Actually it was planned to do this interview at Wacken Open Air, but … I don't know if I was just too pissed to find them, if I was beaten with blindness or whatever, anyway, I didn't find the stand of Prophecy Production, which means that I didn't meet Tchort for that interview. But on the other hand … as you can read … Tchort tried a lot of that delicious festival beer too, I don't know what kind of interview we would have manufactured then … ;-) Mastermind Tchort has answered the questions now between his recording sessions for BloodRedThrone.

Dajana: It was your first time at Wacken Open Air (wasn't it?). What do you think about the fans, festival, location, your time schedule, organisation and all that stuff around? Would you like to come back (maybe with BRT next year;-))?
Tchort: This was my second time at Wacken, but first time as an artist, yes. I think it's a great festival and I am pretty happy with the stage we played at, the crowd I didn't see much of (too much smoke on stage and too much alcohol in my veins). Things worked fine for us I guess and I would love to come back another year with any of my bands.

Dajana: You had to play against U.D.O. (Mainstage) But though a lot of people have appeared in front of your stage, although many didn't know anything about GREEN CARNATION. And they liked what they were been listening to ;-) Did you expect something like that?
Tchort: My hope was that there would be more people coming to our stage while Kreator and U.D.O. had stagechanges, because I felt that the listeners who would come to us, would stay there, that we would manage to keep their interest. Hopefully I was right. Unfortunately, I heard later that most of the busses to Scandinavia had to leave during our set, so that most of the Scandinavians who came with busses, never got to see us.

Dajana: Did you have the feeling the music from the True stage did affected your quieter music in a bad way ( although the stage solution was better this year)?
Tchort: No, we couldn't hear the other stage at all, so we asked if we could have some U.D.O. in our monitors, so we didn't miss his gig … hehe.

Dajana: If you remember, while recording your latest album Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness there was some confusion, who is in the band, who is not (produced by Vibeke Stene/ Tristania). So, who is GREEN CARNATION? Is it your personal baby with guest musicians? Is it a regular band? And who is in?
Tchort: It's a regular band. We had a line up change between the first and second album, due to the fact that the others didn't want to be in a band the normal way. They didn't want the pressure from label, media, etc. anymore and are all doing solo projects now. Very underground kinda thing. Anyways, I write all the music for GREEN CARNATION now, and I chose musicians for Light Of Day, and the same people who recorded the album, performed it live at Wacken and will participate on the next album.

Dajana: GREEN CARNATION has an interesting past. Once founded as a Death Metal band, you left (for duties in other bands like Emperor … etc.) and the rest of the band turned into In The Woods with completely different music. After years, you came back and revitalised GREEN CARNATION as a band with kind of a music in the vein of In The Woods (see that as a very short story *lol *). Why the change in musical direction in "new" GREEN CARNATION? Is BloodRedThrone now kind of a replacement for the Death Metal roots? Is GREEN CARNATION a logical continuation of In The Woods? Please, bring some light into this matter.
Tchort: When we discussed of reforming the band, there had been such a long time in between the split and the reforming, and we all had changed a lot as musicians and as listeners of music ourselves. I had been involved with extreme music all those years, while they had been doing this more progressive rock music with Woods through the years. They had no interest in playing extreme music anymore and I didn't want to play Woods kinda music, so we made a compromise that both parties could live with. We aimed at Doom metal as that was something we all liked to listen to, but never played ourselves. Our first album is very much a doom metal album. Blood Red Throne is my way of continuing what I started up with as a musician, namely Death metal.

Dajana: I have read several times issues describing your music as Psychedelic Doom Metal. Is that how you would call it too? If not, how you would like to describe your music?
Tchort: That was what we called our first album. What we did on Light Of Day, is better described as Atmospheric Prog Rock. For the next album, I am sure the label of our music will change again … hehe.

Dajana: I was very curious how you would transform your music on a festival stage. But in the end it was pretty simple, you just played the whole album as it is originally (more or less anyway). And people liked it a lot, didn't lose the thread or got confused because of the concept. That's amazing …
Tchort: Thanks. First when we approached the idea of playing live (I always thought that Light Of Day, would only be a studio album) I worked on a different concept, a live concept. I wanted to rearrange the album to fit into a 45 minute long live set, but I learned that many of the sounds and extras we did on tape could be reproduced live, and I think the album is good as it is. I mean its very honest and emotional, and that's also something that always works live, so we gave it a try and rehearsed the whole album and performed it one time in our home city before playing at Wacken.

Dajana: I didn't expect that it would work that well on a festival stage. Were you been really convinced of it before?
Tchort: I was easily convinced during the few rehearsals we had to our first show and from the feedback we got from the audience of that club gig. Although we experienced several technical problems at Wacken, like one of the samplers containing all the strings, broke down between line check and the live show, so the keyboardists had to improvise all their lines using sounds they never used before, trying to compensate what was lost, and still play it similar to the album. I think they did a great job, but none of us, except them, understood why the intro never started - because the sampler was down and they could only play a pad, not the childs voice, the rain, the wind, the effect loops, etc. We just had to do the best out of the situation. The outro that was on the album, the music box, was also lost in the sampler, so that's why you didn't hear that at Wacken…

Dajana: Ok, where it works, is there any chance now for a tour? To get this wonderful music in a more contemplative ambience?
Tchort: We would love to play more club gigs, that's for sure, so we just hope someone will book us … hehe. Really, we are playing some gigs and festivals in Norway this autumn and next year, but that's about it of plans already made.

Dajana: Would there be tracks from the first GREEN CARNATION CD included?
Tchort: Don't think so, since no one played on that album except me. The voice would be different, etc. besides playing Light Of Day for an hour is an musical goodie in itself I think.

Dajana: You already started writing on new songs for a third album, can you already give a perspective how it will be about?
Tchort: A lot of things. The next album will be called The Writings On The Wall, and will hold only short songs this time, as I haven't done that with GREEN CARNATION yet… Something different from each album I guess. What it will sound like, is too early to say yet though but I have an idea =)

Dajana: In which other bands (and projects) you are involved at the time? Do you need the contrasts in the music you do? Is there the risk to burn out now? To get overworked and to get drained of creativity and energy? What gives you the inspiration?
Tchort: My son gives me inspiration and I feel that the 3 bands I am playing with now, are so different from each other that I feel I am doing something new with each band. I obviously do GREEN CARNATION, and I have my death metal band, BloodRedThrone and blackmetallers Carpathian Forest. Very different from each other in all aspects.

Dajana: Does the band name GREEN CARNATION have a special meaning? I mean, it's an unusual name for a Death Metal band, nor does it sound like a Nordic band. It's really hard to associate this name with something. The only thing I could imagine is the unripe state of the spice … (but then, I never tried and also have no idea;-))
Tchort: It's the name of a flower, really, but when we found the name we learned that it also could mean green flesh, ergo rotten flesh. It sounded cool, and probably no one else has taken that name already, so we stuck with it.

Dajana: Last part is for you ;-), to tell us what is important for you, we should know, any statement or whatever you want. Feel free!
Tchort: Well, I hope people that are into metal music would take the effort to check out all three bands as they have something special to offer for all kinds of moods. Also check out BloodRedThrone on tour in November, coming to a venue near you!

Thank you very much for spending time to answer these bunch of questions.

Thank you for your support!

Tchort