Amaranthe, Deals Death and more at Backstage (2014)
Backstage (Munich, Germany)
Amaranthe, Deals Death, Smash Into Pieces
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March 29, 2014
Having started off the evening interviewing AMARANTHE and DEALS DEATH, I missed the beginning of the opening act, and walked through the doors just as SMASH INTO PIECES was about half way through their set. Normally during the opening act, everyone uses the time to grab a beer and catch up with friends, occasionally stopping long enough to clap for the band between songs. So you can imagine my surprise when I found the place already fully packed, with the crowd devotedly swaying in time to the music, slowly waving their arms through the air. In all my countless concerts, I have never seen an opening act that was so well received. SMASH INTO PIECES, an Alternative / Hard Rock band with a style that strongly reminds me of SEETHER, had the audience's full and undivided attention, and did a perfect job of setting the mood for what was to come.
1. Heroes (As We Are)
2. Crash and Burn
3. A Friend Like You
4. Unbreakable
5. Colder
6. Fading
Although all three bands put on absolutely phenomenal performances, my personal favourite of the night were the main support act DEALS DEATH, one of the most under-rated Melodic Death Metal bands I have ever come across. Although they have their own incredible and unique sound, the closest I could describe them as is an amalgamation of the technicality and melodiousness of CHILDREN OF BODOM and the sheer unstoppable force of HYPOCRISY. Battle axes held aloft as they shredded the audience to pieces with their breakneck music, these five men put on a truly outstanding show that completely blew me away. If you've never heard of this band before, I highly recommend you go check out their music videos "Fortified" and "Point Zero Solution"; you really won't regret it!
1. Point Zero Solution
2. Facing the Echoes
3. Eradicated
4. Flatline
5. Elite
6. The Separation
7. Beyond Reason
8. Passion for Infinity
9. Fortified
10. Internal Demons
Finally it was time for the headliners of the night, AMARANTHE. With a very unique musical style that is very difficult to describe, AMARANTHE incorporate all sorts of different elements, from Pop to Death Metal. By this point, although the spirit in the crowd had been high all night long, it soon reached a feverish pitch as soon as AMARANTHE appeared on stage. With three vocalists, a bassist, and a guitarist constantly moving around the stage, the performance was full of dynamism and energy. One of the highlights of the night for me was AMARANTHE's encore, during which they played an abridged version of "Walk" by PANTERA, with a mix-up in the line-up which saw Jake E, who normally does the clean vocals, playing the bass guitar, and the bassist Johan doing the harsh vocals. Overall, AMARANTHE put on an excellent show, playing a vast collection of their anthems, and the performance is one fans will certainly remember for a very long time to come.
1. Future on Hold
2. 1.000.000 Lightyears
3. Leave Everything Behind
4. Infinity
5. Automatic
6. Razorblade
7. Theory of Everything
8. Burn with Me
9. Afterlife
10. Mechanical Illusion
11. Hunger
12. Electroheart
13. Amaranthine
14. Call Out my Name
15. Walk
16. Invincible
17. The Nexus
So how are you all tonight? Are you doing alright?
Jake E: Yeah, we have no internet here so…
Elize: But that's actually the only big problem for us, that we can't call boyfriend / girlfriend, so not having internet makes life a little frustrating. But besides that, everything has been great actually
How has the tour been so far? Have there been any highlights?
Jake E: The biggest highlight was the Z7 at Pratteln. All the shows have been fantastic, but an arena that big, you don't know what to anticipate when you get there, but it was a lot of people and a massive crowd, and it was fantastic. You know, you see all the other big bands that play there, and all of a sudden… You want to be able to play it yourself one day, and we did it as a headliner. That was really cool.
Olof: Yeah, it was fantastic, and we had an amazing show in Madrid as well. It was a great crowd, and we have played that place three times before, and once again to finally headline that place was really really awesome.
Elize: And I would also say, since we are in Germany right now, that the German audience has been fantastic. Like yesterday, I feel bad that I didn't go out and say hi, but I thought the club was open late, but they closed before I got there.
Jake E: Yeah, we played Memmingen yesterday
Elize: But yeah, that was great, we had a great show.
Jake E: It's really cool to see. When you go to London, or Stockholm, or Helsinki, or capital cities, you think "this is no problem, that people will come". They're so big cities so you know you have fans in the cities. But a city like Memmingen, I've never even heard of it before, but you attract 350 people. That's really cool!
And conversely have there been any problems or low points during the tour?
Jake E: On tour there's always minor problems like a cable is broken. But on other tours that we've done we've had huge problems like techniques or drums that haven't worked or an amp that has been broken. But on this tour, everything so far has been running very smoothly.
Elize: And we played one show in Switzerland in Bellinzona, and it was very interesting because it was a not so big audience, but for us it was still a very great experience. It was a very very small city, so of course we didn't expect and we'd played in Milan the day before.
Jake E: Yeah, it was very close to Milan, it was the Italian part of Switzerland.
Elize: So even if it had maybe been a low point for some other band, it wasn't for us, because we still got something out of it, even if there was not so many people there. They were great, the ones that were there. And we saw great mountains, and the city is something we will never forget.
I hear you've had to cancel one of the tour dates in Germany. What happened there?
Jake E: Its logistical problems. We have to do a show in London, and we have to ship the equipment to London in advance, and therefore cannot do the Limbach show because we have to play Berlin, and in Berlin we have to rent stuff, and we can't rent stuff at two locations. The cost would be enormous. So this is the reason. So from Prague the day before, we're going to Germany, ship it to London, because the London gig is a very important gig for us. So unfortunately we had to do that, we're really sorry.
Elize, a question specifically for you. Obviously AMARANTHE has been touring a lot, and that means weeks on a bus. How is it being the only female in a bus full of guys all the time?
Elize: I would say imagine you were a boy and you were in a girl's, like SPICE GIRLS, only female people working around you. I mean, I would of course love that, because I like to be a woman. And there is no-one I can share nail-polish, make-up, you know, boy talk. So that's the only thing which is hard. It's very special, but I think I'm handling it good. I can do the girl-talk when I'm home, or Skype with someone. If I have internet!
Your music is very hard to categorise. Lots of people carry on about how you can't ascribe a label to your music. Is that something you set out to accomplish from the beginning, or is it something that just happened?
Olof: It was not something conscious, but I think that when we started to compose the music, we didn't want to copy a band. And we obviously have a lot of different influences that affected us strongly from the beginning. But I would say that it's our diverse backgrounds and our diverse tastes in music that has led up to this combination of musical styles and this "undefinable genre" if you will.
And does it ever cause problems, having these diverse backgrounds? Say if somebody wants to do things one way, and the other wants to do something different. Does it cause conflicts?
Olof: It could have been much more noticeable because we come from different backgrounds, but at least musically speaking, if Elize has a very Pop idea, then that doesn't bother me because I listen to all of that music as well. And like our new brother Henrik, he listens as much to Hiphop as to Metal, so he's not only the big evil growler, if you know what I mean. So usually it's quite ok. But sometimes we might be leaning on one side, and people will go like "Yeah, Olof, maybe that's not such a great idea, let's not do it that way". But it doesn't happen too often.
AMARANTHE have been around for a while now. How have people opened up to the music? Are they more receptive of the different style now? Or has it stayed the same, and they've opened you with open arms from the beginning?
Jake E: They have done that. You know, you always hear some bullshit behind your back from people that "this is not Metal enough" or "this is too Metal for me". But from the start we've grown a big fanbase, and everyone seems to really like what we're doing. And I also think that the one thing that has made our music succeed in this way that we can attract this much people nowadays and all this stuff is because you can't label it. Because if there is no label on it, you don't have to be a Death Metal guy to go to the Death Metal concert, and a Pop guy to just go to the Beyoncé concert. We attract people who are pure metalheads, but we also attract people who usually might not have a DIMMU BORGIR album in their CD collection. So the audience we have is pretty diverse.
In your five year history, you have gone really far, really fast. But is there anything you would change if you could go back? Is there anything you would have done differently?
Jake E: Not really. When we started this project from the beginning we said to each other that this time we're gonna make stuff right, you know, do it the right way.
Olof: Make the right decisions.
Jake E: Yeah, exactly. Not like we have done with our other bands in the past. Not just listen to people, like "You should sign this contract; you just sign, it's ok". There are thousands of decisions that need to be made every day in the band, and I don't regret anything we've done. We've had the right tours, we've had the right support, we've gone to the right countries at the right times. The only thing we regret is that we should have had two bands so that we could have had more shows, play at two venues at the same time!
Olof: I think the only thing, and it's not something that is a very long story, but when we started the band we had a really crappy manager. And after that we got a good one. And that's probably the only bad decision we made. Still, we made a good decision to get rid of him!
In terms of writing the lyrics for songs, do you share this equally between the three vocalists, or does one person write a song completely? How does that work?
Jake E: When we write a song, we usually write crappy lyrics just to have something on the demos. Lately, I have been the one polishing it up.
Elize: We write the crap and he polishes!
Jake E: Me, Elize, and Olof all write stuff down, but it depends. Like one song on the new album, Olof has one song that he has written completely, the whole lyrics completely. On the last album, I had exactly the same thing, so it depends on the situation. It's not that we have one guy that, your job is to write the lyrics, your job is to write the drums… It's a collaboration.
With five of the band members moving around the stage all the time, do you ever get in each other's way?
Jake E: No, the thing is from the start, when we started, it was chaotic. No-one had any idea where we should go, and we would bump into each other, like what the fuck are we doing. I don't know how many shows we have done now, but it needs to be like 350, 400 soon, and we've never rehearsed with the band more than after a CD is done. We rent the rehearsal room, do rehearsals of the songs for a week, and then go on tour. Our rehearsal moments are on stage. So after each show we more or less talk about it, "maybe we should do it like this instead". The problem solves itself more or less.
So "The Nexus" is now one year old, and I hear there are already plans for a new album. What can people expect from that? Will it be something in a similar vein, or will it be different?
Olof: It is recognisably the AMARANTHE sound, absolutely. But I think it's something that is much more mature, and it is something we are extremely excited about ourselves. When we started writing for this album, we had the idea that "this needs to be more different" than "The Nexus" was from "Amaranthe". And I think we definitely achieved that without losing the core sound that we have with the band. So I would say that we are really really excited over the material, probably the most excited we have been in a very long time. It's going to be nice to have some response on it soon. It's not mature in losing the power or the tempo or the heaviness, because when you say "much more mature", people imagine more boring.
Elize: Like to be lazy and slow down, but that's not true. Like I feel that my vocal lines are more… I've been writing them more playful this time than on the last album. Because I thought I was a little bit too serious on the last one. So now it's picking up stuff from the first album that I felt I was missing on the last album.
And are there plans for any music videos from the upcoming album yet?
Jake E: Of course. That was one of the reasons when we sat down from the beginning as well, we don't sign a record deal if there's not a high budget for music videos in it, so absolutely. That's actually a bit of a theme.
Elize: Yeah, it would be weird if we just did not release a video. It would be like "what the fuck is happening". We can never do that!
One last question for you Elize, I heard that you won an award at the Bandit Awards. Can you tell us more about that?
Elize: The award was called "Rock n Roll Model", but it's a prize for being a role model for other people I guess. I didn't know I was nominated, because there was not people officially nominated to this, so it was Bandit themselves who chose the person. I know they follow my official Facebook, they probably see my home page, and I think mostly they see what I do every day on my Facebook. That's one of the main reasons why they picked me, and I just always try to be a good role model, so to get that kind of prize was very exciting, and I'm extremely grateful and very happy about that! And now I take my role even more seriously!
Well, that would be all from me, thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions!
Jake E: Thank you!
So you are now half way through the tour. How has it been so far? Have there been any highlights?
Erik: For me every day is kind of a highlight. Waking up in different places, all over Europe. This is the way to travel! I probably could never travel like a normal person ever again, because touring is just top notch.
Kammo: I'm not a person who has travelled very much, but I've always wanted to do it. So this is like a mixture where you get to travel everywhere, and I also get to play music, which is the main thing I want to do. So it's like the best of two worlds rolled into one. So this whole thing is like a highlight.
Erik: Want to play Metal music, drink beer, and go visit a bunch of exotic places with a bunch of friends? Yeah, sure!
Kammo: And meet people! Strange people, funny people. And just make great memories!
Erik: The tour has been awesome so far, and I look forward to the next half.
Have there been any downsides, or anything that's gone wrong?
Kammo: Everyone in the crew we are travelling with, I mean AMARANTHE are awesome guys, every one of them, and SMASH INTO PIECES, and the technicians, they are awesome guys to just hang out with.
Erik: Genuine persons. You can tell that everyone on the tour really wants to be here.
Kammo: Yeah, and everyone is always trying their hardest because everyone wants everything to be as good as possible, and you can totally feel that with these people because everyone is just incredible.
I heard you guys had a bit of a problem with one of your merchandise bags going missing.
Erik: Yeah, it got lost on the streets of Madrid. Somewhere.
Kammo: Somehow.
Erik: Yeah, somewhere, somehow that bag didn't get loaded on the bus.
Kammo: Last seen outside the bus.
Erik: Yeah, last seen outside the bus. But it wasn't on. So my guess is that someone actually took it. Just grabbed it and ran away. Some Spanish dude or chick is now wearing our shirts.
Kammo: The venue we played in was lying right next to this big city park. A lot of demonstration and cops the whole day. So a lot of people just everywhere, and that's where we had to load off after the gig, so it was almost impossible to have a good eye on everything.
Erik: It was very chaotic.
This tour has been the first time you have played in Germany. How has it been?
Erik: We always heard of Germany as the Metal country of Europe, and we had high expectations, but they have been met and then some. Just to be able to play in another country where people you have never met know all your songs, what your name is, what your dog's name is and whatnot.
That's slightly scary!
Erik: Yeah, it is, but it's all through social media. The shows in Germany have been awesome so far.
Kammo: It's kind of funny actually. When we usually play back in Sweden, most of the audience is actually musicians themselves. So many of them are just standing there, nodding, and after the gig they come up "Hey, I heard you missed that part", "Hey, great solo, you really nailed it". But over here it feels like people come here more to just enjoy the show more than to see you perform the song. So it's more like playing Metal than trying to impress…
Erik: Than trying to play the CD live.
Speaking of CDs, you guys have just released your third album. How does that compare to the other two?
Erik: I've gotten this question so many times, and I don't know how to answer it. Each album is a different process and a different way of looking at the world. I have so many inputs when I write music that every album is incomparable. Of course they need to be, but I would say that "Point Zero Solution" is bigger.
Kammo: It's darker. I was not a part of the writing sessions, because I joined the band after the record was finished. But from my point of view, it's really dark.
Erik: Yeah, you actually have an outside point of view.
Kammo: I really think the album is darker than "Elite" and "Internal Demons".
Erik: Music-wise it's darker and deals with a kind of not so Power Metal-like "kill the dragons and demons", but a more down-to-earth subject of humanity as a whole, and how society is basically breaking down because humanity is now thriving. But humanity can only thrive for so long, because we're eating all the resources. And "Point Zero Solution" is basically about that thing happening from point A to point B, the breakdown of society as a whole, and what to expect and what will happen with the elite governments of the world and all that. I actually got the name "Point Zero Solution" from the ultimate solution; when everything breaks down, the elites of the world will press the big red button and will initiate Point Zero Solution, which is basically "save the best and burn the rest". And without money or power in this world, you are pretty much nothing in the elite's eye. It's a dark album in that kind of direction because it's a very serious subject.
I noticed when I was watching the music video for "Point Zero Solution", everything seemed to be about bureaucracy and going up in flames. Is that what you were trying to convey with the music video?
Erik: We like fire! And as much as we need to have a strong audio, a strong sound that can inflict the listener with whatever feeling, we also need a strong visual statement. And we discussed different ways to approach this as a band our size, and we just felt that "fuck, let's just rent four of these massive pyrotechnic fire pillars and just go nuts".
Kammo: I remember when actually recorded the video, in the very first part of the video, there are some panic scenes with papers and grabbing orders and stuff: that idea actually came up while we were recording the same day.
Erik: Those scenes are about people spending a lot of time getting resources, and then when the resources are out then we just go grab for sand, we just scratch with our fingers, because everyone wants these resources but there are so few left that people start to behave like animals and kill each other, and by that the world of humanity has come to an end. Yeah, sure, if you find the fire burning up ourselves or whatever in the video reflects to this subject, then sure, you can say it like that. But it's also the papers with loan applications, because the value of money will go down as the resource's value goes up. So people won't be able to afford a decent way of living because the money is just gone, so that's why we wanted loan applications in there and just like "approved", "approved", "approved". It's basically when everything goes to hell. The human way. There is a stone pillar somewhere in Great Britain with a list of twelve sentences on how to make the humans feel good, and how they can thrive. And the number one is the population must be I think either at 20 million or 2 million. When the population of humans on this earth is 2 million, then we would be able to thrive. Now we're close to eight billion and we're just getting more and more. It's just math. Unless we can find a way to invent cold fusion where we have limitless energy, then we could solve some stuff. It's huge thoughts.
It has been five years since your first album "Internal Demons". Looking back on the band's history, if you could go back and change anything, is there anything you would change?
Erik: Being a musician is about not being satisfied. If we were to set a goal, let's say we want to sell 50 000 albums, that's a goal. Alright. And then we sell 50 000 albums. What would happen after that? Would we quit? Would we do anything? So I wouldn't change anything we have done because it has gotten us to the point where we are today, but you could say that we definitely learn what not to do with upcoming events. And we don't have a goal. The journey is the goal, so to speak, so we just go for it. But we definitely learn how not to do things; learn by doing and make smart choices.
In all three of your albums, the lyrics are in English. Why did you decide to go with English rather than Swedish?
Erik: Actually, there are two tracks on "Point Zero Solution", the Japanese edition, that are sung in Japanese! Two songs, including "Passion for Infinity" that are sung in Japanese by Ole. Thanks to two people from Japan that we met while we were there, and also a friend of Ole's who speaks Japanese, we got it all in the studio recording, and it all went splendidly. But English as the language of music: we need to have everyone understand what we are singing about, or as many as possible. We need to be that broad. If we were to sing in Swedish, we wouldn't be able to play in let's say Japan. So it just came natural to us that of course it was going to be in English. But yeah, two songs in Japanese!
Would you ever consider doing anything in Swedish? For example, I know SABATON did a Swedish edition of a whole album.
Erik: SABATON is the only band in Sweden that would be able to pull that one off, because they are probably the biggest band in Sweden. DEALS DEATH is not. So no, I don't think we would have chosen that instead of doing an English version. If we were to do two, then we would probably still say no, because we're not that big.
I recently saw an interview where you said that as a band, you're never satisfied, you're always thinking about the next step, the next thing to do. So what is the next step for DEALS DEATH?
Erik: Well, we are about to go on stage. That's pretty much the next step, and we'll take it from there.
Kammo: There are a few festivals coming up this summer. And we have started to plot some ideas for the next record.
Erik: There are always a few standard ideas, like new album and all that. Then there's the huge steps, the huge investments, but we haven't been able to focus on that yet, because right now we're on tour and we're completely focused on getting everything done.
Kammo: This is our first European night-liner tour, so there have been very many things to just grab and things to get the handle on how this works.
Erik: But we don't have any goals or whatnot. We just go for it and try and get as many possibilities as we possibly can. I mean, that's why we do this: we like it and we want to spread it to as many people as possible.
Kammo: I bet you could say that the only goal is to try to do everything you do a little bit better and enjoy it.
Erik: I can tell you my goal. My goal is never to quit. That's probably the best goal whilst still having the band, the goal is never to quit. Because there are going to be some very hard time, if it's either personal issues, or family issues, or money issues: do not quit. That's the main goal.
Kammo: That's when you remember times like this. You remember why you're doing this in the first place. There's dips in everything you do. It doesn't matter if you play music or play football or paint paintings or whatever, everyone has a dip: that's what you have to remember.
DEALS DEATH has had some involvement from some pretty famous people in the past, including members of SABATON, and ex-CHILDREN OF BODOM. How did that all happen?
Erik: Well, I came to know SABATON through this school where I attended, and recorded the first album; Boomtown, where Kammo is now attending. It was a great experience, and I got to know SABATON, and since the town of Falun is very small, all musicians know all musicians. So if you just go to a bar and grab a beer, there are probably a few famous people there who have contacts to other famous people, and that's basically where it started. I asked one of the guys from SABATON, I said "I want the best producer in the world to do this album", and he was like "Yeah, I got the best producer's phone
number right here. Just take it and give him a call". So we went for it. And with the "Elite" album, we also got help from Jonas Kjellgren, he works very close to Peter (Tägtgren), in the same building and we were so satisfied with his work. Because we got ripped off with "Elite"…
Kammo: This was before Jonas.
Erik: We got ripped off by a guy in Gothenburg and he basically stole all the files, and there was police involvement an all that. But then the studio owner got through all of the hard-drives and managed to get all our files back and just took the entire recording and just gave it to Jonas like "Please help us", and he remixed everything and reamped it and all that and replaced a lot of stuff, and we got the product "Elite" from Jonas, and we signed to that record with Spinefarm, so good job! We were so impressed with his work on the "Elite" album that we figured that if we could get him everything he needed and everything he wanted, how would that sound? So that's why we recorded the entire album with Jonas, had him mix it, had him master it, and have him coproduce it. And that's where "Point Zero Solution" comes in. But yeah, it's a very small town, a lot of people know people, and…
Kammo: And that's how I came to be in DEALS DEATH. Because Falun is so small!
Well, that would be all my questions. Thank you very much, and I hope you have an awesome show!
Erik: Thank you!
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