Interview

Singer Johannes Eckerström: "We Want To Treat Everything About Avatar As Art."

Thursday, October 2nd saw Avatar, one of the most intriguing and visually arresting metal acts to emerge from Sweden this decade, perform in a support slot for Mushroomhead at Phase 2 in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Well prior to showtime, as early arrivals were casually gathering outside the venue doors, I sat down at a table in the adjacent restaurant with Johannes Eckerström, a true frontman if ever there was one. An outgoing giant of a young man, both in physical height and in spirit, Johannes is the latest in a long line of theatrically-inclined metal figureheads such as Marilyn Manson and King Diamond.

With the donning of trademark ghoulish face paint still a couple hours away, the German-Swedish singer and I were able to relate as contemporaries on a multitude of topics, starting with his band itself and running the gamut from musical nostalgia, to “selling out,” to nü-metal woes, to piracy, to cultural differences, to the “Rock God” myth and the “groupie mentality,” and much more.

We discussed artists as diverse as KISS, Foo Fighters, Christina Aguilera, Black Sabbath, Mayhem, Pink Floyd, Opeth, Cannibal Corpse, Slipknot, In Flames, Rammstein, System Of A Down, Limp Bizkit, Soilwork, Blind Guardian, Devin Townsend, The Beatles, Beethoven, Machine Head, Nine Inch Nails, the Jonas Brothers, and Led Zeppelin.

If ever an interview could be described as a portrait of a person, I daresay it would be this one. I give you Johannes Eckerström of Avatar - unabridged, unedited, and uncensored.

Mike Smith (OverkillExposure): I’ll admit that I’m still very new to Avatar. I reviewed “Black Waltz” in 2012 for a magazine, but never owned a copy, and it wasn’t until “Hail The Apocalypse,” [2014] and now this tour, that I really became curious. Avatar seems pretty different from a lot of what’s out there, so broadly speaking, what are you guys all about?

Johannes Eckerström: Well, “Black Waltz” was the first album to come out in the U.S. The three albums prior, we only released in Europe - actually the third one was only released through a little independent guy in a garage in Japan. And he stopped answering emails after a month, so I don’t really count that one. [laughs] “Black Waltz” was the first album where we really got our shit together. It started to become more than just about the songs, even though I felt that we’d done our best songs to date on that album. We figured out that we wanted to treat everything about Avatar as art, like a conceptual art project. That’s what we admired in lots of other bands in all kinds of different genres. If you look at anyone from The Hives to Mushroomhead, they’re people who manage to put the visuals together with what the music is saying. Everything communicates the same stuff. Most of the greatest bands do that, either in extreme examples like KISS, or subtly like Foo Fighters. They look the way they sound, without doing anything crazy or theatrical. We knew we wanted to do something like that, in a very broad sense of the term. We were experimenting a lot while recording, and doing photo shoots, trying out ideas for album covers and everything. We gave it some time, and at some point, we had an idea for an album cover featuring me in a lake of fire. And a lake of fire is only fun if you have an actual lake and an actual fire. [laughs] So we went out to the countryside, and the only pyro-technician crazy enough to try it was a guy named Bryce Graves, from an American sideshow group called Hellzapoppin. He happened to be in Sweden, and happened to know our stylist, and so on. So he lit me on fire, and it was very cool. [laughs] Then he showed some other tricks he could do, like eat the glass of a lightbulb and stuff like that. That led us to decide to use all this stuff in a music video, and all we needed was to fit me into the context of the video. We viewed it as a performance video, but there would’ve been TOO much performance by including the whole band. This was a Christina Aguilera, “let the singer walk around and sing, and do sexy poses” kind of thing. [laughs] And we had this whole circus vibe in the song, with the waltz sound, and samples with organs, so we fleshed out the context: let’s make me a scary clown! [laughs] And it just clicked. It worked so well, resonated with me and the whole band. We’d found the face of the music, and something to build from. Since then, it’s been a very organic thing, and here we are today. We now know that we always want to connect the music with the visuals, and put the music videos hand-in-hand with the songs themselves. Every aspect is equally important. So that’s what we are today: a conceptual art project.

Mike: So was there a guiding idea or theme for your earlier albums?

Johannes: When we recorded our first album, I’m sure Henrik [Sandelin, bass] wasn’t even eighteen yet. That was in summer 2005, and we released it early 2006. And I wasn’t even twenty. We were all kids, which means we kind of grew up in the limelight, and got some great opportunities before we were ready for them. There are always very young bands, young talents, that get a lot of hype, and we had a little taste of that in Scandinavia, and there was some cool touring. But afterward, we didn’t really manage to follow it up. I’m still really proud of those albums, especially the first one, “Thoughts Of No Tomorrow,” and the second one, “Schlact.” [2007] But they have a more generic feeling. We did our own take on Scandinavian melodic death metal, but it still was more within a certain tradition than what we’re doing today. Eventually we came to a certain phase in our lives where we didn’t know what we wanted to do specifically, but we knew if we kept going that way, just playing melodic death metal, we’d end up in a little corner that we didn’t want to stay in. So we started to remodel ourselves A LOT with the third album, [2009] so much so that we self-titled it, to let it be the kickoff for the “new Avatar.” But it turned out that it wasn’t, really. [laughs] I mean, there was some cool stuff on it. We were working a lot more with rock ’n’ roll and classic heavy metal influences, and brought them into the brutal sound we had before. So it felt cool, but I think the whole album is tainted with this kind of “please love us!” attitude. “Remember when you liked us when we were eighteen? Can you do that again, please?” [laughs] That’s just the wrong attitude to have, which we learned the hard way. So what eventually became “Black Waltz” might’ve been our swan song at one point. John [Alfredsson, drums] and I actually quit the band for fifteen minutes. [laughs] We were sitting having a beer at our favorite bar in Gothenburg, frustrated, burnt out, saying “This is hopeless, pointless… we’re so OLD now.” Twenty-four years old. [laughs] “So OLD and nothing to show for it.” So we’re like, “Fuck this. What should we do instead?” We quit the band. Sat there quietly for about fifteen minutes, letting it sink in. And then… “But you remember that riff? … We need to finish THAT song.” “Oh yeah, you’re right.” “Cool. REUNION!” [laughs] Had a “reunion” party after those fifteen minutes. But we realized, “OK. This time let’s not worry about what other people think. We didn’t do that in the beginning, but started after a while, so let’s remove that poison from what we’re doing.” Which led up to “Black Waltz,” and we didn’t apologize for anything on that one. We did it truly for ourselves, and decided to put whatever money we had left into the recording to get it exactly how we wanted it. And if nobody cared, at least we’d have done something that WE liked.

Mike: And aside from your confidence levels rising in that regard, what changed about the music? What do you think made the music on “Black Waltz” so much better?

Johannes: Well, we started to learn the “less is more” principle. Personally, I felt I rediscovered metal. I became thirteen years old again, in a way. It’s very simple: in metal, the riff is king, and the riff is groove. Take Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” that beat, that riff… [starts tapping the table, singing]

Mike: Right. And EVERYONE knows it!

Johannes: Exactly. And imagine if it had sounded like this. [taps out a fast, technical beat while singing the riff] It would’ve been the worst song ever! It had to have that specific beat and groove they worked out with Bill Ward. They created the right groove for that particular song.

Mike: If it had been a blast beat, people might not remember it.

Johannes: Yeah, but in other cases, that groove can also mean a blast beat. I mean, I wouldn’t have wanted to hear Mayhem’s “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas” starting with [taps out a dance beat, starts techno-beatboxing, laughs]. No backbeat disco groove on THAT one!

Mike: Right. Whatever the beat is, it needs to be appropriate for the song.

Johannes: Yeah, exactly - the beat resonates with the riff, which creates a groove, and resonates with the specific musicians’ playing style. Going black to Black Sabbath, “Paranoid” only sounds TRULY great when it’s performed by Sabbath, the original lineup. Ronnie James Dio was an amazing singer, but one of the weakest things he ever did, in my opinion, is sing “Paranoid.” It didn’t work.

Mike: Some of Dio’s renditions of Ozzy’s songs sounded great, but on others, you can definitely tell that someone else had done them before, someone more fitting.

Johannes: Right. No one can touch Dio as a vocalist in itself, but sometimes it just didn’t work as well as when Ozzy Osbourne sang those particular songs. So it’s about finding what fits you as individual musicians. Once we figured those pieces out, and wrote some riffs we liked, and got some song titles in our heads, the sky was the limit. Then comes the “Pink Floyd” part of the songwriting, where we take the song wherever it needs to go. Luckily for our careers, that meant that some songs only turn out three minutes and thirty-three seconds long, with a catchy chorus. Which was good. [laughs] Because here in the U.S., radio still matters, even for metal, in a way it doesn’t AT ALL in Europe, except for Finland, basically. We don’t write “radio songs” - we just write songs - and some songs needed to be nine minutes long, and contain slide guitars and weird samples from Indian musicals. But either way, it’s all about respecting the foundations of metal the way we define it, and then doing whatever the fuck we want with it.

Mike: Do you run into people who simply don’t like the fact that you have songs on the radio? I’d imagine some cynics wouldn’t even care to distinguish between a band like Avatar, whose creative process occasionally results in a “radio song,” and a cookie-cutter band that you can tell writes songs specifically aimed at radio.

Johannes: I feel that in a sense… it puts us in a crowd of people I don’t mind being in. Some of our audience comes from the radio crowd, but I don’t mind that, because I still see tons of Opeth T-shirts at our concerts as well, which is very cool for me. It makes me think, “Wow, you like Opeth and us too? We must be pretty good, I guess! Cool!” [laughs] But it’s interesting being here in the U.S., because the radio thing hasn’t happened to us in Europe, and I don’t think it ever will, because those channels just aren’t there. Over here, we’re considered more of a radio-friendly rock band, but it’s weird… A little while ago, I mentioned Mayhem. We come from that kind of background as a band; we were originally a death metal band when we were learning how to play by doing covers. It was all “Hammer Smashed Face.” [Cannibal Corpse] And then other stuff was integrated over the years, and then somehow some of it began to fit into the radio format. But I don’t mind, y’know? As long as I don’t get tempted to write only for that purpose.

Mike: Sure. Then it would all get stale pretty quickly.

Johannes: Exactly. So we needed to just stay focused on that feeling we had at our little “reunion party” in the Gothenburg beer hall. [laughs] “Let’s not repeat ourselves; let’s challenge ourselves; let’s do this for us.” And if the management can put it on the radio, then yeah, good for them!

Mike: Did it surprise you that Avatar hit it this large here in the States? After a couple tours and the Rock on the Range performance, and of course the radio play, people are really buzzing about you.

Johannes: Well, I try to balance against my megalomania. [laughs] Self-entitlement is a feeling I just loathe… but when you’re focused on your job, you’re like, [speaking very rapidly] “OK, so we’ve gotta go to management, and get this deal set up, and let’s go to our [indecipherable gibberish].” [laughs] You turn these dreams into goals very quickly, y’know? Of course, sometimes you stop and appreciate it, like “Hey, this is pretty sweet.” But for us… Yes, in a way, we were surprised that people liked us so much. We couldn’t have known that beforehand. But then again, we had almost ten years of practice in Europe, and ten years of mistakes, that led to the band that released “Black Waltz” as its first album over here. The entry level of experience we had in arriving here led to partnerships that we built immediately. We no longer had the booking agent working out of his mom’s garage next-door to our bassist’s mom’s house. [laughs] That guy was back in Sweden. Here, we didn’t have to wade through those weird record label contracts where they specify all the planets in the solar system, where they also have the rights of release for future purposes, when new planets are discovered, and blah blah blah. All that weird shit. [laughs] We didn’t have that here, because we went through those experiences in Europe. We came here as a much more experienced band, knowing more what we wanted. You always think you’re being honest artistically, but it’s always a learning process to peel away layers of yourself and find new levels of honesty. “Black Waltz,” in that sense, was our deepest album up to that date. So for those reasons, I wasn’t exactly shocked at our success, because the setup was already there, but we did feel lucky that the songs seemed to be up to the standards as well, and that people liked them. That part you can never know and never guarantee, and we still don’t know. We’re writing songs now for a new album, and if people don’t like it… fine! I’ll make sure that I like it, so I can listen to it after I destroy my career. [laughs] I’m cool with that. It’s not SO IMPORTANT that I’m doing this for the world, y’know? I’m not impressed with myself just because I’m a musician, a guy on stage. There are ambulance drivers, Doctors Without Borders, preschool teachers. All that is pretty cool.

Mike: I can imagine taking things as they come - “We got up to this level, cool… Are we gonna go any higher? Maybe, maybe not - Oh, next level! This is cool too.”

Johannes: Yeah, I mean, we stay hungry, and now we actually feel that we can build the band, career-wise, in a way we found it hard to figure out five years ago. It didn’t really move back then. Now it’s moving, and it’s lots of fun. But it’s also turned into a bit of a job. Not a bad job, but again, you turn these dreams into goals, and the idea is to stay grounded and focused. That makes it hard to stop and celebrate. What looks like a point of success from the outside is actually a point of intense work for the band. We’re keeping very busy now, which is very cool, but we’re not stopping to shake champagne bottles. [laughs]

Mike: On the subject of this theatrical type of hard rock and metal… there was a big popular splash of this stuff ten, fifteen years ago, when bands broke out like Slipknot, Mudvayne, and Mushroomhead - who are here tonight, of course. If Avatar had been doing its thing around that time or slightly before, do you think things would’ve turned out similarly? Or do you think something needed to change first, like the rise in popularity of Swedish bands like In Flames?

Johannes: That’s the interesting part, what you’re saying there. Obviously, if we were to release “Hail The Apocalypse” twenty years ago, a whole bunch of our influences wouldn’t have existed yet. I still feel we did a fresh album, and it’s still in the genre of metal, so in that sense it would’ve related to something preexisting, with our own little take on it of course. But if we’d released it back in those days… Rammstein’s “Mutter” album [2001] probably wouldn’t have been out, and we listened to that one a lot. [laughs] So I guess if you put it that way, we would’ve blown even more minds! Yeah, maybe we would’ve fit into the context of that scene… but inevitably it would’ve been slightly different. I don’t really know. It’s always interesting to speculate, though!

Mike: Yeah, the divisions between the American and European scenes, and the great trend migrations, have always really fascinated me. For example, it took some years for the Gothenburg metal style to get noticed here in the States.

Johannes: And vice-versa. Because when we were listening to those Gothenburg bands… well, for me specifically, it was slightly older bands that got me into metal in general. ‘70s, ‘80s stuff. And therefore, the new stuff at the time - that despicable term “nü-metal” - was not OK. Slipknot fans were not metalheads at all, according to me then. [laughs] It took me a while, because now I fucking love Slipknot, and I’m getting into Mushroomhead. System Of A Down’s “Mesmerize” is one of our band’s go-to party albums every time. So much of that stuff. But at the age of fifteen…

Mike: “Posers!”

Johannes: “Posers” wasn’t even strong enough. It was more like “poison.” We thought it was destroying metal. [laughs] That makes me wonder… if we were doing this in Sweden in 1999, painting ourselves, doing the theatrical thing in that environment at the time… [cringes] I think Europe is more open NOW to what we’re doing. Just as it took a while for the Swedish bands to break in North America, it took a while for kids like me to like Slipknot.

Mike: A similar thing happened to me. I was fifteen when Slipknot released their debut, which I went nuts over, and I was into Korn around that time too, but then broke out of the phase and went on a big elitist “anti-nü-metal” crusade for a couple years.

Johannes: But then, a few years later, I’ll bet you accidentally heard “Spit It Out” and started doing this… [starts a “Night At The Roxbury” head bob] and thought, “THAT was hypocritical.” [laughs]

Mike: [laughs] That’s exactly what happened. I’d put away my Slipknot CDs, and walked around telling people, “Blah, Korn is the worst,” et cetera.

Johannes: “I never liked them! It never happened!” [laughs] Yeah, I remember a guy a few years younger than me who lived on my street. He started out with the nü-metal stuff, and with every year, he kept turning into more of a “trve metalhead.” And during the transition period, he made it clear that he only liked the OLD SCHOOL Limp Bizkit. [laughs] He’d say, “I only like their stuff before they sold out.” Because that’s what you said about any band during any transition - you only liked the “old school,” the original, the true, “before they sold out.” And nobody ever really defines when they sold out.

Mike: A lot of people have to put a qualifier on things. You can never simply like a band; you have to announce you “only like them up until [X] album.”

Johannes: Right, and the Limp Bizkit story really shows how bizarre it got, especially around the time In Flames released “Reroute To Remain.” [2002] That changed a lot of things.

Mike: It is a great album, though.

Johannes: I love it! But I had to see them live before I felt comfortable with it. Because for one, they… [makes a horrified face] toured with Slipknot! In AMERICA! Wearing white overalls on stage! [laughs] We were all like, “Hmmm, not sure about this…” But then Soilwork opened for them, so we were also like, “OK, we’ve got Soilwork now; we’re safe; ‘Natural Born Chaos’ [2002] is an amazing album,” and everything. So we saw that, and it warmed us up to “Reroute To Remain.” We finally just said to ourselves, “Well, what’s a sellout anyway?” To me, it felt like Avatar was flirting with “selling out” on the third album, but then it tanked! Nobody liked it. Because you can’t make good music that way. Not a chance.

Mike: And you can’t technically “sell out” if nobody buys it.

Johannes: Exactly. We had so many mixed feelings, because we wanted to be thrashier and more brutal, but also more traditional… we wanted to be EVERYTHING at the same time, except for ourselves. It was strange. It was hard to focus artistically, because we were trying to please everyone.

Mike: And I guess with more age and maturity comes the mere satisfaction of pleasing yourself, as with rediscovering bands like Slipknot and Korn and deciding you really liked them again after all.

Johannes: Sure, and with a few exceptions, I stopped worshipping bands’ entire catalogues. Not because some albums are “sellouts” and others are “not sellouts,” but just from getting more selective. It’s not even about genres either, really. It’s just about good stuff. I think ten percent of what Marilyn Manson has done is really amazing to me. He scared me and kickstarted my puberty in such a weird way. I was not ready when I was twelve, when “Mechanical Animals” [1998] came out! It was weird, and explains a lot of stuff that’s wrong with me today. [laughs] But other than that… Today, I recognize certain stuff that’s weaker, but I still love that ten percent - those particular songs, or maybe a full album here or there. The exceptions are Blind Guardian, Devin Townsend… that might actually be it. Those artists, I love everything from beginning to end just as much.

Mike: That’s always tough for me, because being asked my all-time favorite band is such an impossible question…

Johannes: Mine’s The Beatles. [slaps the table] Done! [laughs]

Mike: I never have any clue, because I’m constantly listening to all this stuff, endlessly.

Johannes: It is hard, yeah. On most days I answer Beatles. Or Devin Townsend, or Blind Guardian, or Beethoven, if he counts as a “band.” He was never on a record label; he was “underground!” [laughs] He did have a problem with piracy, actually. He was the first freelance composer who wasn’t sponsored by a specific royalty of sorts. And a big part of his income came from selling his sheet music. That’s when piracy came into the picture. He had to hurry and sell as many sheets of music as possible before the pirates got ahold of it. Before it “leaked.” [laughs]

Mike: Are you a big downloader?

Johannes: No, but I am a product of my time. I own way more CDs and vinyls than most dudes born in ’86, but also way less than those born a few years ahead of me. The whole band, we’re all a product of our time. Avatar never existed pre-Napster. They had the name in 2001, and I joined in 2002, when we were kids. Napster was already over and dead by then. It was Kazaa or whatever, all that file-sharing. So we’ve only released music during the downloading era. I prefer the iTunes, Spotify, “come and see us, and buy a T-shirt” kind of solution. Who needs to be as rich as The Rolling Stones anyway? Seriously. It makes me kind of OK with this. When the money disappears, it does remove a bit of the greed over time.

Mike: And maybe a bit of the financial pressure as well.

Johannes: Yes, and the downside is that with the level we’re on now, in a different time, we might’ve gotten a lot more money in advance to do some crazier shit than we can do now, but still, we do have label support and we’re happy with them. So it’s just the way things are today.

Mike: I do hope the constant bitch-session about downloading is starting to come to an end. Even though stealing is wrong, it is part of the way things are…

Johannes: I saw a Paul McCartney interview on YouTube, and there was a question: “So, if downloading existed when you were fifteen, would you have downloaded music?” And he was like, “What the fuck do you think? Of course I would!” [laughs] He didn’t actually say “fuck” - Sir Paul doesn’t speak like that in public - but still, the point was there, like… “Um… YES?” And now we have Spotify, which is more comfortable than piracy. It’s the solution. Maybe we’ll get a little piece of revenue from it, and perhaps more, as these services continue to grow. And then we get more control; the albums don’t leak as much anymore. Stuff like that.

Mike: On that note, we had a couple new Machine Head songs leak not too long ago…

Johannes: Yeah, that makes me so cynical though… Every time I hear a story like that, I imagine people huddling up, saying “Let’s fake a leak.” I mean, everybody heard the story about when Apple “forgot” the new iPhone in a bar in London, remember? Someone “accidentally” left it sitting there. And Nine Inch Nails left a USB stick in a bathroom after a show, and it contained their new single at the time, and it started a super-viral campaign.

Mike: It’s crazy how people can plan that to perfection!

Johannes: They used the same advertising company that worked with Microsoft and launched… Windows Vista, I think it was? So Nine Inch Nails launched this viral campaign to promote the album “Year Zero,” [2007] which is a concept album about the future. And there were all these home pages that were part of this conceptual world, where people learned about the characters and the whole background from these fake “news sites” that were set in this fictional world. And it all started with that one USB. There were all these stories going around about it, and I just… I don’t think music really leaks like that by accident or theft anymore, because it’s watermarked! You can try to spread the downloads you receive for press purposes, but someone will find out it was you!

Mike: And they’d never let me through the door again.

Johannes: Exactly. They’re watermarked. I’m not sure what that means, [laughs] except that there’s a line of code saying that it was you. So it’s not that hard anymore. And I guess most people who get promos nowadays don’t want to be assholes about it anyway. At least we would hope that. I mean, the whole leakage thing was a big game a while back, and now it feels, “Ah, it’s so yesterday.” When it comes to Machine Head, I don’t want to accuse Robb Flynn of being a liar when I’ve never met the man or talked to him, but it is just one of those things: how does a leak like that happen today? And if you make such a big deal out of it, it spreads further! I read online, “Machine Head Is Pissed,” basically. I wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t commented on it. And that’s the whole point: right now, I’m talking about Machine Head more than I was last week, and for consistently longer than any time since 2007, I think. Not because I never talk about them or listen to them, but because the campaign - whatever it is - is working! Whether they wanted it to or not. Because here we are talking about them… and now I’d like to listen to some Machine Head. I’m curious. [laughs]

Mike: I think the songs are great.

Johannes: [laughs] You see? It’s working! And since we’re talking about leaked music, now I’m starting to feel guilty, and thinking maybe I should buy a ticket. [laughs] This is how it works.

Mike: Speaking of new albums - and since we’ve already discussed In Flames - “Siren Charms” is my big disappointment of the year.

Johannes: I heard the first single, “Rusted Nail,” I think it’s called? The one where he tries to sing like me. [laughs] To me, it feels as though they know who they are and what they’re doing to such an extent that it starts to work against them. That it’s like, “OK, we’ll put this In Flames piece here, and that In Flames piece there, while trying something new…” And they stick it all together, and it doesn’t really make sense. It doesn’t feel coherent to me. I have not listened to the whole album, though.

Mike: Yeah, that song grew on me, but I feel the rest of the album suffers terribly from that problem, except for “Everything’s Gone,” which is pretty solid and heavy - almost a classic-sounding In Flames song. It could’ve come from “Reroute To Remain.”

Johannes: “Before they sold out.” [laughs]

Mike: Right, and everyone has a different idea about just when they “sold out,” and the bar is always being shifted. But on this album… I just don’t know what Anders Fridén is trying to do with this art-rock vocal style.

Johannes: Well, he has publicly loved that kind of music for a good fifteen years now, so fair enough, I guess.

[muffled, amplified mic-check ranting in Swedish from the concert hall, Johannes pauses]

Johannes: My drummer is also a great vocalist… Oh, and that’s my bass player, recommending that we eat a turd a day. [laughs] That’s the great thing about us as a band on tour. We’re in a country now where most people speak one language, and most of us are bilingual, and I’m trilingual. I’m half-German, so I speak German, Swedish, and English. I recently moved to Finland and can’t speak Finnish yet, but Swedish is an official language there as well, so I survive. And they speak better English than Swedes do anyway. [laughs] But we in Avatar have these language advantages. Sweden is a fairly small country still, y’know? Modest, not even ten million people. Which makes it highly unlikely that anyone else will understand what we say from the stage during soundcheck, when we want to say some funny, fucked-up shit to entertain each other. And if a show is a bit slow and I want to cheer the other guys up, I make some joke in Swedish that the audience will only hear as [growling] “Rawrawraw!” And it’ll crack them up. I’ve been to concerts where I hear something like that, and we all cheer, like, “Yeah, I’m not sure what he just said, but I’m totally pumped up!” And it was probably just some inside joke from some TV skit, or something you’re not supposed to say. But when we do it, it’s in Swedish. So only we know. [laughs]

Mike: I can imagine being bilingual or even trilingual makes touring far more entertaining. Lots of opportunities to communicate in different ways.

Johannes: Especially when it comes to cursing. It’s funny, the different perspectives depending on where you are, and where you’re from - how a language sounds to you, if you don’t speak it. All the stereotypes about languages come in because the less you understand it, the funnier it sounds sometimes. I don’t remember if it’s Zulu or Swahili or whatever, one of those big African languages, the one with the “click” sound… it just sounds so cool. [laughs] It’s a consonant, right? Like an “R” or something.

Mike: And when it comes to crowd interactions, do you notice significant differences between crowds back in Europe and crowds here?

Johannes: I think American audiences remind me of what I see in Paris and in southern Europe, which is a higher level of enthusiasm. In Scandinavia, we’re a bit more stiff and cold, and we all have bands of our own, so it’s a tougher crowd. An amused Swede still looks more bored than an only semi-amused Italian, y’know. And you Americans are pretty enthusiastic about the stuff you like. People are like, “Dude, yes! Wonderful! Welcome to America!” And there’s a bit more of a push there, which I see in southern Europe. But in the end, they’re all just different ways of expressing yourself. If one Finnish guy shakes my hand and says “Well done,” I know how much that means, because Finns are shy.

Mike: That’s one of the first things I learned when I went over there.

Johannes: They’re not rude, but they’re just not comfortable in some of those settings. Swedes are also kind of shy and introverted compared to the rest of Europe, but even so, when I go to Finland, I almost feel Spanish compared to other people. [laughs] It gets pretty quiet on those trams in Helsinki in the morning!

Mike: And I imagine in Scandinavia, you’re dealing with a lot of “Music Police.”

Johannes: Oh, yes. Especially in Finland, because they’re all great musicians. [laughs] I’m not even joking. One time in Tampere, we went to this “open-stage night,” and we arrived early the night before, and we were like, “Aww yeah, we’re gonna kick everybody’s asses in there.” So we showed up, thinking we were gonna kick ass, play our songs, have a beer, and “show ‘em.” And then a couple of drunk Finns crawled onstage, picked up instruments, and played “Rock and Roll” by Led Zeppelin TO PERFECTION. And we were like… “Hmmm, let’s NOT go onstage tonight. We are NOT going to kick ass.” Up there, they started asking everyone, [in a slurred voice] “Can anyone sing this song?” Someone answered, [slurred voice] “Yeah, I can sing this OK, I’ll be Robert Plant!” And then he started singing it PERFECTLY. We were like, “Oh my God!” [laughs] So we learned a bit of a lesson that night. In the north, you’re not supposed to think too highly of yourself, and we don’t like when people do that. Boasting or bragging is just not cool, and the attitude there is to know your place and keep your head down. And if you’ve achieved something really cool, you’re supposed to be very humble and “normal” about it.

Mike: I think that’s pretty good advice for anyone.

Johannes: Of course. There’s a healthy side of confidence, obviously, when the audience is pumped and going “Yeah, this is awesome!” and showing appreciation. But still, MTV’s “Cribs” could never be filmed in Finland or Sweden. Remember that “Daily Show” a few years ago, right around when Obama was elected the first time? It went something like, [sinister voice] “Will America turn into Sweden?” A “socialist country.” [laughs] “Do we want to be like Sweden?” And they sent a guy to Stockholm, who just interviewed hot chicks, who explained, “Yes, we get free massages at work,” or at a reduced price. Stuff like that. Basically explaining that Sweden isn’t that bad. And then they went to Robyn, the big Swedish pop singer, and did this “Cribs” kind of parody with her, where they point to all these bags in the corner and said “Oh, someone’s been shopping!” “No, that’s my recycling station.” [laughs] And eventually they were like, “OK, this isn’t going to work.” She had a nice apartment, but it wasn’t the typical “celebrity lifestyle,” with two TVs in every room, glowing pool table, and a shark tank.

Mike: How everyone imagines a pop or rock star lives.

Johannes: Yeah, I mean, no one is dreaming, “Man, when I get rich, I’m gonna buy that cottage out in the woods.” “Me too! Far away from each other?” “Yeah!” [laughs]

Mike: It is really interesting, especially being in rock ’n’ roll, the gap between people’s “rich-ass motherfucker” rockstar image and the actual reality, which involves keeping too busy to pop the champagne, as you mentioned before. I think some people still don’t fully understand that it’s just not about hookers and blow.

Johannes: [laughs] And people still get surprised that I’m not into it for hookers and blow. I’ve run into some weirdos… This happened in Rochester, New York, I think. We were opening for Sevendust and Lacuna Coil, and were walking around between sets basically trying to sell our CDs to drunk people, like hot dog vendors at a ball game. [laughs] And some guy said, “Aww, I drank up all my money.” We replied, “Oh well, there’s always next time, man.” Then he said, “But! … Do you wanna make me really, REALLY jealous as a brother and as a boyfriend?”

Mike: No way!

Johannes: Yeah. I said, “… Uh… no… I have a girlfriend, but thanks.” He said, “AWW, COME ON!” He got OFFENDED that I refused to have a threesome with his sister and his girlfriend. He was like, “Come on, you’re metal! You’re supposed to get drunk and stoned and not give a fuck!” And blah blah blah. I said, “Well, the way I define metal is, I make my own life choices, not someone else’s, including yours. You can do what you want, but I’m a songwriter, a musician. That’s what I do.” Otherwise it was a great show, and we got to meet Joey Belladonna, [Anthrax] which was very cool. It was a good day except for this guy, who’s so stuck in my memory. [laughs] That is just not who I am or who we are as a band, y’know? Also, I don’t do boob signings. They ask me, and I think, “Do I look like Nikki Sixx?” [laughs] I guess it’s just this ritual that I don’t really understand. Every Midsummer celebration in Sweden, people dance around a huge penis that’s pointing down to the ground. Some kind of old heathen, symbolic, pagan thing. The boob-signing stuff feels like that, like a symbolic sexual ritual, a “cum on my tits” kind of thing. And if you want that from me, you didn’t read up on the lyrics before you came here. I’m sorry if I sound pretentious now, but it’s just… It’s weird when people feel let down because you didn’t meet every expectation.

Mike: You killed the dream!

Johannes: That’s one of the few downsides that really makes me complain. I don’t complain about attention, because for one, I am an attention whore. [laughs] Two, I’m here to do a show and interviews, and play. It’s what we do. It’s a social event; attention comes with the job. And I’m great with kids. I could go home and study to be a children’s psychologist and nobody will ever bother me on the street again.

Mike: Is that a backup plan for one day?

Johannes. Maybe. Maybe. It’s one thing I’d like to do among many. The point is, I don’t HAVE to be here, and no one is holding a gun to my head, so I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining about everything. But there is a thing in rock ’n’ roll… people use you as an excuse to behave in certain ways. “I’m at a rock show, so I’m gonna be a total… blah,” whatever. “And it’s OK, because they [the band] are here! And that guy onstage is my alibi to behave like this, and he’s supposed to live up to my expectations and sign my boobs and grab my ass, and I get to touch him wherever I want.” And when that happens, I say, “Hey, you keep your hands to yourself, but we’ll take a normal picture.” They’re like, “WHAT?” Usually it’s women about twenty years older than me. They don’t give a fuck and think they can do whatever they want. Now imagine if I was a twenty-something girl who leaves the stage and takes pictures with men twenty years older, men who want to grab me wherever they want. It’s just the principle of it: “Don’t you see that this is a bit wrong, that you don’t know me and I don’t know you?”

Mike: People project a lot. They project everything onto the guy onstage, because there’s a need to keep the “Rock God” myth alive.

Johannes: I’ve become a lot better at handling things like that, and sending the right telepathic signals to some of those groupie types. The more used to this environment I get, the less that weird stuff happens. But the reason it surprised me so much earlier on, is this: if you start a metal band, and you start growling, you’re not doing it for the babes. [laughs] None of us were really into this for the babes. There are other genres of music that work SO MUCH BETTER for that. You can be a Jonas Brother and sell those purity rings, and what happens behind closed doors… who knows? [laughs] But in our case, you don’t play metal to get laid. Originally, at least. I mean, the “Rock God” thing is very powerful, but when it comes specifically to METAL, it’s supposed to be more about brotherhood. We’ve added sisterhood to that nowadays, which makes it trickier, but the general idea, which I try to talk about onstage, is treating each other as equals. I travel a lot and see great people everywhere, and I try to connect. Metal is supposed to be about connecting. Let the shallow rock ’n’ rollers and glamsters be the ones standing there going, “Worship me!” I try to entertain people and make them worship themselves, I guess.

Mike: So what can I expect from your show tonight, in terms of visuals and performance?

Johannes: Actually, we haven’t really brought anything cool with us, except for ourselves. [laughs] What’s funny about that is, we do really well when we focus only on who we are and what we’re doing. I enjoy that, because the visual journey really started with that third “Please love us” album, where we started investing in lots of pyros. We still like pyros, but we also kind of look down on them nowadays. We realized that all bands have pyros, especially the really, really boring ones. I learned that the most important visual effects you can use onstage are your own eyes. It seems to be working. We’re still a visual, theatrical band, but it lies more in the personality we bring to it, rather than the bells and whistles. But this fall, we’ll be doing a “bell and whistle” tour in Europe, and hopefully next year we can return with the bells and whistles here as well. Don’t get me wrong: we love bells and whistles! But on this particular tour, we’re just not there yet. And until that happens, I still think we can blow your mind.

Mike: Also, I have to say that “Hail The Apocalypse” just crushes.

Johannes: This album really put in stone our sensation of, “If nobody else likes it, I’m fine with that. I did an album for me, and I’m going to enjoy the shit out of it for the rest of my life.” There were some really cool changes that came with it, too. Tim [Öhrström, guitar] joined the band and became way more of an active songwriting partner than Simon [Andersson, ex-guitar] ever was for the last five years. He wrote most of the riffs on the title track, for example. That was one of the first things he “gave to us,” so to speak. And then the fact that we recorded it live was a cool thing for 2013… You look surprised! [laughs]

Mike: I wouldn’t have expected that!

Johannes: Yeah, vocals, solos, and clean guitars got some special treatment, but for the most part, it was all of us standing in a circle, playing the songs. If you listen to it closely, you can tell we turned off the click track. It was recorded by people looking at each other while jamming, basically. Again, we talked about groove before. Try to keep a click track consistent on a Black Sabbath album, and then consider that those albums are so much more timeless than the mechanical stuff happening now. Metal bands are chasing a certain kind of perfection nowadays that just doesn’t exist, and it kills the soul of the music. The way we did it makes such a difference. It’s something you can really touch.

Mike: It does seem, though, that there is a growing popular movement back in the organic direction. I hope, at least.

Johannes: But they’re mostly retro-sounding bands. I’d love to hear an example that doesn’t sound like that. We’re a very modern band that plays around with industrial influences and uses samples and stuff like that. We’re not trying to be Led Zeppelin. We just realized that as musicians, we should aspire to play live the way they did. And that’s it.

Mike: And I believe you mentioned earlier that you’re writing new songs.

Johannes: Oh yeah. Always. This is the first time we’re trying to keep that process going while on tour. I couldn’t tell you when they’ll be ready; we’re very much a band that says, “When they’re done,” [laughs] but there are already a handful of cool riffs, and with that first tiny draft we got out there in the sketchbook, I’m thinking, “This is cool. This is on the move.” But we still need the general idea we’re going to base those songs on. It doesn’t have to be a concept album about an ancient Greek god or whatever, but there needs to be a little something for us, some words that lead us. With “Black Waltz,” we motivated ourselves with some keywords: “big, powerful, dark, and straightforward.” “Let Us Die” was the first song to come out of that process. And I don’t remember what we decided on for “Hail The Apocalypse.” We just wanted to keep ourselves entertained, I guess. But it raised the bar for what kinds of subjects we could talk about, both musically and lyrically. And for the next album, I don’t have that many lyrical ideas yet. They’re very loose right now. But once I get more of them, I want to raise the bar even more. And then we can start to argue with each other. [laughs] We have become a pretty good collective when it comes to songwriting, so it’s gonna be awesome.