Hi Robert!
First of all, I wish to thank you to give us some of your time to answer our questions.

WORK OF ART gathered in 1992 but you waited until 2008 to issue your first album. What happened during all these years?
Well, when we first started in 1992, we had bunch of songs but no one to sing them. At this point Lars was only playing keyboard. We looked everywhere but couldn’t find a proper singer. Meanwhile, the three of us were starting to get work as musicians so WOA had to wait. In 1995, we finished our musical studies and went our separate ways in order to work on our careers as musicians. Then in 1998, our drummer Herman suggested that we should try and records some songs again and let Lars sing. I was a bit reluctant at first because I only knew Lars as a keyboard player and back up singer but when I heard him sing our songs, it’s was obvious that we had found our singer. However, we never did finish those recording because by then, we all had commitments to other bands and projects so it was impossible for us to get our schedules in sync. Then 2002 we gave WOA a new shoot and this time we were determined not to give up without having at least completed a proper demo. We started the actual demo recording in 2003 but things progressed very slowly. Again, we were just too busy working on other projects. In January last month, we finally managed to complete our demo. We uploaded it on MySpace and the very same day FRONTIERS offered us a contract, and here we are now a year later!

Isn’t it a little difficult to have a deal with a label (FRONTIERS Rec.) and let them wait for 15 years?
No, FRONTIERS contacted us last year after hearing our demo.

To have integrated Lars SÄFSUND as singer and keyboards is a very good choice as his voice fits perfectly to your style.
His voice is one of the best voices I ever heard. And he just keeps getting better and better. It’s funny, all this years of looking for a singer and it turns out that he has been in the band the whole time? The guy is so talented it’s scary, he produced the whole album as well! As for the keyboards, since I write most of our songs on keyboard, I do the main keyboards but then Lars adds or sometimes removes whatever he feels it’s necessary. However, on the two tracks he wrote, I had nothing to do with the keyboards!!

Talking about your style, you operate in the “real” AOR genre, which is a little amazing for a band coming from Sweden. The references we have from there are playing Heavy Metal, Power or extreme metal. Even though some of Swedish artists are references in melodic hard rock, as Tommy DENANDER, for instance.
Yeah, actually there a lot of great AOR bands in Sweden. Bands like STREET TALK and artists like Göran EDMAN but I guess Tommy is the most famous one. However, AOR music is not very big in Sweden; people outside Sweden tend to think that because of all the bands coming from here but really, AOR is very underground in Sweden as well.

You emphasize on your passion for TOTO and it’s clear on the record, as some of your track would fit on the former albums of the Americans.
Oh, thank you so much for saying that. And yes, we are the first to admit that we love and are heavily influenced by TOTO. We are really proud to be compared to them. What better influences can you have anyway?? ;-) And please remember, we usually spend our time in musical projects that sounds nothing like Toto so for us, Work Of Art is a like a musical “water whole” were we can allow ourselves to sound however we like.

Some would say that you even titled 2 of your tracks with Latin feminine names. Isn’t it too much?
You can never have enough girl names on a record ;-) Actually, we also recorded as song called “Valerie” but it didn’t make it to the album. 3 songs with feminine names would probably be a little too much though.

Camelia, is really TOTO-like. Is it respect, inspiration? Some said, over the Internet, pure copy. Where is the limit, according to you?
Well, the limit is if you actually steal a significant part of song, like a verse, a chorus or a chunk of lyrics. “Camelia” is our ultimate tribute to Toto but no section of that song is stolen. It’s more in the way we arranged it that makes it sound like Toto. We could have arranged it in a different way but the song wouldn’t have been as good then. I’m actually proud to have written such a “Totoish” sounding song; it’s not the easiest thing to do.
So, bottom line, we rather make GREAT SONGS that sound like Toto than make SHITTY SONGS that not sounds like Toto. For us, it’s always focus on making the best possible song and not on trying to sound like Toto for the sake of sound like Toto. But we don’t mind sounding like Toto at all.

I personally love Artwork, which for me brings something fresher in nowadays productions. It’s AOR, no doubt with a sound closer to what was done in 80’s or 90’s. Was it your wish?
Oh yes, I think for Work Of Art, that’s the era that influenced us most. And the way we chose to arrange our or songs really calls for that kind of productions.

Of course, all Artwork tracks are not in the same mood. Why Do I is wonderful in a Hard FM style, while Like No Other is more groovy. Cover Me is really catchy with a nice chorus. On One Hour, you play a magnificent solo. This sticks quite well to WORK OF ART style. Among those styles, which one do you prefer ?
I think the “typical” Work Of Art song is tracks like “Why Do I” or “Her Only Lie” but what I prefer is the diversity of all this songs that you mentioned. For me as song writer, it was really exciting to write a whole album and try to stay in the same style but still being diverse. It was great to think in a whole album format rather than just one song at the time. Also, I’m very grateful for the two tracks Lars wrote “Once in a Lifetime” and “Like No Other” because it helped making the record more diverse.

I read in the «  track by track » you wrote for the FRONTIERS Rec. Website that the songs were written along the life of the band, from the beginning, as Her Only Lie which had been written in 1992. Isn’t it too difficult to have tracks dating for the 90’s sound properly in the 21st century?
No, as I said earlier, we didn’t work that much on Work Of Art during all these years so that song still sounded fresh to us. However, there’s a lot of songs that we felt wasn’t very good anymore so most of the songs on the record are rather new. I finished almost all of them after we got our contract last year so to the other guys in the band, most tracks were new when we recorded the album.

Artwork cover is very dark, nearly severe. To my opinion, this does not match with your music. Why have you made that choice?
You have to ask the guy who designed the cover about that. I had a different idea for the cover and we did choose between a couple of different covers but in the end we went with this one. I think this cover suites our music well in the sense that black is always “classy”. That also why we did dress up in suites, because we think our music is slick and wanted the record and ourselves to look that way. However, I got my copy of our CD two days ago and I totally agree with you, the overall impression of the booklet is way too dark! Next time we’ll try pink instead ;-)

Let’s talk about the Internet. Thanks to MySpace, I had a direct contact with the band, with you, eventually. And I am making this interview for a French-based webzine. Do you think that the Web is now essential ?
Oh yes, we built our whole reputation thanks our MySpace site. I don’t think we wouldn’t have reached so many people as quickly if it wasn’t for our site. MySpace is a really great marketing tool for new bands!

This evolution, allowing direct contact with your fans, is something good for you ?
It means everything to a new band like us. The reason why we did pull ourselves together and finished our demo is because I, out of utter frustration, uploaded an unfinished “rough mix” version of “Why Do I?” on Myspace just to show the rest of the guys that people still do care about this kind of music. We directly got so much positive feedback and that was the main motivation for us to finally complete our demo!

Hard Rock, to its broader extend is going fairly well in Scandinavia, in Sweden particularly. And Sleaze rock is becoming a trademark for northern countries. In France we have excellent bands as well but they find difficulties to export and play outside France. What is the recipe, what is the magic formula to change this ?
I don’t think I’m the right person to ask but I can offer you one theory. In the mid 90´s, Swedish song writers suddenly became very popular. They wrote and produced artist like Britney Spears, Madonna, West Life, Back Street Boys, Celine Dion etc. All of those great artists flew over to Stockholm just to record. This caught the attention of the Swedish government who called it “the Swedish music export wonder” and ever since they’ve contributed a lot of money to different projects to help export Swedish music even more. That might have something to do with it.

Artwork shall be in the shops on the 22nd of February. Have you already started to write material for the next album?
Yes and No, I’ve started to write some new material but if it will be for Work Of Art or some other AOR project is too early to tell. We are really in no hurry because writing good songs takes time. We don’t want to rush anything at this point.
Have you planned to tour (with some dates in France !!!) ?
No plans so far but we would love to come to France and play if we get the opportunity.

To finish, what would you say to our HardRock80 readers ?
Well, thanks to all of you who cared to read this interview. Also, a huge thanks to all of you who has supported us on our Myspace site and elsewhere. It means everything to us and I hope our album will live up to everyone’s expectations. Hope to see you soon!

Many thanks Robert for answering our questions, I wish you a lot of success with WORK OF ART.