Gig Reviews
Cult Leader
Stengade, Copenhagen, DEN - 15/4
Album Reviews
Amon Amarth
Previous Nextauthor NB date 19/11/08
Swedish, Viking death metal band Amon Amarth are currently on tour supporting headliners Trivium and Slayer as part of Unholy Alliance Chapter III. You can check out our thoughts on this in the gig reviews section; but first, we caught up with them backstage at the first of their Hammersmith Apollo shows in London to chat with guitarist Johan Söderberg. In a room filled with fresh fruit, we discussed Vikings, fame and the key to band chemistry.
RF.net: What are your expectations for this tour?
Johan: Well, we played Manchester and Wolverhampton already, and those shows were very good. I think the whole tour is going to be good, and it's going to get even better when we come to Germany and Scandinavia, because then we are playing right before Trivium. We'll switch places with Mastodon.
RF.net: Do you have any further touring plans for Europe next year in support of the new album?
Johan: Yeah, we're going to do all the festivals in the summer as well as many tours in 2009.
RF.net: Do you think that, given the state of the music industry, it's possible for a band today to reach the kind of legendary stardom Slayer enjoy?
Johan: I've been thinking about that... I can't see that any band can be as big as Metallica for example. I don't know why. I guess there are too many bands and too many forms of spreading the music. In the older days it was just a couple of bands, and when one album was released, it was massive. Now everybody seems to release albums all the time.
RF.net: Do you prefer playing in a support slot as on this tour or headlining a slightly smaller tour?
Johan: I prefer to headline tours, because then you can do everything as you want to do it. I don't like playing really small clubs, but then, we rarely do that anymore.
RF.net: All of those albums, and in fact the entire band, are centered around this Viking theme. What made you decide to focus on that?
Johan: We thought it was a very suitable topic for the music. Hard music needs to have some hard lyrics, and there's a lot of battle and things in our lyrics.
RF.net: Has your passion for writing Viking themed lyrics ever led you to research that topic?
Johan: Our singer does very much research. He reads lots of books about it and stuff.
RF.net: So what do those tales mean to you on a personal level?
Johan: The thing is, it's just a cool subject to get inspiration from. It's nothing I really think too much about in day-to-day life.
RF.net: You don't think some of the ideals from those times could be applied to modern day?
Johan: (laughing) Not really, no.
RF.net: What other Viking or pagan metal bands have caught your ear?
Johan: Nobody, actually. After so many bands started adopting this Viking theme, it became a little too much, maybe.
RF.net: So, would you consider yourselves to be some of the first to have done it?
Johan: Yeah, among the first. But we don't dress as Vikings on stage or anything. We're a regular metal band, just with lyrics about Vikings.
RF.net: Most people associate the Vikings mainly with Norway and Denmark, yet it's Sweden and Finland that are home to the majority of folk- and Viking metal bands. Why do you think that is?
Johan: Maybe we're trying to take back some of the Viking credibility from them (laughing).
RF.net: Some of the glory...
Johan: Some of the glory, yeah.
RF.net: During the production for that album, you released a series of 8-page comics in magazines throughout Europe. What was that all about?
Johan: It was just something we thought would be a cool idea; to have one of the songs' stories as a comic book. It's basically the title track in a comic form.
RF.net: I'm assuming that the band doesn't take up all of your time, so what do you tend to get up to in your downtime?
Johan: I spend most of the time with my family and try to go on vacation and stuff like that.
RF.net: I also read that you have trouble selling in Sweden?
Johan: Yeah, in the past we didn't sell as much as we wanted. We were always playing outside of Sweden, touring in Europe and America. But now, as of late, we've started playing more in Sweden and they seem to be getting into it.
RF.net: Which bands have influenced you back in the day. I know that some of you are huge fans of Motörhead, so I'm just interested to know where your influences lie.
Johan: My influences are Iron Maiden and Accept - old, traditional heavy metal. Black Sabbath and Metallica.