Hey Guys, please give us a short introduction of the band.

Come Sleep is one of three bands that make the Lingua Collective. This is the darkest of our projects and it came to life as a valve for ideas that did not fit into Lingua. It has grown since then and is now a beast with a heart of its own.

So, your debut album has just been released, tell us about it.

The album is called ”the burden of ballast”. Musically it is a trip through many specters of this wide genre and lyrically it deals with primal wounds and their effect in our grown life as we attempt to adapt to everyday life.

How have the reactions been like so far?

They’ve been good, every now and then (read: every day) I google ”the burden of ballast” and there are a lot of reviews out there and many of them blow me away with their welcoming words. It seems that the listeners are feeling the same as well, our myspace-hits have tripled since the release.

What is the difference between "The Burden OF Ballast" and your EP "The Skull Of Ahab"

They were recorded the same way, live and with little or no overdubs and musically they are quite alike, even though the arrangements are a bit more complicated this time and the sound is dry and naked instead of drenched in reverbs. The big difference is in the vocal efforts, on which I spent almost no time in 2005, I saw them as a necessity instead of an instrument. On ”the burden of ballast” I made sure that the vocals never got boring or felt as something that needed to be there and instead were there for a reason. I am very pleased with the end result, vocally, lyrically and musically.


You recorded your album live, which intensifies the emotion in the songs I guess. Were there any problems doing that?

No, we did that for the first time on the Rövfitta demo in 2004 and really liked the way it sounded so we decided to stick to that way of recording. Except for the debut of Lingua, which was based on a demo recorded differently and in need of similar sound to sound like an album and not two demos compiled as an album. It saves time and helps us keep the energy in the songs. And it’s more fun playing together rather than alone and without the inspiration of the grooving moves of your band members.

From the info-sheet I understood that you guys have 3 bands, is that right? If so, what are the differences between the bands and why 3 of them?

I’ve already told you about Come Sleep. Lingua was the first band and is still the main project, it is best described as melancholic and energetic. It sounds a bit like Dredg, A Perfect Circle and Deftones but with a vibe of its own, of course. It’s the essence of what we do and the other projects are there to prevent us from infesting the original idea of the band.  Rövfitta started as a joke and a vent to release the pressure of always being so serious and pretentious in Lingua. It’s rude, it’s obnoxious. It’s just plain fun. Thrash-punk at its finest.

Was that an idea you had from the beginning or did it develop while recording?

There was never a plan to have more than one band, we just like to play with ideas and some of them see the light of day for others, some don’t. Who knows, maybe we’ll start more bands, maybe we’ll quit some. Time will tell where our hearts will be in the future. With this mentality we maintain the beauty in creating and fun in playing and the result, I hope, can be heard in our releases. I could never keep to one type of music and with these guys who feel the same, I don’t have to start bands with others, have multiple rehearsal rooms and buy new rigs all the time.  We keep it in the family. Our rehearsals are pretty schizophrenic I tell you.

There are a lot of bands you seem to draw influences from, but you keep your own sound. What is your recipe for good songwriting?

To me, who feels that no one can ever again do anything unique and original in music, the key is to borrow, not to steal. You can definitely hear the musical influences from Neurosis, Isis, Mastodon, Cult of Luna and so forth in our music and to try and deny my vocal influences from Steve von Till would be foolish. They’re there, but we try not to make it that obvious. And since we’ve been playing together for over eight years now, I think it’s safe to say we’ve developed a sound of our own. Maybe not the most original in the world, but still something we can call our own.

You guys are from Sweden and there are always good bands coming from there, what are your favorite newcomers or favorites that we should keep an eye on?

How much space you got? There are so many it’s hard to keep track of them, Jesaiah make excellent hardcore in the school of Botch, Fingerspitzengefühl make weird but beautiful stoner-metal (their lead singer Jesper can be heard on our song “storm awaits”), Digression Assassins sound like if Dillinger Escape Plan and The Blood Brothers were making love, The Goatboys are new but sound promising. Also, check out Miosis, Kongh, Memfis, … and then I can’t think of any more. I probably forgot half of them. And that’s just within the metal genre, there’s some real good pop, ambient, electro and reggae too.

I don’t know if it was just on the promo version, but there are no lyrics included on the CD, they seem pretty interesting though, from the words you can understand. So what are your lyrics about mostly and where do you get influenced?

I’m influenced by everyday life. The difficulties we struggle with and the paths we choose to try and reach happiness. Whose feet we trample, whose we worship. The weirdness of it all. Most lyrics start with a perception or an experience and then gets twisted in words and influenced by other people and their similar experiences and in the end they are mostly fiction but with a energy in the words that leave you with a feeling. Mostly a bad one, haha!
I don’t know why we chose to leave the lyrics out of the sheet, I’m really pleased with my work. I never even thought of putting them in there. Maybe I’ll speak to our web designer and have him post them on the net.


It is possible to buy your album digitally, what do you think about itunes and mp3s and so on. Don't you think it is nicer to have a Vinyl record or at least a cd with artwork and so on in your hands? How do you personally deal with this?

You can buy “The Burden of Ballast” for circa 7 Euro from Klicktrack.com.
I love good artwork. I buy almost everything from Tool, Menomena and Radiohead just because they do really different things with album covers and think outside the jewel case. And I used to love collecting everything an artist had done if I got into one of their albums. I have about 600 CD’s at home to prove it. But nowadays I keep to downloading. It mostly cheaper (I rarely buy) and it takes a lot less space. Plus it’s way more environmental, imagine what it would do to the environment if the whole industry went online and no CD’s were printed? And it helps artist get their music out without labels involved. The Five Big will probably run the industry for quite some years to come, but legal and illegal downloading are going to force them to rethink their way of business. I love that.

For me, it’s better to be heard than bought, so if people download our album I have no problem with it. I don’t see us making big bucks on this, if we ever grow (and to grow you need to reach and what better way to reach than downloading?) and are able to tour, that’s where the money is for us. not in royalties. We have a good deal with Version Studio Records, but that’s because we are friends. Royalties are so low nowadays that bands like Radiohead make more money letting their fans pay whatever they want for their latest release. As many as 60 percent downloaded it for free and the rest paid about four Euro and still they made more money of it than what they did when they were bound to EMI. That pretty much tells you how much the labels take for their part of the work, and for most artists that are not world famous, that’s never going to pay off. Instead, they keep repaying for expenses made on their account. So to not have to go through that, I could stick to releasing our stuff online and have my “money loss” come from downloading instead of high fees from my label. Give to the poor, not to the rich.

Do you have favorite songs on the record? Well, I do, and I think every band likes some songs more than others because of different reasons. So tell us!

Which one is your favorite? Mine varies from week to week. The opening “Be The End” is a really powerful song because of its simplicity. I like the originality of “Never Conquered”, it has a ‘94-’95 metal sound over it, a weird mix between Type o Negative and Unsane. I’m really pleased with how “His Beast Is Done” turned out, being the most unfinished song when we entered the studio and I shouldn’t forget “By the Unknown” that was written just a couple of weeks before entering the studio. That one is some of our best work I think. I have difficulties listening to “Crave Change” and “For Sleep” because I never like re-recordings of my own songs, but people seem to like them anyway so I guess it’s just me. I always think we can do better even if we’ve done something really good. I’m not striving for perfection. I just want to keep evolving.

Mine is "Storm Awaits". Great song! Anyways are there any touring plans? I read that some of you guys have children at home, this makes a big tour pretty hard to realize isn't it?

Part of writing music and being in a band is to play live and, if you’re lucky, to tour. Me and Thomas have kids and that makes touring difficult. Not impossible, but there’s no way we can do as many other small bands do and use our vacations for touring time and use our private money to “invest” in the future. It’s just not fair to put your family through that. And that makes it a bit harder to make a tour reality, but not a impossibility. But this is like golf to us, a really expensive hobby, so we’ll keep making music even if the band “doesn’t make it”. It’s just too much fucking fun!

So that is it for now, if there is anything else you wanna tell the readers, go on...
Cheers // Misha.