While Leprous are gearing up to release their next album, drummer Baard Kolstad’s other band, Rendezvous Point, are thinking ahead on their own new record. Prog catches up with the quintet’s Nicolay Tangen Svennæs, Gunn-Hilde Erstad and Petter Hallaråker to discuss Dream Chaser, tortured artists and the potential of some very exciting guest collabs.
Norwegian prog metallers Rendezvous Point describe their third full-length album, Dream Chaser, as an epic with Hans Zimmer-style arrangements that’s “harmonically, rhythmically and melodically interesting.” Formed in 2010, the band’s core trio of keyboardist Nicolay Tangen Svennæs, bassist Gunn-Hilde Erstad and guitarist Petter Hallaråker all studied at the Conservatory of Music in Kristiansand, Norway. Svennæs and Hallaråker had been friends since they were 15, and bonded with Erstad over a love of prog music.
Hallaråker was the one responsible for introducing Svennæs to prog music in via Dream Theater and Tool, even covering the former’s Erotomania in an earlier band. But Rendezvous Point deviate from those more classic prog metal styles, with Svennæs saying their sound is “more melodic prog rock with some fast guitars and odd time signatures.”
Hallaråker agrees: “It was always meant to be big, but in a proggier sense, and heavy. When you have five band members, everybody listens to different stuff, and there’s just so much inspiration to take from. I guess everybody came from the same core of prog music, while getting inspiration from stuff outside of that too.”
Alongside Rendezvous Point, Svennæs performs with Ihsahn; and drummer Baard Kolstad is also in Leprous. Having such a wide range of music taste and experience seems to have benefited Rendezvous Point. The band’s output has evolved from their 2015 debut, Solar Storm, to a more light-hearted, fun approach, embracing shorter tracks and a more accessible formula.
“Rendezvous Point has always been this playground where there are no rules,” explains Svennæs. “We’re free to break the limits of the genre – that’s a feeling of freedom that I don’t get in my other projects.”
Despite that, the Norwegian quintet address some critical topics in Dream Chaser. One is the trope of the tortured artist, which Erstad encountered through her PhD research into evolving and achieving peak performance in music.
“To be big and famous you have to hurt a bit, physically and psychologically,” she explains. “We talked a lot around it and felt like, yeah, this is something we all feel – we have to hurt a little bit for our music. So that became the starting point for the lyrics.”
Before, people would say, ‘You sound like Leprous,’ … Now, people will say we sound like Muse or Rammstein
Petter Hallaråker
“Being a musician becomes a part of your identity, and if you don’t achieve your dreams it feels really personal,” says Erstard. “You feel like you’re failing if you don’t achieve your dreams – that’s why we chose Dream Chaser as the title of the album.”
Opening one’s soul to create authentic music can result in a feeling of being insulted if the results don’t land as expected. “It has to be that way in order to make it feel real,” Erstad comments. “You have to dare to be vulnerable in your music to make it reach somebody, or to make it shine.”
Rendezvous Point’s sound is a very different beast from that of Ihsahn and Leprous despite their shared personnel. Their own raw display of soul could be difficult for those who think they’re entering into a similar listening experience – especially after they took time and effort to write for themselves, rather than appeal to those existing fanbases.
“The goal is to make something that we like,” Svennæs says. “I try not to think too much about what other people might think any more. I just try to make the coolest thing I could possibly make at that specific time.”
Hallaråker agrees, saying that Dream Chaser is, again, a new direction. “It’s still the same band, though,” he adds. “There’s still the energy, the heaviness and all that, but I feel we’ve moved more into a territory that we want to explore further. The first album was more traditionally prog with longer songs and more time signatures, but now we’ve condensed it.”
The average track clocks in around four and a half minutes, making it arguably a much quicker journey – but the effect isn’t minimised. Rendezvous Point are energetic, in-your-face and genuinely huge fun. “We just want to get to the point and make it as cool as we can!” says Hallaråker.
“Before, people would say, ‘You sound like Leprous,’ but I think that’s because of Baard’s involvement. Now, people will say that we sound like Muse or Rammstein. All of these influences are there – but if we just try to make what we think is cool, there’s a chance that other people will also like it. If you can accomplish that, I think you keep some of the authenticity.”
Hallaråker adds: “We haven’t been too conscious of the whole process. When we write music it starts with a riff, but we don’t sit down and think we’re going to make something that sounds like something else.
“That’s the way it’s been with all three albums – when you listen to them you can see that there’s something different in each one, and we’re moving in a direction. It’s not like we’re consciously trying to do that, though, when we’re making the music. It isn’t a big plan or anything like that!”
I would love to have a female vocalist on there… Sia, I would love that
Petter Hallaråker
Living in different cities in Norway, their creative process will be familiar to many modern musicians. “We usually write in Logic [software], make sketches and send it to the others,” Erstad explains. “I made one for Still Water and sent it to the rest of the guys. Nicolay started to play around with it, and Geirmund [Hansen] put vocals on it, and it became a song that was really far apart from what I’d started with.”
The result is a love letter from a collective, rather than being penned by one person and taught to the remainder. When it comes to outside influences and potential guest collaborations, though, the band say they’d want to work in the same way, which leads to the question: are we likely to see any guest appearances from members of Ihsahn or Leprous?
“It would be cool to have a couple of parts in a song with some screaming vocals,” says Svennæs. “But I’ve already asked Ihsahn – and he doesn’t do that stuff!”
“I would love to have a female vocalist on there,” Hallaråker says. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but [electropop singer-songwriter] Sia, I would love that. I thought about Emilie Nicolas [Norwegian jazz artist] as well, who Nicolay plays in a band with.”
Svennæs adds: “Collaborating with other bands or artists is a good idea. It would be cool to try that out more, actually.”
