Isn’t this what dreams are made of? Bassist and founding member Paul Logue had a hairbrained idea to form a band due to encouragement from other well-known artists such as David Readman and Doogie White. I had the honor of sitting down with Paul, discussing the journey of this multinational melodic metal band Eden’s Curse and their fifth album release Cardinal via AFM Records with Nikola Mijic (vocals), Thorsten Koehne (guitar), Paul Logue (bass), John Clelland (drums), Christian Pulkkinen (keyboard), which I highly recommend.
Hello Paul! For music lovers here in Southern California to Niagara Falls, Canada, where the publication is located, introduce Eden’s Curse to the readers.
Okay. We are a multi-national European based kind of melodic metal band. We actually started in 2006, as a song writing project for myself. I formed a band and found some of the members for the first record. I wrote some songs for other people over the years like Pink Cream 69, the guys in the band – Doogie White, who sings with Yngwie Malmsteen and Michael Schenker now. Those guys kept saying to me, “You need to go and get a band together; you do great songs, do something with it.” I decided to explore that and went to the internet to find people; it didn’t matter to me where they were from. I had this hairbrained idea that I could a do an album as long as I could find people like minded. We went ahead and the album sold 10,000 copies, went straight into the charts in Japan. We were like, “Okay. I didn’t expect that.” Fast forward a few years later, we started to go on tour with bands like Stratovarius so we came pretty much from the studio/bedroom, many of the studios were back bedrooms and we went on tour with Stratovarius and Dream Theater and Firewind. And really Eden’s Curse started to build up a following and gain some traction amongst metal genres. Here we are now, ten years later; we’ve done five albums and a double live album. This is a fifth album, Cardinal which has just been released yesterday.
As you stated, Eden’s Curse is multinational band. Five members, five different countries. What’s the process of getting all the members together to record an album, rehearse and put a tour together?
Yes. It’s pretty difficult, I like a challenge. Tammy, I don’t like to do things at half measure; I like to make it difficult as possible [laughter] for myself. In all honesty, I think the key to all is careful planning, being very prepared whenever we do anything. We pack our set list very far and advance as possible, like for example we had this record in the can since the beginning of March, I think. AFM’s release schedule was quite busy and we always want to make sure we’re getting top priority in promotion with them. There is no point in us going with Evergrey the same ones, because Evergrey that one – the label’s top acts. So, we are quite happy to wait and get the proper attention that we crave as a band. And that allows us to get on and plan. So, if you imagine the dilemma we’re going on tour next month, we had to pack the best songs from the record before anybody heard us and see how they receive. So luckily, so far the reviews all the songs we’re packing are good. So, that gives you an idea that you’ve got to plan ahead. We recorded the first album long distance, I’ll do the bass at my house myself, and the drummer John board from Scotland and went to Germany and record the drums over there with Dennis, our producer, and that was the only time that we only anybody met, the other guys all do at home but they’re all brilliant producers as well as musicians and that was the key to starting as band you have to number one: have the talent; and number two: you’ve got to know what you’re doing in a studio and that’s been the key to the success so. But don’t think about it now, we used to, in the beginning, and the early days we had the travel expenses equivalent of the day of an after commission, you know? [laughing]. So, we’re all in Europe, we’re all a couple of hours away in a plane from each other. Which is no different to some bands in US for example, one guy might be in East Coast, some Central, some you know, right where you guys are. So, we just get on with it. We pack our set list, we do our homework, that’s so important. You can always tell within an hour that someone hasn’t been rehearsing and look all you know a group that’s all these guys are very very well prepared and that’s how it works for us.
There were changes of personnel within the group. Being the founder of Eden’s Curse, what changes did you endure as far as the chemistry or your signature sound to the writing process?
The main change is obviously changing our first, lead singer. With all greatest respect to our first, lead singer I think we got an upgrade in that department. I loved the first guy’s voice, but the second guy’s voice is absolutely spectacular. Nikola is our current singer- he’s from Serbia, he is our wonderful wonderful vocalist. That has obviously changed. I’ve been the main song writer the band since the 2006 forming and the guitar player and as huge part of our sound and of the success- he’s a virtuoso player. We’ve been the two main constants in the band and that has helped us keep our signature sound. I don’t think we’ve lost too much we’ve seem to gained; the fan base’s gain with it as well.
Well that’s true: I became a fan.
There we go.
Cardinal is Eden’s Curse fifth studio album, released via AFM records. Can you tell the readers a little bit about it and what will draw new fans to this album, and to you as a band?
We’re quite a diverse band, we don’t patch in all our self on any particular genre. Some people say we’re melodic metal, some people say we’re power metal, some say we’re prog metal. We just grew up listening to bands like Dokken, Queensryche, Dream Theater, even some Winger back in the days… even Van Halen, so we’re the melting pot of all the bands that we just adored and loved. We’re never shy to explore some of the avenues that some of these bands take. There’s no hard and fast truths in rock music: we just write and come out with material that comes from our heart and what we love to hear as listeners ourselves. We write, first and fore mostly for ourselves and that seems to have worked for us. We never tried to force style, but we can be like Survivor one minute and then the next thing we can be double bass balls to the wall like Except or something like that, or we can go off kind of proggy like Dream Theater. But keeping it interesting and always sounding like Eden’s Curse. It doesn’t – there’s nothing. You’re not going to get a Rihanna track or anything like that on the album thankfully. We have nice styles and I think there is something for everyone if you just like good, hard rock music.
The band released three videos prior to the album release. What’s a process in choosing the perfect song that will grab the fans attention? I love Sell your Soul!
Thank you.
Sold my Soul [both laughing]
It’s extremely hard. When we do have video, videos are expensive to make. We don’t have a lot of budget that we stack in a big pot for videos. We’re trying to do one, the most expensive part of being in a band is touring; especially if you’re in a group who just eat, eat, eat: they eat money like it’s going out of fashion. The actual video itself was try to pack a song that represented us as a band, was catchy enough to potentially grab other listeners, but also at the same time, can we make a good value with us? Can we come up with a concept? We’ve had at least four or five that we could have chosen but this was the one that we felt was quite an uplifting song; it’s got a great feeling to it, a good vibe and a good message as well. We were able to do an ET style, tongue and cheek video. At some point, you get an effective concept with girls also hacking back to what I said – demographic is middle aged guy so it’s win-win in their eyes.
You’ve had some amazing guest vocalist on the past albums: Pamela Moore on Angels and Demons, James LaBrie of Dream Theater who is phenomenal on No Holy Man, then on this album is Liv Kristine of Leaves Eyes on Unconditional. Do you write the songs with an artist in mind? How does it come together?
We never actually write any of the duets with anyone in mind other than our singer. It’s just as we start to work on them and idea may come to our heads that a different voice might just take the story somewhere else. No Holy Man was really a prime example of that. Even the Angels and Demons as well because it’s the devil and the kind of angel type thing. That went brilliantly well and having that iconic voice like Pamela’s on there was hugely important. James as well was building on the success of that duet, to think: ‘Could we do this again, keep it interesting?’ Don’t force it but at the same opened many doors to us which led to us going on tour with Dream Theater in the UK, which was phenomenal. For our development as a band it was massively successful. Liv again was as we started, we don’t traditionally do love songs so for us we felt, as the song progressed, this would be killer to have a female on it. We admittedly thought of Pamela as well, but then we thought: ‘Well okay, Pamela is Angels and Demons, let’s try a different voice.’ I was meeting AFM for a production meeting anyway and we talked about Liv. She’s in ‘Leaves’ Eyes’ and on AFM and they said: ‘Oh she’s fanatic, she’s a lovely girl, she’s easy to deal with, very professional.’ We agreed to approach her for this. Fast forward: two days later Liv’s in Germany – she’s a Norwegian living in Germany – I’m in Scotland in Glasgow. I’m in a bar In Glasgow with a few friends; one of her friends is immigrating to Australia. She walks on the door and I’m like: ‘What?’. I look at the girl walk past and I’m thinking: ‘No it can’t be. She’s in Europe somewhere.’ The door then opens and a guy comes in with Leaves Eyes t-shirt on and he recognizes me immediately and says: ‘Hi. I’m Mik, tour manager from Firewind, we toured back in 2010.’ I said: Well mate, how are you? Then the penny dropped, it must have been Liv – and I told him this a story about meeting the label and he said: ‘That’s incredible. She’s sitting over here, eating fish and chips.’ So, I’m like: ‘no way!’ Of course, I was invited over to meet Liv and she was just god smacked to the story as well. She says; ‘That must be fate.’ So, she said to me: ‘Email me the song and if I’ll love it, I’ll kick its ass.’ And she sure did… Lovely person, we talked for half an hour, about the life, about music, the label, music scene. She was a lovely soul; we connected on that level.
That’s a beautiful song.
Thank you.
Not being familiar with Eden’s Curse, and seeing the album cover of Cardinal, I thought it was an all-female band. [both laughing] then listened to it, I found out otherwise. What has been the reaction to the album cover?
Well our demographic is middle aged men so it’s been doing rather well. We’ve always had from the first record to the first album covers – Eve from the Garden of Eden, sitting, I have them on canvas, hang on Tammy…
Okay.
I’ll spin us around and can give you a tour. I’ll turn the light on so you can get a better picture. So, here’s the first album here. Because of the name of the band, Eden’s Curse, we decided always to have a spiritual theme; we’re not a Christian band or anything, but I thought it would be cool. I’ve been married for eighteen years, so I don’t want to kind of write ‘boy meets girl’ on the second album. As I said, I grew up in on diet of Queensryche, Dream Theater, this is killer I love this, isn’t that stunning?
That’s nice. Yes, that is very nice.
What we done is we kind of decided to have a different theme with each album linking it in some way to maybe Sin of the Garden of the Eden or some aspect of it. And this is the live album, this is the same girl, look at the details on this.
Oh, wow!
It’s kind of like an Egyptian…
That is gorgeous!
Isn’t it beautiful? I’ve got a space here for the fifth record that will go here. But that was the whole point; to try and build upon the themes and the styles that we have, keep it interesting. But at the same time, always have that link back but be respectful, but not trying to be sexist. We’ve had emails, of course you get emails over times: ‘those guys are pornographic covers. The chicks got no clothes on’. Well actually she’s wearing a cello between her knees [both laughing]. Obviously, it’s symbolizing Eve from the Garden of Eden and we try to do it very very tastefully, respectfully. I’ve got a young daughter as well, so I wouldn’t be very good father if I was teaching my daughter that way. The fifth album, the lead character from the cover Patty, her name- she’s a Polish friend of ours, her husband is the band’s photographer. She was the lead character in our last video Evil and Divine. The video was very successful I don’t know if it was just Patty; obviously, the song and our vocalist Nikola, which was his first album with the band, he’s a quite photogenic guy, he’s a good-looking fellow. The video was very successful so we thought about using Patty and we thought: ‘Okay fifth album: why don’t we bring four friends along, for the party’ Then we were trying to get a concept with title as well so that’s how it ended up that way. But the other point I must make what I really wear because some of the girls are friends of friends of hers and they brought a friend along. So, all people we know and it made it such a cool atmosphere for the video we done for Sell your Soul. Its’ the same five girls but we have been able to bring them to the lounge party and to come out in stage with us on the tour, which we kick off in the home town of Glasgow next month. That’s been practically all.
The album release party was the other night at the Hard Rock Café in Glasgow, how was the reception to the album?
It went down very well. John and myself are both are Scottish based. We couldn’t fly everybody, it was too expensive to do; so, we were of the Scottish contingent, doing that there. It’s quite a nervous thing, I’ve never done anything like that before to get that instant reaction. But the room kind of went quiet after some of initial chit chatter. At the end, we got a big applause and the last track, Jericho, was on everyone’s lips at the end, because it was the end, such a big grand, epic song of ours. It’s one of the longest songs in the album. But a lot of people talked about it and it was an awesome night to be honest. It was a great experience and something we hope to do again.
The band doesn’t seem to tour often. The only time I believe you’ve been here in the United States was 2010. Will there be a North American tour?
We don’t tour in the US, and that’s because there’s no interest from promoters. For us to come to America, we need a promoter to come and invite us to come there. That is what happens…the only show that we had done in the States was an invitation to come to Melodic Rock Fest. We would love to do it but I guess in many ways for European bands to come is probably going to cost five thousand bucks to get us there in the first place. So, you have to be pulling in enough audiences. I don’t know in all honesty, if people are aware of us on the road map, in terms of promoters. I know that we have a fairly substantial fan base in the US, in terms of what we see on Facebook and Twitter. We got a lot of US fans. I couldn’t even tell you if we could show in New York, how many people would come. I just don’t know. It’s one of those unfortunate possessions that we would love to come. I think our fan base would love us to come, but we are totally relying on a promoter approaching us to say ‘We want you to come and play in America.’ They’ve got to finance it all. There’s cool festivals, so maybe one day we’ll get another festival appearance; we’d love to do something like Progpower in Atlanta or something like that which is for our type of music. Maybe we’ll end up radar of somebody at some point.
I’m in envy of the Summer Festival Season in Europe. All the bands that are there, the atmosphere and the fans. It would be amazing to see that here. I don’t know if that will ever happen but it would be amazing. I think I must go to Europe to see that.
Europe’s I’ve done a couple of them. I’ve been up to Sweden Rock etc. which is just phenomenal. And the only thing that you don’t get is the great weather that you guys get in the North part of the Europe. Sometimes it can be a little bit of a lottery so you must go with your backpack and all your waterproofs. When you guys do it in summer you get a sunburn and it’s great, you can enjoy it. And even where I live in Scotland, we have green mountains for a reason because it rains a lot. So, you can’t really have festivals here but in Europe there are some amazing festivals and that’s a type of thing that we concentrate and trying going into. Even in Europe is difficult for us to get on the big festivals because they have some awesome bands like Toto was here and Slash and Alter Bridge. So, we are competing against some major names, it’s what we are building up to aspire to. There’s a lot of great mid-size festivals too. We do one in England, it’s 2000 people and a great hall of just music fanatics; so, these types of festivals are coming up too, but there is a lot of choices for sure.
I only see the photos and read about it. It’s like you know “Someday– Someday I’ll experience that”.
Why not. Life’s for having no regrets. Absolutely!
That’s right. Lastly, what’s next for Eden’s Curse?
Well, right now, everything is geared towards this promo trip obviously. Next month we start our tour: UK tour. So, the headline UK tour, which is club shows alone, so we’ve got seven in a row. And then we take probably Christmas off with our families. We’re back on the road in February in Germany and Switzerland. That’s just been announced were going on as main support to a German power metallers Freedom Call. The tour is 10 shows in Germany, one in Switzerland. Now, we’re just getting our name in for festivals another potential headline show. So, this moment in time it’s putting the feelers out, as they say, to promoters and we’ve got a little bit of interest in Japan as well. So, we’ll follow up and see what we can line up for the rest of the year. We want to play and tour as much Cardinal as possible this year and next year begin to make noise and trying to push band up higher.
Nice. Paul, thank you very much for your time.
You’re welcome.
Like I said, I enjoyed the new release Cardinal. I’m new to you, we at Music Life Magazine wish you much success and we look forward to hopefully seeing you some day on a North America tour.
Thank you very much, Tammy. It’s said that Rome wasn’t built in a day and if we keep producing and getting to new people…sometimes when I meet the new fans that are apologetic that they haven’t found us sooner and we say: ‘It doesn’t matter when you get to the party as long as you get there.’
Well said!
Absolutely.
Thank you very much. Have a good day!
You too, enjoy your morning.
You can check out Eden’s Curse on Facebook and Twitter, or their mobile friendly website: www.edenscurse.com. You won’t be disappointed!!
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