surrounding this issue, that's why I brought it up.
As for what he's been up to between that and the Twisted into Form recording, he has not done a lot of singing. Apart from working a lot (he works for one of Norway's largest stage production companies, as a band manager and a booking and show production agent), he's been in a Norwegian band called Sims, which is kind of a straight, modern rock band, and every summer he gets together with some old friends to do a three hour long show, playing covers of all the metal and hard rock classics you can possibly think of. He's also been involved in a lot of very different projects as a backing vocalist, and I know he did some solo work a few years back, releasing a single. All these things have been pretty far from anything metal, though.
Who is responsible for the songwriting? Was it a joint effort or the work of a single person? In particular, I'm interested as to whether Leif wrote his own lyrics and vocal lines.
The bulk of the songwriting is split more or less fifty/fifty between Erik [Aadland] and myself. Each of us will normally present our ideas to the other, and we'll work out the songs from these initial ideas. The main responsibility for developing a specific piece of music lies with the one coming up with the initial idea, but the process is very cooperative and we lean heavily on each other when it comes to developing the ideas further. Once the basic structures of a song materialize, the arrangements are worked out with David [Husvik].
When it comes to the lyrics and the vocals, Leif has so far only come in to do the actual singing. I'm the one writing all the vocal lines and the major part of the lyrics. Erik has written the rest of the lyrics, typically adding to them and helping me out whenever I get stuck. As you can see, Leif has not written any of the stuff on this record, and the main reason for this is that he is not at all accustomed to our type of music, with all the odd meters and weird tempo changes. Leif comes from a much more straightforward rock background and it takes him some time to get into what we are doing, but in the actual recording environment he does in fact contribute a lot. I will go through all the vocals with him as we record, trusting him to make sense of my sometimes rather rough (and out of tune...) sketches. He has complete control of his abilities in a studio setting, and he is free to interpret and embellish on all the melodies as he sees fit.
Due to purely logistic matters, the last songs we wrote for the record were done very differently, in that Erik and I each worked out one song separately over a great physical distance, but in general Twisted into Form is a very collaborative effort, and it's the totality of the band's members that makes our music sound like it does - not any individual member.
The texts at times frankly admit personal weakness, and the mood is often melancholic, which contrasts the instrumental prowess and heaviness of the music. Does metal generally allow for such feelings, or do you see yourselves apart and above genre standards?
Metal, or at least modern metal, has a very solid focus on strength and aggression, but for me personally that's never been a very interesting issue lyrically. There's enough power in the music to make line after line of text about violence and over-the-top toughness seem a little unnecessary, so I prefer focusing on other themes that I can actually relate to myself. But still, I don't think this is particularly unique - Fates Warning has been doing it for years, and Opeth, even though they can sound extremely angry and heavy, fill their lyrics with plenty of emotion. It also depends on which type of metal you are referring to at any given moment; most black metal acts would never dream of spilling their deepest emotions in their lyrics, and I guess death metal, thrash and similar genres also avoid this to a large extent, but within the more progressive scene most bands reveal a little more of their inner workings. It might also have something to do with age; as you get older you see things differently, and - maybe - your perspective changes a bit. The world has a way of getting under your skin that it might not have had when you were younger, and it's only natural that this should be reflected in the lyrics you write.
Even so, I think our approach is a little more insisting than most other bands within the metal scene, in that we paint with very consistent and dark colours throughout the whole album. Looking at the lyrics now, it's pretty clear that we have not made an album that's brimming with hope and happy endings - quite the opposite, in fact. This has nothing to do with my (or the others') personal position in life - I'm a very privileged person and I know it - but I'm painfully aware of what goes on in the world around me, and for most people our planet it not a very happy place.
Have you performed live already, and is there a chance to see you around Europe?
We have not performed live at all with Twisted into Form, and I'm sorry to say that it is not likely to happen any time soon either. It's not that we don't want to, it's just that our situation right now is a bit tricky. I've been living in Portugal for the past couple of years, while all the other guys are still in Norway, and this has made rehearsals rather difficult. For now, we have contented ourselves with focusing on following up on the album at hand, and also writing more music. Only time will tell, I suppose, but one day I would love to perform our music live - it would just have to be done when we can focus on it a 100 %. We wouldn't want to make a half-assed effort of it, now would we..?
Lars from Spiral Architect told me that he appears as a guest on the album. Where's that?
Then I think you must have misunderstood him. He is not a guest on the album, not in the sense that he is playing on it. He is, however, on the thank you-list, where he definitely belongs. Also, I think it would have been very premature to ask any of the guys in Spiral to help out on this album - this is, whether people see it or not, a completely different band from Spiral Architect, and we are already being compared ceaselessly. I know it's not possible to avoid this, people will always want to compare what you've done before to what you do now, but we didn't want to give them even more reason to do so. At least not on our first album; who knows what the future might bring?
What have you been doing in succession to your split from Spiral Architect, and why did you leave anyway? - Twisted Into Form is as close as you can get to A Sceptic's Universe…
Well, there were many reasons for me leaving Spiral Architect, and my timing could definitely have been better, but sometimes you just get to point where you can't go on. I basically left Spiral the moment I left the studio in Texas, where we had been recording A Sceptic's Universe. This happened in 1998, two years before the album actually came out. There were things happening during the recording that I didn't agree with, and I had been quite frustrated for a long time leading up to the studio session. Time - or rather lack thereof - was one factor; I am, quite unlike both Lars and Steinar, not all that fond of practising, and I have a number of interests outside the realm of music, but when you're rehearsing for hours and hours up to four times a week, there isn't really any time left to pursue other things. Also, we had almost no concerts or other "breaks" from this routine, and I was getting very tired of it all. Recording the album was supposed to be one of those very few breaks, but with all the problems we ran into in the studio, technical as well as personal, I just couldn't deal with it anymore. In addition, we were running on overtime and I had an appointment in Norway that I just could not miss, but I still extended my stay till the very last moment, spending money I couldn't really afford to spend - and ended up not playing another note anyway... All this just go to me, I suppose, and I was quite upset when I finally got on the plane. And that was my last day in Spiral Architect, even if it wasn't official for another couple of months or so. It took me awhile to process all this, and for a long time I was rather angry about the way things had turned out. But just for the record: They are still very good friends of mine.
It took a long time before I felt like picking up the guitar again, and the two years between leaving Spiral and starting up with Erik, which happened in 2000, I did everything but play - working, travelling a bit, getting over a really bad break-up, doing some photography, socializing... You know, mostly things that I had wanted to do, but not had much time for. But for some reason that annoying itch came back, and when Erik and I finally started talking about the possibility of maybe doing something together, I was getting in the mood for music again! Strange how that works, really.
As for Twisted into Form being close to Spiral Architect, well, there's really nothing I can do about that... I was a contributing part of Spiral for six long years (more, if you count all the bands Lars and I played in before Spiral; they all lead in that direction one way or the other), and it is only natural that my presence there had some sort of impact, whether it was guitar riffs or vocal lines (which I also did a lot of back then). The thing is that this music is what I know, it's what I've always been playing - and changing the people around me doesn't mean that I will suddenly make completely different music. I write what I know, and that's all I can do, so everything that was me in Spiral Architect is still me in Twisted into Form. Of course, having other people around you will affect the final result, and I think there are substantial differences between the two bands - but I'm sure this will become much clearer to everyone else once those lazy slobs in Spiral finally get around to recording their next album - hehehe! Which they will do, by the way - if you were wondering...
Do you plan to be more present than your former band in terms of releasing albums and gigging, or are you guys just as slow in your doings?
As I've already mentioned, gigs are not an option right now, but I do hope there will be another album in the not-too-distant future. I've been spending most of my spare time after we finished Then Comes Affliction... working on band related stuff - our website, the MySpace page, answering e-mails and interviews etc. - and there hasn't been much time to write, but I do have some new ideas and I'll try to pick up some pace once the bulk of the other things are done. Although I must admit we are a bit slow also; we started Twisted into Form as an outlet for our own creativity and pleasure of playing music, and I don't want to lose that side of the band by making it a stress factor. Music is supposed to be fun, isn't it?