Trail of Tears: The Journey Continues with Winds of Disdain

Photo Credit: Nat Enemede

Trail of Tears: The Journey Continues with Winds of Disdain

Norwegian gothic metal pioneers Trail of Tears have released their long-awaited comeback EP entitled Winds of Disdain via The Circle Music. Winds of Disdain marks the band’s first release in over 10 years and signifies a new chapter for Trail of Tears.  With iconic albums released on labels such as Napalm and Massacre Records, Trail of Tears is ready to enrapture an entire world once again, with an exciting independent label by their side.  Highwire Daze recently caught up vocalist and founding member Ronny Thorsen to find out more about the almighty return of Trail of Tears!  Read on…

We’re here with Ronny Thorsen from Trail of Tears. First of all, after 10 years what inspired you to write and release a new Trail of Tears album or EP?
Oh, yeah. That’s the million-dollar question, I guess. I think that was kind of like a two-sided thing. First of all, it was the need to create something or, you know, just the desire to create something. Obviously, I have been active in other bands as well after we initially put Trail of Tears on ice like in 2013 or whenever it was. But, there is something about your first band that kind of never leaves you, I guess. The second part was, you know, the desire to kind of rekindle the old friendship with some of the other guys, especially some of the original members. Initially, we reached out to all the original members to see if they wanted to be a part of this. We managed to get some of them and the other ones are, unfortunately, on completely different paths in their life and for various reason it wasn’t possible.

We finally got back together in late 2020 and of course, we chose the absolute worst time to announce the return due to the pandemic. At the time that we announced the return, we obviously thought that this crap was going to be over soon and unfortunately it continued to make it difficult for us for another at least year or two. We had originally a lot of touring plans and festivals. They got first postponed, then canceled and very difficult to plan, very difficult to have any kind of continuity in making plans both recording and touring. Also, that did something, you know, to our motivation for a while. Because a lot of people were like, “Well, if you can’t tour at least you could write songs.” But when you’ve done, you know, numerous attempts at something and everything just kind of backfires because of something that you can’t control, again, being the pandemic, then at some point you’re going to get a blow from that, and I think that’s what happened to us. That’s why it has taken like four years for us to actually put something out now. Of course now, we are one week away from the release of the EP and we also have material for more releases. So, yeah. It has taken time, but we are on the right track, I guess.

The new EP is called Winds of Disdain. Is there any overall story or concept behind that title and that song?
There’s no concept of the EP or to that song per se, but I think that the title reflects what we just talked about, the times that we have gone through. It’s been like a whirlwind. The whole world has gone through like a storm. I think a lot of people, a lot of bands, a lot of businesses have really been getting hurt and damaged by this. I think the lyrics on this EP, in general, are like a summary of what the world has gone through and what the world has felt during these last few years. That’s the easiest way I can put it. We have tried to put into words what we have been through and hopefully, now that we are out on the other side, we can turn that into something positive instead.

How did Ailyn from Sirenia become involved with Trail of Tears?
Ailyn was the first person on our list because obviously she’s been working with Jonathan in Sirenia for a lot of years. When Ailyn joined Sirenia she moved to Norway from Spain and she’s been living here for some years now.  So, when the cooperation ended between her and Sirenia, she was available on the market and we contacted her, we presented our ideas, and we asked her if this was something she wanted to do. Of course, she knew about the band from beforehand and now she actually lives in the same town as the rest of the band members. She relocated here. So it was even easier. From the start, she was very positive and she’s been contributing a lot of things for the band, with lyrics and melodies, vocal arrangements and a lot of stuff. That’s was also something that was very inspiring for her because in Sirenia everything was just, you know, kind of handed off to her. She didn’t have any creative input. Of course, Morten Veland did everything and I think that’s something that she was missing a lot.  Was to have like a hand in the creative process as well. So, when we presented that to her, I think it was easy for her to say yes.

You have another new member Nicolay Jørni Johnsen. Give me a little background on Nicolay and how he became involved.
Nico is also from the same town as us and he’s a little younger than us. We are the old timers now and he’s like 10 years our junior. So, he brings in a lot of energy and a lot of creativity. Nico is actually the main contributor; I would say to this EP along with myself and Ailyn. He’s done a fantastic job for the band. We have recorded basically everything in his home studio. So he’s a good songwriter. He is a good engineer. He brings in a lot of energy. He’s been playing in some local bands here. He played in a band called Harm that released a couple of albums, and he has also his own project. So, he’s been active in the scene for quite a few years. But like I said, he’s in his 30s and we’re all in our 40s now. I think he was probably like 4 – 5 years old when we released our first album, so it’s kind of funny that he’s like now one of the persons in charge of his once favorite band.  We’re super happy with Nico. He is a great guy and he’s a great acquisition.

Is Jonathan also currently playing with Green Carnation?
Obviously, Jonathan is an extremely active guy and he’s with Green Carnation. He’s doing a lot of session work. He’s been in Gothminister on and off. He has a salsa project. He’s Latino. He’s from Chile, you know, so he’s into different styles. Jonathan is one of the three people in this ownership of the band along with Runar and myself.  So, Jonathan will always have a role in this band, but we are aware that he might not always be available for us. And that’s something that I’ve yet to address properly in the band and we will. But we can say that Jonathan is always going to be a part of Trail of Tears. He is always going to be a part of this family and whether he will sit behind the drums in all the shows or in the studio that is another story. But, yeah. Jonathan is our friend. He is family and he will always be here.

Has new lineup had a chance to play any live shows yet?
We have only played one live show with this lineup and that was a festival in Norway, which was like a year ago. It has turned out to us that playing live is, for me I have to say, the main reason why you are in a rock or a metal band. I mean being in a studio recording and creating is fun, but the ultimate reward is to go up on a stage and present that material for a live audience with everything that can go wrong. For me, that’s part of the thrill. But I think that we have realized that in order for us to really get back on stage, we needed to focus on releasing some new music because we have been inactive for so long. During the last ten years the scene has changed so much that I think that there are only a very few handful of bands that can actually go out and tour on old merits, if you know what I mean. You see a band like Emperor for example, who haven’t released anything in forever but they are able to go out and play shows festivals and so forth.

The feedback that we have gotten all the time was that you need to put out new music. You need to focus on releasing new music. Maybe people just have to see that we can still play our instruments and once we prove that we will become more attractive. Also, what we have communicated all the time is that, we are not a band who can jump on a tour bus for six weeks. That’s not where we are anymore. Obviously that makes us less attractive for a booking agent or a touring operator because we are at this point in our life now where we have responsibilities, full-time jobs. Some of the guys have families. I’m very set in my life now with a fantastic job which I cannot just wave goodbye to. But what we really want to do is to play some good festivals and to play some weekend things. We fly down, we play a festival in Germany, a festival in Belgium, a festival in France and fly back, you know, fine. But obviously those things are expensive. Traveling costs and everything like that now is just totally crazy. But let’s see what happens. We take everything as a bonus. After we’ve released this new music we will see what’s happening. We’ve actually started now talking to booking agencies in festivals for next year, for ’25. So we’ll see what comes out of it.

Photo Credit: Nat Enemede

Did Trail of Tears ever have a chance to play out here in the States?
We did a full tour in the U.S in 2008, I think it was.

What was the experience like?
It was a true confirmation that we had no name in the U.S.

Oh, no.
I mean, for us it was a great experience and fortunately we had good deals and everything. So, we didn’t lose any money on it. We actually went out pretty okay in the end. But we did this tour with Echoes of Eternity from California. We did it with Unexpect from Canada and a couple of other bands that I can’t remember at the time. But we did like 30 shows in January, February 2008. The big cities were okay, New York, L.A, San Francisco, you know. But a lot of the other smaller places we played for pretty few people. Playing wise it was fun, but I would rather play front of 1,200 people than 10 or 120. So there we go.

What did you think of Los Angeles when you were here?
When we were in Los Angeles, we played The Whisky actually.  When you’re on a tour like that you don’t get to see anything, which is kind of tragic actually. Because you see backstage areas, you see, maybe if you’re lucky, a hotel room and whatever you see from the bus window. But we were there for one day in LA. We came in the morning. You wake up in a tour bus and you’re also at the venue, which, of course, we were in West Hollywood when we woke up. We just walked around, and we did the show. We went to The Rainbow afterwards and got drunk and got on the bus and went to the next city. That’s how it works.

At least you got to play a legendary club when you were out here and got to get drunk at the legendary Rainbow.
Definitely. That was one of the highlights on the tour actually. Playing The Whisky and visiting The Rainbow. I mean, obviously we’ve played better venues than The Whisky, but for me, to sit backstage at The Whisky just pinching myself like, “Okay, Jim Morrison was here.” All the metal bands – everyone was here. Every single band that I grew up listening to has been playing this venue and we are here, you know. This is pretty incredible.

I wanted to just ask you about the previous full-length Trail Of Tears album that you did, Oscillation. When you look back on that, what do you think of that 2013 album in retrospect?
To be perfectly honest with you, I haven’t listened to that album in forever because, to me, that album is associated with so many bad feelings and so much negativity. I mean, ultimately it led to the demise of the band at the time and just the whole songwriting process, the whole recording process, everything around that album is so tainted and so drenched in negativity that I can’t even listen to the album, to be perfectly honest with you.

I think the demos we did for that album were 10 times better than the actual results that took us three years to make. Because everything sounds like a puzzle piece of copy and paste from a million different studios and there is no identity left in those songs. Which is a shame because there are a lot of good material on that album. It’s just so written with negativity that it didn’t come through and yeah, it’s a real shame.

Photo Credit: Nat Enemede

With the brand-new Winds of Disdain about to be released, what’s up next for Trail of Tears?
What next up is we are going to look into some of the offers we have now from booking agents, first of all, and festivals. Hopefully we can get some of that together so we can finally bring the band back to playing live. Also we have now, this quite expansive cooperation with the Circle Music in Greece, our new label, who will release first now the EP on May 24th. Also, we are going to re-release all the previous albums on vinyl.  Starting with Disclosure In Red our debut album, which will be released, I think in the autumn. I’m just now preparing to send them files and everything to the label and we have to kind of remake the original cover art because those files are nowhere to be found and the original cover artists passed away, unfortunately a few years ago. So, we’re going to start with that, and I think the idea is that we are going to release those albums with like a six-month interval. So, you will see all the previous Trail of Tears records being released on vinyl. We’re also talking about a new album, like a full-length. We’re just writing songs and we’ll see what happens. This EP is kind of a test for where we are today. Obviously, the scene is completely different now. A lot of things have happened in 10 years. Of course we had streaming before, we had social media before, but now everything works in a completely different way. We’re still trying to figure out everything. A lot of bands today, they are more like social media wizards than they are actually musicians. So, maybe we can learn something from them and pick a few tricks here and there. Because I have no idea how to really work the algorithms and everything like that. I don’t have a clue how it works. We have to, kind of, align ourselves with people who know what the fuck they’re doing because we, for sure, don’t know what we’re doing.

Do you have any messages for Trail of Tears fans here in the States who are reading this now?
This is actually my second interview with U.S press. So that’s nice. I advise people to pick up the EP and check it out. Obviously, it’s all on the streaming platforms. But if you really want to support the band and the label, you know, we’re a small band, they’re a small label, order the CD, order the vinyl, support the band. The small independent artist. I always try to encourage that people, if they like the music, if they like the band, they support the band directly by doing that. The big corporations, they will always have their coffee money and whatever. We need them as well. But, you know, support the small guys!

(Interview by Ken Morton)

Trail of Tears on “Winds of Disdain”: 
Ronny Thorsen – vocals
Ailyn Giménez García – vocals
Runar Hansen – guitars
Nicolay Jørni Johnsen – guitars and programming
Endre Moe – bass

Trail of Tears online:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trailoftearsofficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trailoftearstheband
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/76xPyUXPsTtSfap214AjLd

The Circle Music online
Website: https://thecirclemusic.gr/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thecirclemusic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Circle-Music-109161897443413/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_circle_music/
Bandcamp: https://thecirclemusicfamily.bandcamp.com/