Working together as a band with only three members helps keep everything within a tight circle, and it remains a band effort, where all the member’s influences are blended in together as Stensland explains, “Tor Atle on drums is more into modern, brutal and extreme metal, always on the search for the perfect groove. If there was another bass player, this would have turned out in some other direction as well. Erik on bass is a fully-fledged Manowar freak that plays loads of chords and strange stuff on the bass that stands out quite special. When he plays he creates a massive wall of sound. I merely have my interest in the prog and metal from when the ‘80s turned into ‘90s like Fates Warning, Psychotic Waltz, Megadeth, Testament, Death and so on, but I think we have found a unique combination and a ‘style of our own,’” explains Stensland, who now speaks about how he writes lyrics, “When it comes to the lyrics, I don't have any rules, but everything that affects me in the daily situations may end up as a lyric inspiration or something. Some of the lyrics come to me as personal issues and stuff that irritates me. Some inputs comes to me from watching the news and issues in the world today, and a bit of modern technology stuff is always interesting and makes a special twist to it, the ocean and the moon inspires me as well when it comes to writing lyrics…”

The band worked with renowned metal producer Jacob Hansen for ‘Conspiracy in Mind,’ which was recorded in a three-week period. Hansen is well known for recording bands such as Rob Rock and Pyramaze among many, many others, and his ear for such a solid, hard driven sound helped bring out the best for Communic’s dark sound and as Stensland explains, it was another great feat to begin with, “I think that the sound that Jacob produced for this album is very powerful but also as clean as the songs and details on our sound needed,” says Stensland, “Jacob Hansen uses ProTools, and we used real drums and amps. I was really looking forward to have the production done with Jacob Hansen, and I really felt that he had something to offer to our kind of music and to help us getting THE sound that pays respect to the songs. I knew what sound I was after and I think we came damn pretty close. Maybe Jacob is into more extreme music, but he has a good ear, and was easy to work with, and did whatever he could to meet our criteria, ideas and crazy stuff that we made him suffer for. Also that we could work alone at night, recording guitars and stuff on our own, overtime was a big plus, and hopefully we can work with Jacob next time as well.”

For any band who isn’t signed, it is hard to get a demo reviewed, hell in many cases getting a record that is on a big label reviewed might be hard in some cases, but Communic beat the odds and somehow their demo made it to the offices of Rock Hard Magazine and not only was reviewed, but was given the award of “Demo of the Month” with one of the songs appearing on the sampler ultimately causing a domino effect that would lead up to the current standing of the band. “I guess a few labels recognized this and kept an eye out for us, and after just a few months after the demo was recorded,” elaborates Stensland, “we had a few interested parties that wanted to work with us. I don’t know if this was the breaking point, but we was actually quite surprised that everyone just kicked on the demo, and the final album sailed into Sound Check Position #1 in Rock Hard as well. Really amazing.”

One of the biggest things the Rock Hard Magazine feature led up to was the eventual deal with Nuclear Blast Records, but regardless, there were a lot of dues paid way before the article was published as well as finding a decent management company to help the band with business decisions. “We had tried the "hard way", through the underground and through numerous concerts in our local area in previous bands, but it didn't do it for us. It didn't get us anywhere...,” states Stensland, “We knew that we had some cool songs, and wanted to make an as professional demo as possible, with as good production as possible, that really would show the potential in our band and material. The Idea was to NOT send the demo out to all and everyone, so we only printed only 100 copies, and was aiming to get the band signed to a decent management as the first task, and it was found in the Danish based management Intromental soon after the demo was done. We had already been in contact with Nuclear Blast that really liked the demo, and we started to work more directly towards different labels that we had on our list, to get the band signed, and after some months the final decision landed on Nuclear Blast, and I couldn't me more happy right now. It may look like we are coming from out of nowhere, but we have actually been around for many years now, trying to get our music reckon through different bands during the past ten years, pushing demos and stuff through the underground and other sources. Maybe just the right amount of luck and good timing this time around…”

“NB has done a great job for us already, and we are a fairly new and young band on this label, but it’s well known that they put a lot of efforts in to promotion of their bands, and also putting bands out on tour, so its like a dream come true to have our debut album ready for the masses right now.”

The band has just come back from a three week European tour and holds out hopes for more dates, but nothing is definite yet, “we played some cool festival gigs and other shows, so right now we don’t know if there will be another tour in the fall, hopefully. So now we have been in Europe, so maybe South America would be cool. I hear that Norwegian bands do well there, and also North America would be amazing to visit.”

When most metalheads think of Norway or Scandinavia in general, the term extreme metal gets thrown around quite a bit, forgetting that bands such as The Flower Kings and Hanoi Rocks had their origins there, “Norway has always been put on the spot in the press for its extreme metal,” continues Stensland who now speaks of metal’s saturation in Norway, “so there hasn’t been much room for the other band struggling REAL HARD to break through and to get recognized. There are some good progressive and power bands in Norway these days that have manage to get signed to labels outside of Norway. We are just doing the music that we like to play and don’t think too much about what other are doing or expect from us. Right now it seems that the thrash metal is going strong, and I like it, hopefully more progressive stuff will break the light and move into the scene again, but there are so many bands these days so it’s quite hard to keep track.”

Wrapping things up, Stensland says that the band has plans to begin writing for the follow up to the record, but at this point they are taking things one day at a time, “After the summer we will start to focus on the next album,” concludes Stensland, “we have some songs ready by now already, and have loads of ideas for the rest of the album as well. If everything goes as I’m planning, we will have our 2nd album ready sometime early 2006, but it depends on how much touring there will be supporting "Conspiracy In Mind" because I would like to do another tour to support our debut, but we will see if we can get something going.”

In the end, Communic have conquered the task of being able to establish themselves with such a solid album sounding like a bunch of seasoned veterans rather than a new band altogether, who knows where the next record will lead the band.

-Tommy “Hashman” Hash