The Eternal – 10-04-2009

Interview with: Mark Kelson
By: Sabine van Gameren

On a lovely, sunny day I sit down with Mark Kelson from the Australian band The Eternal. The band is on a world tour and this day they were in The Netherlands.

They are already two weeks on the road and some more weeks are coming up. Right before they left their home country they had a couple of weeks with weekend shows in Australia, so the band got into the gigging mood already. The band announces it huge on their website, their world tour but Mark is still quite down to earth: “We are not really a huge band so some shows are really small”. Even though he tells that it is small, the band also went to Japan. So far, almost every band that went to Japan comes back with amazing stories. Nothing different for The Eternal as it seems. “We did some shows in Japan which were a surprise to us. Probably the most interesting headlining experience we had” says Mark. “It is so organized, by the minute!” and Mark continues talking about what amazed him: “The people are all polite. They come up and take photo’s and ask signatures, they are very polite and respectful. It’s culture is extremely clean and well organized.”

To see The Eternal touring much is not something new for them. The band already had a tour to Europe straight after releasing their very first album. How come that these Australians find their way to Europe and the rest of the world so soon, while some others never take a look out of their own comfort zone? Mark is clear about it. It seems to him as something natural that comes with an adventurous mind. “You have to get out there and just do it if you want to do it” he states. That the band is not born with a golden spoon in their mouth might be clear as well. The band organized pretty much all of it their selves. “We are not getting a huge support from our label” tells Mark but he does not sound to bitter of it. The rock and roll side of touring is not discouraging them at all. “We don’t have too high expectations. If we get a hotel, that’s nice. If we crash on someone’s floor, it is fine too” says Mark and he seems quite sure about that. But yet I wonder how the band made it after their first release. It will be hard to go somewhere if your fan base is not too big yet. “We hooked up with another band and did it together. We’d paid for the airfares ourselves and brought merchandise to sell. We got the tour out of it but lost the airfares. That is fine, we do it because that is who we are” Mark explains. The band took risks with it but for them it felt right. Mark says: “We knew that our albums are available in Europe so that was enough motivation for us to come.”

By now it is the third time we see the band appearing on the European stages. The band must have gotten a fan base by the touring already, but I wonder if this is the major element in the growth of their fan base or does internet erased borders for them as well. “It is hard to have an idea of how this has come. I kind of think we are still in the hard work, shaking a lot of hands stage of the band.” says Mark, but he seemed to agree with me that the touring is a major thing in the building of the fan base as he continues: “We need to go around and make fans, give people a show to remember. I think those gigs bring a couple of new people in the family”
After the band finishes this world tour they have done more gigs outside of Australia then in their home country. That makes me wonder about the fans that they have at home, how do they see the world domination ambitions of these guys. These people have seen their first gigs, have been around since the start. Mark tells: “The Australian fans are pretty supportive. This tour is a world tour, we go to a lot of places and we organize ourselves. I think a lot of other bands from Australia are pretty taken back from that” so this must have given them a certain status as you should guess. “We are more known for being that band that goes overseas and tour over there.”, says Mark.

To step back from the touring part of this band, there is some more to wonder about. The band get announced as being gothic metal at several websites, as they are now in The Netherlands where Gothic metal often gets associated with female metal vocal bands I wonder if they feel comfortable under this label. As it seems like Mark initially want to tell that he doesn’t care, he does say quite strongly: “I am not Goth at all. I am just a rock guy.” As well as he announced to be more influenced by bands like Pink Floyd etc. but he can understand where the gothic is coming from: “I think it comes from my former band Cryptal Darkness which was more gothic. When The Eternal formed, we might have this over us.” So, that must be where this comes from, but what about now, where does The Eternal feel more comfortably placed? Mark doesn’t have a clear musical territory where he feels The Eternal fits in: “We are dark-melodic-progressive-rock-metal band. A bit of everything. On Kartika there is some world music on, some weird instruments and a lot of progressive elements as well” With these being said, we went to talk a bit about their latest release “Kartika”. There were three years between Kartika and the album before “Sleep of Reason”. Besides the tour that took place after the release of “Sleep of Reason” there was a lot going on. After their label Firebox dumped them, almost all of the band members left. After some time of rebuilding and the return of their drummer the band started working on new material. “The problem with Kartika was that we were very ambitious with not too much of money. We went way over budget and it took us long time to record” tells Mark. After that, things got better and Firebox welcomed them back to the label. “Somehow we got it back together and got Kartika together, a really epic process” sighted Mark. The mixing of the album was done in Estonia by the same engineer as “Sleep of Reason” who had moved to Estonia. Mark tells that in the first place someone else was suppose to mix it, because they could not get him anymore. “We were doing it with another engineer but it became quite clear that this project was too big for this engineer to handle.” As things were not really going as they were suppose to, they went over to Estonia to mix it. “I just rang up and begged: please help me finish this album, I’ll come to you. He said yes and we were scheduled in for three weeks to mix it” tells Mark.
As we were reflecting the album Mark came to the solution he is satisfied with the results in the end even thought quite some things went on before it was born. “I think Kartika is a good album. For me it is still associated with the time that it was a bit difficult in the band. It is hard for me to look at it without remembering all the pain” he says and continues after a bit of silence: “Kartika to me is the ultimate learning experience of The Eternal. It has some great songs on it and I am really proud of it”
Luckily there is some more sight what is in the future as well. The band does not stand still and have some thoughts about a new album: “I already have some things in mind I want to do on the next album. I want to make it more spacious and make it a more controllable project. I think a sort of continuation of Kartika, . A good album, to the point in 40/50 minutes” and for those who were pleased with their work before, Mark tells that he expects it to be released in 2010. To give us, curious people, already a bit of an idea of what we can expect he tells: “We wrote quite a bit already. It is all very focused. It is more spontaneous not so much over thought. Much more like how the band would play it and over dubbing the crap out of it. We are going to strip it back, but it still sounds like The Eternal.“

Links:
The Eternal MySpace
The Eternal Official