Q:  Hello Snowy. Welcome to The Metal Pit. It’s an honor to be interviewing one of my favorite musicians.

Snowy Shaw: Is that so? Ok, thank you extra much then. 

Q: Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to meet you in Atlanta last year during Therion’s headlining appearance at ProgPower USA. What were your impressions of the festival and do you believe that that was truly Therion’s last U.S. performance?

Not if it’d be up to me.
    Prog Power was just fucking great! I met so many nice people, it felt almost like one big happy family, or actually more like some kind of a hippie commune for metalheads. I’d love to go back there soon again.
     Well, towards the end of our last US tour in 2007 Therion leader Christofer surprised us all when he went public and said it was the last US tour Therion would ever do, but I don’t really think he meant the occasional one off show or festivals though. 

Q: Since you’ve just released your live album “Snowy Shaw is Alive!” which is a live retrospective to your recording career in metal music. Personally I think it sounds great! What made you think of doing this live recording at this point in your career?

Personally? Hahaha! So far I’ve only received the best reviews and response for it, so I assume you’re not the only one who think it sounds great.
     Well, to be honest I didn’t set out to make a live album per se, that wasn’t part of my original plan. You know I did this one big ass show and had it recorded and filmed for a possible DVD, but then since the response was so over the top mind blowing I wasn’t gonna rule out the possibility of  doing more shows when and if the right opportunity presented itself, so then had a change of heart and decided to put the DVD on the back burner until I’ve collected more footage and stuff. In the meantime though I thought it’d be nice to release the recording as a live album.
     The whole conceptional idea was for me to go out there and play “All my favorite songs by all my former bands” on one hand to sum up my career so far and on the other hand to give people the best and most entertaining show possible. Not necessarily songs from my personal recording career, although I’ve singelhandedly have written more than 50% of the music I performed while the rest are stuff  that I’ve been playing together with the original bands in the past.

Q: The video Live Showreel in the Wunderwurld is such a bombastic and epic live performance, it leaves me wanting more live footage! Is there any chance of ever seeing the entire performance on a special dvd? I know you stated there were issues with the company that recorded the audio for the performance.

Yeah absolutely, there will surely be a live DVD release in time, but like I said, I want to film and record a couple of more shows before that and really make it the way I personally would have wanted it, with some of the best pieces and moments from a number of shows including behind the scenes material and so on instead of just using one single two hour show straight up and down in its entirety. Eventhough at the show in Gothenburg the audience were completely freaking out, amazed out of their minds saying they have never ever seen anything quite like it before and that it wasn’t just another ordinary heavy metal concert.
    I even saw people up front crying out of joy, which felt kinda weird I must admit. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not pushing it back because it wasn’t any good, because believe me it was.
    I had my buddy Patric and his Revolver Film Company staff to capture the whole spectacle on film, and he’s such an unquestionable pro and have worked with loads of big names like In Flames, Arch Enemy, Europe you name it.
   So may I suggest to the readers that if given the opportunity, you should really jump to it and get your assess down there to watch my kick ass live performance in the flesh first hand, which is still the ultimate way of experiencing it, or any live show for that matter.
    As for the issues you mentioned, I don’t know what you’ve heard but it’s all settled and taken care of now and I won’t be using them again for any upcoming shows.

Q: Do you have any plans for doing another “Snowy Shaw All Star Band” live at any point in the future? Personally, I would love to see a performance at ProgPower USA in Atlanta. I think the fans that attend the festival regularly would love it!

Yeah, fuck yeah! I’d love to bring this unique spectacular live performance to Prog Power and I’m sure the american metal fans would love it too.
     Next up, I’ll be doing a very special Halloween event show in Sweden right after I get off the Therion 25 anniversary tour in Europe. It’s one helluva huge live show event and stage act and with some very interesting things going on on stage where I throw in a few very special secret guest appearances in the mix. If half of it goes according to the plan it’s gonna be nothing short of fantastic. But saying that it requires shitloads of planning and preparation is like the understatement of the century. And I need to arrange, organize and co-ordinate every-fucking-thingway in advance before the Therion tour kicks off since it ends in Ukraine only a few days before the Halloween Event.   
   By the way, on the strong advise of my agents and managers it’s just called Snowy Shaw and I decided to drop the misleading all-star-band tag.

Q: The majority of metal fans were first introduced to you as the replacement for Mickey Dee in King Diamond, but you’ve gone on to represent yourself not only as a world-class drummer, but also as a spectacular frontman.  What was your impression of working with King as both a performer and as a person? Did working with him inspire you to become a frontman or was that always a goal to get out from behind the drums?

   I can’t emphasize enough how grateful I am for the opportunity I was given to play with the King. I was a complete rookie and that’s where I cut my teeth being thrown into that crazy rock n´roll circus. Most definitely I learned a lot from it and got both routine and experience, but maybe not so much in the way you might think as being inspired by King in that sense. Despite our age difference I guess it’s fair to say that we both share very similar kind of influences and passions with music, horror and stage acts, and above all I’d say the main common denominator is Alice Cooper and what he did for stage performances in the 70s in general and with Welcome to my Nightmare in particular.
      But of course long before I joined the band I was a big fan of Mercyful Fate and K.D. I have a lot of respect for King and his legacy, or any artist who devote their whole life to their art without compromise like King have. Kudos to that.
      No, I never really had any desire to step out from behind the drums to begin with. And it actually never really crossed my mind until maybe when I started my own band Notre Dame in the mid-late 90s, and figured no one could better represent my music than myself. That’s been the fucking dilemma throughout my whole life from when I first started playing music and every single band I formed or got involved with would fall apart without exception because there was never any singers to be found.  Eventually it got to the point where I was so damn frustrated with the whole situation that I said Fuck it! I’m gonna do the singing myself then. This notion would probably have occurred to me a lot sooner if I’d been a bassplayer or guitar player up front, but for various reasons to sing while drumming isn’t exactly the best or most common combination.
    It wasn’t as easy as it may sound though, it’s not until about right now that I feel I start getting the hang of it a bit better. There’s been many times when I regret not starting out singing instead of playing the drums when I was a kid.

Q: What’s your relationship with King now? Do you stay in contact? Is there any possibility of doing a guest appearance when King Diamond tours again?

    We had a very long talk over Skype about a month ago and I can’t tell you how happy I am that he’s well and back on track after the triple bypass, his back problems and all. Over the years we’ve kept in touch very sporadically although I haven’t actually met the man in person for about 15 years.
   Many people have asked whether I’d be doing a guest appearance when King will be playing Sweden Rock Festival, which I’d love to do if I wasn’t on tour in Latin America at the time. Some other time down the road perhaps, or maybe King will do a guest appearance on my show, who knows...

Q: Memento Mori is a band that I wasn’t familiar with until I heard the new live album, now that I’ve had a chance to go back and revisit that material on YouTube, I have to say it’s quite impressive. What was it like working with Messiah Marcolin in the band?

    Next question.. hahaha! Just kiddin’, Messiah is like the nicest guy you can imagine, like a big teddybear of a person and it’s always nice to hang out and socialize with him, but professionally, well, that’s a whole different ballgame, and it’s already pretty well documented by the Candlemass guys so I don’t think I need to add any more fuel to that fire. And having said that, there are probably a few people who consider me a pain in the ass to work with too, and that’s fine, but I can assure you it’s for very different reasons and that’s another story. I think on the first two Memento Mori albums we were on to something really cool but unfortunately there was a clash between Messiah and myself  during the recording of the second which I suppose led to its demise.
    Make no mistake, I think Messiah is one of the most phenomenal, original and unique front men and singers there ever been in rock history. Let me tell you, Candlemass was supporting King Diamond on the european tour 1990 and it was a real pleasure and privilege. Normally I rarely care about watching the support act but this was different, I became their biggest fan and watched them practically every night. During the after party on the first or second night I told them we need to swap places, because I thought they were just so unbelievably fantastic.
      Whatever the reason might have been for our differences in Memento Mori sadly things didn’t gel, but lots of water under the bridge since then and we’re on good terms now. In fact it didn’t take more than a year or so after we were butting heads in Memento til we played together again in another band called Collussus.  

Q: The Opera Diabolicus project  “+1014” was released recently, which, in my review I categorized as “if Therion, King Diamond, and Dream Evil had a Satanic bastard child”. (Which is meant as high praise! Haha!) How did your involvement in a metal opera about Countess Bathory come about?

     Oh man, there’s been loads of twists and turns on the long winding road to its release. But I’m delighted that it’s now getting such astounding response with great reviews and plenty of Album of the month nominations in the metal circuit all over the world. Especially since I had actually begin doubting this album would ever see the light of day.
     Initially I was brought in as the last man to do some vocals in the fall of ´06, after that songwriter/guitarist David had been terrorizing me for several months with phonecalls and eventually I folded and agreed to do it. Turns out the compositions unexpectedly had a lot of potential although it was in part rather poor sounding and this nagging son-of-a-bitch was a really great guy after all. Later on they realized after the first mix that the drum machine wasn’t cutting it, so then they hired me to the drums on top of their crooked recordings, which is sort of the backward way of doing things if you ask me, but I adapted well to the circumstances and tried tagging along following what was already down on tape. A year or so later they decided to re-record all the guitars and bass but first after the second mix they hired me as a photographer, stylist, designer as well as shopping deals for record labels, which I did and landed them two or three interested parties with prominent metal labels, whom in the end pulled out and meant that some of the lead vocals wasn’t up to par. So again when they turned to me for advise I suggested Messiah would be the perfect fit for the project but unfortunately, as usual he turned it down saying he didn’t have time and wouldn’t wanna be distracted from working on his own solo album that he started in 1991 if I’m not mistaken. I then made some phonecalls and brought in my good friends Mats Levén and Niklas Isfeldt from Dream Evil. Opera Diabolicus then went on to sign with some german label but time went by and absolutely nothing happened and in the end they discovered that the label had in fact gone bankrupt, and they found themselves back at square one again and had to find a new label to the release their long awaited grand opus.
    This is the short version of the story, but what never changed was that the songs and the concept were great and really had potential, it just needed to be executed properly and that took a while, but at least Andy La Rocque who mixed the album could then afford buying a new house with all the money they spent in the studio..

Q: After hearing the finished Opera Diabolicus album, are you happy with how it turned out? Do you know if there any possibility of doing a one off live performance of +1014 or do you think it is just a recording project?

   Yeah, I think I pretty much covered that in my previous answer.
    As for live performances, I don’t wanna rule out the possibility of occasional ones in the future but yes, this is more or less a studio project, or actually a rock opera kind of metal project that will do things and little differently compared to the usual metal band route. And personally I’ve been pushing for us the fully embrace a different kind of approach and emphasize on that uniqueness or originality, I’ve got some really great ideas up my sleeve, but it seems it will take same getting used to for the other guys.    
     I’ve talked to Mr Grimoire it and presented some ideas on how it could be done by not doing the normal conventional routine of playing support act gigs etc which wouldn’t be fair to this rather dramatic and epic doom metal version of a Rock Opera. I can’t see that happening within any forseeable future though, but who knows there might be a little guest thing happening towards halloween…

Q: You performed on the second annual 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise with Therion. How was that experience and was there any particular events that stood out for you during that festival?

    The whole cruise thing was just a terrific and yet unusual experience, one I never expected I’d be on in my life, almost like a paid vacation. Normally the artists are kind of separated from the fans in the sealed off backstage area and that kind of thing, but here we were all in the same boat so to speak, and it was just awesome. Everybody was very friendly,well behaved and respectful and were all getting along just perfectly.
     It’s not everyday you can take a dip in the pool and sip on a beer in the jacuzi in front of the stage while watching Exciter or Edguy bashing and thrashing away.
     One thing that stood out and on a bad note, was that I was hanging out talking to Bobby Jarzombek who was there playing with Riot, an old favorite band of mine, but the leader and only founding member Mark Reale was hospitalized and couldn’t attend and then the next day I heard Mark had passed away just hours before their show. How incredibly sad and tragic news, I was just lost for words. R.I.P 

Q: I asked the readers of The Metal Pit what questions they had for you. So here is a couple. What instruments do you play besides drums and what order did you learn them in. Also what singers were your influences growing up?

    I began playing the drums when I was about 13 in the pop/rock band that I founded and also wrote the lyrics in our native tongue , swedish. But I had a need to express myself and contribute more in the song writing and eventually I got tired of humming or voicing out the riffs to the guitarist from behind the kit so that’s why I picked up and fiddled around on the guitar and gradually I got a little better at it. All because the other guys didn’t always have a lot of ideas.
    The singing never occured to me until many years in my mid 20s, but for the same reason pretty much. That old Do It Yourself mentality which I could very well be a poster boy for.
    It’s kinda weird but somehow I’ve noticed that there’s a special relationship and mutual admiration between singers and drummers, many singers started out as drummers, for instance Bon Scott was originally a drummer, so was Iggy Pop, Nicke Andersson, Dave Grohl obviously, and many many more that I can’t think of right now
    Another thing on this subject that’s kinda funny that I recently came to realize is that from a young drummers perspective, my favorite bands when I grew up had some of the crappiest drummers in rock, but in my opinion the greatest singers and the best songs or coolest concept.
    I’m talking about KISS, Manowar and Scorpions. So one can assume I’ve always been more interested in good tunes with good vocals first hand rather than the drumming in itself. While I’ve met so many musicians in my life who just seem so caught up on their choice of instrument and are only interested in listening to those parts in the music as some of education, competition or whatever instead of the music as a whole entity.  To me it’s a bit like having a disgusting bowl of soup just because you’re a big fan of the carrot which is one of the ingredience.
    As for singers, the aforementioned Manowar singer Eric Adams, is definitely one of my all time favorites that has influenced me tremendously. There’s tons of great voices and singers out there that I admire and that’s influenced me one way or the other, but my earliest recollection of even being conscious about a singer was Dan McCafferty of Nazareth, and to this day he is still one of my all time favorites and his voice is still the rawest and coolest voice I’ve ever heard. Then there is Axl Rose, Paul Stanley, Klaus Meine, King Diamond, David Byron, to mention just a few
    And of course, needless to say, like everyone else in metal, the Metal God himself Rob Halford.

Q: Off topic for a moment, you and I have something in common (aside from the fact that we both own an adorable French Bulldog! Haha!) with our love of the band KISS.  Have you ever had the opportunity to meet them? A lot of long time fans are up in arms about Tommy and Eric playing the roles of the Spaceman and The Catman. What’s your opinion?

     No, luckily I haven’t met them, I’m a firm believer that one shouldn’t meet your heroes though it might ruin your whole perception and foundation on which you’ve built your life on. I came to this conclusion after I had met Joey DeMaio, do I need to say any more?
    As for the replacements in KISS, Hmmm, suit yourself for opening that box. I’m happy for both of them, they probably got the greatest job in the world, especially Eric Singer whom I can just assume was a midwest kid who grew up in the 70s loving both KISS and Alice Cooper. It certainly is no easy task to replace any loved character in a band, even for Eric Carr who was always considered the “new guy” although he was probably in KISS at least twice as long as Peter Criss. I even hear people talking about that “new singer” in AC/DC although Brian Johnson’s been there for about 32 years now. 
       And without those two guys or for that matter any qualified guys replacing Ace and Criss the ship would have sunk to the bottom a long time ago. Maybe that’s just me but personally I think they should have ended it all with a big bang at the turn of the millennium as was planned, or at least promoted publically that way, but they’ve been on the Farewell tour for close to 20 years now and that’s ok as long as they enjoy doing what they’re doing. Personally I couldn’t have care less since I adamantly refuse to attend shows with any of my old heroes by principle anyway, simply because it breaks my heart and I rather watch younger bands who still has the kind of killer instinct my old heroes used to have.  
    On the contrary I think they should all be replaced by 4 young and hungry KISS clones. I always considered them like 4 fictious super heroes playing a role anyway, initially as an extension of their individual personalities but still they are no different to let’s say Batman, Spiderman and Dracula. It’s the ultimate concept, and it just don’t get any better. I’m pretty sure greedy Gene have already contemplated this and have tried convince the reluctant Paul a thousand times that they should make a TV show like American Idol where they pick out the best Gene clone among thousands of contestants. I for one would love to see my grandchildren and their grandchildren discover the KISS phenomenon just like I did when I was 7 years old, which forever changed and gave my life meaning. Otherwise I doubt you’d be talking to me right now if it wasn’t for the impact KISS had on me.  
     I guess I better stop now and shut the fuck up, otherwise I can probably go on forever on this subject and in general slam the pretty naïve point of view loads of fans seem to have regarding the honorable reunions, all done for their love of heavy metal and totally in denial of the fact that money has anything to do with it, and the hopes and great expectations that once you have the original Black Sabbath line-up together in a room once again you can only expect miracles and a new Paranoid album just like the good ol´days.

Q: You seem to be perpetually busy! What’s on tap for Snowy Shaw in the future? Any specific recording projects you are working on that you can discuss?

       There’s a few albums that I’ve been involved with in the pipeline just about to be released now before summer, like this project I’ve done with a french industrial metal act called THE CNK & SNOWY SHAW and few other projects. Therion’s making a new one too. For lack of a better word, it’s something very special, even by Therion’s standards.
    I was just about to go into the studio next week to mix 2 songs I’ve been recording for a special occasion, but earlier today I had no choice but to call the studio and cancel the mix until further notice because I’m so much behind schedule with the recordings due to all the massive problems with my recording devices, upgraded systems and changing computers, uncompatible this and that and what not. It seems I’ve suffered every fucking perceivable technical mishap in the book over the last couple of months, and I’m frustrated out of my fucking mind here right on the verge of  imploding. I had set off time and had every intention of recording my own new material, but what do you now, time flies and soon I’ll be on tour again. I bet with my normal luck I’ll eventually get it all to work properly right before I go on tour and then the whole damn house burns down ( laughs)
     Please keep your fingers crossed for me, ok?

Q: Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview. If people would like to purchase “Snowy Shaw Is Alive!” or Snowy related merchandise and also keep up to date with all of your various projects where can they find you on the internet?

     Great, thanx for having me.. much appreciated.
   I have a brand new webshop with tons of great stuff – check it out via my new website www.snowyshaw.net
Otherwise, look me up on facebook where there’s a few fan pages etc besides my personal ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3tG5w8bjbM

 See you around, stay true - All the best