Interview with Destination's Calling - September 2012

PoM.: Hi and congratz to the new album! I really enjoyed it?
 

Markus: Hi Patrick and Hi to all readers of powerofmetal.dk. Thanks for the congratulations. The feedback from all over the world is just awesome and we’re really happy about that.

PoM.: 'End Of Time is your latest album since, what kind of feelings does this release bring up on you?

Markus: I’m very proud of the new record. We’ve put a lot of effort, hope and money into that project. In the end all our efforts really paid off and that’s a good thing for us. As already said we get a lot of feedback from fans and press from all over the world. All these awesome critics show us that we’re on the right way and people totally like what we do.

PoM: Tell our readers who not are familiar with Destination's Calling a short story about the band's history?

Markus: We started DC 13 years ago, in 1999. We knew each other from school and already played together in other bands. From the beginning on we focused on writing own songs and 3 years later we put out our first demo-cd "Mastery of the Light". It was recorded at our rehearsal-room and mixed by our singer Chris. In 2003 we entered a professional studio for the first time and did a 3-track promo-cd at Dreamscape-Studio/Munich. With that professionally recorded cd we could gather a lot of attention and we’ve been able to share stage with many well-known bands like Brainstorm, Freedom Call, Ektomorf, Disbelief, etc.
We once more entered the Dreamscape-Studio in late 2005 to produce our first full length album ”Invisible Walls”. It was released in 2006 by our own and we got so much encouraging and enthusiastic feedback from all over the world. It was fantastic. The album was re-released in 2008 by Silverwolf-Productions. We then took a little break. When we started off into the songwriting process of the new record, it was obvious that we all were grown up -you know, older and wiser :-) it simply felt right to step up to the next level. We contacted Sascha Paeth in 2010 and asked if he was interested in working with us. Right after the pre-production we went to the Gate-Studio in February 2011 and began recording ”End of Time”.

PoM: Tell us something special, funny about the work with 'End Of Time'?
 

Markus: This time we recorded the greater deal of the material on our own, in private. After the drums were done at Gate-Studio we got all the data and worked in our own home-studio. We did the guitars, bass-guitar and the vocals exclusively there. That was a perfect situation: we were able to work out the single vocal-parts without any stress. I think that really paid off. During the ”Invisible Walls”-recordings we had about 8 days for the vocals. This time we had the chance to do it in four weeks. That’s quite a difference regarding the stress-level. Especially for our singer Chris.

PoM: My favourite track on the new album (besides the awesome title track) is 'Burning Paradise', Which songs on this album does your hearts beat extra for?

Markus: My favourite songs are ”Dreams died on the road” and ”Soulbound”. Dreams... has so many facets and so much atmosphere. It’s an epic song. And Soulbound just kicks ass. There’s a lot of power in it.

PoM: Have you any musical sources of inspiration or role models? Which bands or persons has meant anything special for DC's musical development?

Markus: Of course, we’re influenced by different bands and different genres of metal music. I listen a lot to bands like Evergrey, Nevermore, Avantasia, Kamelot, Queensryche, Opeth, Machine Head and many more. In a certain way, your musical background is reflected in your songwriting, no question. But besides that we managed it to create our own DC-style. It’s that powerful riffing and Chris’ wonderful voice that makes us in some ways different to other melodic metal bands.

PoM: This is DC's third album and without a major label involved, how come? Is it self-chosen or...?

Markus: We had quite a lot of offers from different record companies but we couldn’t agree on a proper deal. I mean we paid for the whole production and that’s a huge amount of money. But with all these contracts we couldn't afford putting together another record and going into the studio, not even in the future. That’s a fact. So we decided to do a self-release. We do have a lot of business-contacts right now. We managed to have our album on different mailorders worldwide (Hellion, AOR Heaven, Pure Steel-Shop, CDInzane, NEH-Records, RockAvenueRecords). We even have our distributors in the US and Japan. I think that’s a great thing for an unsigned band. Besides that people can also download our album on Itunes or Amazon.

PoM: Which of the members contributes most with the writing in the band?

Markus: Most of the songs are written by our singer Chris and me. At first we record demo-versions of new ideas. It can be a single refrain, a guitar-riff or even a complete song. Than it’s mailed to the rest of the band and after that everyone contributes own parts during the rehearsals. During this process I try to add some lyrics that make sense and that’s it.

PoM: What's the future plans, any tour or maybe festival?

Markus: At the moment we’re looking for some more gigs to play and there are already some new ideas. In late August we had the chance to play together with Evergrey and Stratovarius. It was great fun and people completely freaked out at that night.

PoM: I surfed in to DC's web site and saw that you run the site by yourself, is it because own web art knowledge/interest or just greed...hehe?

Markus: Again, I have to mention our singer Chris. He’s in the IT-business and he likes being creative in different ways. So he programmed the whole webpage and did a really great job.

PoM: Tell us something about the artwork - who made it and is it important for you with a cool artwork?

Markus: Chris (our singer) came up with that idea. He’s very talented and has done the whole artwork. In my eyes it’s a really strong theme. There’s a lot of atmosphere in the cover-artwork. For me the lighthouse in the middle symbolizes something like hope in desperate times. In my opinion the atmosphere of the songs and the artwork match perfectly together.

PoM: Thank you for taking the time answering on my questions. Do you have any last words for our readers?

Markus: Thanks for the interview and thanks to all readers out there. Check out our new album ”End of Time” and visit us on www.destinationscalling.com or on facebook. Cheers.

© 2012 Patrik Skoglund

Interviewed by Patrik Skoglund