Jorge Ciudad from Chile's PowerMetal.cl spoke to PAGAN'S MIND frontman Nils K. Rue about the band's new album, Heavenly Ecstasy. Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

Q: During all this time since God's Equation, when did you start to feel the pressure of releasing a new Pagan's Mind record?

A: "People were asking about the new record just one year after (the release) of God’s Equation, and people asked (about it) all the time!, so that’s a good thing because they want to get new stuff and everything. It’s really, really difficult to just push a button and try to be creative, because good music comes from the heart, it comes from the soul, and it’s really not something that you can push out there. Of course, there’s a lot of bands putting out music all the time but I really don’t think it’s always what they really feel from the heart. I think that you have to be in the right mood and take your time (in order) to write good music."

Q: Why does the band think that Heavenly Ecstasy is their most "cohesive" effort so far?

A: "Finally now, like almost ten years, we have grown!, we have become adults musicians, if you know what I mean, and he have found ourselves more than we did in the past. We don’t have to impress that much anymore, we just want to write good melodies and tunes. I think that this is a really more mature side of Pagan’s Mind, where we really find the essence of the music. The power is still there, the epicness is still there, but it’s a little bit more simplified, there are not so many extreme progressive elements... they are there, but tuned down a little bit and I think that’s a wise choice if you want to hit a greater audience as well, because the sound we have is pretty unique, you can tell it’s Pagan’s Mind anyway."

Q: As far as the fans of albums such as Infinity Divine (2000) or Celestial Entrance (2004), what will they find on this new record?

A: "They will find plenty of progressive stuff. They will find plenty of brilliant solos. And they will find plenty of high-pitched screams. But more, they will find better song structures, they will find better written solos, better written music! Of course, we want to make the young power-progressive audicence happy, and we want to impress and make everyone happy as well, so (by) growing into this more mature style of music, we want to reach more fans, we want to also reach the most common Heavy Metal fans."

Q: How does Pagan’s Mind describe its own evolution since Celestial Entrance until now?

A: "In the times around Celestial Entrance we were really, really hungry to get out there and prove something, and do a lot of intrumental stuff and be technical, you know? I wanted to show myself as a singer and sing very high notes, just screams and everything!, just to impress people. We sort of did that, but in time you tend to grow, you tend to be more and more confident in what you can do. You do what you think is good, what sounds good and everything, and you kind of... you are not so juvenile anymore, you don’t need to be cool with the girls if you know what I mean, you can be yourself and do what you want, and what you think it’s good. And I think that shows really well on the two lasts albums, God’s Equations and Heavenly Ecstasy, because we have grown more into what we think is a classic rock sound, which we really are big fans of."

Read the entire interview here.

Check out the entire conversation on YouTube below: