Karnivool: "Never let it take you 10 years to make a record. It will drive you crazy"

After a wait that lasted thirteen whole years, Karnivool finally return with an album worthy of the anticipation. On the occasion of the release of "In Verses", we had the pleasure of speaking with Ian Kenny in a wide-ranging interview. The iconic frontman guides us through the labyrinthine path of the decade-long creative process, describes the struggle between hope and despair that permeates the lyrics, and shares his thoughts on the impact of artificial intelligence on music and the challenge of translating such a multilayered sound to the stage.

Hello, Ian, and welcome to Rocking.gr! How are you?

Hey, man, how you doing? I'm good. How are you?

I’m really happy we had a chance to talk. I have to admit, before we start, that I'm a huge fan of the band, so it's quite an honor and a pleasure to talk with you, especially since I've had the chance to listen to your new album for a while. First of all, how does it feel having a new album so many years after the previous one? What's the feeling for you and the band?

The feeling is good, man. I can't believe we got here. I can't believe we got through it and that we finally completed the record that we've been thinking about for, like, a long time and working on for a long time. So, yeah, it's feeling good, man.

A bit of celebration is probably the best way for it.

I know that you take your time always with your albums to work them into perfection. Was there any specific moment during the compositional and creative process that you realized, "Okay, now we have the heart of the record. We have something that really is the identity for this new album and what we're trying to achieve"?

Yeah, there were actually moments of that through the whole process where you'd find a part of a song that you really knew was going to be the whole backbone for that song. Therefore, it gave the song a position on the record, right? Even though we hadn't completed the record, we were like, "That one definitely is going to make it. It's that, that this whole section here is what it's supposed to be." Little moments like that. And then maybe as the record was coming together, we probably didn't really know that until the last stages, the last approaches of the record, when we understood each piece fully. I think at that point, we understood what type of record we had made, and at that point, I guess we felt like, "Oh yes, finally, we've made the right record here."

Because there were a lot of times, man, where we just didn't know what the best move was next. So we pushed pause on this record a lot. We stopped working on it because we had hit several walls, and it was like, "Fuck, this isn't right." And it's hard when you don't have the answers. You're like, "What is it? Or where is it?" So, yeah, we'd stop and we would let it come to us, as opposed to pushing or trying to push to find the whole thing. You'd let it come to you a bit and let the whole thing breathe, which is hard. It's a hard thing to do, because all you want to do is just achieve, you know? You want to feel like you're winning, and you want to feel like you're doing the right thing, and that everything is working and everything's okay. And the truth is, it's not all the time. It's ups and downs, man. It's creativity, it's this fucking thing that you know, you live through the best you can, and try and love it as much as you can, even when it's destroying your brain.

Do you think that also having some sort of pressure from your past discography and fans expectations is something that plays a role in your creative decisions? And maybe also impacting the decision making that led to a lot of time for this album to be completed?

Yeah, I'm not sure that we felt inherently within us pressure to deliver something as good or the same as the previous records or something different. I think we know, whenever we finally get there, we believe that when we get there it will be enough. It will be good enough. It will be what it's supposed to be. The hard part is just getting there. But the pressures… maybe the pressures were like just knowing that we've got amazing fans, and they were constantly asking for new music and for more Karnivool. So that was a very real pressure. And I think we got to moments where we're like, "Oh, I think we have the record. We could maybe get in the studio and record this now. Is it ready? Maybe not. Is it great? Maybe not." So, yeah, we felt pressure. We could have got it out sooner, maybe, but I don't think it would be like it's meant to be.

Were there any ideas creeping up again - maybe even ideas that couldn't work on previous albums - that you utilized for this album? And maybe, if you could share which tracks these are and what… maybe it was a riff, maybe it was a melodic idea, or a vocal line?

Dude, yeah, there are a few. Even ideas off the back of “Asymmetry”—there were leftover echoes and riffs and ideas from that. I think maybe the next time we were writing, we were in Budapest, Hungary, and parts of "Ghost," the first song on the record, some of those verses and riffs were written then, back in like 2014. And maybe before that, parts of the verses—maybe the vocal ideas, maybe a few key lines for "Opal" — they were probably before that. The actual riff at the end of "Opal", that was from a riff from, like, either the “Themata” era or “Sound Awake” somewhere there, which I completely forgot about until Drew and I were discussing it in an interview recently. He's like, "Oh yeah, that riff was something." John, the bass player, was like, "As we were working on 'Opal,' and it was coming together, that riff was called Smegma or something, whatever the hell it's called. That would work there." And we're all like, "When was that riff?" And it was like, man, 15 years ago. So it's crazy. You never intend to use stuff like that. I think what's in the past is in the past, but it's crazy what things will resurface and why. I mean, that's… that's mental.

That's crazy. You also have a different mind space at the time, so when you come back to an idea and the way that you utilize it as a band, you have new experience and your new mindset of how this could work.

Of course. And things that did come back from those very early Genesis ideas, when they came through into Carnival 2025, they were reworked and kind of brought to the fold, brought to the new… you know, nice.

So I believe the theme of the album has been described as a journey through frustration and catharsis. Could you give us a bit of sneak peek behind the curtains? What was the lyrical concept? What were the concepts that inspired the song, themes, and lyrics?

Well, there's a bit to it. I think in the lyrics, there is a summation of, you know, 10 years of working on a creative space with some guys that share a creative space and truly love it, but also trying to navigate life and this world and our mental health and a whole bunch of ups and downs, knowing all along that if we can get it to the end, we will be much better, and things will be much better. So it was a hard road, I think, for everyone. I think everyone was tested.

So within those lyrics, there's a bit of reflection. There's a little bit of hope, but there's hopelessness as well. And there's a bit of loss and refining things, and falling out of love, a bit of loss. Really, it was an interesting way to do a record. I don't recommend it. Don't ever take 10 years to make a record. It'll do your head in. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of that in the record. It sort of just plays in between hope and hopelessness.

And you know, the cover to this album is a composite of a few photos, and it's really like a reflection of the space we were in. If you were to look at it, it was just this wasteland where we were walking through it together, trying to find ideas and inspiration and the right words and the right language and the right things. It was lonely a lot of the time in there. And it was weird—just like the cover is, there's weird shit on there, like a fallen jet, you know, there's a weird thing. But in the artwork, the last thing that is there is that tree—there's something new again. It's a bit beaten, but it's new. It's beginning again. So I guess that's where we feel we're at. We're beginning again.

And things are feeling good on that side.

Great to hear. A lot of bands mention you as an inspiration, as a band they were always looking up to. You've also done some guest vocals, also for your fellow Aussies Northlane. I was wondering, did you have any inspiration from other music, keeping up with new bands that are coming up, and maybe this affected your approach and the way that you were thinking about the album and seeing how the progressive scene in general has been growing in the past few years?

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I probably wasn't so focused on the progressive scene. It's a little hard to try and recall the inspiration because of such a long form of time making a record. To be honest, my memory is patchy on it. But what I can say is, yeah, there are definitely times when we've been on tour with different bands. We've been out with Cog, we've been out with The Ocean—some really excellent bands to watch do their thing night after night. And yeah, we saw a few bands as well. While we've been on tour, we managed to get to a few festivals, and we saw Tesseract, and we saw those other guys… what are those clown guys? Clown Call, fuck. They were good, man. So things like that, we always take things away from touring, and we always learn a lot when we're playing in the live arena with different bands. Over the years, touring with bands, that always leaves something—maybe that spilled into the record. Outside that, it's just things that we listen to, things that turn you on, things that make you remember why you love music.

And for me, that's anything, man, like a big, good country song. For me, it's not necessarily the progressive thing. I probably should pay more attention to the progressive thing. It's a wonderful space, but yeah, I'm usually listening to other dumb shit.

Another point that you’ve received a lot of acclaim for, is how your albums sound. Always very organic, but always very grandiose and very imposing from a sonical perspective. Having released a couple of singles before the album, and taking into account the experience and technological advancements, was there any specific target in terms of how you wanted your album to sound? From my point of view, it's an organic but modern sound. But I'd like also to see if you had any specific direction, and maybe differentiate the sound of the album compared to your past.

Sure, I think we would like each time we make a record for it to feel new and sound new. But I think what's important to us in sound is to make sure that the details are there, even in the playing. So it's all about what's in the hands, what's actually being put down. That wants to feel organic, that wants the dynamic in all of that, the push and the pull, wants to feel like it's being played. Every transition is a played-in sort of thing. And you want that to feel a certain way. And the sound of things, I guess Carnival, once it gets enough meat on the bone, naturally forms its own sound. As long as it sounds real and big enough and delicate, considering all those spaces in between that we like to creep into. Yeah, I love the way this record sounds. Forrester has done his thing, and it's so good. Again, we've just exercised that - Carnival and Forrester working together. It's a good thing, man. We get results beyond what we thought we could get. It's exciting, amazing.

You mentioned sounding real. So I'm gonna ask you something that has been troubling me and maybe other musicians all over the world - about AI and how you see artificial intelligence creeping into the world of art, and music in specific. What is your take on this? How does it feel creating music that is not something for instant gratification, but requires a lot of listens and focus, while people are distracted and AI is feeding artificial music to our headphones?

It still feels very new. If AI-generated music becomes more mainstream than organic music, that would be something I'd look at closely. But why? What is going on here? If it starts to become monetized, and record companies start buying the software to champion AI music and create a whole other industry around that… I don't know what that would mean for live artistry in our industry. That could be a slippery slope. AI-generated songs can sometimes be fun to fuck around with. Of course, we are curious by nature. You want to know. But you can hear that it's not a real thing. I've listened to a lot of it. There's some stuff online, like Funk Soul Brother, AI versions of Thermata in a funk band. It's weird because I'm conflicted and confused about it. Initially, I said, "Don't want to hear it," but then I listened… it's pretty good. It's only because it's familiar and I'm hearing it reimagined. Outside that, I don't know. It'll probably flood the world with some average stuff quickly, maybe develop into something compelling. I don't know.

Going back to the real thing and playing instruments - you’re about to start a new tour in a couple of months, I believe in April. What are the main challenges of bringing the songs of the new album to a live setting, especially for older songs?

That's a really good question, because we are in rehearsals as we speak. It's a bit of a mountain to climb. We've recorded the record, the songs, and put them together in parts and layers. There's so much going on, especially in the guitar work—Drew's layering and his approach, his whole patchwork, his tapestry of parts, is quite involved. Both Hoss and Drew are literally working out who's going to play what and what best serves the song. Because there's too many parts, you've got to pick the one that works best and serves the song. It's a bit of a headache. But it takes time to work it all out. I wish we knew and learned everything before we recorded, but we don't work like that. We start recording and add things in, build the songs the way we want, and then get into the room and it's like, "Fuck, how are we gonna do that?" But we figure it out.

Okay, I have to ask- there are a lot of fans in Greece that would love to see you play here. Is there any chance of that happening sometime in the future?

I surely hope so. We're back in Europe in April and May, predominantly club shows on our headlining tour. But we will be back mid-2027, looking at festival sets. If we could include Greece, that would be amazing. Where would we play? What do you suggest?

There are a lot of festivals and club shows. My personal preference would be a club show, for intimacy and air conditioning, because summer festivals can be quite hot. One great place is an outdoor theater on a hill on top of Athens. We saw Opeth and Leprous play there a couple of years ago.

That would be amazing. I’ll get my people to talk to your people.

We need to make it work! One last question: it took 13 years for the new album. With the new momentum, are we going to wait another 13 years for the next one?

I hope I get to speak to you soon, but I hope it's not 13 years (laughs)

Hopefully it will be when you visit us for a live show! Thanks for taking the time and for continuing to release amazing music.

Yes, it's Nikos. Pleasure talking to you. I hope to speak again sometime.