JM: Well, it actually goes a bit further back than that. Martin and I, who have been writing most of our material for quite some years, felt bored when we played the older material live, so we wanted to spice things up a bit. We wanted to play something harder and faster, because that’s what we both grew up on and it’s what we love to play live. We tried to make the whole old line-up turn in that direction but by then, I think it was too late. People had lost their focus and their belief in the band, so to survive we felt that we had to focus on the basics – playing what we love, without much further thoughts about outside expectations from the label, fanbase and so on.

AD: This isn’t of course the first time you’ve had a line-up change. I remember Kral leaving around 2005/2006. Rene came in “off the shelf” and it was business as usual. What’s the glue that holds Mercenary together?

JM: I’d like to believe that it’s made a difference that we’ve always had our eyes on the next step, taking things from the exact place we are now, trying to progress in realistic terms instead of dreaming of great achievements and being disillusioned along the way. That’s been my mindset for all the years in the band. Dreams can make you soar high, but can also make you come crashing down when the grey and gritty reality rears its head every once in a while. If you keep focused on the challenges ahead while of course having aspirations, it makes you enjoy all the small victories so much more. Apart from that, I think we’ve had a musical vision that has been nurtured, developed and matured through the years. Furthermore, Martin really helped take the band to the next step and it’s been amazing writing music with him for the last few years. I think what we share, together with René, is the love of doing our own thing and that’s a continuing motivation for us and something unique and special in playing in a band in a not very commercial genre like metal. You get to do exactly what you want to, no rules and no restrictions. It’s a great freedom and a privilege to be able to spend your time doing something like that.

AD: Although I sense some changes in stylistic approach on “Metamorphosis”, I still think the album is “recognisably Mercenary” in terms of the mix of aggression, melody and catchiness and also in the harmonies and growled vocals. What would you say has been added to the Mercenary sound on “Metamorphosis”?

JM: For me, the big difference with this album is that for the first time, it feels like we’re all pulling in the same direction. That’s never really been the case on any album in the past. I also feel that it’s the first album where we’ve taken a serious step towards realizing the potential of the band – both of the musical vision behind the band and of the individual potential of the musicians in the band. In the past, the songwriting never really clicked totally and a lot of random decisions were often made in regards to the arrangements of the songs. At least, that’s how we felt it from the inside. Martin and I were never truly happy, just merely satisfied with a compromise we could live with. So to sum it up, I basically just feel that the new album is a lot more focused than our music has ever been and it’s making us happier than ever.

AD: When you are composing and recording material, do you aim to be “recognisably Mercenary” or does it just come from within?

JM: Actually, when we started writing material for the new album, we experimented a lot and wrote both some really fast material and some really slow, brutally heavy songs. It was great fun but in the end we felt that some of the material was a bit too far from our natural sound. After a while we changed things up a bit and felt that we had achieved a better balance of the old sound and some new elements. So I guess it mostly comes from within but we have to keep our focus as well.

AD: For me, the difference from before is a more pronounced thrashiness, and in other parts a greater degree of technicality and integration in the guitar work. That suggests to me the influence of Rene and Martin, who have both been in the band a while now. Have they both become more influential in the band as a result of recent changes?

JM: We’ve written the new album together, so of course they’ve been essential parts of the songwriting and creation of the new album. But the change in direction was very much a shared decision. But when we were a six piece band, we had to consider everybody’s decision because we wanted to run the band as a democracy. So, to be a bit cruel, that kind of watered down our focus and intentions to play harder material. In the end we insisted on it but it just didn’t work with the old line-up.

AD: The vocals on “Metamorphosis” don’t sound so different from before. In spite of there being just one vocalist now, I’d say that if anything there was a greater range. Was this part of the plan?

JM: Both yes and no. We wanted to make the album with the René as the sole singer, and we were of course not entirely sure how that would work out. We just had the basic idea that we wanted him to do both aggressive and melodic vocals, and see how it turned out along the way. We knew he was a great singer and we had faith in him and basically we just wanted to make the best of the whole thing. But René really surprised the fuck out of us and kept surprising us week by week by discovering and displaying new facets of his singing all the time. He really stepped up to the challenge, and to my mind he has both the best aggressive and the best melodic singing in the history of the band. I’m not saying this to put anybody down, it’s just my personal preference.

AD: What qualities were you looking for when you recruited your new drummer Morten Løwe?

JM: We basically wanted someone who shared the musical vision, who knew the band and wanted to push it further. Morten’s technical abilities are unsurpassed and moreover he’s a great guy, so he was a natural choice.

AD: For me the template track is “Velvet Lies”, which musically “metamorphoses” itself from melodic emotion to a heavier section and then over to technical guitar work. Which track on the new album do you see as the flag-bearer for your new sound style?

JM: I’m actually glad you see that track in those terms, because I personally love that song because of the exact same contrasts and the way the ending drowns in a sea of noise. I think that track and “In a River of Madness” operate with some of the more interesting contrasts within a single track on the album and for that reason they are some of my favourites. But our sound has always been complex and the songs have always had a lot of variation and that also goes for the new album. No single song has all the elements. For that reason I’ll just leave it at that rather than pinpoint one single track.

AD: The lyrics and delivery of “Shades of Grey” make it sound like a personal track. What’s it about?

JM: I’m not really the right one to answer, as René wrote all of the lyrics for this album. But the personal fight to overcome despair and estrangement is a recurrent lyrical theme of his throughout the album and I think this is also clearly the case for Shades of Grey. René drew on a lot of personal experiences and some bad periods in his life for many of the lyrics, and that’s kind of a general topic that fits very nicely with the thematics of rebirth and the phoenix rising on the cover. That gives the album title another depth and meaning apart from the obvious one referring to the changes in band line-up. The metamorphosis is not just musical but also personal and existential.

AD: “Metamorphosis” is on NoiseArt records. What difference has the change of record label made to you?

JM: I think the biggest change is that NoiseArt is the sister company of Rock the Nation, which is a really well established booking agency who now handles our booking. We got a kind of small scale 360 deal, so to speak, with one company taking care of all of our business aspects. It makes things much easier as all the money goes in one place – they are interested in us selling records and in us touring, as both make the band grow. It wasn’t quite that simple when we had a record label that was independent from our booking agency. They didn’t always cooperate very well and often blamed each other for the lack of progress. We feel that this new deal is a really good and visionary way of handling the situation which in a way sidesteps the current crisis in the music industry.

AD: You’ve been in the cycle of touring and recording for a few years now. Did the three years between albums seem like eternity? How do you keep the momentum going all the time?

JM: Well, it wasn’t like we sat around and waited all the time. We did some touring, some festivals, some more touring and then some more festivals following the release of “Architect of Lies”. We started writing new material in late 2008 and starting doing preproduction and demos in 2009. We then realized that we actually had bigger musical and personal differences between us than we had realized so far, and we tried to remedy that for a while. In the end, that resulted in the change in line-up and soon after we continued writing the new album when Morten Løwe was on board. So one thing led to another and it didn’t feel like a long period, because so many changes were happening. But still, it was a long process and honestly, it didn’t feel like we had a momentum all along. There were long quiet periods and we really got a chance to sit down and think about whether or not we really wanted to do this. And I think that strengthened us because we didn’t just make another album by habit, we really thought things through and went into this new phase of the band knowingly and willingly. We wanted this, we wanted to change, to grow, to adapt and to expand.

AD: You’ve been part of the “Power of Metal Tour” with Nevermore, Symphony X and others. Do you find inspiration for new material and new musical ideas while you’re on tour together or does this happen at other times? Do you keep a note book with ideas?

JM: Yeah, we just got back home last week. It was a really amazing tour, probably the best we’ve ever been a part of. But I think we really get into a kind of “tour mode” when we tour, where we don’t really think about much else than doing the best we can day by day. We might write a bit of music here and there, but we usually write new material when we decide to focus on that, and when we get that process started we begin to inspire each other and ourselves, and then the ball really starts to get rolling.

AD: Do you compare notes and share ideas with other bands while you’re on tour?

JM: Not really in terms of music, but of course we talk a bit about the music industry, gear, technical stuff, studio tips and so on.

AD: What motivates you in life? Has this changed in the last 10 years?

JM: Oh, I guess that’s kind of hard to put down accurately in a few words. I guess I’ve more or less always had the aim of living a well balanced life. I don’t really consider myself a musician who will always play music, I’m just a guy who plays a bit of guitar and who got a lucky break hooking up with some talented people through the years. I’ve always just wanted to make the best out of the current situation without any specific long term goal, in music as in most other things. I never had the specific ambition of making a living from music or selling thousands of records, but I guess 10 or more years ago, it seemed really exciting and enticing to try to make that next step for the band where you make albums that somehow make a difference, and you go on tour with great bands and do festivals and so on. And we did that, so now the focus is just on the next step from here – strengthening the new line-up, getting some more good tours and write some more music that we’re really happy about and have fun along the way of course. For me, it’s more a way of life than a means to an end – the means is the end, so to speak.

AD: It’s disappointing that the “Power of Metal Tour” doesn’t come to the UK so we don’t get to see you here this time. How do you get to promote “Metamorphosis” to UK fans and to those who don’t know about Mercenary?

JM: Truthfully, there’s unfortunately not a lot we kind of actually do ourselves that will make a difference. We hope to be able to play a festival or two, but apart from that, there’s not really anything we can do at our end apart from hoping that our next tour includes a few shows over there.

AD: What plans do you and the band have for the rest of the year?

JM: We’ll do some festivals over the summer, play some Danish headliner shows in the early fall and then we’ll probably do another European tour later in the fall. We got some interesting offers to play Russia and Australia too, so hopefully we will be able to make that happen as well.

Maybe we’ll get the time to write some new music in between the shows as well, we’ll see.

AD: And finally, is there anything you’d like to say to readers of www.metalteamuk.net ?

JM: Just that they should of course check out “Metamorphosis” – it’s a very diverse metal album with influences from everything we love about metal. I think it’s our most honest and focused album yet, and that every metalhead with an open mind will be able to find something to love on that album.

AD: Thanks very much! Good luck with the promotion of the album, and I hope to see you very soon.

For more on the band check out http://www.mercenary.dk/

Interviewed by Andrew Doherty

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