After returning from their recent North American tour, Heri Joensen of Týr spent some time talking with Hotel Hobbies about the band, the new album Battle Ballads (review here) and his approach to song writing.
Hotel Hobbies: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me. You have just returned from the North American tour; how did it go?
Heri Joensen: It was great. It was the first tour since 2019 and it was amazing to be back on the road. As tours go, this is the best one we've ever been on. It was just an enjoyable experience all round.
Hotel Hobbies: It seemed like the reception you were getting was really quite amazing.
Heri Joensen: It was overwhelming, honestly - best reception we've ever got for anything we've done so far.
Hotel Hobbies: Just to go back a little before we talk about the new album, the band have now surpassed twenty-five years – that is quite a feat.
Heri Joensen: I suppose it is. I decided when we started the band that wanted to this for a living for the rest of my life. That doesn't mean I could see today's situation in my mind's eye. I definitely couldn't. I was just determined to keep doing it until I drop so I’m still very happy we have got this far. Looking back, I'm very happy with what we've achieved.
Hotel Hobbies: It certainly has been a success! Thinking of the new album now; I have listened to it many times and I can tell you made a conscious decision to build on the orchestration of the live album A Night at the Nordic House. I think you have achieved a great balance.
Heri Joensen: Wow. Nice. Thanks. As with the symphonic show we did, I think our music is well fitted. I have always made music in a classical way and that’s why it makes sense in a classical way. We have metal, but I always write out everything in notes for every album we’ve done. So, when the guy who arranges the orchestration goes to work, he already has our full notes. As I understand it, when they do this with most other bands, the person making the orchestration figures out what the what the band is playing. There was zero time spent on that in our case. I asked Lars, the Danish guy – who lives in London by the way – to make the classical parts so that were an integrated part of the music. He did a wonderful job with that.
Hotel Hobbies: Can you maybe touch a little more on that working relationship with Lars and how he shared his ideas with you?
Heri Joensen: Of course, when I have finished writing the song, I have the song in MIDI. So, all I have to do is send that to Lars. He takes it into his computer and puts sounds, orchestral sounds on that, you know, violins, cellos, whatever you need and then he sends it back to me. Occasionally, we would have some comments - change this a bit, change that a bit - but mostly we would use it as he suggested it. Then, there are a lot of details to fiddle around with and he is finished and he it sends it to Jacob Hanson, who mixed the album. So yeah, there's a bit of back and forth. Lars has a sample library of someone playing every possible note on a violin and other instruments and then he takes the appropriate notes.
Hotel Hobbies: The orchestrations fit seamlessly on the album. Hammered, the opening track, for instance has some power metal influences and its quite a blistering track and the orchestral flourishes work from the start.
Heri Joensen: Thanks! Hans Hammer, our new guitar player, came up with the basic idea for that song and we made the rest. I suppose our choruses are in general like power metal. I like the layered vocals with choirs and I like it to be sing along friendly. Some of the honour definitely goes to Jacob Hanson, who made the final sound and put everything together properly. It's surprisingly difficult to make the sound when there's so many elements in the music; it's difficult to make the sound transparent and clear, but he does that wonderfully.
Hotel Hobbies: It is a very well mixed album and I imagine quite difficult to get the orchestration at the right level. When listening though, you can pick out the different instruments well. Nothing overwhelms anything else.
Heri Joensen: That is precisely the challenge of mixing the sound, the levels and the colours.
Hotel Hobbies: Unwandered Ways is a little more folky along with the orchestrations but you manage to keep some of your classic sound.
Heri Joensen: We have always done the same when we write songs. I write the guitar parts and the chord progressions. It's the same type of melodies as always, and we've simply added orchestrations so if you take away the orchestration parts, it would sound like most of our albums. I didn't really consider the orchestrations while writing the songs. I just knew there would be orchestra. Except for maybe, Torkils Dotur because some parts have only orchestrations.
Hotel Hobbies: Row is probably what some would call Viking Metal and I think the flow of the album is perfect. Row is a huge call to arms and it works really well just before a quieter song.
Heri Joensen: Thank you! Honestly, I didn’t really think that deeply about the sequence of the songs but it was decided pretty early on which would be the opener and which would be the last song and the second last song. All the other songs were more less in a random position. Most people have a catchy song early on which is why we put Hammered first. Maybe Axes or Dragons Never Die should have been number two or three but Dragons is number three and Axes number eight.
Hotel Hobbies: I like the order and I think it is good to have that sort of track spread through the album and not all upfront.
Heri Joensen: It works well so you might be right! (laughing) Many bands have the three catchiest songs first so people continue to listen but maybe it is better to have them dispersed. You could be right!
Hotel Hobbies: I apologise for my terrible pronunciation of the next track, but Torkils Dotur is a beautiful song. In my review, I wrote, “The track builds steadily and midway through the song, symphonic opulence adds devastatingly potent melancholy.” I think it is an amazing track. How did you go about choosing that particular folk song?
Heri Joensen: Thank you so much! I had been working on that melody and putting a chord progression to it for years! I used that guitar part as a jingle on my YouTube channel for some time. At any moment, I will have several folk melodies that I'm working on – putting together harmonies and chords. This was just one of them. When the time came to make this album, I'd been struggling with the thought of leaving it as a pure symphonic piece or adding some metal. I decided in the end to put the metal parts in as well and it builds and goes faster and faster and higher towards the end. I’m glad I did that. It reaches a really epic level.
Hotel Hobbies: The final song of the album is a multi-part song and brings together everything that has been going on throughout the album.
Heri Joensen: The last song, Causa Latronum Normannorum has a Latin title. I had a melodic idea years ago and I tried it at different tempos. A friend of ours said we should use the half-tempo version not the fast one. The half-tempo was much more epic so that’s what we have here. There are some quotes from an Irish monk called Dicuil who wrote in the late seven hundreds. Causa Latronum Normannorum means Because of Norse Raiders. They were talking about the Faroes, that it was a nice place with sheep, bird and fish and everything but it was becoming uninhabitable because of Norse Raiders so they left the islands.
Hotel Hobbies: How much do you think being on the Faroe Islands and the environment there influences or inspires you?
Heri Joensen: Probably a lot. The traditional music, of course, has inspired me my entire life and so have folk tales and mythology. Possibly the landscape has influenced me but definitely the solitude here. I’ve lived in the centre of Prague for some years and the Faroes has an environment far more conducive to work, no doubt.
Hotel Hobbies: Can I ask you just a bit about the artwork on the album and how your relationship with Gyula Havancsak works?
Heri Joensen: We’ve used Gyula Havancsak for several years now. I think the first one he did for us was By The Light of the Northern Star. Very early on in the process of making this album - I think I had three or four songs finished - I sent him what I had: demo recordings and lyrics, and told him to go to town on it and see what he could come up with. He sent us a basic draft of what he wanted to do. We all thought it was a great idea and he developed that to what is now the cover. It’s a very, very strong cover, I would say. I like the details and the intricacy of it. It kind of reminds me of Iron Maiden albums where you can just sit and get lost in a cover. It's a very nice feeling and he did a wonderful job.
Hotel Hobbies: That’s one of the reasons I buy some albums on vinyl!
Hotel Hobbies: It is very hard to pick a favourite on the album and mine often changes in the moment. Are there any tracks you are particularly pleased with?
Heri Joensen: I’m very pleased with Causa Latronum Normannorum, particularly for having used Latin so we can add one more language to the ones we have used before. Let me see! We have used Norwegian, Faroese, Danish, Icelandic, English and now Latin. So, we are up to six languages! Maybe we can add another on the next album! I do like to leave favourites to the listeners after we release it. That’s why we ask our listeners what we should play. We have a Facebook group – The Great Heathen Army of Týr – and we ask people what they want to hear and follow those polls pretty closely.
Hotel Hobbies: This album seems to be a natural evolution of where you have been heading. When you look back, what bands inspired you when you were younger?
Heri Joensen: When I started playing music, it was Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and some Scandinavian bands like Europe or TNT. Nowadays, it's more or less the same bands. I listen to the same things over and over. Of more recent bands, I've been fascinated with the meteoric rise of bands like Sabaton and Amon Amarth. I also like Powerwolf. Not that their music is terribly sophisticated, but it works for what it's supposed to and people are fascinated by it. The live show is very, very important to the growth of a band. Now, finally, we might have the financial means to upgrade our live show a bit and keep the level of music high. That’s been on my mind recently.
Hotel Hobbies: You have completed the North American tour. What are your plans for the rest of the year? I know there are a few things lined up.
Heri Joensen: Yes. All we have made public so far are six or seven festivals over the summer. The tour plans are being made as we speak. Typically, we make one headliner tour and one support tour in the US and the same in Europe. So, we have to do that before next summer, let’s say.
Hotel Hobbies: You really seem to thrive on the writing side of your work. How is your love divided between the writing / recording side of your work and the live side? It must be rewarding to write but with the live shows, you receive more instant feedback.
Heri Joensen: If I had to choose one of those things, I would be a songwriter. That’s what feels the most meaningful to me. The level of control and the level of performance that you can get in the studio for an album is just much, much higher than you will ever get live. You can sit there and fiddle with it for days, weeks until it's perfect. Live – you have one shot! Musically, to play live, is extremely rewarding and I meet people who tell me that my music got them through a lot of shit. I can relate to that because I know what music meant to me when I was younger. I know what Iron Maiden and Judas Priests did for me. Being on the other end of that is deeply humbling and it's meaningful. We play some songs for the thousandth time, but there are people who hear it for the first time and taking part in their experience and their excitement is what makes it worth it.
Hotel Hobbies: You must look back on the history of the band with some pride!
Hei Joensen: I do. I do. No doubt about that. There are maybe two solo artists in the Faroes who have made a career comparable to ours, but no bands. I'm very pleased with what we've done. I hope people in the Faroes are pleased with that. My band mates are pleased with that.
Hotel Hobbies: It would be great to see you back in the UK!
Heri Joensen: Thanks. We'd love to come back, but it's been surprisingly difficult. I'm not sure if Brexit has anything to do with it! We're also outside the European Union here in the Faroes - we always been so I don't know, I have the feeling that there are two countries - England and Sweden - where it's very difficult to get in because their music industry is really geared for export. There are a lot of popular bands from Sweden and from England. England is the birthplace of heavy metal so nothing strange there. I have the feeling they're very keen on exporting their own bands, much less keen on importing foreign bands. That's my experience of it. I'm not sure if that's right, but we'd love to come back to England.
Hotel Hobbies: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. It has been a fascinating interview.
Heri Joensen: Thank you! Thank you for doing this great interview, what can I say? It's been a pleasure.
Hotel Hobbies: Hopefully I'll see you at a gig in England at some point!
Heri Joensen: That would be very nice.
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