Our guest for this interview is the one and only Peter Lake, the genius behind THEORY IN PRACTICE, quite possibly the best technical death metal band ever existed (Yes, we mean it).
Hi Peter, thank you very much for accepting our interview request. Personally, you are by far the most influential quitar player for me and I can’t tell you how much I love everything about THEORY IN PRACTICE, my favorite band of all time. I hope you don’t get bored, I tried my best to hold myself about the number of questions. I can easily ask you hundreds of more questions about your guitar playing and composing abilities if it was up to me. :)
Let’s start with what you’ve been doing lately. Metal-wise, last thing we know about you is that you’ve played on MEKONG DELTA’s “Lurking Fear”. What what have you been doing since then?
Well,…Metal-wise…not much. After Lurking fear I lost some of my interest in metal music, and especially technical metal. I have mentioned this before, and once again, you spend an extreme amount of time practicing, and in the end I don’t feel the audience response gratifying enough,so I felt that a change of direction was necessary. I then started a Southern rock-style band with a few local friends, and we recorded a few demo songs that are available on iTunes and Spotify. The name of the band was Southern Collider. For different reasons we never pursued the project after that. From that point I was exploring all genres of music, from techno-dance to extreme Metal, when I suddenly felt the urge to return to the roots of Thrash,…I was always found of bands like Exodus and Slayer to name a few. I wrote 7-8 songs in a traditional Bay area style, and recorded them with again, some local friends under the name of Final Mantra. The material was never released and I have no current plans to make that happen either. Overall, by comparison to the TIP days, music has not consumed nearly as much of my time, as I developed other interests such as American muscle cars and off-road vehicles, a hobby that I still indulge in.
I’ve been listening to metal since 1993 and THEORY IN PRACTICE is by far the most shocking, mind blowing band I’ve ever listened to. It’s sheer genius. Untouchable, breath-taking. It’s actually “more than music” for me. So here it goes: Is there a chance for a new THEORY IN PRACTICE album in the future? If yes, please wait for me to scream my heart out with joy and tell us more; if no, please let me get a tissue to wipe my tears and tell us why not.
The possibility to see a New full length release from TIP is unfortunately very small, I am simply in another frame of mind these days,..BUT!..I have 3 songs written for what would’ve been our 4th album, that I might record and release. Also in the vault, I have hundreds of riffs from the TIP era, that technically would suffice for another couple of albums.
In an interview from 2002, you’ve said: “If you want to make money off your music then do not play technical metal, it will consume ALL of your time, energy, sanity, your buddies will vanish and your girlfriend will leave you and you wont get a penny from it on the way!!! But if you’re self destructive, please be my guest, join me in the music of madness.” Looking back at this now, did you manage to claim all those things back since you stopped playing technical metal?
Let me say this, right after TIP I was generally tired of music, and everytime I looked at my guitar I felt sick. I had sacrificed a vast amount of time and energy writing complex songs and perfecting my skills at rehearsals etc. In the process other things were neglected that pertains to a normal life such as any means to provide for myself. I didn’t own any kind of transportation and my girlfriend was supporting me and cared for all the household bills. One day I finally had enough, and after a few beers I called my mother which was a hairdresser at the time, and asked her to come over and cut my hair off,…needless to say, she arrived 15 minutes later more than willing to perform the task upon my request. Shortly after, I got a job as a technician at the school of arts in the area, and was earning my own money. Today, I work as an organizational development coordinator at a community educational program. I own a house, a summer cabin, I drive a brand new car and also have a few American cars as an ongoing hobby. I seriously doubt that every member of a Metalband could make as much as a Swedish worker does.
As far as I see it, THEORY IN PRACTICE played the soundtrack of apocalypse and portrayed it like no other. What was going in your mind while writing all those albums? What kind of mindset did you have during the THEORY IN PRACTICE period that you’ve created a music that managed to integrate perfectly with those lyrical themes in a kind of cinematic way? I mean, when I listen to the “The Armageddon Theories” and “Colonizing the Sun”, I feel like “all right folks, this is the end, the universe is collapsing right now” haha.
When I formed TIP with Mattias and Henrik we only had one goal, and that was to make the most extreme and technical Metal we possibly could. I remember we used to record ourselves during band practice and listen afterwards, often we would look at each other and wonder wtf was that?….when we got lost in our own music we knew we were on the right track. As far as lyrical content goes, I was never involved in any of that.
“Colonizing the Sun” is my favorite album of all times. I know it note by note, all the lyrics, every little detail on it. I actually spend 3 days to search for it while I was in Stockholm in 2002 (found it). I know it’s been far too long, but I would be really happy if you can you tell us about that particular album. What was your aim before you started writing it and how was the writing process? I ask this because it’s the most unique piece of music I have ever heard.
For the CTS-album, I wanted music that was more like songs in a traditional sense as far as arrangements etc, not just a 20 minute barrage of non repeating riffs resembling the AT-album. Yes, the AT-album is very technical and that was the intention, but the CTS-album has better songs in my humble opinion. The writing process remained the same as the earlier releases. I wrote the riffs at home, recorded some of them, hoping they would fit together and brought them to rehearsal. Some songs were completed with the exception of vocals, for instance Dehumanized, and Colonizing the sun that I had recorded on my computer with drums programmed to make it easier to understand. (How do you explain the drumbeat during the verse in Dehumanized to a drummer?)
Henrik plays melodic death metal with SCAR SYMMETRY while you’ve been playing –not that much extreme- music recently with TUMBLEWEED OVERDRIVE, SOUTHERN COLLIDER and MONUMENT SEVEN. Did you get bored with all that technical stuff or what? Are we going to hear crazier, more complex stuff from you in the future?
These days I’m much more impressed with anyone that can write a good song and especially a hit song than an Uber technical Metal tune. It is much harder to write a hit song than a super technical Metal song, period. I remember how we used to sit in our rehearsal place and make a mockery of bands that were using simple basic chord progressions such as (Em,C,D,Em)…today I don’t. I however like to incorporate a bit more complex harmonies to keep it somewhat interesting and to prolong the expiration date of the song. I now write songs that I enjoy playing, technical or not. A good song is a good song, and arriving from Florida in time to agree that less is more is Matthew Brink, also in Tumbleweed Overdrive.
You’ve been playing guitar since 1986 and you truely are a virtuoso. I know that Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin and Yngwie influenced you when you were younger.But those guys have much warmer styles in terms of soloing. It’s clear that you were into Yngwie’s neo-classical approach and you reflect DiMeola and McLaughlin’s kind of jazzy feel, but your solos in THEORY IN PRACTICE are more than that.Keeping in mind that you are self-taught, how did you master those unorthodox, eerie sounding solos and melodies that are so cinematic, so layered and sounding both beautiful and evil at the same time?
I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 16 years of age, sure, I had a guitar prior to that, but It was mostly hanging on the wall. From that age and on I was very dedicated and had a rigid practice schedule and I would play relentlessly for hours at the time. I basically learned what I know by picking songs that I liked apart, and I was soon connecting the dots after that. My vibrato came naturally and early on. I was blessed with good ability to analyze pitch and that helped. Sometimes I write the beginning and the end of a solo and I improvise in between, and as the progression I’m soloing over is unorthodox I tend to follow that feel.
Related to the previous question, are there any newer players that you’ve heard in the recent years and found interesting?
No!, I like my old heroes,..what they did back in the day that is.
Your recent band TUMBLEWEED OVERDRIVE play a modern heavy metal/hard rock with an American feel. The great thing is, I can totally get that it’s you when I’ve heard the solo section on the song “Blind” (I’ve listened to it like 30 times with the excitement of finding a new Peter Lake solo after many years). So what can you tell us about TUMBLEWEED OVERDRIVE? Your brother Patrick plays the drums and Magnus from one of your previous bands, SORCERY, plays bass. What is TUMBLEWEED OVERDRIVE is all about?
Tumbleweed Overdrive Started out as a project with myself, my brother and Matthew Brink. We just wanted to get together and jam out some tunes for fun. Initially we were shooting for a less distorted and more of a Pop oriented sound, and we also had Swedish lyrics in mind. We gave up on that though pretty quick however. At that time, I was longing for some coarse grain, abrasive type of distortion with none of the ice pick treble that we all hate with a passion. After some research and tryouts we came to the conclusion that no Guitar head would deliver, so we started to elaborate with pedals. We thought that the Big Muff Pi was close and we tried many different versions before I settled on V4 from 1978. A Fuzz pedal, (as you might imagine) is not the greatest tool for fast and technical playing, so we had to keep things real simple and straight forward to make it work for us. Bass player Magnus Karlsson/Mard called us when he found out through the grapevine that we were in the works. We recorded a demo and placed an ad looking for a vocalist in the classifieds, and Magnus Thurin replied and provided a few samples and it was a done deal.
MONUMENT SEVEN is also a band that you play with your brother. What can you say about that project, what are you plans?
M7 was a project I did around 2008. We recorded a few songs, but it basically fell apart due to the long travel distance between me and Magnus Ekwall. I have always admired the work of Leif Edling and thought it would be cool to do something in those lines. I guess you could say it’s a tribute to him. I really like the songs I wrote for M7 and I still think they are some of the best I’ve written.
What was the motivation behind MUTANT? You were playing technical death metal with THEORY IN PRACTICE, so were you also into black metal back then that you’ve started MUTANT, which definitely has a black metal feel to it.
I like melodies, and if Black Metal has anything,..It has melodies in abundance. Perhaps hard to understand for some, but that’s my perception anyways. The reason for Mutant was the ongoing crowning success of all then current Black Metal bands. I was amazed then, how so simple songs could become popular, .and Henrik and I decided to join the movement. We thought it would be a walk in the park but were soon proved wrong.
MEKONG DELTA was obviously a big influence on you when you were younger and then you managed to join the band for an album. Did you guys know each other, did you apply for the gig, or did they reached you and invited to play on “Lurking Fear”? Was it a fun experience? Why did you leave the band after one album?
As you mentioned above, Mekong Delta was a huge influence on me towards the end of the 80′s and the beginning of the 90′s. I thought it was the ultimate music. So different from everything else that I had ever heard. Ralf Hubert was and..IS..a pure musical genius and I realized that even more when I was working closely with him in MD. He has a vision and stays true to it. I got in contact with him through Devoraz, who handles their fan web page. I wrote him to see if any new releases were on the horizon. Devoraz then informed me that Ralf was searching for musicians for an upcoming album and asked me if he should mention me,..and to that question I answered yes, and that was the beginning of our collaboration. The reason for leaving MD was purely lack of time on my behalf. I had just started my new job and simply couldn’t devote a sufficient amount of time. In TIP we weren’t that anal-retentive as far as being 100% tight. We were a bit more relaxed, but when it comes to MD, perfection is of paramount importance and every 32nd note has to be dead-on. In a sense you have to play like a computer which is challenging for sure. Another aspect of it as well, is that playing riffs you didn’t write seems harder in comparison to your own riffs. I also played a solo on “The Apocalypt – World in shards” from the album ” Wanderer On The Edge Of Time” which is the album after “Lurking Fear” All in all it was a pleasant enriching experience to work with Ralf!
So that was all. Thanks a lot for your time, and most importantly, thank you very much Peter, for creating the most unique, most mind-blowing and in short, best music ever. At least for my opinion. I’m really sincere about that. Just having the chance to thank you for your music is really amazing for me. THEORY IN PRACTICE is one of the best things I’ve experienced in life and something I put above anything else in terms of music.
Best of luck with everything you do, take care and can’t wait to hear more music from you.
Cheers!
Thank You very much!
Interview
Ahmet Saraçoğlu
