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Johannes from Avatar. Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it! “Yeah. No problem…” Avatar recently released the brand new studio album ‘Feathers & Flesh’. What were your main inspiration for this record? “The main inspiration was the challenge we set out for ourselves in terms of – through the years we have learnt that we work best under pressure, diamonds are created under heats of pressure. That’s what we do to ourselves. So every time we have figured out how to do something well we make an effort to approach it in a way that makes it hard – and in this case we basically asked ourselves, do you know how to make a concept album? Nope. Okay cool, lets go! Y’know for the album before this ‘Hail the Apocalypse’ the big challenge was that we were recording it live totally old school in terms of method of recording. And as we saw we were able to pull it off, the challenge there was to do the whole live recording stuff and then one we were able to prove to ourselves that we were able to do that, that stopped being interesting. So this was more different and high tech a recording, and more layers, the live choirs, that requires more stuff to create that sort of beast of a production. So the challenge was the biggest inspiration, then of course that once we had that, y’know then came our artistic inspiration we had to figure out – the story and everything and that is y’know, quite obvious when you read it it’s very twentieth century literature in the form of fairytales and just using poetry to form a whole story. Like that could be, haha am I going to be portentous enough to say it, that it was Dante a bit – although I just read the first 20 pages ‘cause I wanted to be that guy who read Dante. Um, um… my girlfriend is way better at that stuff haha. But eh, that story telling through poetry and then applying that with the music. And in terms of band names that were thrown around as reference points, y’know there’s always these metal bands that there’s too long a list for this interview haha. But something more specifically interesting more than ever was Queen and The Beatles, and especially the part where y’know our material is so diverse for a long time but each song gets more diversified with each session. And then there are different ways to define your sound, and if you are… I don’t know, Chuck Berry – you have those three chords and say “baby baby golly Miss Molly” or whatever, and that’s your sound but The Beatles and Queen their sound as if they are a group of people that play together and that’s it and then they do whatever they want with that. The catalog of Queen and The Beatles are extremely vast in their diversity, so we took that as inspiration to dare to y’know go out there.” From ‘Feathers & Flesh’, what would you say the band’s favourite track is from it, and why? “I really don’t have one. Since the second or first album… no, the first album we took whatever we had that’s what anyone would do with a debut album but, the second one where it was more like most albums. Okay now it’s time to write the album and in that process someone said “ah this is my favourite”, and the rest of them shout out “what’s wrong with the other ones?”no nothing no, no, no and then oh okay now we are starting over because every song has to be our favourite. Which is also why we are so burnt out at the end of a writing period. Then I always did enjoy an extra bit but not in terms of a song itself, like not in terms of listening to it – there’s some stuff that has a special challenge to or just a story attached to them and in those terms we have ‘Raven Wine’, and for the ‘The Swarm’ because they have examples of that. Now with the years we have become better, y’know daring not to have hand represented put in stone for going into the studio – we can jam, we can improvise and we can see where things go once we are in there. And then it’s also ‘Sky Burial’ just because of how different it is from the rest, it was a different way of recording – ha it’s actually the first track in the Avatar catalog where I play the guitar in the album. That was fun!” You released a book alongside the album titled, ‘Feathers & Flesh: A Fable’, What was the concept behind this? “Well then again with the concept album the way this album is, it is a story – it is a fable. The songs, the stuff I sing is y’know is what the characters are saying, the animals in the story. And, but along side that is y’know everything that sets up the scenes what happens between the songs that leads the moment. And what happened to be more elaborate booklet but it just became too much, too big that we were too proud of just to cram in there with tiny font. We wanted to create the literature side of this album with the same respect we treat the songs. So it just had to become a book, to treat the words with respect they deserved.” You provide illustrations in ‘… A Fable’, created by Hendrik Krantz. What made his artwork stand out so much to use in your book? “Yeah! Ha – we were lucky. He was originally a friend of my older brothers. So we were looking at many more y’know full-time illustrators and everything and people were sending tests to us – we were getting a bit desperate and we are looking at stuff people had sent us was examples of what they could do what we had in mind, and nothing clicked. We were sitting in the studio in Lerum where I grew up, so he was out just visiting us and hanging out for a bit and he showed us this friend on Instagram, “what about this guy?” he’s really a guy from our hometown from Gothenburg. And eh, I don’t think he has that much professionally prior to this. He’s a teacher, this is a hobby.” Sometimes, when you’re putting so much personal detail in to it, it just adds to it. And because you know the guy as well? “Yeah, exactly! And we just like working like that. Most people around us when we do artistic things are y’know from the neighbourhoods. ‘Cause through my little sisters, that I found the girl who makes our stage outfits and the guy who builds half of our stage rig, the stuff we use on stage is also from Lerum. It’s y’know a very small community with people that with when we bring out the work into the world.” You recently toured the US. How was that for you? What was the best part of that tour? “Good, yeah. We were there five times this year. I’m quite tired of it, haha. The United States to tour ‘cause it is convicted, Walmart is open when we have time to buy our groceries…” So your drink and that then, eh? “Hahaha, yeah! There’s bus parking ‘cause everyone is driving everywhere. The venues are in areas where you’ll put a y’know… it’s like here in Europe the clubs we are playing are usually inside a City built a thousand years ago, the streets are built for horse and carriages – it’s a logistic. The bigger the city, the worse it is. Well, in most of the States y’know you’re playing in the desert, in a shoe box or something. Or if it’s a bigger arena it’s also designed for stuff to come there. So it’s comfortable. But Europe is home… and eh, it’s also in many ways a more fun place to travel because you get into the Cities more and because our countries are older, so there are more differences.” Yeah, there’s a lot of landmarks and that as well, y’know, stuff like that? “Yeah! Exactly. Because y’know we saw the Alamo… we were in San Antonio and there is a difference between Texas and main up North but it’s still not the same as the differences between Scotland and Italy and then Denmark.” You’ve not long embarked on your European/UK tour – what are you expecting to see from the fans whom are going to show up? “Well it’s all been good. I’m very proud of that, there’s always some ring-rust in the beginning but we hit the ground running from the first show I feel. And we were all very enthusiastic about this tour for such a long time! Only because we hadn’t done a European headline tour for two years. The production we bring, premiering songs here… we haven’t played in the States either, y’know we have saved some stuff for the European so we’ve been very excited about it all of the way. And because most of the crew, all of the crew have been working a lot before so we were already a well oiled machine before we got started. So y’know it’s always been good.” Most importantly, what are you expecting from us here in Glasgow tonight? We are well known to be quite wild. “Yeah! It’s our third time here… first time was the worst show we have ever had. It was on our first European tour – you remember the one that all got cancelled in Germany? So eh, they were accused, wrongfully accused headliner for being new-nazi’s. they were not. Um, but it was a very rough tour, rock star boot camp… and in Glasgow we were the first and out, three people were there of which one was asleep and two were pointing and laughing, and showing middle fingers… and that was Glasgow the first time. Actually Jonas knocked Henrik out with his guitar like BAM! In his face, so he fell over, fainted. Fell into me, I didn’t understand, “stop pushing!” he wakes up and y’know keeps on playing – haha, so that was the first time. Second time was two years ago… and that was amazing, and like you say a wild crowd. It’s special for being this far up North because you can trace the level of, like y’know Northen countries are very metal as in term of people like the music, but the metalheads down South y’know are more physical in showing their appreciation. But if I remember correctly Scotland was an exception to that rule – it was a violent show.” What’s next for Avatar, after the touring is complete… Some well deserved time off for the holidays, straight back into the studio, or continuing to tour the world? “A mixed bag, we have a music video that’s timed to get filmed and everything, we’ve had the script lying in our drawer for quite some time and y’know we pour just as much passion into that side of it as we do to the music, so that’s a bug thing. We are gonna play a cruise, ha, eh… between Miami and Bahamas.” All right for some, eh? Here’s me here in the freezing cold! “Hahaha, yeah so that’s happening. Festivals in Summer looks promising… we are looking at some, the opportunity… now y’know that y’know we, this tour and the stuff we here and in the United States we gave established ourselves at a certain level, now it would be good for larger bands to give us a round of opening spots. So eh, that and festivals are the next agenda for next year. And writing new songs… we already started that, we are always writing.” So for your last question, something a bit more random, if you’re up for it? “Yeah sure, sure…” If you were to be a part of any fairytale, which fairytale would you be in? “Well in the original form, all the German ones are awful to be part of, haha. Y’know, you watch Family Guy and do you watch the ‘once there was a kid who sucked his thumbs, then his Mom cut off his thumbs, now he has no thumbs. Goodnight!’ Hahaha. I wouldn’t like to be a part of any of them, really. And also, now I wrote a fairytale, with my half German blood I kept in that tradition of everybody dying in the end. Y’know, so… hahaha… It’s perfect! It’s true, and y’know, all the good there’s a level of mystery, which makes it good to hear about or read about, to not be a part of. No-one was happy at the end of Lord Of The Rings, so yeah no… I’d rather be in the Harlem Globetrotters, haha.” Haha! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me. All the best for the show tonight. Interview: Carol Black ]]>
