“Hail The Apocalypse” Avatar’s brand new album is already out. Johanness and John gaves us some details here about it.
Hello guys! How are you?
Johannes Michael Gustaf Eckerström (vocals): Doing really good, back in Paris, I love this place.
John Alfredsson (drums): Doing great thanks.
“Hail The Apocalypse” will be out in May. First, what’s the meaning of this title? Why does it fit to your music?
Johannes: Well, it comes with our title track and musically, it’s just that song in particular that emphasis a lot of stuff that we are all about. That riff is a riff I didn’t hear before anywhere else and it comes with a bone crushing groove, something new and fresh that still is very much a part of what Avatar is. It’s a very good title track and then it also, in a way, sums up what we are about lyrically because this album is the darkest one we made yet. It’s really a study in darkness mainly around the psychological perspective and it’s dealing with the kind of issues with us, it’s also talking about finding a way to cope with this darkness and how to handle and deal with it. So “Hail The Apocalypse” to deal with the inevitable.
What’s your approach to music? Because it’s very diverse.
Johannes: It’s what we feel with the previous album “Black Waltz” with that one, we figured out a lot of stuff on what we’re about. We found a path in music that we feel belonged to us and only to us compared to earlier stuff. We finally are good musicians between each other not just individually. The way we sound as a group is much better. We can at least try anything and see if it works for us to do something great out of it, I think that gives us the diversity. We’re a metal band so the riff is God and no riff is greater than its groove.
Why Avatar by the way? Did you want to hide behind some characters?
Johannes: I would say that it’s the opposite.
John: We got it a long time ago.
Johannes: Well you know what it means, but John thought about it when he was like 14 and to me the idea of what it means to be in a band called Avatar, is the other way around. It’s getting all the potential of each human being we are, we try to unveil it. So it’s more about unmasking than masking actually.
In which horizons are you navigating this time?
Johannes: Well, I’m on a boat for a couple of reasons. One thing that I realized afterwards was that I think last albums themes were a lot about fire and this one, there’s way more water (laughs) when I read back my lyrics. Again, “Black Waltz” opened a door for us artistically and now we have to keep exploring these dark stories for the music we’re making.
John: It’s also apocalyptic itself.
Johannes: Yes, you’re steering that ship through that storm, embracing it, embracing the apocalypse once again.
You recorded the album in Thailand, that’s quite unusual for Swedish, why did you go there knowing that you have some of the best studios in Europe?
Johannes: Because it’s unusual for Swedish band. When Entombed and other went to the Sunlight Studios, that was quite unusual and that is what it made it great. We are also looking at doing things in an unusual way for us first and foremost. Our producer moved there and we had this meeting when we still was in Sweden, going into songs and he told us “I’m going to Thailand so we’d better do it there” and we just roll away with him, found a good studio, Karma Sounds Studios. It’s always great to change environment and we took that to an extreme by switching continent.
John: We recorded the foundation of the album live before. But there, near the studio, there wasn’t any tourists and the beach was at about 15 minutes, but we went once.
Johannes: The rest of the time, we were in the studio, we were very devoted and then we moved to Pathong, which was in my eyes a very miserable place, it was hard for me to enjoy something like that, showing many of the ugliest side of humanity. Trafficking victims, animal cruelty all around and stuff like that so…
Will you do it again? Recording in Thailand.
Johannes: No. Because next time it will feel normal so we’ll have to do something new. I would like to do like the Rolling Stones or Black Sabbath, renting a castle in France. If this album goes well enough, we’d love to do something like that.
John: If we get more money with this album, we’ll have more to burn after. (laughs)
Johannes: Probably somewhere cold next time.
John: Antarctica. (laughs) Like Metallica.
Johannes: We should probably do this. Thanks for the idea!
I have to admit it, it was really hard to get into your music because it goes everywhere every time. How diverse are your influences?
John: Very diverse but on the same time, we have a lot of common grounds as well like The Beatles, Iron Maiden.
Johannes: It’s interesting people have reacted differently about this. The way I feel is that everything is tight together even with all the grooves. We have created dynamics and it’s not fun to us to make the same album twice or the same song twice. Some bands may work like that but we take the time to really make sure that we offer something which every piece is unique. Since “Black Waltz”, we’re in a real continuation with the same rules.
So it must be hard but: which three songs will describe the best the album?
John: All of them! (laughs)
Johannes: I could say maybe “Hail The Apocalypse”, “Tower” and “Puppet Show”, something like that. It shows the diversity but it’s still based around that one idea of the riff. All things that are in a specific way by us, you won’t hear them played by any other band. They tight together and all shows the different levels of darkness that we are dealing with.
You already released records in the past before the success of “Black Waltz”, how could you explain it? Did you change something?
Johannes: Well what happened is that the first album we recorded, we were 17/19 years old, and we were really young and unexperienced. Since then, because we put some stuff out so early, we were growing up with a kind of a spotlight on us, so we were very public at that time. So like every band, it took a while for us to really find our path and to define what we were really about. And the difference is that when it came out, we were really young, but I’m still proud of that especially the first one when you look at it where no one in the band had turned 20 yet and it was done in two weeks, including mixing and mastering, it was really ambitious looking at the resources we had.
But coming from Sweden, you took some time getting international, how do you explain that?
Johannes: Well it took some time to find the right people to work with but also the define ourselves and we finally did with “Black Waltz”.
A word about “Tower”? It takes nearly three minutes to take off but after it’s still very slow and atmospheric.
Johannes: Originally that song wasn’t written for Avatar. I just brought a couple of songs and this one, we wanted to try and make out for Avatar. After an album which is freaky rollercoaster as “Hail The Apocalypse” is, it felt just appropriate to end with something dark, I think it’s the darkest piece of lyrics I wrote.
Do you find it hard to come on the music scene with something really different? Isn’t it frustrating at the beginning?
Johannes: Well people have got into it. I feel that we really revitalized the band in the last two years and we toured with Avenged Sevenfold and Five Finger Death Punch. Before that, of course we had some frustrating years, for sure, but in the end we do something more inspiring now. Adding to that, we don’t want to be retro, we aspire to be the best Avatar band in the world.
What about retro bands? Do you like them?
Johannes: I love them. Ghost are great. It’s not us pushing up any ideals about how things are supposed to be, we only decide what we are supposed to be.
John: There’re so much retro sounding bands but those sounding like cover bands, I don’t really like. It’s a fun thing when they came but they didn’t last because many bands already done that kind of thing.
Isn’t it kind of easy today to sound “retro”?
Johannes: Yes that’s a thing but in the same time, if you like retro and that’s you’re only thing, so you’ll have to do that and I’ll respect that. There are couple of those things that interested me personally and if I want to listen to retro, I don’t go retro, I’ll listen to classics, because “Screaming For Vengeance” is fucking awesome and timeless.
What were your secrets to keep focused on music and reaching success?
John: Well first it took some time to realize how it works. Actually, when “Black Waltz” came out, we’re near to quitting out because we did the first two albums when we were kids, did a lot of touring, lost a lot of money and nobody cared etc. Then we realized that if we were going to do some money, having a living out of it, we need to change something. So we made it more accessible to people we thought.
Johannes: Yes we were thinking too much about other people.
John: Focusing on other people, trying to make things accessible so we didn’t really do the album for ourselves. But that album also didn’t go very well, then we sat with Johanness at our favorite bar in Gothenburg and we were like “fuck this, we can work with children and have a lucky life, so let’s quit Avatar, cheers” and fifteen minutes later, Johanness said “dude, we should do something with that riff first, so let’s have a comeback here”. (laughs)
Johannes: Avatar came back fifteen minutes later. (laughs) We were just about to quit, we don’t care anymore, that put us in the position where we were kids discovering metal, we did it only for that soul and that music that we’d discover and that made a lot whole difference. This album was for us, like our first demo, then people and when we got their attention, we were so relieved that it starts to happen now. Finally we’re getting something that we never experienced since the first album.
John: The philosophy around “Black Waltz” was to make an album we’re happy with it first and foremost. Keeping on that for the new record that was a challenge because now people try to tell us how to do.
Johannes: But we did all those things that we wanted to have on the album, even if people around us said the opposite. The songs that were too soft, on the paper, worked out perfectly on the album, we put a cover on there because we love our versions, we also went more brutal and that’s why I think we did a better album this time. We recorded live, old school way to just raise the bar and to do something we haven’t done before.
John: That will maybe allow us to make another album and maybe, in the future, we’ll make a living out of this.
So any advice to young bands?
Johannes: Do music for yourself, there’s no other way to do it. You want to be rich? Get into stocks or oil business or even gold. It’s like: you want to get girls? Just go out, at bars. The only reason you want to do music it’s because you WANT to do music and if you truly feel that. After that, the question will be: what do you want to achieve with it?
Do you remember the first time ever you were on stage?
John: I played the flute.
Johannes: And I played the trombone.
John: But our first Avatar show was in Gothenburg’s suburb and we have this annual talents competition.
Johannes: And we were there, playing “Raining Blood” (Slayer), “Clayman” (Inflames) and then we had to play one of our songs.
John: “Rocking To The Victims Of The Liar”
Johannes: Because long titles are cool. (laughs) By the way, it was very grindy, we played as fast as we can at that age. We were 15/16.
John: I was super-nervous two weeks before the show.
Johannes: One of my favorite moments was, at our third show, John was in a black metal band at the time called and there was another competition in the city next to ours.
John: So first I played with them, wearing corpse paint, crosses and then I had to rush to the bathroom, washing everything before playing with Avatar. (laughs)
Johannes: And he forgot in which band he was in. He started “1, 2, 3, 4” silence, and then everybody looks “ok we’re starting over” and he looked at us and said “oh it’s you!” (laughs) Lots of fun memories, a very special time for us.
What about the most freaking thing you’ve done on tour?
Johannes: Most of them are probably secrets. (laughs) Well, everybody has its worst show ever right?
John: Glasgow.
Johannes: Glasgow, yeah, on our first European tour. We were still kids, first album, not even 20, in spring 2006 and we had to tour with Impaled Nazarene and we had a lot of trouble. We were so excited, that was huge for us. When we played in Glasgow, everything went wrong like the sound guy hit the intro but I haven’t my pants on and our bass player got sick on the first show of that tour. He was fucked up and on that show, he did a movement forward, to headbang, at the same time, got hit by the guitar, fell on me and waked up “oh oh okay!”.
John: People weren’t happy, they were pointing their middle finger etc. The sound engineer shut down the sound and we were out.
Johannes: It was really really a rough one.
And here’s the last question: we are “RockUrLife”, so what rocks your lives guys?
Johannes: Money and coke. (laughs)
John: (laughs)
Johannes: Actually this kind of trip we’re doing now (promo) kind of rocks my life, I feel like a jetsetter for spending two days in New-York and not a week, that would have been vacations, and being jetlagged every time, that’s pretty rock n’roll.
John: Every day rocks my life.
Website: avatarmetal.com
