Finland’s Jess and the Ancient Ones very quickly became one of my newest favorite bands. Like most of the great bands I love the most, I found them while on a quest to find something that was just a change from the roster of bands that are driven down my throat on a daily basis. You can call them occult rock, you can call them psychedelic rock, and according to guitarist/songwriter Thomas Fiend, you can call them shit for all he cares but all he asks is that you at least give them a listen with an open mind before passing any kind of judgment.
Jess and the Ancient Ones have the honor of being handpicked by King Diamond himself to be the direct support band for his upcoming North American tour. On the night before their departure for the states, I had the opportunity to talk with guitarist/songwriter Thomas Fiend. We talked about the upcoming tour with King Diamond, why he feels that sometimes less is more when it comes to occult rock bands, and what he hopes that fans will take away from seeing them for the first time.
This was a really great interview and quite an honor to be the first pre-tour US interview they were doing. This is a band that I am truly excited about and I hope you all will enjoy getting to know the greatness that is Jess and the Ancient Ones. Enjoy!
Thomas, thanks so much for doing this interview today. How are ya?
I’m good, thank you. Sure thing! It’s nice to do an interview before we go on tour. Excuse my probably coughing. I’ve been sick for some time but I’m getting better now [laughs].
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Well, I’m glad you’re getting better before your big US tour with King Diamond!
[laughs] Yes, I know.
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First off, I have to say that I’m a huge fan of Jess and the Ancient Ones. I actually found out about you guys from a list of occult rock bands to check out and you guys were the best on the list!
[laughs] That’s great. It’s always nice to hear that our music is appreciated and it really means a lot to us so thank you, Don.
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Jess and the Ancient Ones have been on constant rotation and I have to say that I was surprised at how little I could find of you guys online in the form of American interviews. There really seems to be a lack of US press. Are we just slow getting to you?
[laughs] It’s all kinds of promotional hassle. It’s been quite an issue for us. It’s hard to reach new audiences when people can’t find you but the internet as really been a great tool. I mean, look, you found us through the Temple of Google [laughs]. It does seem that the stars are aligning and things are changing for us. Our label has even let us know that they’re interested in licensing our music in the US so we’re working on that deal. I feel like we are getting that well wanted and well deserved visibility in the US. Things are changing and things are happening quite fast and it’s quite good.
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Bands seem to either love or hate technology when it comes to getting your music to people. Do you feel that the technology 
has been a good thing for Jess and the Ancient Ones?
Personally, yes. That opinion might differ inside the band though. It can be bit narrow minded now to think that you can’t use technology to spread your message if you have one. I embrace all of that now but it doesn’t affect the sound of our music. We just tend to dig into the past and incorporate things from the 50’s and 60’s and lots of American music from those decades. It’s important to stay alert and to stay with the times a bit.
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Jess and the Ancient Ones, unlike a lot of bands that are doing this kind of music these days, chose to record digitally as opposed to analog yet you managed to still capture the classic vibe of this kind of music without it sounding overly modern.
Exactly. We’re talking in the future about experimenting more with analog things but we’re really not extremists when it comes to that. It’s not a matter of life and death that we do everything in analog. Yeah, nowadays there so many options that you can do things any way you chose. Thanks to technology, we are even able to really make proper demo recordings at the rehearsal space before going into the studio. You can get home recording equipment that is not so insanely expensive and you find that those tools are there to help you. We don’t use them as computers that will help us modify everything. That’s a whole other extreme. Technology offers us solutions and makes the workflow easier which is always nice.
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Thomas, you and some of the other members of the band are actually members of other bands which play a much more extreme kind of metal. Why this kind of direction for Jess and the Ancient Ones?
I moved back Finland from Spain where I had lived for a couple of years back in 2007. I hooked up with Thomas Corpse who’s a dear friend of mine and we were playing gigs and writing music. During 2008 we started to listen to more stuff like Roky Erikson, especially the Evil One Plus One album, Tom Waits, Led Zeppelin and that kind of stuff. We just started listening to this stuff and began to soak it in. I thought it would be fun to make songs like this that were a little more melodic and less heavy in that way. We’ve been playing extreme metal for the bigger part of our lives and for me. It’s not that I was bored with it. I just wanted to broaden my views and get a bigger perspective on music. The ideas we were having we knew we needed to have three guitars and clean vocals and the material started to sound like something we couldn’t do with a metal band. We wanted to start a journey with this and in 2010 we started the whole thing.
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Was having a female singer part of your initial vision for this band?
We were just looking for a singer to sing with clean vocals. We managed to find Jess and it just felt natural from the start. She’s a great singer and we really loved the sound and we knew that there was no need to keep searching. We just started rehearsing and recording.
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All of the songs are written by yourself and Thomas Corpse but is there any other involvement in the process at all from the other band members?
Myself and Corpse write all the lyrics but the songwriting process really involves all of us. We will make a draft or a skeleton of a song with some different ideas that set the fundamental mood or direction of the song. Then everyone at the rehearsal place will work together to make different versions and little by little the song will start revealing itself.
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There is a significant growth in the songwriting and performances from the debut album to the Astral Sabbat EP. I love that this growth is evident but the vibe that Jess and the Ancient Ones forged in the beginning is still very much there.
Songwriting is an endless ocean of learning. You just never get to become perfect in that art. The production, the arrangement, they are just such a fascinating thing. We try to evolve and do our best. The new material that we have sounds quite different from the debut album but you can still hear that it’s the same band. It’s all about evolving and embracing change on many levels. We aren’t seeking to sound like anything. We just noticed that some time has passed, some stuff we’re going to do might have some folk rock and surf rock elements. We just follow in the direction that the material takes us. It’s not like a conscious decision.
The first song I heard by you guys was “Astral Sabbat” and the minute I heard it I felt like I was listening to something really magical. When you wrote this song, did you think that this could be the song to potentially bring in some new fans?
We have noticed that all the time there is more interest in what we’re doing and we are receiving good feedback at the gigs and in the media. We’ve noticed that things are moving forward for us but we are not sacrificing too much energy worrying about how things will go or how they will happen. We just keep doing what we do and we’re enjoying the ride and the process of creating and performing music.
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Jess and the Ancient Ones was recently handpicked by King Diamond to open his US tour. Is this the band’s first time in the US?
Yes it is. King Diamond actually found us the same way you did. I don’t think he went and Googled “cool occult rock bands” [laughs]. I don’t know exactly how it happened but he ended up seeing our video for “Astral Sabbat” on YouTube and he liked it so much that he wanted us to support his tour.
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That had to blow you mind.
Oh yeah. It was kind of a mind fuck really [laughs]. Corpse had called me and said, “I have the best fucking news ever for you.” I figured it must be that we have a nice gig somewhere or something like that. I still haven’t had time to really think about it too much. We have so much work to do with the whole thing. The moment we heard that we had this offer we all agreed that we had to go no matter what. Now it’s been quite a busy month. We were supposed to be in the studio recording the 2nd album but now has been postponed until after the tour. We are going to be in the United States soon and we can’t wait.
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What are you looking forward to the most on your first trip to the US?
I’ve never really been to North American before. Some of the other band members have but I have never been. I’m really looking forward to the overall experience. I enjoy traveling so much and I enjoy seeing all the different cultures and especially going to play music somewhere different. To meet the people too and to see how life in general is in North America. With the gigs, all the places seem so interesting and I’m so excited for every single gig.
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I’ve never seen you guys live and I’m so pumped. What can I expect from my first Jess and the Ancient Ones show?
If you come with an open mind I’m sure that you’ll find different kinds of vibes and layers in our music. The beautiful thing is that you can make up your own conclusion and decide to be inspired or influenced or affected by the experience if you find it interesting enough. It’s just an ethereal rock show. I find it almost difficult to describe the experience. It’s really beyond all verbal explanation. It’s just best that you come and see us live to see what it’s all about.
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King Diamond definitely has a pretty intense fanbase. Are you guys at all intimidated to be opening for King Diamond and what are you hoping that the fans will take away from seeing Jess and the Ancient Ones live?
Exactly that kind of an experience. I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting combination with King Diamond’s sound and our sound. I think it’s a perfect mixture actually. There’s a certain kind of dark vibe and atmosphere going on in both bands. I’m just looking forward to it. We’ve been waiting eagerly to get this kind of a chance to play in the States and for a change to play to bigger audiences. I’m convinced that this tour will be a total triumph. I don’t mean to sound arrogant but I’m sure it’s going to go great.
I don’t call that arrogance. I call that confidence and honestly that’s how I would hope you would go into this with.
Thank you. I think it’s going to be really interesting to hear after the shows what people think of us. Did they like us? We know what we’re doing and know where we’re going so we feel good about that.
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Are you ok being described as “occult rock” or do you feel like that pigeon hole’s you?
Yeah, I’m fine with it. I think of it as a musical term; a musical style. That’s one way to describe the sound of the band. It really doesn’t bother me if someone calls us occult rock or psychedelic rock or folk rock or if someone calls us a piece of shit. It doesn’t bother me [laughs]. The negative critic is interesting if it’s done in constructive ways. It’s good to hear all kinds of opinions.
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Occult Rock can sometimes be considered hokey by the general public because of how it’s portrayed by certain bands. Do you feel that bands like you who truly believe in what you sing and write about suffer because of this?
There are black metal bands and occult rock bands that really are serious magicians and people who really practice what they preach which is something that I really appreciate. There are also these others who are just playing with symbols and the image stuff.There’s nothing behind that thing but listing quotes from books you’ve read or names deities that you’ve read about. I don’t want to sound too hostile towards others. I respect what others do and it doesn’t bother me but I don’t identify with that kind of stuff.With this band we don’t have a need to have a lot of skulls, props or a huge backdrop behind us. In a movie once it was said that sticking feathers up your ass doesn’t make you a chicken [laughs]. I think that a lot when I see that in the metal scene with all the mysticism. We bring emotion and we just have this kind of raw emotion to our music and we try to transmit that live as good as we can.
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Thomas, thank you so much for taking the time out to do this. I’m really looking forward to see you the US debut of Jess and the Ancient Ones here in Atlanta on opening night.
Thank you, Don. Thank you very much for the interview. It was a nice conversation and I’m looking forward to meeting you. See you soon.
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