RockOverdose and Zisis Petkanas, had the chance to chat with Daniel Brennare, on the recent LAKE OF TEARS album, marking the return of the band after almost 10 years!
"Ominous" is the personal story of Daniel Brennare fighting with illness and depression, framed with amazing music and artwork that can only be understood together.
Please find below details for the new album, in the words of its creator!
Enjoy!
RockOverdose: Hello Daniel and welcome to RockOverdose! How are you today?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Hello! Thank you very much! I’m fine today thanks!
RockOverdose: After nearly a decade of silence your new album «Ominous» comes this month. How would you describe “Ominous” in terms of music and concept?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Oh! Where should I start from! First and foremost, “Ominous” is a story based on illness and depression. For me these two “monsters” or “ominous brothers”, let’s say are a symbol for me, for illness and depression. That’s the basic story of the record.
Then another layer that can be seen more in the pictures, even the lyrics is about a lonely cosmonaut traveling to the end of the world and meets with these ominous brothers. So actually there are two stories which lead to each other.
RockOverdose: Is this album more of a personal project? Because the press release mentions you on guitars, vocals and keyboards, without any other name appearing there, which leads me to think that the bass and drums are the result of programming, while he is also in charge of production.
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Yes you can say that! It’s very much based on me and my thoughts! Yes, it’s a very personal record. I’ve been thinking of it all these years, I did all the small details by myself.
RockOverdose: Why dont you have a full band?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): That’s a deeper discussion I think, but you can compare it maybe with a relationship between a man and a woman. It’s just when time eventually gets you into that point when you realize that this relationship is no longer the best thing. That’s what I think happened with the band that nature and time got onto us and had to do other staff except from the band.
RockOverdose: Did you face any difficulties while recording due to the covid pandemic lockdown?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): No difficulties from that. There was no actual problem for us because we were a small team isolated working at the studio.
RockOverdose: The cover art of the album is darker than ever! How it represents the music and lyric concept?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Yes! I think it’s amazing. As I said before, I had this idea of these two monsters, so I did some sketches I found some pictures. I contacted Vladimir – the guy who did the artwork – through a mutual friend. We managed to get a really good cover, and I must say if you haven’t seen it there’s also one picture for each song, within the booklet! It’s a really amazing cover and it’s quite important to look at the pictures while listening to the music, in order to get closer to the meaning and deeper to the story. Pictures and lyrics are connected; some of the things in the songs maybe are not so clear and difficult to explain, so this way it becomes more clear when you look at the pictures.
RockOverdose: I suppose most of the songs are your personal experiences, and what you've passed through....
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Yes that’s the really special thing with this record. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but this comes from inside, illness and depression. So, everything you can find on this record is pretty much from inside the story, except maybe from the bonus track, which is not really part of the story.
RockOverdose: You have released two videos for the singles “At the Destination” and “In Wait and in Worries”, are you going to make any other videos? Why you chose those singles?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): There won’t be more videos. I must actually say that from the beginning I didn’t want to make any single for this record because I knew from the beginning that they would give a totally different view from what I wanted to give with this record. This is a record that you must listen from the beginning to the end; all songs are depended to each other. There won’t be great if you isolated. However, I had to choose two of them so I chose the first two just not to break up the story, it’s some kind of an intro.
RockOverdose: After all these years, has Lake Of Tears become the band that you have dreamed of?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): I think we all started to play in the late 80’s early 90’s and then we mostly played death metal actually. Few of us had some ideas that maybe moved to a different direction, bands like Paradise Lost etc started to create this gothic jam. Paradise Lost and Tiamat were an inspiration for us, we felt that we found something; we had some ideas to follow up. All this passion came from the fact that we were great fans of the music that came to the late 80’s, from thrash to death metal somewhere where that change happened. That was our inspiration and from where all started.
RockOverdose: After all these years can you tell that Lake Of Tears became the band that you've dreamed of?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Not really I don’t know… In some cases it has been! For me story telling was always been important, I don’t know why. And I noticed from the beginning that what I wanted to do with my music was to reach deep into a person! For me it was never so important to reach out to thousands or millions people, but to be able to reach deep into just only one person. So I guess in that case it has become some kind of a dream, because this is a really fantastic think to be able to do, to reach down a person that can be anywhere in the world.
RockOverdose: One of my favorite albums is "Forever Autumn" back in 1990, it was a really great album, every time autumn comes I recall it!
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): That’s really great! It comes down every autumn, I’m really happy about that! Oh thank you! “Forever Autumn” is based on quite dark stories. It was due to my separation from my first real love, and I had some dark moments there. But now afterwards I’m really happy, some of our most famous ones even this dark moments gave happiness to our life afterwards.
RockOverdose: It comes from your soul ...
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Yes its one of the main themes, but it’s not totally thematic. It’s a combination of autumn and heartbreak I think.
RockOverdose: Any other news regarding the new release?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): No I don’t think so, now we just have to wait for a couple of weeks before it comes out. I got some reactions, very good mostly, especially from the people who understood the record and not judging it song by song. That’s what I meant before for the videos you have to listen to the whole album in order to make a review. It’s quite amazing actually, because I didn’t expect people to understand the record so quickly.
RockOverdose: It's a comeback for Lake Of Tears, as many people say...
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): It’s been … I don’t know how many years back, always a comeback! The band is still here, every new record will be always a comeback! It has always been here!
RockOverdose: Do you have any memories from Greece?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Yes I have some! One of the best memories is the food! One of the worst is that we missed the plain due to the different mentality, this kind of little more relaxed attitude …. You are so different people than we are here in Sweden. Of course we had some really great times with fans during the shows and afterwards!
I must say since we speak about Greece, that one big influence for this latest record is the ancient Greek Mathematician Pythagoras. For those attracted in Mathematics they will find some interest in our new record.
Pythagoras assistance in both mathematics and music is very interesting and if you read his theory you will notice that music hasn’t been kept as it should have been, let’s say properly mathematic as it should have been.
RockOverdose: Would you like to leave a message to your greek fans?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): I have to thank you all for your support through all these years! I still get messages from people everyday regarding how important are my songs for them, and this is the greatest reward a person can get!
RockOverdose: I don't know if you'd like to mention it public but I know that you have a health problem... Is it ok now?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): It can never be ok. It’s a chronicae form of leukemia but in periods it’s ok. I mean, it’s not always bad, it’s just when your cells start to break down, then you get your cure and then it’s ok again.
RockOverdose: I understand. You have to be carefull....
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Yes! Extra carefull!
RockOverdose: Do you want to mention it in the interview?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): It's ok with me. I really didn’t want to talk about it at first but now I talk a lot! I really don’t fear, I’m 50 years old, I don’t feel ashamed to talk about it! Everyone has its own struggle, I have mine, and for good or for bad my struggle with the illness and I must say the following depression was even worse. It has become somehow public! I think that’s ok for me.
RockOverdose: I wish you the best! Of course lets hope this pandemic will end and make some lives shows!
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Maybe we will meet again on the road some day!
RockOverdose: Are you planning to do any live shows?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): No plans now! I think we have to wait at least for one more year before making plans. I don’t think it has meaning to plan shows now, because they will probably be rescheduled due to the pandemic.
RockOverdose: If everything was OK would you do that? Because as you said you don't have a full band... If you played live, would you have session musicians?
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Not at the moment! I’d prefer not to… But who knows… Some days I even feel that some kind of new context, I don’t really know what it will be … but something new would give me the passion to play live! Just not going around and this ordinary like all these rock/metal shows we’ve been doing for 30 years but something else… I mean probably the fans of course want to see us, it’s good for them, but for me it’s not really inspiring any more in life.
RockOverdose:I have to thank you very much for your time. I wish to meet you someday and chat face to face! Good luck with the new albume!
Daniel Brennare (Lake Of Lake Of Tears): Thank you very much! Take care! Bye!
Follow Lake of Tears!
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/13ltb...
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/si/artist/lak...
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelakeoftears/
Website: https://www.lakeoftears.net
For RockOverdose,
Zisis Petkanas
Questions - Edit - Transcript: Vivi Zapantiotou
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