Photo Credit: Heli Andrea

After their set on the Archetype Stage at the RADAR Festival, we caught up with bassist Nicolai Mogensen from VOLA. During our interview, we discussed their upcoming studio album, ‘Friend of a Phantom,’ which is set to be released, and their confirmed headline tour in November.

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So, how did the set go?  

Nicolai: I hope it went well, but when you’re on stage, sometimes you get into your own world, your own head, so it felt like the crowd liked it, and I had a good time. I had some back issues, but there’s always a little when you get older.

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Everyone was absolutely going insane for each song. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. There were mosh pits of everyone circling around, just enjoying the music.  

N: It’s always my favourite part when I have in-ears and when I take them out after the show, and I can hear. Because when you have them in, I don’t notice it as much as I should, but I need them in to play the songs. 

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So, with your album that came out three years ago, ‘Witness‘, and your new album coming out in November, was the writing process different from each album?  

N: Yeah, I think it was a little bit different because we became more of a professional band, meaning that we suddenly had to tour a lot more than previous albums. We’ve had more time where we just focused on writing an album. This time it was tour then back home writing some bits, tour again and writing bits, so we had to get used to that way of not just getting, I think most of us are really good at just focusing on one thing at a time and then it just takes a little bit longer when there are distractions like that, but it was great distractions, and it’s great to tour, so it’s longer. And I think it was a good learning curve for the future because, hopefully, we’ll become more of a professional band in the future, not the opposite way.

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Are you looking forward to sharing the new album on the tour and seeing what the fans think?

N: Yeah, both the new songs and the old ones. It is always something I look forward to on tours. It’s amazing to be able to do it, and it’s something I’ve been dreaming of doing.

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Has it always been a passion of yours?  

N: Maybe not always, but yeah, for most of my life, my uncle was a musician, and I’ve had a dream of going on the tour bus and stuff, like small stuff like that.

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Because your band has Danish and Swedish members, does that influence your music at all? Do you use your heritage in your music?

N: I think it influences our songwriting a little bit, and I think that the cool thing about being in a band where we all bring stuff to the table is that, hopefully, we all bring our uniqueness. The band sound is the combination, so I don’t know if there’s a Swedish sound in there from Adam. But there’s an Adam sound in there, whatever that is, that might be Swedish, and he’s inspired by a lot of stuff.

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Are there any bands that you look up to or influence your music in that sense when you’re writing your music?  

N: Not when we write music. I think we have been very much inspired by bands like Meshuggah, but we didn’t want to do what Meshuggah did; we wanted to take some of their elements and use them in a different way. I think they’ve always been one of the bigger inspirations in terms of guitar, bass tone, and drum sounds, but we wanted to make it more melodic. So that was so cool about Meshuggah. I think that inspires you to also do something new with what they did and then, of course, we were also inspired by other bands like Porcupine Tree and a Danish band called Mew. I don’t know if you know them, but it’s a really cool band, Mew. Yeah, but I recommend them. They’re from Denmark, like us, so maybe it’s, yeah, but they tour internationally too, so they’re a very melodic band, so we wanted to sound like them and Meshuggah at the same time. I think that made what can maybe from the outside look like a weird mix, but it feels very natural for us who knows the bands, you know.

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You said your progression from your first album to your album now is very different and the journey you’ve been on to get to where you are now. So, where can you see yourselves in the future?

N: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know, we haven’t really planned that much ahead, so I think we’ll just write one song at a time, and that song has to feel fresh, and that is usually tied into what we did previously, so it’s always different what feels fresh depending on what you did before. Sometimes, you’re tired of guitar riffs, and then it feels fresh to do something on a keyboard, so it’s hard to look 10 years ahead or 20 years ahead.

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Because there are so many bands on the Radar line-up, is there any band that you would want to collaborate with?  I see elements of Tesseract in your music because it’s very atmospheric. I can see it being played as a soundtrack, in games, or something like that.

N: Good question. Yeah, it’s a cool idea. It could also be…Leprous is also a great friend of ours, but usually the most exciting things, I think, are when it’s very different. For instance, we have an artist called SHAHMEN on one of the songs, a rapper. So, yeah, doing something with someone where you don’t even know yourself how it will end up. It’s a good way of mixing it up, working with someone who is completely different…who doesn’t listen to the same music as you do.