an interview with...
avatar
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Short Bio: Avatar is a metal band from Gothenburg, Sweden formed in 2001. The lads grew up in the eye of a storm of local musicians made up of metal greats and legends who conquered the world and redrew the map of heavy metal. After two EP Demo’s, five full length albums, 2016 brings us the new concept album ‘Feathers and Flesh’. Keys and Chords had the opportunity to talk with Johannes Eckerström, vocalist of the band.
Keys and chords: “Hello Johannes, welcome to Keys and Chords.com and thank you for taking the time for doing this interview. My name is Lars, joining me is my colleague Johan. Congrats on the new album, we’re glad to be able to interview you regarding this album. Let’s not waste time and start with the first question.”
Keys and chords: “For me, Avatar has a kind of psychological nature, I also noticed you have a philosophical way of thinking. Are this some kind of trademarks for the band?” |
Johannes: “I do not think we as a band necessary work on a particular point or what we are doing is a trademark. I think what’s going on is: we only try to be on the move and challenge ourselves and if it’s any sort of psychological nature, again, it’s because it’s a way to mentally challenge ourself and try to find a meaning in the art to create or create art with content of meaning beyond just being funny and cute if you know what I mean. So there’s no real agenda with it. I think it happens because of the nature of the way we work which is always… Finaly the way to challenge ourselves everytime and that goes for each level, as musician, songwriter and also to challenge our mind.”
Keys and chords: “‘Feathers and Flesh’ is a concept album, with lots of energy and aggression but also melodic elements with some progression. The ideal ingrediënts for a concept album. As far as I know the album tells a fable about an owl who goes to war to stop the sun from rising. Can you tell us some more about this story?”
Johannes: “Absolutely, yeah like you said there is this owl and she goes to war to stop the sun from rising, that is correct, and what happens is that in her world, as far she knows and as far as she can remember, she is a nocturnal hunter and want to control her world. That’s how she thinks.”
Keys and chords: “I noticed in the songs that the owl encounters some troubles like the beehive and the eagle but does the owl succeed in her mission?”
Johannes: “No, no, she fails and that’s the whole point! You can’t stop the sun from rising. You cannot stop time from moving on forward. What happens in a partically night of the story an eagle arrives and proclames that he brings the dawn, and with the dawn and her world undenied plus the fact that his kingdom will come instead she need to step aside. She figures out if I kill the eagle, I kill the sun! But we know astronomy you know and the sunrise has nothing to do with eagles. So the point with that is that she doesn’t know where to begin with the struggle. Also, her mind has nothing to do with changes of time moving and that is where it’s all build around. Then across the story she will meet a whole bunch of different animals with different ideas like in any kind of fable and potentially she could have learned a lot along the way but she ends up learning very little and she dies getting burned by the sun while she begins her attack.”
Keys and chords: “So actually the owl encounters the eagle in track number three ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ – is this correct?”
Johannes: “That’s where the eagle arrives in the story, Yes!”
Keys and chords: “‘Feathers and Flesh’ comes in several merchandise bundles. Unfortunately, we as reviewer only get a digital promotion download but I understood one bundle offers a 60 page hardcover book with 109 verse poëms because the story is too extensive to fit on one CD and it needed a booklet. So, the book complements the CD and vice versa?”
Keys and chords: “‘Feathers and Flesh’ is a concept album, with lots of energy and aggression but also melodic elements with some progression. The ideal ingrediënts for a concept album. As far as I know the album tells a fable about an owl who goes to war to stop the sun from rising. Can you tell us some more about this story?”
Johannes: “Absolutely, yeah like you said there is this owl and she goes to war to stop the sun from rising, that is correct, and what happens is that in her world, as far she knows and as far as she can remember, she is a nocturnal hunter and want to control her world. That’s how she thinks.”
Keys and chords: “I noticed in the songs that the owl encounters some troubles like the beehive and the eagle but does the owl succeed in her mission?”
Johannes: “No, no, she fails and that’s the whole point! You can’t stop the sun from rising. You cannot stop time from moving on forward. What happens in a partically night of the story an eagle arrives and proclames that he brings the dawn, and with the dawn and her world undenied plus the fact that his kingdom will come instead she need to step aside. She figures out if I kill the eagle, I kill the sun! But we know astronomy you know and the sunrise has nothing to do with eagles. So the point with that is that she doesn’t know where to begin with the struggle. Also, her mind has nothing to do with changes of time moving and that is where it’s all build around. Then across the story she will meet a whole bunch of different animals with different ideas like in any kind of fable and potentially she could have learned a lot along the way but she ends up learning very little and she dies getting burned by the sun while she begins her attack.”
Keys and chords: “So actually the owl encounters the eagle in track number three ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ – is this correct?”
Johannes: “That’s where the eagle arrives in the story, Yes!”
Keys and chords: “‘Feathers and Flesh’ comes in several merchandise bundles. Unfortunately, we as reviewer only get a digital promotion download but I understood one bundle offers a 60 page hardcover book with 109 verse poëms because the story is too extensive to fit on one CD and it needed a booklet. So, the book complements the CD and vice versa?”
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Johannes: “That’s super correct. What happend is we just had to many words to fit in a booklet and we needed to treated the story with the respect it deserves, which let us do it in this way. It’s been a very exciting project also. It’s a new way to challenge ourselves which is also why we did the whole concept album. It’s been a fun project to do.”
Keys and chords: “Johannes, you stated that Avatar is the first band of it’s kind releasing a physical book alongside the album. In a sense this is true but the a-capella metal Band ‘Van Canto’ inspired their latest album ‘Voices Of Fire’ on a book ‘Feuerstimmen’(which means voices of fire) from the German writer Christoph Hardebusch. “ Johannes: “Yeah, of course but there are many albums inspired by novels but we didn’t use an existing novel to write the music. Blind Guardian used the ‘Silmarillion’ (J.R.R. Tolkien) to write ‘Nightfall In Middle Earth’ – which is one of my favorite albums of all time. We actually have our own physical book alongside the album to tell the story. I mean, we’re not the first concept album in the world but we had the opportunity to add some tweaks and provide some fresh ideas to the fable which was important to us.” Keys and chords: “So unfortunately Van Canto was first…” |
Johannes: “But did they write the book?”
Keys and chords: “No, no, they based the album on a book. As a matter of fact the album was composed at the same time the writer was writing the book and they inspired each other. So, in some kind of way Van Canto had the same idea at the same time or don’t you feel it that way?”
Johannes: “O.K. I understand, but I never claimed we were the first ones I only ever said that this was something I never done before. I don’t know every album that is released in the world, obviously. A lot of bands have a story that goes along with the album, that is the nature of most concept albums. Our book is a extention of the album and we wrote it by ourselves.”
Keys and chords: “The album was recorded in three European studios, Castle studios in Germany, Finnvox studio in Helsinki - Finland and Spinroad studio in Sweden. You recorded the album in December 2015 with producer Sylvia Massy. Which parts did you record in which studio?”
Johannes: “Finnvox is wrong, I don’t know why or how but someone at our label put the wrong studio on the album info. We recorded in a brand-new studio but also in Helsinki. When we record we are always looking for a kind of isolation, for the initial parts especially, we want to be far away from friends and family to concentrate on the music. While we record drums and bass everybody is there and we finish ideas in the writing proces. When we do the drums, we play along and that proces is very important to the writing and we want to do that far from the world. It’s also a childhood dream to record in a castle and that was an old castle in Germany. You know, reading about Black Sabbath and Rolling Stones in the seventies, it’s like a childhood dream coming true. We did the most there and I live in Helsinki nowadays so doing the vocals there was useful to be closer at home and isolation wasn’t necessary anymore. The finishing we did in Spinroad at Lindome where we used to walk and the band grew up. We just needed to be somewhere where we had a connection too because we had to record a church organ and a live choir and stuff and that we need to do where we knew who to call.”
Keys and chords: “For the albums ‘Schlacht’ and ‘Avatar’ you had Markus Tagaris as producer, for ‘Black Waltz’ and ‘Hail the Apocalypse’ you had Tobias Lindell. The new album is produced by Sylvia Massy who did previously work with System of a Down, Tool, Exodus, Red Hot Chili Peppers and she also engineered and mixed several projects for Rick Rubin. How did you come to this choice and what are the differences in working with Sylvia Massy?”
Johannes: “Silvia did subscribe the best of herself actually! You usually got 3 kind of producers coming from different schools to the pit. You got the engineers, the techicians they’ll do the studio recording promoted into the roll of producing. They know sound very well, they know recording very well, microphones, very technological stuff. Then you have musicians that get promoted into producers that have a certain experience and are great in getting projects together and you have the thirth category, lets call them the artsie fart (starts laughing). Silvia is all three and that’s the magical thing with her. She’s so amazing and a technical minded brilliant engineer, knowing sounds and experiment with sounds and also a musician. She understand arrangements and stuff like that, so really great to have such a producer that we haven’t got in the past. She’s like an artist from another world, a kind of proper renaissance woman and you know, she paints while she records, it really creates a vibe. She always does that apparently, it creates a very artistic environment.”
Keys and chords: “No, no, they based the album on a book. As a matter of fact the album was composed at the same time the writer was writing the book and they inspired each other. So, in some kind of way Van Canto had the same idea at the same time or don’t you feel it that way?”
Johannes: “O.K. I understand, but I never claimed we were the first ones I only ever said that this was something I never done before. I don’t know every album that is released in the world, obviously. A lot of bands have a story that goes along with the album, that is the nature of most concept albums. Our book is a extention of the album and we wrote it by ourselves.”
Keys and chords: “The album was recorded in three European studios, Castle studios in Germany, Finnvox studio in Helsinki - Finland and Spinroad studio in Sweden. You recorded the album in December 2015 with producer Sylvia Massy. Which parts did you record in which studio?”
Johannes: “Finnvox is wrong, I don’t know why or how but someone at our label put the wrong studio on the album info. We recorded in a brand-new studio but also in Helsinki. When we record we are always looking for a kind of isolation, for the initial parts especially, we want to be far away from friends and family to concentrate on the music. While we record drums and bass everybody is there and we finish ideas in the writing proces. When we do the drums, we play along and that proces is very important to the writing and we want to do that far from the world. It’s also a childhood dream to record in a castle and that was an old castle in Germany. You know, reading about Black Sabbath and Rolling Stones in the seventies, it’s like a childhood dream coming true. We did the most there and I live in Helsinki nowadays so doing the vocals there was useful to be closer at home and isolation wasn’t necessary anymore. The finishing we did in Spinroad at Lindome where we used to walk and the band grew up. We just needed to be somewhere where we had a connection too because we had to record a church organ and a live choir and stuff and that we need to do where we knew who to call.”
Keys and chords: “For the albums ‘Schlacht’ and ‘Avatar’ you had Markus Tagaris as producer, for ‘Black Waltz’ and ‘Hail the Apocalypse’ you had Tobias Lindell. The new album is produced by Sylvia Massy who did previously work with System of a Down, Tool, Exodus, Red Hot Chili Peppers and she also engineered and mixed several projects for Rick Rubin. How did you come to this choice and what are the differences in working with Sylvia Massy?”
Johannes: “Silvia did subscribe the best of herself actually! You usually got 3 kind of producers coming from different schools to the pit. You got the engineers, the techicians they’ll do the studio recording promoted into the roll of producing. They know sound very well, they know recording very well, microphones, very technological stuff. Then you have musicians that get promoted into producers that have a certain experience and are great in getting projects together and you have the thirth category, lets call them the artsie fart (starts laughing). Silvia is all three and that’s the magical thing with her. She’s so amazing and a technical minded brilliant engineer, knowing sounds and experiment with sounds and also a musician. She understand arrangements and stuff like that, so really great to have such a producer that we haven’t got in the past. She’s like an artist from another world, a kind of proper renaissance woman and you know, she paints while she records, it really creates a vibe. She always does that apparently, it creates a very artistic environment.”
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Keys and chords: “So you just told us, she’s painting while you recorded the album but does the album or the booklet include some paintings of her, she did while you were recording?”
Johannes: “sadly no, she didn’t had the chance to finish the works, she works a lot and at the time she was done with us she move down to the next project. It would have been cool but we had Henrik Krantz who did it and it’s also perfect, it fits perfect towards what we were doing. We were very happy with him.” Keys and chords: “So, actually Silvia has a few unfinished paintings from the recording sessions of ‘Feathers and Flesh’?” Johannes: “Yeah it was. Actually there were about two finished ones and she started a thirth one but none of them could have been the album cover and she knew we wanted a lot of other illustrations and she wouldn’t had the time to do that so… She record people all the time and she’s travelling the world so… I don’t see how she has time to illustrate the book as well.” Keys and chords: “‘Regret’, the opening track on the album, was described by the band as “an intense journey through epicness” and it must be the most different album intro you ever written. How was this intro established or came to mind?” Johannes: “Well actually that part was a part of the song “House Of Eternal Hunt” but ‘Regret’ started at the same song but we couldn’t have it make sence before we devided the two. It was the right basement for what is happening, there is so much heavy metal going on immediately. High pitched vocals and to start the album with a shredding guitar solo. It’s a perfect statement for what this album is all about and everything what goes on with it.” Keys and chords: “‘The Eagle Has Landed’, was released as first offical single on March 25th, 2016 and was an instant gratification reward for pre-ordering “Feathers & Flesh.” A conscious decision by the band or enforced by the label?” Johannes: “We never choose singles in the band because we don’t like singles. We write albums and therefore when we do a song we just don’t say “oh this would be great for radio” you know. We discussed it with the label and management, we think that a single is like a movie trailer in a way. I’d like people to hear the whole album and it’s difficult for me to pick which song to present that. We provide the songs and based on talking we take over after a while cause we are the ones who writes scripts for the music video’s and all of that. |
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That is something the band is doing. They may do that because we do not let them into the studio while we’re write and recording and not let the label decide how the songs would sound like but once the songs are there, up to the single it’s their call.”
Keys and chords: “The first video for the new album is the track ‘For the Swarm’, a song telling the story of the owl encountering a beehive. Can you tell us more about the concept and the story behind that clip?”
Johannes: “Well, one thing we figured out is that it would be impossible for us to do the movie of the story on the album so we decided to use each song as individual songs and build the story on the individual song. So the video is a visualization of the song. On the album the swarm are the bees who work as a collective and they don’t see themself as an individual but as part of the hive and part of creating something better and that’s why things multitude, we are building something within the song. It’s an abstract realisation of that idea.”
Keys and chords: “Today a new video was uploaded to Youtube… It was a really good story actually.”
Johannes: “Thank you!”
Keys and chords: “‘For The Swarm’ was being voted number One in Loudwire's Battle Royale for the week. I can image you didn’t expect this to happen. Can you describe how that felt months before the album’s being released?”
Johannes: “There was a fan voting thing and it was very cool to see. More than anything it shows that we have very very dedicated fans that go online and vote over and over again. You know you have Marilyn Manson or accept and everything between those two are on those battles and people where voting for us, that’s pretty nice, but then Baby Metal kicked our ass so there you go.”
Keys and chords: “Avatar did tours with Avenged Sevenfold, Evergrey, In Flames, Warrior Soul, Helloween, Five Finger Death Punch, Rob Zombie and many more. Also appearances on festivals like Sweden Rock Festival, Rock on the Range and Louder than Life. This summer you play Alcatraz Metal Fest in Belgium on august, 13th 2016. In 2015 you played a container show there. Is their something you wanna reveil for the fans who come to the show this year?”
Johannes: ”Well, you know we have lots of new songs and they just moving us forward that show who we are and what we do. I had to add, Belgium has been really really great for us in the last few years and I’m looking foward to coming back again this summer and hopefully we come back for more than one show once we get to our European tour, hopefully this fall. Last year Belgium was crazy cool and also the year before so I can’t wait to come back.”
Keys and chords: “OK Johannes, thanks for the interview and maybe I speak to you again when the next album comes out. We hope to see and hear you in Europe.”
Keys and chords: “The first video for the new album is the track ‘For the Swarm’, a song telling the story of the owl encountering a beehive. Can you tell us more about the concept and the story behind that clip?”
Johannes: “Well, one thing we figured out is that it would be impossible for us to do the movie of the story on the album so we decided to use each song as individual songs and build the story on the individual song. So the video is a visualization of the song. On the album the swarm are the bees who work as a collective and they don’t see themself as an individual but as part of the hive and part of creating something better and that’s why things multitude, we are building something within the song. It’s an abstract realisation of that idea.”
Keys and chords: “Today a new video was uploaded to Youtube… It was a really good story actually.”
Johannes: “Thank you!”
Keys and chords: “‘For The Swarm’ was being voted number One in Loudwire's Battle Royale for the week. I can image you didn’t expect this to happen. Can you describe how that felt months before the album’s being released?”
Johannes: “There was a fan voting thing and it was very cool to see. More than anything it shows that we have very very dedicated fans that go online and vote over and over again. You know you have Marilyn Manson or accept and everything between those two are on those battles and people where voting for us, that’s pretty nice, but then Baby Metal kicked our ass so there you go.”
Keys and chords: “Avatar did tours with Avenged Sevenfold, Evergrey, In Flames, Warrior Soul, Helloween, Five Finger Death Punch, Rob Zombie and many more. Also appearances on festivals like Sweden Rock Festival, Rock on the Range and Louder than Life. This summer you play Alcatraz Metal Fest in Belgium on august, 13th 2016. In 2015 you played a container show there. Is their something you wanna reveil for the fans who come to the show this year?”
Johannes: ”Well, you know we have lots of new songs and they just moving us forward that show who we are and what we do. I had to add, Belgium has been really really great for us in the last few years and I’m looking foward to coming back again this summer and hopefully we come back for more than one show once we get to our European tour, hopefully this fall. Last year Belgium was crazy cool and also the year before so I can’t wait to come back.”
Keys and chords: “OK Johannes, thanks for the interview and maybe I speak to you again when the next album comes out. We hope to see and hear you in Europe.”
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Special thanks to all the photographers involved for the use of their pictures
Johan en Lars Kaethoven
Johan en Lars Kaethoven