Legacy: Where does the name "Tomorrow's Outlook" come from?

Trond: There are almost as many bad band names as there are bad bands. By that I mean that it is the quality of the music to the greatest extent, that determines what associations you have with a band name. That said, I do not mean that we basically have a bad band name, rather the contrary.  I came up with the name on my own, and after a few searches on Google, it turns out that it is unique in a band context. Thank goodness that we sometime in the future will not to have to change its name to Tomorrow's Outlook Of Fire, he-he!

Legacy: Do you define yourself as a project, recording project or Band ? Why ?

Trond: We've set ourselves up for this question, as we use the words band and project interchangeably in our biography. But when I look at a band with a handful of members who are practicing and playing together, I must deny that we are not. T.O. is composed of musicians from around the world. But we are not foreign to the idea of live performance in the future so I can also say that we are not just a studio project. We are a project sort of like Tobias Sammet's Avantasia, which we are otherwise very inspired by. It might be a little grand to say that it might be us headlining Wacken Open Air and Sweden Rock Festival in a few years, he he. It should however be said that we have a long way to go before we get near the first two Avantasia albums.

Legacy:How do you define your music style ?

Trond: 80's Metal with a touch of both the European and American Power Metal style. Also inspired by Video Game Music (C64, Amiga, NES, SNES and Sega) from the eighties and early nineties.

Legacy: MACHINAE SUPREMACY was one of the first metal bands that combined metal with videogame sounds. What was your cause to combine those styles?

Trond: First and foremost, I want to interject here that our debut album, "34613", carries way too little evidence of being inspired by video game music vs. the vision I originally had in the songwriting process. I wish that we had been inspired even more. But while we are not inspired, like the band you mention, Machinae Supremacy. It is not necessarily the 8-bit sound that captivates most, but instead it just made the eighties and early nineties VGM for what it was, namely, the seductive melodies. Sometimes I also remember the heavy and intense riffs. VGM is definitely the first thing I remember hearing that really captivated me, as attached to the cerebral cortex and in fact has meant something to me. It is not impossible that it is also just video game music that steered me in the direction of metal and hard rock in the early nineties. Therefore, I must say that it is natural for us to combine these two genres.

Legacy: Which kind of music do you prefer in private?

Trond: It is largely within metal, and it is not that I in any way am narrow-minded, but because that is what captivates me. It started in the mid-nineties with bands like Helloween, Gamma Ray, Edguy, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Blind Guardian, Stratovarius, Hammerfall, etc. Eventually, I developed a tremendous interest in the underground scene. It was through it that I came in contact with U.S. / Traditional Metal and most of the 80's metal. And there's no doubt that it is precisely this genre I enjoy most of all today. Some of my favorite bands are Crimson Glory, Lethal, Lizzy Borden, Alcatrazz, Queensryche, Heir Apparent, RIOT, Virgin Steele, Omen and Deadly Blessing. In my opinion it is precisely the United States, and also Germany and Sweden that have the most to offer in the metal scene.

Legacy: You recorded the songs in a long period in different places with different engineers. Why didn't you choose to collect songs after another and then record it “on the fly” ?

Trond: TOMORROW'S OUTLOOK is an unconventional project, and we have found a very unconventional way to record. To record song by song is what works best for us. We didn’t make any decisions on the first album, it just happened, and there was also a necessity since we never had saved funds on hand. We recorded a little bit now and then, depending on when we could spare a few bucks. The advantage was that we all the way had plenty of time to make small changes and adjustments. In some cases, we recorded only small, subtle harmonies, while other times we did bigger procedures. Many of the details of the music is because much of the recording took place over time with the ability to tweak.

Legacy: Having in mind that you recorded in a 3,5 years period. How did your musical skills improve in this period?

Trond: I do not know to what extent it is possible to hear the progression in our song material, but production wise, we have probably learned a great deal. Back in 2007 we did not know what we were doing. The whole thing has been a learning process from A to Z. In the first songs we recorded there was no talk of quality control. Everything went pretty much through as long as it played well and sounded cool. We did not have a clue how to manage the files we received from our artists either. There were many times that Colin Davis of Imperial Mastering tore his hair out, wondering what we were smoking up here in the north, he he. Fortunately, we have re-recorded and glossed over some things.

Legacy: What themes do you want to transport in your lyrics ?

Trond: We write about anything that inspires us, and it can be anything, and we do not want to limit ourselves to just write a few specific things. It is not impossible that one can see a red thread in the texts sometime in the future, but basically we want to be able to write about exactly what may come to mind, and inspires us right there and then when we hear a song . At the moment I wonder if it was a good idea to define our style of music. Just as with the lyrics, we compose and record music, regardless of the genre it may fall under. But do not worry, the apple never falls too far from the tree.

Legacy: How did you get in contact to your guest musicians which are a who of who of 80s Metal style ?

Trond: I had never been in contact with SKI (Norman Kiersnowski) before I, through e-mails, asked him to sing lead vocals on White Lightning. I only knew of him through his incredible vocal performance on Deadly Blessing's Ascend From The Cauldron. Fortunately this became the beginning of a great friendship and collaboration.
The same applies to the story of the highly skilled guitar-player Sami Saarinen, who we found through the Finnish parody band King'O'waR. SKI and Sami were the first professional musicians to get involved in the project.
Gate To Freedom was the second song that we recorded for 34613, and is the only song on the album featuring Scott Oliva on lead vocals. We also had never talked to Scott before we invited him to do some session work for our project, but we knew he was the right guy. We really loved his work on the re-recording of Wind Wraith's The Fortune Teller's Gaze.
We didn't have a regular session drummer by the time we recorded Gate To Freedom, and the search for a permanent solution finally led us to Atlanta, GA and the performing/recording artist Mike Haid. I didn't know much about Mike at the time, only that he was a great and versatile drummer, working as a music journalist for Modern Drummer Magazine and playing with guitar virtuosos like Michael Harris and David Chastain.
Mike later put us in contact with his friend Michael Harris, and that's how we got to know him and why he's also playing on our debut album.
We later also invited New York City music director, producer and session drummer Charlie Zeleny to play with us. I wasn't very familiar with the guy and I hadn't touched base with him before, but we needed another session drummer. I already knew that he was on a recording with Ron Jarzombek (Watchtower) and Alex Webster (Cannibal Corpse) so I figured out that if he was good enough for their projects, then he would definitely be good enough for Tomorrow's Outlook. These days Charlie actually performs with famous acts such as Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess and Deep Purple/Rainbow's lead singer Joe Lynn Turner.
When we in late 2007 were asked to contribute with a track for an upcoming Baptized In Blood tribute to Lizzy Borden, we got in contact with the legendary hard rock singer Graham Bonnet. We wanted to create a buzz around the release, and it was a pleasure to announce the guest appearance by one of our all-time favorite vocalists. It was so cool to work with Graham on 34613. He was very down to earth and a great person. We have already been talking about doing some more collaboration in the future.
Mike Gorham was the fourth singer to be introduced to our project. Back in the late 80's he sang in a few local bands in the New Jersey area that use to open for Deadly Blessing. He was a friend of SKI who just wanted to get his voice out there once again. Mike was first featured on a great duet with SKI on Red Sharks for the upcoming The Revenge Of Azrael tribute to Crimson Glory, but then he totally blew us away on Doubt with his strong and typical american metal voice and also with his great song-writing talent.
Later, on a collaboration with Andreas and I, Mike put all his talents and effort into writing some of the best lyrics and vocal melodies I've ever heard in a song before. We loved the final result so much that we decided to try and get one of our all-time favorite singers to do a reprise of the song for the end of the album. It was beyond our deepest imagination that we could really get Michael Kiske (EX Helloween) to participate on the track. Well, the rest is history!

Legacy: Is T.O. planned as a one record-project or do you have future plans ?

Trond: We hope and believe that we will have the opportunity to record a sequel to "34613". We already have some exciting ideas for both the artwork and songs, and we have already recorded two demo songs. “Fly Away”, with the appropriate production, is reminiscent of Edguy / Avantasia at its best, and “Outlaw”, which is closer to the American eighties metal. We strive for continuity, also plan to use many of the same musicians on the sequel.  Trio Oliva, SKI & Gorham on vocals, everyone will participate in the next slice. If there is a possibility that we have some prominent guest vocalists on the block who had been incredibly cool to work with. I can mention names like Bruce Dickinson, Michael Kiske (Yes! - We would love to work with him again!), Kai Hansen, Ralf Scheepers, Tobias Sammet, Tom Malicoat (Lethal) and Todd La Torre (Crimson Glory). I've already been in contact with a couple of these. In the case of Bruce Dickinson I do not know how realistic it is to even consider him, but as they say, ‘nothing ventured nothing gained’. Otherwise we are entirely dependent on selling lots of copies of the debut album, and also having sponsors work with us if we are going to be able to reach our goal with a sequel within a reasonable time. We have already made some steps to reduce costs for the next recording. Among other things, we will save a lot of money just by recording the drums here in Norway, as well as record all the bass and most of the guitars in Murphy's Cube Studio, home studio of Øystein Kvile Hanssen (Cyclophonia).

Legacy: Regarding your CD-Line up, how will you, if planned, go on stages?

Trond: As mentioned earlier, we do not dismiss the idea to take Tomorrow's Outlook on stage sometime in the future. But it must also be done properly! So, no half-hearted attempts by trying to stack together a crew with only a handful of local musicians. Should there be a question of live performance, it will not happen without several of the respective musicians participating on the album. Otherwise, this is not something we have talked that much about yet.  It will probably be a much hotter topic in a few years when hopefully the sequel beats down like a bomb in the metal scene. We have lots of cool ideas and are confident that the next album will make us a household name within the melodic metal music.