interview by: Roberto Martinelli

Sweden’s The Crown has always been a good band. But for drummers, it’s never been anything but about Janne Saarenpää, the large man who sits behind the kit. However, The Crown’s latest album, Possessed 13, has changed all that. Saarenpää’s skills are still as great as ever, but they’ve been incorporated into the whole like never before, resulting in the best album yet by this five-piece band. I spoke to Saarenpää about his development as a musician and his group’s plan to re-record and release their previous album, Crowned in Terror, despite its only being a year and a half old (at the time of this interview).

Maelstrom: The Forsaken’s Nicke Grabowski, in his interview with Maelstrom (issue #10), listed you as being one of the best drummers in Swedish metal.

Janne Saarenpää: Wow. That’s great to hear.

Maelstrom: Well, it’s no big secret that you’re one of the best drummers out there in metal. What did it take to reach the level that you’re at?

Janne Saarenpää: When we started the band, we actually didn’t know how to play our instruments, even. The singer, Johan, would tell me he wanted me to sound like the perfect mixture of Slayer, Morbid Angel and Deicide. High demands. It of course didn’t work out well in the beginning. After several years – and especially after our second album, Eternal Death – I really got determined to learn to do it properly or quit. I sat down for many, many hours. I’ve improved to a level that I’m almost satisfied with.

Maelstrom: I remember reading an interview with you after Deathrace King came out. You were talking about having a beat per minute goal. It was some ridiculous number. Are those the kind of things you still set as goals?

Janne Saarenpää: Well, I actually did a check on my double bass drum [recently]. (laugh) I read somewhere that Derek Roddy does 260 beats per minute on his double bass drums. I’m up to 245 on a sunny day. But I don’t try to put it into our music anymore. I think I have reached my limit for that. It doesn’t suit our music. But it’s always fun to see how I’m doing on speed and accuracy.

Maelstrom: That brings up a perception that I had about Possessed 13. Overall, it’s the best album you’ve ever done as a unit. What I have noticed is that before, like on albums like Hell is Here, the best things about that record were the drums and the guitar solos – everything else wasn’t quite as good. But on Possessed 13 it’s all up to the same level – the drums and solos are incorporated into the whole mix.

Janne Saarenpää: That was our aim. We wanted to cut down on the show off factor, so to speak. Instead of showing how fast we could do our fills or how many solos we could put in there, we let the songs speak for themselves – making them more straight forward in order to be able to play them more relaxed and be more convincing. I feel I overdid my drumming on Crowned in Terror a little. I focused too much on the small parts, and the overall feeling suffered.

Maelstrom: Now, you just mentioned that when The Crown started, none of you could play. Are we really to believe that?

Janne Saarenpää: I bought my drums in 1990, when we started the band. Our guitar player was like, “hey, try hitting the bass drum at the same time when you hit the cymbal. It will sound cool.” I was like, “ok, I’ll try it.” So you can imagine, it’s been *hard* work. I’m not any kind of a natural talent.

Maelstrom: It’s always been remarkable to find that so many of the great drummers out there have never had lessons.

Janne Saarenpää: I had lessons....

Maelstrom: Ahhh... I’m happy to hear that.

Janne Saarenpää: I went to a drum school. I had a 20 minute lesson every week from a traditional drum teacher. He showed me how to learn new stuff and to improve what you have learned. So he opened a lot of new doors for me. The rest of it was very much my own hunger.

Maelstrom: It seems that most drum teachers don’t know much about extreme metal, or have even heard of it. Is it wrong to be frustrated about not being able to find a teacher whom you can learn a blast beat from?

Janne Saarenpää: That was pure will. I listened to Morbid Angel albums and I learned. The only thing my teacher knew was Tommy Lee of Motley Crue. But he said, “you know, the drummer Motley Crue of the band Tommy Lee? He’s very good.” But he showed me what’s out there, and all the rest that I wanted to learn was up to me.

Maelstrom: How heavy are the sticks that you use?

Janne Saarenpää: ...2Bs, or something....

Maelstrom: Would you say they are light or heavy sticks?

Janne Saarenpää: Pretty heavy. I don’t have to put much effort into hitting the drums, which I did previously, when I used light sticks.

Maelstrom: Is it more difficult to use a heavier stick when playing really fast?

Janne Saarenpää: I’ve been taking advantage of the drum skin pushing back; so I believe I get more speed and power that way.

Maelstrom: You mentioned putting in a lot of hours in. Can you tell us how much it took? What were really important exercises or techniques that helped you?

Janne Saarenpää: After Eternal Death, I really wasn’t satisfied with the music in the studio... the kick drums in particular. It’s the most taboo things in the metal scene, to ask a metal drummer, “how was the kick drums in the studio?” and they say, “yeah, everything was fine.”

Maelstrom: How is that the most taboo thing?

Janne Saarenpää: Drummers very seldom admit that it’s hard playing very fast double bass drums. No names mentioned, but I know many drummers mix their kick drums with the computer afterwards.

Maelstrom: They add beats, or do they just add sound?

Janne Saarenpää: They add sound, but more importantly, they *move* the beats. Moving the beats is my problem. I have no problem with people triggering or enhancing the sound, but moving those beats means that you’re improving your skills with the computer, and that is not fair play.

Maelstrom: I can’t imagine how a drummer that had any pride in his playing would want to do that.

Janne Saarenpää: If you play a show and a kid comes to you and says, “I bought your album. I think you’re a great drummer.” How can you accept people's compliments when the computer has done the hard work?

But anyway, I had bought these really expensive pedals. I thought that would solve everything, which was very wrong. So I actually threw them away for a while and sat on my drum throne, tapping my feet on the floor to certain patterns – actually, 13 of them. I used the metronome to improve my speed. When I got the control of my legs without the pedals, that’s when I realized how little it’s up to the pedals to improve performance.

Maelstrom: What else?

Janne Saarenpää: High demand by both me and the rest of the band made it that I didn’t want there to be any problems the next time we went into the studio. On the Hell is Here album, nine of the songs are first takes. The couple of months before, I was up to playing everyday for two or three hours. Nowadays, I managed to get myself unemployed in June, I try to play everyday. Right now we’re busy in the studio. I practice two hours a day.

Maelstrom: You ‘re in the studio? As a band?

Janne Saarenpää: Yeah, we’re re-doing Crowned in Terror.

Maelstrom: What do you mean, you’re re-doing it? You’re re-recording it?

Janne Saarenpää: We had some trouble with the equipment for Possessed 13. We made a deal that we would re-record Crowned in Terror with Johan on vocals in exchange for financial help to buy new cymbals and stuff. At first it was an idea of the company’s (we think he means Metal Blade Records. - Roberto). But when I think of it, we never were really satisfied with the mix of it, and as a Crown fan myself, having the chance to have all the albums with Johan on vocals is irresistible.

Maelstrom: When are you planning to bring it out?

Janne Saarenpää: I don’t know. The company wants to put all the effort into [the new] album right now. So, maybe next summer.

Maelstrom: But Crowned in Terror just came out not even two years ago. It’s especially funny because Crowned in Terror was perceived as your big splash album because you had Tomas Lindberg on vocals. Frankly, I don’t think an extreme metal vocalist “makes” the record. Of course, he’s great on Slaughter of the Soul, but it’s not just because of him. But in terms of the hype, Crowned in Terror didn’t live up to it. It’s not what Possessed 13 is. And the proof is you have your old vocalist – who’s improved a lot – despite being “no one” compared to Lindberg, but it doesn’t matter in the end.

Janne Saarenpää: We have a very special relationship. We have been together for 13 years.

Maelstrom: So why did Johan leave if you have this special relationship?

Janne Saarenpää: After Deathrace King, things started to work really well, so we got a lot of tours. But the thing was, we didn’t get paid for them. Empty pockets and a lot of bills is a very bad combination to come home to. Johan got married and he was having some issues with his family. So he really had to quit the band to get his life sorted out. He told us he regretted it pretty badly. But he’s got it all sorted out and is back in full force. It’s good to have him back; he started all this trouble and now he’s ended it.

Maelstrom: So Lindberg was a stop gap for you from the very beginning?

Janne Saarenpää: Yeah. Well, we didn’t know we’d get Johan back. We thought we’d work with Tomas and see how it went. But we didn’t know it would end this fast. We realized very quickly that we were way different people, especially on tour. The friendship thing wasn’t working. So it was a nice surprise that Johan came back.

Maelstrom: Do you think it’s reasonable to expect people will buy the re-release of Crowned in Terror?

Janne Saarenpää: Well, I actually don’t care, as long as I get my own copy. But the German side of the company thinks it’s worth doing it, so we’re happy to do it.

Maelstrom: It’s interesting how Possessed 13 is divided into chapters. And the chapters actually have a different feel to them: the last chapter has more of an old-school, mid-tempo energy, and the first chapter is more thrashy and fast. But it all fits in together really well. Even though the styles are quite distinct, the record doesn’t sound cut and pasted. Now, apparently the music for this record was written over the course of the band’s history. Did you just have a bunch of material lying around? How did this all come together?

Janne Saarenpää: Well, since we couldn’t play that well when we started the band, when a good riff was written, we totally wrecked the song by playing it badly. So, many riffs and songs stayed in our heads for a long time until we felt we were good musicians enough to play the riffs properly. Many of these riffs were on our old demos, or even before the demo era.

Maelstrom: I didn’t get the second, bonus disk on the Possessed 13 album. It says it’s a disk of demos. I don’t really understand. Are they demos of songs on Possessed 13?

Janne Saarenpää: There are no complete songs from Possessed 13 on that disk. Ideas old and new have been put together to make new, complete songs. Some of these demos were for the first album, The Burning, in 1995. So what this disk shows is our history and what we’ve learned in 13 years.

Maelstrom: I must tell you that I appreciate what your band is playing a lot. There are so many technically talented bands that come out of Sweden. I don’t know if the computer helps them or not, but Sweden has the highest standard of sound and playing. But the downside to that is that so many of these bands sound exactly the same. But your band on the Possessed 13 record, sounds Swedish, but doesn’t sound like all the other bands.

Janne Saarenpää: That’s cool. We’ve been told from the very beginning that we’re a very god mix between Swedish death metal and early 90s Florida death metal. We were very influenced by bands like Morbid Angel, Deicide and Malevolent Creation. We’re not aiming to sound like anything particular, but we do have our favorite bands.

Maelstrom: Thanks a lot for your time, Janne. Anything you’d like to add?

Janne Saarenpää: Thank *you.* Well, it’s sad we don’t have a US tour lined up. I hope very much it’ll happen.

The Crown, clockwise from top: Johan Lindstrand (v), Marcus Sunesson (g), Janne Saarenpää (d), Magnus Olsfelt (b), Marko Tervonen (g).