Back in the UK again to support of the god-quaking album ‘Twilight Of The Thunder God’, this time heading up the rather tasty ‘Full Of Hate’ package, Amon Amarth’s drummer Fredrik Andersson took the time to talk to Planet Loud about conquering the world, improving the past, and bobble-heads.
Planet Loud – The new album ‘Twilight Of The Thunder God’ has been a big success, such as breaking into the Billboard Top 50 and landing at number 6 on the German chart, so how much of a surprise was this big leap forward?
Amon Armath – It didn’t surprise us that much, because for every album we’ve climbed up a little bit with sales and in popularity; and with the listing positions, yes it’s going up but sales in general are going down, so you have to compare it to where other bands go, so the actual position is not worth as much as it used to. Of course it’s cool to have that, to say we’ve had a Billboard Top 50 album, but it doesn’t really affect us, we’re not celebrities because we have this position or that. Though it is easier to book shows, the promoters are more willing to book you and they can expect a certain amount of people at the shows, so it’s a good instrument for measuring how popular we are.
Planet Loud – Listen to both ‘With Oden On Our Side’ and ‘Twilight Of The Thunder God’, there also seems to be a big leap forward with the sound; ‘Twilight…’ seems bigger and grander than anything you’ve done before.
Amon Armath – We’ve always wanted to sound great on albums, but before we didn’t have the means to do it, didn’t know how to do it or how to reach that level; but when working on ‘With Oden…’ with Jens [Bogren, producer/engineer] he was able to take us there, and we’ve really improved that on ‘Twilight…’ We’ve also added other elements, like live horns and strings and I think that adds atmosphere to the album.
Planet Loud – How was it worked with the illustrious guests that appear on the album?
Amon Armath – Lars [Petrov, Enslaved] is a great friend of the band, so it was just like having another one of us there; it was no problem at all. Roope [Latvala, Children Of Bodom] we’ve known for a while having toured with Bodom several times, and we’ve wanted for a long time to have a shred solo on the album, but Olavi [Mikkonen] and Johan [Söderberg] aren’t really that type of soloing guitarists, so we said if anyone’s going to do it, it will be Roope, and he said he wanted to do it. The Apocalyptica thing is also something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, and they were able to do it just the way we wanted them to do it and I think it’s awesome.
Planet Loud – In particular with the Apocalyptica contribution, how much of a free rein were they given?
Amon Armath – We recorded the basic guitar lines for four bars, and told them to just explore it; they took our guidelines and created that atmosphere and feeling, doing all the build up and everything.
Planet Loud – You’ve been living with the album for a while now, so what are you highlights from it, and have they changed since playing the material live?
Amon Armath – We haven’t played all the songs live yet, but my highlights from when we were done with the recording were ‘Tattered Banners And Bloody Flags’ and ‘Embrace Of The Endless Ocean’, and those are still my favourite tracks; I love the atmosphere, the grooviness and heaviness of ‘Tattered Banners…’ and the epicness and sadness of ‘Embrace…’
Planet Loud – How was it to go and revisit the first four albums and do them in their entirety at the end of last year? In particular the first, ‘Once Sent From The Golden Hall’ as you didn’t appear on it first time around?
Amon Armath – It was awesome actually; it was a lot of fun to rediscover songs we haven’t played for so long. It was a bit of a struggle to do the first album as Martin [Lopez] recorded it and he’s a totally different kind of drummer; the problem I had was I wanted to play it my way, but I know a lot of die-hard fans want to hear it the way he played it. So I tried to find a good mix between the two by keeping the things I thought were important to keep and changing the things that no-one would really notice. What I thought was most important was to tighten up the whole album as it’s a little bit… I don’t want to use the word sloppy, but I know that when it was recorded back in 96/97 they had maybe two or three days to record all the drums on an album and you can hear it. I’m really satisfied with how the live album has come out, I think the songs sound better actually. We tried to improve all the albums, with the knowledge we have now it was possible to do some minor changes and I think they are all tighter played and better performed.
Planet Loud – As a result, have any of the older songs crept into the set-list for this tour?
Amon Armath – Yeah, now we don’t have problems picking out any of the older songs that we wanted to, and we’ve picked up a couple of old songs for this tour. It’s obviously difficult because since we’ve growing in popularity, the majority of our fans are into the latest two albums, and possibly ‘Fate Of Norns’; but if you go further back than that, we decreased the fan base by half at least, and for every album before ‘Versus The World’ there’s 50% less again each time. If we play something off the first album, maybe ten percent of the audience know the songs.
Planet Loud – Where did the inspiration for the limited extras for the album, like the comic and the bobble-heads, come from?
Amon Armath – We’ve never been that serious about the Viking thing, we don’t dress up like Vikings or pretend we’re Vikings; we’re just a bunch of musicians who play the music we like and draw inspiration from it. And with the bobble-heads, someone suggested the idea and we were like “sure, I want a bobble-head of myself!” It’s just a collector thing for die-hard fans, we ourselves are really into that sort of stuff, getting something extra, and it’s a fun and cool thing to do.
Planet Loud – Does it at all annoy or concern you that you’re often lumped in with all the folk and pagan bands and all the stereotypes and clichés that comes with it?
Amon Armath – We don’t feel as much a part of it as the scene wants us to be; I know a lot of our fans listen to bands like Ensiferum, Korpiklaani and Finntroll; but we don’t feel we’re that close musically, we don’t use any folk instruments or music at all, from the beginning we always just played metal or death metal and sung about Vikings, but it doesn’t bother us too much really.
Interview by Dominic Hemy
