Was it based on personal experience or simply passive observation?

What happened in the recording studio or on stage to make one song sound different from the rest?

These are just some of the question bands and musicians attempt to answer in Line 'em Up - the newest page of The Power Of Metal.Dk.

This is where your favourite bands comment on their albums, track by track, because as someone once said, “Ideas are the building blocks of ideas”.

Enjoy!

Here’s a chance for you to tell our readers about your new album “Monolith”.

A fantastic album with lots of energy and full power all over!!

But could you please start off by introducing the readers to StoneLake?

StoneLake –  Peter Grundström - Vocals , Jan Åkesson - Guitars , Annika Argerich - Keyboards , Lasse Johansson - Bass , Fredrik Joakimsson - Drums

Could you please give us some info on the album: Where did you record the album and who has produced and mixed it?

StoneLake – The "Monolith" album is recorded , mixed , mastered and produced by Jan Åkesson in Furulund , Sweden

And now onto ” Monolith”… track-by-track, what inspired you, and what do what to express with this song etc.

01. Fanatical Love

StoneLake – We took the ideas of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism and applied them to love, playing with the idea that the object of your love can grant absolution of past sins, and that you would literally be willing to die for them. The song is desperate; you have to be saved now, but you’re also deluded to the extent that you think one night with you would be a religious experience. So really it is a song about delusion; the person you are idolising may not even know you.

02. You Light the Way

StoneLake – The song starts from the point of view that your lover is leaving you and you are going crazy; you just can’t deal with it and are trying to maintain a grip on reality. There were certain phrases we wanted to keep from the first vocal ideas we had when starting to write it, especially the “down, down, down…” and so the feeling they directed us to was trying to save yourself from drowning in madness over this loss of love. Then there is this great breakdown in the song where you have a moment of clarity, you realise what is really going on and step out of yourself: that your lover has been cheating on you but you don’t want to believe it, so you lie to yourself and make the lover a beacon who can guide you up and out of the dark spiral you’re in. You think they can save you from the Devil if they’ll just come back to you.

03. End This War

StoneLake – This was a great tune with a driving angry beat and fanfare at the start that made us imagine a battle, a relentless fight, and we went with lovers who are always at each other’s throats. They are still full of passion: that’s why they fight so hard. So although the relationship maybe really could be saved if they put down their weapons and remember what brought them together in the first place, something in the magic of the music made us think that these two will be doing this forever: it’s an eternal fight and they will never stop.

04. With Someone Like You

StoneLake – For some reason we were imagining Bonnie and Clyde dying together in a shoot out and the last thing they do is look in each other’s eyes. So we took that, kept the scenario of a shoot out in mind, and wrote about wanting to die looking into the eyes of lover, or even that you could find love and some peace in your last moments as long you were looking into the eyes of a kind stranger. So there is real desperation in the song – you are saying, “I don’t want to die. But if I have to, don’t let me die alone and keep something of me with you when I go.”

05. Double Life

StoneLake – This is about loving someone who’s bipolar, and how that demands you be a different person at different times yourself. The whole lyric is a declaration of love, with enough honesty to recognize how hard it is to stay together. We used the move in the song from a slower melody to the fast spoken lines as a statement of determination; that the real person you love is always in there, no matter how they’re behaving, and you’ll never abandon them to their illness – you’ll tame the wolves, even if it takes a lifetime.

06. Hater

StoneLake – Well, this was really about bullying, both in person and having in mind its modern form: being a ‘Hater’ through social media – someone who bully’s with words. We chose to write about a bully who’s smart enough to know what they’re doing and ask them why. There’s a power trip in it and a feeling of superiority but in the end the bully is always despised, and if you’re intelligent, what is it that makes you blind to what you’re doing both to your victim and yourself? It’s probable that hater’s identify with their victims very easily and fear being a victim themselves, but we want to say very strongly that there is nothing admirable in being a bully, and it is a bad choice in life to make yourself one.

07. Will You Be Loved

StoneLake – The first lines of lyric came very quickly, whilst writing the chorus, and what we were feeling connected completely with Carole King’s great song “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” So we went with a strong version of that idea (which, in simple terms, is about fear of losing love after you sleep with someone) and made it about making a choice whether to lose your virginity or not. We tried to really say that in the struggle not to give in – and you may really want to give in – you hold all the power and that no, you don’t have to have sex till you’re ready: love is about more than sex.

08. In a Freezing House

StoneLake – In A Freezing House is all about discovering love, discovering deep feelings having grown up in an emotionally barren family and releasing all those suppressed feelings. All these new emotions are bubbling up as you’re being drawn out of your shell, you are scared of them but now you know they are good, even though you were brought up to believe they are wrong. So it’s about repression, and it’s also about great sex!

09. Notorious

StoneLake – There are big themes in here; that we can all lose ourselves in our own thoughts and feel so alone and desperate. But if we can open up and feel the vastness and possibility of life we can be saved from ourselves. Life is bigger than our own individual problems and has lessons for us if we want to learn them.

10. Desolation

StoneLake – The haunting melody of the piano instrumental is an exploration of the feeling of Desolation, and we felt it was a great way to both wind the record down and also to bring you back to the beginning of the album, ready to take on everything again!

Tell us a bit about the artwork – who made it etc. and how important do you feel it is to have a cool artwork?

StoneLake – The artwork is made by our friend Andre Beckston.

The artwork is very important for an introduction  and to give a good first impression of the band.

Any last words you want to round this interview off with?

StoneLake – We would like to thank you for this interview and we would like to thank all our great fans out there.

Kenn Jensen, April 2013