“Contempt”, “Failure” and now “Defiance”. Are they a trilogy? Has the cycle been ended? Where will you move from now?

I wouldn’t say they are a trilogy. Each album has elements that are distinct to that album that set it apart from others. And my plan is to continue that. I hate when artists make one album over and over. My aim is to have a development and evolution in each album. The cycle will not be complete until I wake up one day and say ‘OK, I’m done writing for A23’. All three albums are like steps in a journey, representation of certain period in my life.
If I woke up one day, and found myself unhappy with what I’ve done, I’d probably end A23 and move on. I think it’s a kind of a balancing act – you want to evolve and change with each album, but you can’t change so very much ‘cause you’ll alienate from people who are fans of your music. Which is not to say to write what the fans want, but you cannot simply ignore them. Take for instance Haujobb’s “99” album – the backlash on it was incredible. And it’s a good album, but I think they might have been better served if they created a side-project; or if that’s where they wanted to go, they should have made gradual change. You risk alienating everyone appreciating what you’re doing.

What do you think, how is Assemblage 23 perceived as? What is Assemblage 23?

I can’t say there is one big unifying ideal that defines A23. It is a representation of me, because all the songs do come out of my life, my ideas, and my own personal experiences. I don’t want to say:”here’s our motto, this is what we think you should think of us.” I would rather let people listen to our music and come to their own conclusion. And if they want to assign a label or theme to the band that they see fitting, then that’s fine with me, but it’s much better to leave the impressions to the listener.

I am going to do quite the opposite: the person on artwork for “Defiance” – is he looking up to the skyscrapers, or standing up to them…?

It is an abstract representation of the concept of “Defiance”. To have somebody just completely vulnerable, this person who is completely naked, facing something much bigger than him, in spite of his vulnerability – that is a basic concept of “Defiance”.
One of the themes that runs through a lot of the songs across all the albums is an ideal of standing up to what you believe in, not allowing yourself to be defeated; not crumbling under the pressure.
A lot of people expected “Defiance” to sound just like “Failure”. I didn’t want to do that. I’ve made deliberate effort, for it to still sound like Assemblage 23, but to not sound exactly like “Failure”.

“Failure”. That period of your life. How would you describe it? Accident with your father… do you think of that time as really failure, fate, just life…

“Failure” title is an injoke to myself. I thought when it was finished that everyone is going to hate it. I was pretty happy with how the album sounded like overall, but it was different than “Contempt”, which, for a debut album was pretty well received. So I thought to call it a failure to make it easy for the critics to put a tag on it at the end of reviews <smile>. In a very nice way, quite the opposite happened – so it ended up having almost an ironic sound to it.

True. With every album you reached more and more people. And some new bands are influenced by Assemblage 23; Endymion for instance, you even did a remix of one of their songs, and they are from across the globe... (continues on next page)