Jonaton from Graveyard tells Jen about their new Album »Innocence & Decadence«

I interviewed Jonaton in Sweden and we chatted about Graveyard’s new Album called»Innocence & Decadence«. It has been three years since they released Lights Out and there is much excitement and expectations from fans. This Swedish classic rock band makes music that is moving and stimulates your senses.

Hi Jonaton, it has been nearly 10 years since you released your Demo does it feel that time has passed you by quickly?
Yeah Definitely time has passed quickly.

Off the top of your head how many bucket list moments have you had over the last ten years and can you share some with us?
Yes my dream was to live off the music and we have been doing that for a few years since releasing Hisingen Blues, it has been great to have what we have always dreamt about so we have nothing to complain about. It has been 3 years since you released Lights Out, so there is pretty high expectations from both fans. You have released ‘Apple from the Tree’ to date, How has the feedback been so far?
I think it’s been good, very good so far I only check the Facebook page and the comments so it’s hard to tell yet but it is good so far and that is really nice. We have not felt pressured by expectations or anything like that I don’t think, we just try and make it as good as possible.
Yes you have to be true to yourself and your band.
You have had a few changes for this album such as Truls returns to the band on bass not guitarist this time around, how was the adjustment process for him returning?
We called him when we were recording the demos for this album and asked him if he would come down and help us out and play some bass for a few songs. He said yeah no problem. he has been working on his own solo album and he was putting down the bass tracks so when we called him he was happy to keep on playing bass. He was just a perfect member of the band, it was good because he is being in the band once and it’s nice now he’s back. There was no problem in adjustment.
That is good as he might read this!
Yeah (laughing)
You make your debut on lead vocals on the ballad Far too Close, is this something that you had always wanted to do?

No, not at all, more like the opposite. I went for a try during the other records the rest of the band have been telling me that I should sing a song but I’ve never really been comfortable with it. I figured that I should just go for it this time and that’s how it turned out. How different was that for you in regards to recording? Were you incredibly self critic with your vocals? Yes of course! I still am!
Did you write Far too Close yourself? I guess I wrote that one but we always try different things and sometimes you make the whole song and show it to the others or sometimes you write a riff and you work on that together and we try and figure it out so it’s very different. We all do apart of the songs and we work together most the time but sometimes somebody brings in a song.
Magnetic Shunk is a perfect opener for the album, was this always going to be the case? We actually never thought about how the tracks would be placed on the record at all really our manager helped us out because no one really wanted to take the responsibility to decide which songs made it and which ones were ticked off. Our manager decided that would be a really good opening track and we agreed.
“Stay for a Song” is seriously one of the most relaxing songs I’ve ever listen to. Great way to finish off the album, this is defiantly a song I will be listening to when I want to kick back and relax.
That is good to hear!

Do you have a song, any song by anyone that you turn on to relax?
Not really lately I’ve been having trouble listening to music and relaxing sometimes I just go for some kind of noise some drone sound. I hear music the time and sometimes you just need to take a little break from it.

I really like the artwork for the album, there is so much detail I see something different ever time I look at it. As I was typing this, I just saw the tiny people in it. How long did this take to design? Did you as a band do it yourselves?
It was the same guy that designed the Hisingen Blues cover. He did it pretty much all on his own. We knew that he would do a good job again so we left it to him.

Can you tell me if you have a hit prediction off the album?
Not really, it is really hard to tell. We had trouble deciding which song would be our first single so I don’t really have a good answer for that.

Was there any other songs that you wrote that didn’t make the cut for the album?
Yeah there was a few that we didn’t use but only a few. there was one song that we wrote in the studio, it was a really fast track and we tried to record it the next day and it just didn’t work. We only had a small amount of time in the studio.

I think that the album is more clear for want of a better word than your other albums, would you agree?

Definitely I think so too, I think we used a big room and we have never had a big room to record in before and I think that made a big difference. We had to learn how to use that big room as well. It wasn’t obvious for us how to record in that room. Maybe there’s a little bit more depth to the sound of the album. Like a 3-D sound.

That was where Abba recorded right?
Yeah lots of big bands have recorded there and it was a little nerve wracking but as soon as we started it was all right.

You have been to Australia this year and for SW in 2013, I hope you return soon after your US tour you just announced, do you have plans for that?

Definitely, we will be back we don’t have any plans but we will try and be there early next year. I can’t promise you anything but we plan to come back as fast as we can.

I look forward to that! Thanks for your time Jonaton, appreciate it. All the best for the album.
Thank you very much for having me Jen.
My pleasure.