On January 30th,2005 Dave and Ann Marie of BeyondEarCandy had the pleasure of interviewing Kral, songwriter and bassist for the band Mercenary of Denmark. In addition to his composing and guitar contributions, Kral also provides the growling undertones in the harmonious vocal maelstrom that is the signature sound for this extraordinarily diverse metal band. With their latest release, 11 Dreams ripping through the psyche of hungry metal fans and jaded interviewers alike, Mercenary is poised to catapult the metal world onto a whole new level of progressive, dynamic sound. Still raw from an explosive concert the previous night, Kral still had much to say about the band, the new CD and their dreams for the future.

Opening Discussion:
DAVE: Hello Kral, it's Dave & Ann Marie from BeyondEarCandy, glad you could have the interview call with us today.
AM: How’re you doing? This is Ann Marie, we talked earlier.
KRAL: Oh, hi Ann Marie!
AM: I hear you have a bit of a sore throat?
KRAL: Oh yea, just a little bit. I’m gonna be fine, you know. We just played our asses off last night and just sung with full lungs, you know, and I can feel it today.
AM: Where did you play last night?
KRAL: In a Danish city called Randers.
DAVE: Too bad we’re so far away or we would have stopped by to see ya. (laughter)
KRAL: People were just freaking out. It was very intense. We had to ask people to calm down. They were on stage and jumping around. My cables came out of the pedal. They sang along to all the songs. We were just really blown away by the crowd’s response so we had to tell them to calm down.
AM: Were you able to do it?
KRAL: Uh…not really. (laughter)
DAVE: Well, at least you gave it a shot!
KRAL: Yea, and at the end of the show, like 5 minutes before we ended the set, my cable was just not functioning any more. It was really hilarious. People were just letting loose and having some beers and having a real party and they’ve also just been very hungry to hear us. We hadn’t played there for three years. The new hype for this album has definitely worked. It was really different from the last time we played there. People were standing there and looking, you know, with their arms crossed over their chest.
AM: Wow, that’s gotta be hard.
KRAL: This time it was like DAMN!
AM: Surprise!
KRAL: Yea, Surprise!

Awards & Denmark Press:
DAVE: Well, hey, you got a great album under your belt and it’s having it’s impact.
KRAL: Yea, I think so and thank you. We really are satisfied with this result and something is going to happen I think.
AM: It’s incredible the reviews that I’ve been reading. Tell us about the awards you won. You got album of the year, vocal performance of the year and guitarist of the year. Who were those awards from?
KRAL: It’s like the official kind of Danish metal awards. All the Danish metal people cast their votes and also people from abroad. Germany, England, Sweden, everybody that’s interested in metal really has had the chance to cast their votes.
AM: So is it on-line voting?
KRAL: Yea it is. So it’s like really the public has voted for us, yea I think it’s very good. We were also second runner up for best live band. Hate Fear was first and Mercenary second. It’s like amazing because we have at least 15 really good metal bands in Denmark that have been playing a lot of years, so the competition was pretty hard.
It’s really a good shoulder clap, if you can call it that, from the metal audience in Denmark and abroad. Also we’ve been getting a lot of mails after those awards asking, “Can you come play here and here and here?” In the past, we have been the ones that had to mail and phone around asking “Can we play here?” and getting “No, not really.” (laughs) It was the other way around and now it has turned. It’s really fun.
AM: It’s really opened up doors for you.
KRAL: Yea, and the press in Denmark, the ordinary newspapers, which does not usually write a lot of articles about metal, they also contacted us to do a big feature. A national newspaper that sells like 650 thousand copies.
AM: What’s the name of the newspaper?
KRAL: BT. I don’t know what it stands for, but it’s the biggest one in Denmark.

Latest Album '11 Dreams' :
DAVE: So now your new album is going to be released in the U.S. like in a week?
KRAL: Yea, next Monday, eight days. (Feb. 8) I’m really thrilled to see what the reaction will be. I know the reviews have been over the top, you know, 10 out of 10 and all. I don’t get it. It’s amazing. Did you see the Blistering.com review? I think that’s one of the most amazing reviews I have ever read for one of our albums. He’s (reviewer David E. Gehlke) was really just freaking out.
DAVE: We’ll have to check that one out. (Brings it up on the computer)
KRAL: I almost had like tears in my eyes when I read it. It was so beautiful. He says it’s breaking new boundaries. It’s really pioneering the metal genre. He just compares it with all the big stuff.
AM: Wow, I’m reading it right now.
KRAL: He sent me a mail where he said he hadn’t heard such a good album for the last five years.
DAVE: You guys have really put something special together. Obviously, we’ve had it for awhile, but still glad to hear it’s getting released in the U.S. so the rest can hear it.
KRAL: Yea, I’m really glad too, ‘cause the U.S. has to hear it. The reviews have really been so good, so the public has to hear it also.
DAVE: Are there going to be some extra tracks on the U.S. release, do you know?
KRAL: Yea, there’s going to be a radio edit of 11 Dreams, the title track and also a 3-D version of 11 Dreams.
AM: Well, that’s it, we’re going to have to get another copy. (laughter)

3-D Version of the song '11 Dreams':

DAVE: That makes it worth it. Now, the 3-D, that’s something new, right?
KRAL: Yea, it’s really new.
DAVE: How did that come about?
KRAL: A guy just posted an article about it on Century Media's homepage (Go to Breaking News section, select the More link, & scroll down), where I explained what it really was about and what the effect is. People have to hear it. It’s hard to explain, you have to put on headphones and close your eyes and you’re just in for a big ride.
DAVE: How did you guys even hear about that, doing something like that?
KRAL: It’s a very old idea. Back in 1998, our old guitarist, Nikalau Brinkman had got a demo CD from the university in Aalborg where they had developed this binaural sound also called 3-D sound. You can go to AM3-D.com and there’s everything about it. The CD contained an interrogation where when you put on the headphones and close your eyes you feel like your sitting in a room with a police officer.
DAVE: That sounds terrific!
KRAL: It’s totally real. I just got the goose bumps when I heard if for the first time. Because I thought, “Damn! What if this was used in music?” So I got the idea back in ’98 and then I discussed it with some people over at the university and they said, “Yea, we really also would like to do something like that because it would be totally new and we haven’t done that before.” But the reason for not doing it back then was the computers. They were not really ready for such a big project. Because of hard disks being not that fast. It was too big to have this project done before this album. So I have been planning this for many years and talking to a lot of guys and figuring how we should do it and which song should we use. It was a big task to make this work. So, I’m really proud after seven years it’s finally out in eight days. I really think some Americans and people over there are really going to be, whoa, spooked out, because it’s really mind-blowing. It’s a new technology and it’s definitely not the last time we’re going to use it.

This time we used five days in post production doing this song and basically if we had 14 days it would be better. So next time around…we have just discovered how long it takes to make it really, really good and it takes more than five days to perfect it. The rest of the album is perfected in every detail, you know. The 3-D, the sound is not so perfect but the effect is just amazing. When you put on the ‘phones and hear the song and when Martin plays the solo in the song, you can feel the solo going around your head. Outside your head, not inside your head. Really, when you close your eyes you can stretch out your arm and follow the guitar all the way 360 degrees around your head. It’s just totally amazing. Like when you see a movie in 3-D, you feel like the images are coming out of the screen. It’s kind of the same thing here. The sound comes out of the head phones and out of your head. It’s a world premiere. It should get all the exposure it can get because it’s going to be big, I think.
AM: So where did you do the 3-D, in the same studio?
KRAL: No, we copied all the files to hard disk from the studio then went to another studio in Aalborg where the university is and then we did it there. So, it was like five months after we had mixed 11 Dreams.
AM: Which university was that again?
KRAL: Aalborg. That’s also the city where we’re from.
 

Aalborg Rocks! Concert:
AM: Oh yea, you’re going to be playing at Aalborg Rocks February 26, right?
KRAL: Yea, Aalborg Rocks. It’s me who is the organizer of the festival.
AM: Oh cool! And you’ve got Evergrey joining you.
KRAL: Yes, and Communic from Norway, they sound a bit like Nevermore.
AM: So, you put this together yourself?
KRAL: Yea, all by myself. One person. Totally new initiative. I’ve never done this before. I just went for it. I decided in, I think, December, “Hey, I’m going to do a festival!”
DAVE: That’s excellent...
KRAL: Yea, it was already a success like the first day! I got seven bands now and I think it’s really a cool lineup. You can go to Mercenary.dk and just last night I did a video teaser, trailer kind of thing, of all the seven bands. Go to tour dates and click on Aalborg Rocks.
AM: Oh yea! There it is!
KRAL: Just download the video, it’s like 21 MB or something, doesn’t take more than five minutes. You’ll get a presentation of all the bands and you’ll also can hear Communic. I think the line up is cool. I only got one death metal band on there because I thought, well there’s also people that want to hear death metal.
AM: Who’s the death metal band?
KRAL: It’s a band called Mindmare.
The basic idea was really to promote metal in Denmark. Just putting on another festival each year that would be attracting a lot of people and just spreading the word and spreading the message that metal is really here for good.
AM: Now you guys have developed quite a relationship with Evergrey. You’ve toured with them like three times already and getting back together with them, right?
KRAL: Yea, yea. (laughs)
AM: We talked to Henrik Danhage (Evergrey) recently…
KRAL: In the States?
AM: Yea, in New York. And he was very complimentary about your band. He said you were some of the politest people he ever worked with.
KRAL: We’re really just your basic down-to-earth nice people. And we’re really serious about things, it we have a gig the day after, we don’t want to party. We have some basic rules. If we play like tomorrow and the day after, we don’t want to party because we can’t deliver a good enough show then. We want to be 110% every night. So we always wait until the last show.
AM: And then have a really BIG party, right? (laughter)
KRAL: Yea, then have a really blow-out!
AM: Well, whenever you come to the U.S., because you ARE going to tour here, we’ll have to make sure we’re there for that last show.
KRAL: Yea, we’ll be so happy knowing that afterwards we’re going to have this awesome party. (laughs)
AM: Unfortunately, everyone who comes over here usually starts their tour in New York, where we are and ends it in California. But if it’s going to be that good a party, we may have to fly out to California for it.
KRAL: (laughing) Yea, a killer party, man!
AM: Well, it will be fun to come out and visit Heather Smith at Century Media too.
KRAL: Yea, I think she’s such a nice person. I’m on the instant messenger like each night of the week with her now, just blabbering away, you know.  She’s also very connected and very good to promote our album. She’s really into it , we can definitely feel the impact of what she’s done. When she sends out the album she also puts on a personal note and calls in advance and saying, “Hey, I’m going to send you this album that’s going to change your life.”

Lyrics of '11 Dreams' Album:
AM: Yea, we were on the phone shortly after we had both heard the album and she was like, “Oh my god, have you read the lyrics? This is so intense!”
DAVE: Those are some pretty scary lyrics there! I like them.
KRAL: I know, I know, very personal lyrics also. I don’t know if I told you the story but they’re really based upon my dreams.
DAVE: Wow, that’s wild.
AM: I’m glad I’m not having YOUR dreams! If I keep listening to this I’m afraid I will! (laughter)
KRAL: I don’t think I would show this to a therapist or psychologist, he would think my mind is fucked, you know! With Everblack I did it that it was only darkness and black. For this album I wanted to be more surreal and optimistic, more light, but still have this really scary dark stuff on it. When I wake up in the morning I sometimes can remember images or something from the dream I had last night, maybe once a week or so I can remember stuff and I instantly write it down, because if I go take a shower I’ve forgotten all about it. So it was about writing it down the moment I opened my eyes.
AM: And that’s why you called it 11 Dreams?
KRAL: Yes that’s really why. Also the whole atmosphere on the album, the keyboard stuff just adding to the atmosphere, things being larger than life and I think dreams are larger than life also. It’s really big moody stuff. Then after a year of putting little notes together and gathering up the dreams I had, I just put them together and added a bit of reality also, because it should make a little sense because it was really surreal. Dreams are usually that, so I added some reality in there. I think it makes sense to me and also a lot have people told me they really like this and interpret it in many different ways. They ask me, “What is that song about?” and I say, “Hey, you have to make your own mind up.” Because I don’t want to spoil the surprise! Maybe in a year or so when the album is not that new anymore I’m going to write down each song, what I thought it was about. What the pictures were in my head when I wrote it and just the basic story of each song. I want to do that because I think there’s a lot of people wondering, “Where the hell did that come from?”
DAVE: Yea, especially Sharpen the Edges.

Song 'Sharpen the Edges':
KRAL: Sharpen the Edges, whoa, it’s like really scary but at the same time it’s really beautiful.
DAVE: Yea it’s pretty wild, it really pulls both ways at the same time.
AM: That’s the song Heather and I were talking about. I said, “I love that song. It’s so beautiful.” and she said, “Have you read the lyrics?!” and I said, “No.” and then I’m reading it and I said, “Oh my god!”
KRAL: (laughs) It’s really evil.
AM: But what really struck me first was it’s so beautiful, so it’s such a contrast.
KRAL: I thought that song came out just the way I wanted it. I think the mood of the song, though being very beautiful, also has this bit of spooky element to it. The acoustic sound and the acoustic chorus is really moody also. The lyrics are really just kind of inside a serial killer’s mind. Almost like that, but it’s also about unhappy love because there’s this really haunting line, “If I can’t have you than no one will.”
AM: That line gets me and then “You look so peaceful now you’re gone.”
KRAL: Exactly. I also got the goose bumps when I wrote it. After I had finished the song… it took like three hours to write that song, it was really quick, it just happened. I had my headphones on and with the song instrumentals and stuff just came up. It popped into my head and I wrote it down and when I had been in there three hours, my girlfriend just knocked on the door and I was like “Whoa.” really in a dream state, you know.
She’s like, “What the fuck are you doing?” and I was like, “I’m just far out right now, but you can look at it and tell me what you think.” and she was like, “Damn, this is spooky shit!” Instantly she related it to our own relationship and she was scared, you know. (laughs) I said, “Hey, it’s only a story.” Like movies, you shouldn’t take them too serious. She also said it was really beautiful. She was immediately knocked out by the lyrics. So it just came together very fast and I looked at it afterwards and thought, “Hey this is perfect. It can’t be better.” I didn’t edit it. It just came out this way.

Song 'Music Non-Stop':
AM: What about this other song, Music Non-Stop?
DAVE: That was a cover from a band Kent?
KRAL: Yea, that’s a cover song from Kent that I think also captures the same ideas we had for guitar harmonics. It has some of the same haunting chorus. If you hear that song just before you go to sleep, you just can’t stop repeating that chorus.
DAVE: Yea, “Why don’t you dance to the music I hear inside my head.” over and over.
AM: I found myself singing that at work and people were looking at me a little weird. (laughter)
KRAL: Yea, you shouldn’t put that on right before you go to bed, because you’ll lie there and think “Stop this damn cd player inside my head!”
AM: That’ a great song. It really fit though it’s very different from what you wrote.
KRAL: It’s very different, particularly in the beginning of the song, it really stands out because of the space and drum and nothing on it. It’s very bare. And then you got the guitars on and then the vocals on and it really just builds up to the chorus. We just loved the tune and we thought it would be a challenge to do this pop rock tune and make it a bit more metal. And I think we succeeded. Some people have really freaked out over that song. The weird thing is, in Denmark, they hate it.
DAVE: No way. Is that right?
KRAL: Everybody in Denmark, every radio, every where, we have just been told “You shouldn’t have done that track because it’s way off.” They think it’s better than the original, but they think the ten other songs on 11 Dreams is way better than this one.
DAVE: I think it fits in with the whole album theme, I think it works really well.
KRAL: Yea, I think so, We really just said to ourselves, “We don’t care what people think. It they don’t like it, they can skip this track. If they like it, like we do, perfect.”
AM: I’m glad you did. I think it’s a cool break between all the nightmares swirling around. (laughter) Take a little break there. Dance to the music in your head.
KRAL: Yea, it’s very positive, very party, very radio oriented song. I just also love it and we just did it just to be a bit different. We could take an old Iron Maiden song or Nevermore song or something and just make it Mercenary but we just wanted to do something a bit different and take this Swedish pop rock band and just…because we love the song. I know that people in the U.S., maybe they don’t know the original.
AM: They probably don’t.
KRAL: We just wanted to kind of give a tribute to the song and make it known a little be more worldwide because we love the song. It was very popular in Scandinavia in ’98, for like a whole year it was constantly on the radio. The tempo is a bit slower than in our version. We wanted to add a little bit of tempo to it because we thought it was really, really slow and it wouldn’t work if it got any slower. Right now it’s a perfect tempo I think. The original is 105 bpm and we did 115 bpm. I don’t know if you know those terms?
DAVE: Sure, absolutely. Beats per minute. Another song, Supremacy, you re-recorded right?

Song 'Supremacy':
KRAL: That’s correct. We did a Supremacy song in ’96 and at that time we thought now we’re really on to what we want to play. That was the first real Mercenary track we ever did. Because we’ve been playing… I founded the band back in 1991 so I’ve been playing for almost 14 years now.
AM: It changed a lot since then.
KRAL: Yea, it went along, a lot of line up changes, and in the beginning it was just learning to play the guitar and play the bass. The first five years was really about finding some people that wanted to play at a more serious level and then in ’96 we made the first track which I thought, “Now we’re really onto something.” and that was the Supremacy track. This song is very important for us because it was the moment where we thought, “Now we have something original, something that belongs to us and not trying to copy anybody else. So, we basically wanted to re-invent the song and make the version two for this album because it has a very nice chorus also, “Raise the flag for me.”
 

Past show at ProgPower IV (USA, Sept. 2003):

DAVE: It’s just phenomenal that it is now happening for you guys. You’re definitely a band that impresses live. We saw you a year and a half ago at ProgPower. It was just amazing the impact you guys had. A lot of folks didn’t really know you that well.
KRAL: We were really the wildcard. I think we played a mediocre show because we were really stressed out. That was really mediocre for us. We can play way better.
DAVE: We can’t wait to see it, if that was mediocre!
KRAL: We did put out a lot of energy, but we were still stressed out because some gear did not arrive from the airport and it was really a mess. Air France really fucked up. Jakob’s guitar was completely smashed. Martin’s guitar frets was also smashed. All the knobs was like taken off, because maybe we had some illegal stuff in there? (laughs) I don’t know. They had separated the effect machine and didn’t really bother to put it back together.
AM: So what did you do to replace the guitars?
KRAL: Glenn said, “Hey, we can arrange something with a music store down here. We can buy an Ibanez for you guys. So he did. It was really kind of him to buy us a guitar. We made it in the last few hours, but you know, the stress factor!
AM: Well, it’s got to be hard playing with an instrument you’re not familiar with. They’re all a little different, right?
KRAL: Absolutely. Jakob said it was not the same. It was really different.
AM: Well, we were really impressed, but I could tell when you came upstairs after the set, you seemed relieved.
KRAL: (laughing) Yea, we were! We had been building up to this event for six months so it was like, whew! Just before we went on stage we were really nervous and really stressed, but once we had played the first two songs we really felt comfortable on stage again.
AM: Well, it looked like you were. You had such great stage presence.
KRAL: (laughs) Well, we try to be professionals.

Future Tour Plans:
AM: So any plans for when you’ll make it back here to the U.S.?
KRAL: We really don’t know. Century Media said let’s wait and see how the album does and then a month after it has been released they can kind of tell us something.
DAVE: We’ll just have to remind them, of course, that a lot of us bought the album on the internet.
KRAL: Yea, and when it comes out in the U.S., if thousands of people have bought it already, they can’t feel the boom there.
DAVE: Well, what we’ll do is we’ll talk up the 3-D track and get them to buy another one. (laughter)
KRAL: It would be great if all the others also did that. (laughs) Because the best track on there is the 3-D track. Then they can use the European version as gifts for their little brothers. (more laughter)
AM: Now in April and May you have the Monster tour with Brainstorm and At Vance. I tell you, it’s so much torture for us over here seeing these tours come up and we can’t go. That’s going to be awesome!
KRAL: Yea, it’s a really good bill. We are really also looking forward to that one because we are all about playing live. We like being in the studio, don’t get me wrong, but really we just love to be on stage and when the crowds’ reactions are like last night, it’s all worth while. All the 14 years I’ve been doing this is really paying off right now. People are really just freaking out and everything and we just love being on stage and having a good time and talking to people afterwards and doing all the signings, everything. We love it.
AM: I see you just booked Dynamo Open Air in Holland too, right?
KRAL: Yea, when the Brainstorm tour ends in Germany, we have only three hours ride there to Dynamo so it was really perfect. Also, we’re in top shape when we go to Dynamo, that’s important when there’s a lot of people there. Anthrax is coming also.
AM: Yea, I saw that, Anthrax, Masterplan and Jon Oliva’s going to be there.
KRAL: Yea, Jon Oliva, Obiturary and us and Gorefest also so …
AM: That’s another show we’re saying, “Oh shit. Why can’t we go to that.”
KRAL: (laughs) Yea, yea. Well, we’re going to be in top shape when we play the Dynamo and we’re going to blow people away. It’s going to be awesome. Just play almost all the songs from 11 Dreams, hopefully, and then some songs from Everblack also.
AM: Oh, so just torment us a little more here.
KRAL: (laughing) Yea, exactly!
DAVE: Well, our time will come.
KRAL: Yea sometime, I don’t know when it’s going to be. I can’t really say anything, because it’s up to Century Media.
AM: Of course. But do you have any ideas who you would like to tour with when you come to the U.S.?
KRAL: Oh yea! I have a big dream, my 12th dream. (laughs) My favorite band of all time is Nevermore.
DAVE: Oh yea, they’ve done well over here.
AM: What a kick-ass tour that would be!
KRAL: Yea! Nevermore, Mercenary and some third support act, maybe. It would be a totally amazing bill. I think we compliment each other really good, music-wise. It has some of the same elements, but still really different. People that listen to Nevermore could listen to Mercenary and vice versa.
DAVE: That’s one dream I hope comes true. I’m not sure about the first 11, but definitely that 12th one. (much laughter)
KRAL: It is just a big dream of mine to meet the guys of Nevermore because I’ve been into Sanctuary in the old days, Into the Mirror Black. When I first heard the song on Headbanger’s Ball, Future Tense, I was, “Oh shit, this is great!”
AM: Well, Nevermore are a Century Media band also.
KRAL: Yea, they are a Century Media band and I had Heather Smith send (Warrel) Dane a copy of 11 Dreams recently, so I’m just shaking. I want to hear what he thinks of it, because he’s my god, you know, my biggest idol. He’s the one person in the world I really want to meet the most and I think if I ever meet him, I won’t know what to say. (laughs) I’m not worthy! I think I will freak out!
AM: Well, you know it will probably happen.
KRAL: Yea, I also feel it’s only a matter of time. Sometime we’re going to meet up with them and I’m just gonna freeze. (laughs)
AM: I’d love to take a picture of that.
KRAL: Yea, it would be a great picture. Me getting all pale.
DAVE: We’ll have to whip out the cell phone video camera for that! (laughter)
 

Mercenary on Video:
KRAL: Yea. Did you check out the cell phone video?
DAVE: Yea! Who was doing that? I checked that out. That was cool.
KRAL: Me and Morten, from the band, have cell phones with cameras and we were just filming around when we played with Evergrey, some Danish gigs and other gigs. And Morten just found out recently he could take the clips and put them in the computer and then in Windows Movie Maker, which is in every Home XP version, he just dragged all the stuff on there and added the music and that was really it.
DAVE: Yea, that was really great. You had drunk people, you had puppets… (laughter)…something for everyone! (more laughter)
KRAL: Yea, it’s really a funny video, I think, and the cost of the video is 0.0 dollars! No budget at all! But it still does the trick and it’s really funny.
AM: Sometimes that is some of the best stuff.
KRAL: Yea. I just found out this Movie Maker program…I’m really hooked, I also did the Aalborg Rocks trailer. I just found out from Morten how to do that and now I’m just making videos all the time.
DAVE: Well, we’d love to get a DVD of you guys someday.
KRAL: Absolutely! I think when we do Waken, we’re going to play Wacken also, it’s between the 4th and the 6th of August and probably somebody’s going to film the show. I dunno. But we are definitely going to do some live stuff from one of those bigger festivals.
DAVE: That would be terrific, because even if people see you that way, when they see you live, they’re going to be impressed.
KRAL: If we do a live DVD, we want it to be perfect. Because we are really perfectionists.
AM: Well, you know it shows in everything you do. That’s one of the things that makes you guys stand out.
KRAL: Yea, (laughs) on the albums it’s perfection, but on the mobile phone video it is no where near! (laughter) That’s just for the hell of it. Our albums are worked through in every detail to make sure nothing sounds weird or anything is out of tune and making the vocals sound perfect. Every line, every stuff we do, Mikkel or me, if we can’t hit the note, we just wait until the day after and try again until it is there. Then when we rehearse after the album is out, we had a hard time. “Oh shit! We gotta play all this?!” (laughs) It’s a big album to have to pull off live, but we rehearsed a lot and now it’s all come together and we can perform the stuff live practically as it is on the album.
DAVE: Wow, that’s great.

The Vocals:
KRAL: Yea we are four singers on stage. Morten is also a singer, and Mike on the drums, has also his head mike on so we can do all the choirs and all the big, weird vocal stuff.
AM: That’s amazing, because you have a lot of different elements going on in your songs.
KRAL: I know, I know. That’s what people really freak out on. They really just love the variation of the vocals with the “beauty and the beast.” (laughs.) I also thought in the beginning on Everblack, when Mikkel did some vocals and I dubbed his vocals with my shouting, and we just found out, “Oh my god, these vocals fit together perfectly.” Because I added some aggression to his nice, beautiful voice (laughs) and he added some melody to my shouting, so they just came together perfectly. It was a match made in heaven.
DAVE: Well, thank you for using some of your voice to talk to us.
AM: Oh, I see we’ve had you on the phone for over an hour now! (laugher)
KRAL: Hey! My voice is getting better. I think it’s getting warmer. I have an hour more if you need it!


The Album Cover Artwork:

AM: Well, I did want to ask you one more thing. The cover of 11 Dreams, that was done by Nicholas Sundin. Did you have any input into that, or was that his idea?
KRAL: Oh we had a lot of input into that. He had a picture of the frame, and all the mirrors and then the little clock, that was it. It was also a bit different color at first and we wanted to make it a bit more dark green. And then he had another picture where these two faces, these masks were it and we just thought, “Hey, if you take these faces and put them into this mirror, I think it would be great.” We just tried out different stuff all along. In the process we had like 15 different images.
AM: Does it in someway have anything to do with the music for you?
KRAL: I think it has stuff to do with the music also, but it’s still surreal. The two heads could also symbolize me and Mikkel, the two vocalists. There’s a lot of symbolism in there. It’s really open for interpretation and the lyrics are the same so I think it comes together perfectly.
AM: Now, the cover of Everblack, that was…
KRAL: Travis Smith.
DAVE: That was another kind of surreal album cover.
KRAL: Oh yea, I loved that. I was just so blown away by it. We worked that for six months. I don’t know which version you have. The digi pack or…
DAVE: The digipack.
KRAL: Alright! Then it’s the right color. It’s so beautiful in the digi pack. I live that image with the moon and the orchids. It’s really also surreal and very, very classic also.
DAVE: It really sets the albums apart from other bands of your type to have these surreal covers. It’s just wild.
KRAL: Yea, we were so happy when we saw the finished version of the Everblack cover. I was immediately going, “I have to have a big fucking poster of that cover in my bedroom.”
AM: Hey, sell that on your website. I’d love one!
KRAL: We have about two thousand left. It’s a huge poster. It’s like one meter and ten in height and 80 centimeters long. Yea, it’s a big poster, a really beautiful, full glossy poster. We made five thousand of those. We used like three thousand of them. There’s a big demand for those posters. Of course, when we do get to the states sometime in the future, we’ll also have those posters with us.
AM: Good, maybe we can snag one of those then.

Kral speaks on BeyondEarCandy.com:
KRAL: How long is BeyondEarCandy been going?
AM: About a year and a half.
KRAL: I did a station id…
AM: Yes, you did.
DAVE: It’s on there.
KRAL: It’s in the rotation?
AM: Oh yea, it’s on. 
KRAL: Wow! I’ll have to go on. It’s on, like 24 hours a day?
DAVE: Yea, it’s on 24 hours, all the time. We have all three albums on, First Breath, Everblack, and 11 Dreams. You’ll hear Henrik from Evergrey and Henrik of Morfade. A lot of Henriks.
KRAL: But I said Kral, right?

The name Kral:
AM: Yea. But how did you get that name?
KRAL: It’s a really old story, because I was only six-year-old. Now I’m 32-years-old, so I’ve been called that for 26 years. So, I’m getting used to it now. (laughs)
DAVE: I would think so.
AM: Why did they give you that nickname?
KRAL: We just went on some kind of…um… what do you call it in English? Not in the kindergarten but the next step from there. What is that?
AM: We call it first grade.
KRAL: Yea, first grade we went with like 20 kids out on this island in Denmark, called Livo. An amazing vacation for like a week or two.
AM: Your kidding. They took 20 kids on an island for two weeks!?
KRAL: Yea, yea!
AM: They would never do that here. You’re lucky!
KRAL: And this island is the most beautiful we have in all of Denmark. Untouched nature and a lot of wildlife.
AM: Were you camping?! Where’d they have you stay?
KRAL: No, they have one building at Livo. One kind of like hostel or motel kind of stuff.
 AM: Uh, huh. Oh, we got away from the name, (laughter) so you’re on this trip…..
KRAL: Yea, we were 20 kids just freaking around and at some point we should have something to eat you know, and the leaders said, “You should eat some makral.” I don’t know if it’s called makral in English. It’s some kind of fish. Some smoked fish, I don’t know what it’s called in English. It’s called makral in Denmark.
AM: Can you spell that?
KRAL: M-A-K-R-A-L
AM: Oh, ok, I got it! It’s probably what we call mackarel.
KRAL: Yea, mackarel! They wanted to force all the kids to eat that mackarel and I was the only one who got away from that. I just didn’t want to eat it and I just protested. And then suddenly, another one called Henrik, it just came to him that he would call me mackarel or makral for the rest of the day. Then it was Makral for five years or so until I was 11 then people thought it was silly to call me Makral, so why don’t we just call him Kral. (laughter) Then it was Kral from there. It’s kind of a stupid story. I didn’t want to eat the mackarel and now I’m called Kral for 26 years. (laughter)
AM: Weird how things happen like that.
KRAL: Yea, and now I use it as my artist’s name. If we hit it big time, I also want to be a little anonymous, somehow. I also want to have my private life on the side, you know.
AM: That’s important to hang on to.
KRAL: Yea it is. I also have a little three-year-old kid and and if things go nuts I don’t want to spoil my private life just because of that.
DAVE: Sure, sure. Hey, that’s a great story. I never knew how that was.
KRAL: (laughing) nobody really does. So, it’s just Kral from there. You know, a lot of these black metal bands have these really weird names like Thunderforce or…..(much laughter) it’s not like that!
AM: Do you want us to post that in the interview or would you rather us not?

Interview Wrap-up:
KRAL: It’s up to you guys. What I tell you, it’s really ok. I’ve told you so many things, your going to get cramps in your fingers. (more laughter) So it’s going to be on the left side?
AM: Yea, on the home page.
KRAL: Alright! (laughing) And hopefully, I’ll be there also for a few days?
AM: Oh yea, you’ll probably get a month. We try to do one every four to six weeks.
KRAL: Oh that’s perfect because the album is coming out right now.
DAVE: Yea, good timing!
KRAL: Well, I really also appreciate it the time you took off talking to me and I appreciate all the stuff you’re doing to create an awareness of the album in general and also the 3-D stuff. It’s pretty cool
DAVE: Absolutely, Kral. We’ve enjoyed doing it. This is fun!
AM: That’s the whole purpose of BeyondEarCandy. We really want to promote the music and the good bands, and get the word out. Get more people listening and get more festivals and bands touring. That’s our whole focus.
KRAL: That’s perfect. That’s like what I wanted to do with the Aalborg Rocks festival.
AM: Well if not enough people put together US shows, we may plan to do our own, dammit!
KRAL: And you can write us up for the festival already now if you want us there. We gotta be on your first one.
AM: Absolutely. The headliner!
KRAL: Yea, headliner. By that time, we’re going to be pretty big!
DAVE: Now see, we have a dream!
KRAL: Yea, now you have also a dream! It is very important to have dreams.
Well, you guys have a nice evening, and I’ll just go in and relax to your radio program and just see if I come up somewhere.
AM: It’s been wonderful talking to you. We’re glad to see you guys doing well. We hope you continue to have great success and come over here real soon.
KRAL: We’re really working our asses off, we definitely want to come over and play for the American audience.
ALL: (goodbyes)

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Hear all Mercenary's albums & Kral's recorded station id on BeyondEarCandy radio!

Find out more about Mercenary on their official web site

Thanks to Heather Smith of Century Media for arranging the interview!

Thanks Kral for the interview!