INTERVIEW: Jan Pauwels of Tim’s Favourite

Interview with Jan Pauwels from Tim’s Favourite
Interviewed by Laura Barnes

Hey Ever Metal readers! I know I’ve been silent for a while, but don’t worry – I’ve been cooking up something good in the meantime. Remember back in January, when I had an existential crisis over how good Tim’s Favourite’s latest album was? Well, I liked it so much that I just had to pick up my phone and tell the guys directly! That’s right, I managed to get front man Jan Pauwels’ on the phone, and he was kind enough to humour me for a wide-ranging conversation that lasted about… An hour? An hour and a half? Either way, considering I normally fall into a catatonic state if forced to socialise for more than fifteen minutes, I think we did pretty well! So, without further ado, I present to you… The Interview! 

Hey Jan! Thank you for agreeing to speak to us today. Really excited to get this interview underway. So for people who don’t know the band very well, you guys describe yourselves as ‘Zen Metal’. How would you describe that to others?

Haha! Yeah, I don’t think there’s any other band that plays Zen Metal. What does it stand for though? Well, the idea is that we achieve a culmination of Heavy Metal and a Psychedelic, trance-like atmosphere. We don’t always do this, but we try. That’s what it stands for. 

That sounds about right. I remember listening to the album and going “Oh, so that’s Zen Metal”.

Ehh, it’s what we try to do, but we don’t always manage it. There are some songs that are a little less zen, a little less psychedelic, but Zen Metal was my goal from the beginning. As a kid, I listened to bands like The Doors, and I loved their song ‘The End’. Adding that sort of influence to Heavy Metal is something I’ve always wanted to do. 

On the heavier tracks, like ‘Not In Our Name’, there seems to be a lot of layers to your sound, and it made me wonder what the album would sound like live. Have you played these new tracks live yet? How did they feel in a live setting? 

Our music is always double tracked, with two guitars playing. Before this album, there was only one guitar player, and people told me there was a big difference live — that we sounded thinner. Now, we have a second guitar player, and people say it sounds just like the albums, with a thick, fat guitar sound. 

Like being pummelled over the head, but in a good way.

Haha! Well, that part comes from bands like Metallica. Using two guitars gives their sound a thickness, especially live. 

Do you guys prefer playing small, intimate gigs, or would you rather play to a larger audience in a more impressive venue?

Hmm… I don’t really have a preference. We played a really big festival, just over a year ago, and actually I felt very very comfortable and it was very very good. At the same time, we’ve played very small gigs with up to 30 people, and you have much more contact with the audience. For me… I like both. As long as we can play, anything goes! 

What festival was it?

Alcatrazz, in Belgium of course. It’s probably one of the biggest metal festivals in Belguim. That was real fun to do.

Festivals can be quite a challenge, though. At your own gigs, everyone is there to see you, which isn’t always the case at festivals. 

Yeah. When we started playing, we were in a big tent, and there were about 100 people. By the end, the tent was full! Around 1000! People who’d never heard our music still enjoyed the live experience. That was really amazing, I must say.

In my review, I mentioned that I found the album to be quite nostalgic. You can hear the influence of bands like Tool, Alice in Chains, those 90s bands. Is this era meaningful to you, professionally or personally?

It was the era of music I grew up with. Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, I don’t hear many bands like those anymore. Alice in Chains continue to write fantastic songs, but new bands? I get the impression that they are more interested in creating heavy music than good songs. We happen to write Heavy Metal, but we could always try something else – our goal is writing good songs. 

I think I feel this way because one of my earliest influences was The Beatles. Purely from a songwriting point of view, I think they are still one of the best bands ever. They didn’t write Metal of course, but they had somewriting skills, and that is what matters to us. 

How long have you been singing for?

Almost, like, 30 years now? The Beatles, James Hetfield, Layne Staley, Chris Cornell… Unbelievable singers! Listening to them, imitating them, that’s how I learnt to sing. But in the beginning… Well, the first recordings I did, I could hardly listen to them. It was disgusting. I’m the prime example of “anyone can learn to sing!”, cuz when I started, I was really, really awful. 

How inspiring!

Yeah! When I was in my twenties, I had friends that were much more talented than me. They had such good voices, and I couldn’t listen to myself. But you can learn. If I can do it, anyone can do it!

…Well, maybe not anyone, but, y’know, most people. They say in my language, ‘To exercise brings art’. 

Since that era was such a big influence on you, I’m gonna ask you a tough question now. If you could bring back any artist from that decade, in their original form, who would you choose?

I’ve already mentioned them – Alice In Chains with Layne Staley. That voice! They still exist with a new singer, of course, but the sound! The timbre! Nobody sings like that. And of course, Chris Cornell. 

That was a big loss. 

It was a big loss. I would say he was my biggest artistic hero. His lyrics as well, they were like poetry. You could see he had this depressive side, especially on ‘Like Suicide’. With Chris Cornell, nobody expected it. I was really shocked. 

It is very common for people to put personal feelings in their music. Is that something you guys embrace?

I think it is inevitable. There’s at least 10 songs we have where I write about what’s going on inside. “Fly”, the last song on the album, is about a friend of mine. He was a fantastic guitar player. I taught him how to play the guitar, but in a couple of weeks he was already better than me. He ended up killing himself. The title refers to how he always wanted to be a pilot. He did the exams, passed most of them, but then when they asked him why he wanted to be a pilot, he couldn’t answer. And so, he didn’t pass. He also stopped playing guitar, and nobody knew why. He went to Southern France, to a deep valley, and jumped into it. He flew at the end of his life. 

Yeah, there’s some rather sad sides to our music. 

And an angry side, too. 

The angry songs, I’d say, are our most optimistic. ‘Not In Our Name’, for example, refers to what is going on in the United States, with Black people being killed and the growth of right-wing and fascist movements. ‘Not In Our Name’ is a statement, saying “We don’t want this”. They claim the values of the enlightenment, and then misuse these values. We try to stand up to that sort of ideology. 

Would I be right in assuming the album title, “Amaconda” refers to a certain company?

Haha! It’s a pretty obvious wordplay. ‘Amaconda’ refers to Amazon. We compare them to an all-suffocating snake. They’re not a nice company, and they’ve disrupted democracy. They exploit their workers. They create this monopoly, and there’s nobody that can compete with them. It’s scary! But the song also refers to other big tech companies, like Facebook and Google. 

We also feel that at the moment, people are disgusted with anything to do with religion. I’m not a religious person, I’m actually an athiest, but I hate extreme and dogmatic athiests that make fun of people that believe. They believe that science can’t be unified with religion. One of the biggest astrophysicists from Belgium who invented the theory of the Big Bang was a Catholic Priest. 

Amazon, to me, is symbolic of this extremely scientific, logical worldview. I think it can be very dangerous. 

It must be difficult, as a band, to have to navigate these tech companies for the sake of your career. 

Yep. If you’re not on social media, you don’t exist as a band. Facebook is one of the most polarising ones – you can argue about ANYTHING on there! It’s set up to divide people.

As for streaming, there’s one platform we are not on, and we decided it as a band. We are not available on Amazon. The others, well, we need them. We don’t exist otherwise. But that’s the way it is. Unless you have billions and billions of streams, you don’t make anything. You don’t make anything unless you are Metallica. 

And Metallica really don’t need any more money. 

They have too much money! I was such a huge Metallica fan until “The Black Album”. They were such a good band, with this anti-commercial attitude, but, well, that changed. They have nothing to do with what they stood for in the beginning, if they stood for anything, anyway. 

When you guys were writing the album, did you have a clear vision for the album as a whole, or did you figure it out as you went along?

This album was made in a special way, because it was during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Normally we make up the songs as we rehearse. Someone comes up with an idea, and then we put them together while rehearsing. But these songs, they were just written by one person at home. 

So it was a challenge, but a challenge you could raise yourselves to.

The COVID lockdowns, they were not easy. But at the same time, I got the impression that for a lot of people, it felt like a slowing down period.  You could slow down and go against the rat race. We could take the time to breathe and write good songs, but that was probably the only positive thing. 

There’s even a song on this record about this time. “Totalibertarian”, it’s a word we made up. In our country we had many people that were extremely against vaccinations. It’s not a wrong viewpoint to have in itself, but there was one professor that wrote a book about it, and compared the stigmatisation of people who did not want to be vaccinated with the stigmatisation of Jews during the second World War. I found that so disgusting, so insulting, to the Jewish people who died. His book was completely crazy and scary, but he was very successful, especially in the states. 

Of course you can critique vaccinations, especially when they are passed through so quickly, but comparing it to that? Disgusting. He said, “There is either total freedom, or totalitarianism” which is… An extremeist point of view. And people fell for it. 

Since you were writing things separately, how did you deal with any disagreements?

We talk. We try to be a democracy! Which isn’t easy in a band, of course. There’s always someone who is the main songwriter in a band, so it’s not 100% democratic, but we try to listen to eachother. We try. 

Well, you’ve been together for a long time, so it’s clearly working. 

Yeah, me and the drummer have been working together for quite a long time. Then the bassist joined the band, and then… Oh, this is quite a nice story. My little nephew, Tim, joined the band. He had always been our biggest fan. He’s my brother’s son, and a long time ago I discovered him listening to our demos, big headphones on his head. He was about four years old, and he was fascinated. That’s where our name comes from!

What’s it like having a cfamily connetion in a band?

It’s very special. It’s a fantastic feeling, knowing that I taught him how to play guitar. 

How have you felt since the album came out? How has the reception been?

Bands always say that their latest album is the best, but I did really feel more confident about “Amaconda” than our last album. I think we had some good songs, and the reviews ranged from good to… Superlative I must say! I mean, 10/10! We’ve never had that before – thanks again for that. 

What made you more confident about this one?

Hmmm. There songs have a bit more variety, I think. And it sounds better. The previous one, the drums were recorded at my house. This time the drums were recorded in a studio, and that makes a difference. It breathes more. 

What would you guys like to do next?

Ah, the thing is, our music is very difficult to put in a box. You have a Death Metal scene, you have a Black Metal scene, but there is no such thing as a progressive-psychedelic-metal scene. So we find it difficult to find gigs, to be honest. We have gigs, but not enough! In my opinion, anyway. A long time ago, somebody told me, “You guys will either be very small, or very big, nothing inbetween. I don’t know. Maybe he’s right. We put a lot of effort into finding gigs. 

Okay, I promise I’m nearly done now. This ones for something to leave the readers with – what is one album you think everyone should listen to at least once in their lives?

Ahh now that’s a difficult one! Actually: “The Direction of Last Things”, by Intronaut. They’re an American band, they’re fantastic. It’s complex and intricate, they have this melodious, Alice in Chains vibe. I work in a shop, and I said, “We have to order this!”. 

Oh, and the “White Album” by The Beatles!