The following is an excerpt from a new interview with TURISAS frontman Warlord Nygård, conducted by Komodo Rock:

KR: Do you feel that the extensive touring you did last year made a positive impression on sales of your album The Varangian Way?

Nygård: "To be honest we haven’t really toured that much. I mean look at all the crazy Polish bands doing three months in a row-tours without a day off! Of course gaining some foothold in the UK and also playing more there than maybe the average European band has its effect on the album sales."

KR: Your schedule is very busy for 2008. Do you see yourselves taking a break in the summer, or will you continue onto the European festival circuit after Paganfest?

Nygård: "Yeah, we start out by doing two weeks in the UK from March 1st and onwards and then continue over to the rest of Europe. After that we join the Paganfest tour in North America almost directly after, just to make it back to Europe for the festival season start. We don’t have any festivals confirmed yet as we’ve been quite busy working with these over 60 shows we already have in front of us before the summer, but I’m sure those confirmations will start to fall in as spring moves on. It will for sure be a busy year and by summer I think we can actually start speaking of extensive touring, but nonetheless it is clear, that at some point we will need to take a break to get some ideas together for a new album. It’s just too hectic right now to write anything."

KR: Is the future of music like yours in the live arena, rather than recordings?

Nygård: "I hope not. I like doing both and could imagine, that if we ended up touring and touring only playing the songs we did in the early days of our career it would quickly become dull. I think the income is definitely swifting over to all things other than the sale of the music itself, but without that, there would hardly be none of the other either. I think the world is moving towards a direction where music itself becomes 'theoretically' free, so that the consumer pays for it by side products as the live shows, merchandise and other and most importantly, seeing adverts here and there.

KR: Do you think that the live experience is now even more important with the accessibility of music online?

Nygård: "To be able to make living yes, but for the consumer – not really. There will always be the group of people who like going to shows, theatre, seeing movies on the big screen, but at the same time, there’s also a group of people who are just happy to listen to the music digitally at home or on your iPod, and watch movies from a DVD on a small laptop screen. I mean, there’s people who are totally fine with Facebook being their only social activity, and in a way, that’s completely alright. It’s just different. To me listening to music on CD or seeing a show was never on the same line anyway, and with our band it’s probably even more obvious."

Go to this location for the complete interview.