PAGAN'S MIND guitarist Jorn Viggo Lofstad recently spoke with Metal Asylum in New Jersey about the band's new album God’s Equation and the slightly more industrialized direction of the music. A few excerpts follow:

Metal Asylum: Why have you decided to work with Stefan Glaumann (who has worked with the band RAMMSTEIN) and what were his contributions to these songs on God’s Equation?

Jorn: "We felt that our new material was a little different and more straight to the point this time. we also wanted a change in sound partly and after hearing so many of Stefan's fantastic productions, especially the powerful and heavy but still organic sound on Rammstein's Reise Reise. We knew that this was the guy we wanted to work with. We are very satisfied with the work that Fredrik Nordstrøm did for us on our two previous albums but we felt it was a time to try something else and also try to reach a more organic and original sound. A lot of the metal bands use a lot of the same top five studios in Europe and a lot of the stuff sounds almost the same. We want to stick out in the crowd and its better to go to a guy that not so many metal bands use (he does a lot of pop rock mainstream stuff too) then to the ones everyone uses. On top of that he is without a doubt one of the best there is! And he gave us what we came for and that we knew he is so good at: a heavy but still very organic sound on the entire album."

Metal Asylum: I can definitely hear the industrial influences on God's Equation. Why do this now after releasing three other successful albums without that element?

Jorn: "It's just a natural progression for us, why would we ever look at three previous albums and try to copy that, that would not work for us and we would deliver a less than good album, I think. I guess if I’m gonna try to analyse it like that I think maybe the power metal (the sing along national anthem kind of thing) elements are not that present on this one and switched out with more heavy and straight to the point songs. And also like you mention some industrial elements here and there on the keyboards. Other than that and of course a different production, I think we have a lot of the same energy and big sounds as on our previous albums. In other words, we did it because we think it sounds cool hehe..."

Metal Asylum: Nils also has some different effects on his voice. Can you tell us about that and how often it was used for the recording?

Jorn: "All the distorted and other kind of Fx sounds on Nils vocals where recorded like that by us and not done in the mix, we have also done that on our two previous albums but maybe not as much as this time. But then again and for instance the song 'Atomic Firelight' or the bridge on 'Evolution Exeed' was not on any of our previous albums either and I think that kind of vocal sound really benefits those songs. Nils has a lot of strong sides as a singer and what we try do is give them a perfect blend, it's an important element of his sound."

You can read the rest of the interview here

God's Equation was released on November 9th in Europe and will be available on January 15th in North America via LMP. A new e-card is available here.

The album tracklist is as follows: 'The Conception', 'God's Equation', 'United Alliance', 'Atomic Firelight', 'Hallo Spaceboy', 'Evolution Exceed', 'Alien Kamikaze', 'Painted Skies', 'Spirit Starcruiser', 'Farewell', 'Osiris' Triumphant Return'.