Interview: Private Line: “Is this still Rock music?” - STALKER MAGAZINE inside out of rock´n´roll

Private Line: “Is this still Rock music?”

Their fans have been waiting for five years, but now it looks like that the new album of Private Line will be finally released this autum. „Dead Decade“ is the name of this masterpiece, and the first single with the same title, plus a video, was released in the end of April. We met guitarist Jack Smack in Helsinki to find out why it took so long.

Hi, Jack, how are you doing today?
I am a little bit tired, because I played here yesterday with Acey Slade (at Trash Fest, the ed.)

And did you like it?
Yeah, it was awesome. We had only one rehearsal, we rehearsed one hour for the songs and then we were ready!

Well, the show went very well then!
Yeah, you were here? Did you like the show?

Yeah, sure it was very nice. I’m not a huge fan of Acey’s voice but yeah it was nice!
Ok, but it was really fun to play. It was like a good kind of pressure when you have never rehearsed a song together.

In the last interview we had two years ago you mentioned that the new Private Line record would be out in spring and nothing happened, so how does it look nowadays?
Yeah, nowadays it is looking really good. There was lot of stuff happening and the album was delayed. Like Guns’n’Roses last album (laughs) I started to call our new album “The Finnish Democracy” because of that.(laughs) It was only a joke.
Anyway the Album is called “Dead Decade” and the first single from the album and the first video will be out end of April. So we shot the video a month ago and we gonna release the second video and single probably in the summer 2011. I think we´re gonna make many videos from this album, because there are so good songs.
Well, anyway the album will be out in August 2011. It was supposed to come out in April, but there were problems with one agency, I don’t wanna name it, but there were things we wanted to do differently , because it is a fucking good album and we don’t wanna ruin it now, we wanna make everything perfectly.

So you just take a little bit more time until you release it?
Yeah, we anyway gonna play some shows along the with the new single and we will release another one before the album so the show starts anyway this month.

Do you already have plans to tour Europe? I am asking because we get all these request from your fans.
Yeah, we get those as well, but it has been really difficult to say anything to anybody, because sometimes we didn’t even knew ourselves what the hell is happening, when are we releasing the album and when are we gonna start the tour. You know, we were concentrating for the album so much, cause we wanted every fucking detail to be perfect. So this is our problem, because we really wanna make the most perfect album every time. And every time it’s gonna take more and more time but it is pain for the fans and pain for us also.

So you are all perfectionists?
Well, I don’t know if we are perfectionist or what we are, but when we know that this isn’t what we want to release, then we wanna make it as good as possible, so that we don’t have to regret it later. But of course we wanna come to Europe again, but I think we gonna do the tour for the “Dead Decade” album in the fall when the album is released. I hope that the European Fans, the people in Switzerland and Germany and so on want us back, even though many people might think that we died already (laughs)

Oh, I am sure they don’t think that and the main point is that you come back. And if someone wants to see you, they can come here, it is very nice to have you every year at Trash Fest.
It’s good to hear that because I heard there are also people from Australia here tonight who just come to see us. I really appreciate that!

That is very nice. What would you say are the biggest differences between the new and the previous record?
I think even though I said that we wanted to make every detail as good as possible, it was the same thing in the last album but I think the songs are breathing much more in this album. There is lot of stuff in the new album that we wouldn’t even thought we ever use those. We put there harmonica and there is Kantele, a Finnish traditional instrument, and other different kind of elements from Russian music and Blues and Slavian music, just different mixture of Rock’n’Roll and weird things.

I don’t know how to say it, but anyway we played the album to one Finnish top producer and I asked him “What do you think about it?” and he said “It’s perfect collection of singles, there is no bad song!” and he thought “It’s quite a bad thing that there isn’t no bad songs!” and that it is a too good album. Like it should be a single collection and I said “Then it works!” Cause we don’t like to do shitty songs that we don’t want to play.

Yeah I understand. But it is very nice to get such a comment on your record.
Yeah, I took that as a compliment. But anyway it is always hard to say what is the difference between the albums. Of course the old cliché is that I will tell you that “This is the best album we have ever done!” But in this case that cliché is true.

Well, I guess in most of the cases this cliché is true because you grow with every new album!
Yeah, I think playing the guitars for the "Dead Decade" album was much more fun, because it was very easy to play the whole album, even though we had quite difficult stuff in there. Making the songs for their final versions took time. But anyway it is a freaking good album. I also played it to my mother and she started to laugh, because in one song called “Deathroll Casino”, which we´re gonna play tonight, there is this Russian part in between the last chorus and the Russian orchestra comes in, and when my mother was listening to the album, she had her eyes closed and I was watching her when she was listening and she started to laugh when the Russian part came and after the song I asked her what she thought about it. And she said “Is this Rock music at all anymore?” (Laughs) But we really like to use different kind of elements in our songs to keep them fresh.

Ok, thanks a lot for the update and let’s continue now with the 7 Deadly Sins.
Ok, let’s do so.

Read the 7 Sins interview here

Author: Sandy Mahrer, photos: Band
Date: 2011-05-15

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