"Krone" interview

Pain:

After his collaboration with Till Lindemann, Swede Peter Tägtgren is now back with his own project Pain.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Nuclear Blast, Heile Photography)

With his project Pain, Swedish death metal musician and ex-Lindemann partner Peter Tägtgren finds an outlet to mix his emotions and fears with dark humour and AI-driven visualization. "I Am" is his first album in eight years, and he will be playing at the Vienna Arena in early 2025. He gave us an in-depth interview.

As the founder of Hypocrisy, Peter Tägtgren made death metal history far beyond his native Sweden back in the 90s. The 53-year-old also made a name for himself as a popular guest singer and drummer for various projects, as a profound producer of well-known albums in the heavier genre and, for a few years, as the musical sidekick of Rammstein singer Till Lindemann for his Lindemann project. After the pandemic, the liaison between the two quirky thoroughbred musicians ultimately fell apart due to things outside the creative world.

As a result, jack-of-all-trades Tägtgren is not only concentrating more on Hypocrisy again, but also on his commercially successful project Pain, with which he mixes industrial metal and electronics in such a way that the line to a band like Rammstein is very thin. The new album "I Am" is the first in eight years and tells the story so far quite uneventfully but profoundly.

"Krone": Peter, let's start very simply. Please tell me something about your new studio album "I Am".
Peter Tägtgren: The songs "Revolution" and "Party In My Head" were the first to be released. "Party In My Head" was a song I wrote in 2021 away from Pain. The label thought we should finally put something out again and at the same time I was concentrating on Hypocrisy. I wanted to make people laugh a bit during the dark Covid times, so the song came out early. It took on a life of its own and became even bigger than "Shut Your Mouth", which is probably still the best known Pain song for many. "Revolution" is the most brutal song on the whole album. I'm not interested in sales figures, I want to express myself in the music.

I've long been fed up with the media, politicians and the economy feeding you false information or ruining your life by trying to decide it for you. I don't say in the song that I want a revolution, but it will come because people have had enough. My son Sebastian wrote the music for this song and I wanted to shock people more this time. Pain is a project that usually focuses on party music. I wanted it to be a bit different this time. The album is very mixed, there's a bit of everything.

How does it feel when your son is part of the band and is already writing songs?
I don't have to explain anything to him because he knows exactly what to do. He also wrote the song "Don't Wake The Dead" and recorded it almost single-handedly. I just wrote the lyrics and sang along to it. The song is very electronic, it has an old Depeche Mode vibe. We have a lot of songs that go in that direction. It was never important to me to always chase after the latest trend. I prefer to experiment and whatever feels good ends up on the album. I don't want to sound like every other band, even if "Revolution" sounds very contemporary.

Apart from that, there are always synth echoes of the 80s and 90s. We made an animated video for the song "Push The Pusher". The origins go back to the fact that it annoys me that people keep telling me I should finally grow up. In this song, I fight against that. My family is particularly annoying, but my son has no problem with the fact that I don't want to grow up. We don't have a classic father-son relationship either, unless he gets on my nerves or acts stupidly - then the father in me comes through.

Has Sebastian learned a lot from you in terms of music or has he copied a lot from you, or has he always tried to find his own way?
He started out as a drummer, just like I did. He became very good very quickly and then concentrated on the guitar. I bought him a MacBook, where he later learned recording techniques. He's quite lazy, so I always have to push him. But once I get him that far, he's great. He also did the song "Mathematik" with Till Lindemann and really rocked out on it. There's an electronic, failed remix of it where his drum tracks were cut out, but the album version is great.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

Do you see your younger self in your son when he's playing music?
I really do. I used to always have an acoustic guitar with me to write songs, but then quickly picked up the electric guitar in the context of others because it's easier to explain where you want to go with the songs. That's how I went from drums to guitar and Sebastian's path was similar. The fact that I've been singing for more than 30 years is due to the fact that nobody else wanted to do it. I grew up somewhere in the woods, where you don't find that many people who have the same taste in music and share a hobby with you. In high school there were maybe ten people who liked the same music as me, but they were all fans and none of them knew how to play an instrument. So whatever you wanted to listen to, you had to do it yourself. It was hard, but you develop and get better and better.

Do you feel comfortable as a singer today or is it still something you sometimes have to overcome after all these years?
I have good days and not so good days. I'm not a professional singer and when I have a bad day, my voice sounds bad. What gives me hope is that I'm getting better every day. When you focus on your vocal training and turn on the radio, everyone sings off track for you because you're so focused on every detail in your training to make you better. You can't listen to any other music for quite a while until you normalize yourself. I was born a drummer - not a guitarist and not a singer. It all turned out that way and that's the way it is now.

The last Pain album "Coming Home" is now eight years old. That's an immense amount of time, even for the long empty spaces in Pain's history. When did you start writing "I Am"?
It really got going during the pandemic. There were initial ideas at the end of 2019, but I was still working intensively on the last Hypocrisy album. After that, I went on tour with Lindemann and then the world closed its doors. After Hypocrisy was over, I was more actively writing Pain material. In between, I had three bands releasing albums and touring alternately. My head was almost bursting at times. Now I can live very well with two bands, it's almost a comfortable luxury.

What are the lyrics on "I Am" roughly about? What do you refer to?
It's very much about how we humans lose ourselves in the current world and become more and more stupid in the process. I mean, there are traffic accidents out there and instead of helping, people stand and film - it's completely absurd. It's about not trusting anyone and loving yourself because that's the only thing that makes sense. I'm on my smartphone all the time and I can't even remember what I used to do on tour when there was no internet connection. I probably slept more. We're all hostages to technology, but you don't have to give in to it completely.

What does the album title "I Am" summarize?
Broadly speaking, it's about cancer in the vein of "I am the poison in your veins and your body". Sebastian's grandmother on his mother's side died of cancer. My mother also had cancer, but survived it. My grandmother also died of cancer - I am very much confronted with this issue. I'm very scared of it myself because I know how it spreads genetically.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

Pain was always the project you used as an outlet for personal issues and worries. Is that even more the case today than it used to be?
The band is my therapist. When you write, you open up and analyze, which is good. Writing a song always involves a certain amount of risk, because people ask you what's wrong with you. But my feelings are what they are and every song I write comes straight from my heart and reflects my views and experiences.

You shot a video for the song "Go With The Flow" with the actor Peter Stormare, who is a good friend of yours ...
We shot the video in Cologne. We were thinking of "Taxi Driver" or "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas" while shooting. We wanted to have fun, but not copy anything directly. The song is extremely simple and if you don't understand the basic message, you're dead inside. It was important to me to keep the message clear: Don't cry over spilt milk, just move on. Don't dwell on the past, but live your life.

How do you know Peter so well?
He's primarily Swedish, like me. He lives about two and a half hours away from my home, also in the countryside. We are both huge Beatles fans and have had countless detailed conversations about the history of the Fab Four. He has also made videos for bands such as Dynazty and H.E.A.T., but has now moved more in the direction of film and Hollywood due to a lack of time. We must have known each other for almost 20 years.

You don't seem to be afraid of artificial intelligence either - after all, you like using it, for example in your own Pain videos?
Like the internet, artificial intelligence has its good and bad sides. Like the internet, it is used for good and bad things. You can't stop its development and evolution, but should rather try to use it sensibly. This is the problem for humans. We don't open our eyes wide enough and don't know how to use things well enough.

Have you always been open to new technologies and developments?
Absolutely. And why not? I always do what I think is right anyway and always say what I think or feel. So I also use things that are perhaps not so common in metal, but I don't care.

Does Pain as a project have the same meaning for you today as it did 20 or 25 years ago?
When I was working on the debut in 1997, I was suffering a lot from depression, but from that point I quickly realized that I could go anywhere with Pain. With Hypocrisy I always keep both feet firmly planted in metal, but with Pain or even Lindemann there is and was total freedom. No two Pain albums are the same because I allow myself the freedom to do whatever comes into my head. That's a wonderful luxury.

Did you actually end your participation in the Lindemann project yourself and voluntarily?
I stopped in 2020, yes. Sometimes things are what they are. I no longer have any contact with Till, but that's life. When we were writing music, everything was wonderful. We pushed each other to the limit and there were no boundaries at all. Our strength was to create things. Then things didn't go so well with touring and business - so at some point it came to an end.

(Bild: Andreas Graf)

Don't you prefer to write alone anyway? Do you need a certain form of solitude to be creative?
If I count out the work with Till and the early Hypocrisy songs with Mikael Hedlund and Lars Szöke, I've almost always written everything on my own. It's not so much that I couldn't do it with someone else, but it always turned out that way and at some point it became established. It's important to keep all your options open, because that keeps your mind relaxed.

Is it always so easy to juggle all your projects?
I have to do that. You shouldn't take eight years between albums, I realize that, but it hasn't worked out any other way. I stopped producing other bands and albums a long time ago, because the time I spend in the studio is spent being creative and recording my own songs. If something interesting comes along the way, I wouldn't say no, but I'm not in it for the money - it has to be an exciting project. It has to excite me, otherwise I wouldn't do it.

Which song on "I Am" was the most challenging for you?
I very rarely see my albums clearly and I've always had a problem with my self-esteem. In this respect, everything is always a challenge that lasts longer. You can sometimes hear that in my voice, but I always try to fight it, which sometimes works better, sometimes less well. Singing clean is hell for me. I don't like my voice and never will, but now I'm so deep in it that I can't get out. I always write music for myself and not for others. Even if I didn't have a career or a record deal, I would still write music - there would be absolutely no alternative.

Could you also imagine no longer going on tour and putting all your energy into creativity and the studio?
I firmly believe that living life inspires you. If I just sat at home and stared at the wall, I wouldn't be able to come up with anything creative. In this respect, it's good that I'm out and about all the time and get into situations that I would otherwise never experience. You have to go out and meet people to experience something. Of course, I could write the same album with different melodies every year, but I want to keep growing and challenging myself. The safe zone would be too boring for me.

You probably also need the contradiction between your rural home and the urban areas where you are on tour?
I've stopped going out on tour. I've been on tour constantly for a good 30 years and I don't know how many times I've been to Vienna, for example. I know the city like the back of my hand and no longer have to spend all my time exploring it. Of course, that also applies to other cities. But I always walk around New York because I love this city more than anything. Nowadays it's more important for me to get enough sleep, because otherwise my voice fails. You hear the bands at festivals when they're just croaking after two songs because they're constantly on the road and partying too much. I really sleep a lot on tour and try not to drink too much. It doesn't always work, but more and more often.

Is it actually more fun to be on stage with Pain or with Hypocrisy?
Those are two different things. I take both projects absolutely seriously, but in a Pain show there is a lot of room for humor and funny interludes. That's not the case with Hypocrisy. Now it's about showing people that we're back and still have a lot to say. If it's up to me, our shows and productions will get bigger and bigger, but in the end it's up to the fans.

2025 live in Vienna
On February 6, 2025, the tireless Tägtgren will return to Vienna with Pain and the new songs from "I Am". Together with The Halo Effect, he will cause a sensation in the Arena. Tickets and all other information about the metal highlight can be found at www.oeticket.com.