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Interview with Fredrik
Andersson of Amon Amarth
November 2006 by Sam Thomas - Photos by Sam and Steve
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We caught up with Amon Amarth in Bradford Rios,
partway through a tour to promote their latest album “With Oden on Our
Side”. Sweden’s Viking death-metallers were in fine form, with a lot
of good-natured discussion about whose turn it was to be interviewed.
Drummer Fredrik Andersson drew the short straw, largely because he
admitted to a liking for “Old Speckled Hen” of which we brought along
a few bottles.
Did you all give up day jobs to work on the new album?
Yes
And was it difficult to do?
To quit? It wasn’t difficult to quit the day job but the livelihood,
well I guess it’s a matter of how you want to live your life. We felt
that at the stage that we’re at we wanted to dedicate ourselves to
Amon Amarth. It wouldn’t have been possible to continue at this level
if we hadn’t take this step because it takes too much time like when
you tour: the day you come back from tour you start your daytime job
again, go to rehearsal place, practice a few songs and then there
should be some time for families and whatever.….
You thought that to get to the next level this
is what you needed to do?
Yes, we needed to
Do you have any regrets about doing it?
No. That’s been my dream since I was a little toddler. We’ve got plans
for next year - we’re basically touring until 2008 non-stop, we have
something planned for every month so we’ll be busy |
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How much difference has it made to this album
being able to put so much time into it?
A lot. We were able to focus 100%. We treated it like a full time job:
we spent 40 hours per week in rehearsal rooms from nine to five,
Monday to Friday. It was the best way for us to actually write the
songs: before we were always working, we’d come home, eat dinner and
then go to the rehearsal place by night you’re tired and you just want
to watch telly but you have to go and do stuff to be active. It was OK
when we were 15 to do that because you have the energy but when you’re
in your thirties it’s nicer not to have to.
Steve: Yes it’s like we quit everything to do
our own business, today we got up at up at 5 in the morning… |
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It’s like touring – it’s not and easy living for everyone, it’s a
pretty hard life
Steve: All that drinking!
Yes, seriously it’s not all that easy but we like it and we enjoy
doing it so we think it’s worth it.
Do you think that with this new album you got
out of it what you should have done considering how much more work you
put into it?
Yes, we really like the reviews and all the response we’ve got. We
knew when we wrote the album this is the best we’ve ever done and we
felt really strongly for the songs, right from the first song we
started working on. The first people who heard the album was of course
the record label and their reaction was that they were very happy.
Then the management were very pleased, and then the fans, which is the
most important of course, fortunately they liked it. It’s really
rewarding and we feel like we deserved it for this album because we
put a lot of effort into it but of course there’s always the worry
will everyone else like it as much as we do, but so far they have.
Which is your favourite track?
That’s really hard, I like all of them. I guess maybe listening wise I
prefer Hermod's Ride To Hel but playing wise that would be number 7,
Cry of the Black Birds.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks of
track number, not title, my favourite one is number 2 which I think is
called “Runes to my memory”. What do you think about you playing
bigger venues this time around? Good?
Of course it’s good, in Europe you feel the difference, it’s like
changing standards from the 2 star hotel to 3 star hotel: a bigger
venue has more stars
At least this time you got to play in the UK,
last tour I had to go to France to see you!
Yes, we’ve never really had a name in the UK, the media hasn’t paid us
much attention. We’ve never been able to break into the market.
But that’s quite a normal UK thing, we don’t
have a big death metal scene.
Yes, bands like Carcass are big, but maybe not the newer bands.
Do you see a lot of each other when you’re not
actually travelling together?
You mean do we hang out together? I’d say not too much.
Really?
Well, we do if things are like going on, say if someone has a party or
something like that but two of us live on the north side of Stockholm
and three of us on the south side. We have different interests go to
the football, they hang out together and then of course Johann the
guitar player, he’s the family man, he likes to stay home. |
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Do you think life has moved on: when Amon Amarth
started it was demo tapes, now it’s internet, we have your tour diary
online - is it a good experience having to work that hard at the
beginning or do modern bands have it too easy?
Yes, definitely I think that made us who we. I think we have this
thing of being a working band, we’ve been working from scratch and
little by little, step by step. We’ve been learning for 15 years and
we’ve been growing a little bit for every album we’ve put out.
Steve: Some bands sell out, don’t they, become
commercial?
We still hang out with people that we met years ago on the road
But you haven’t changed your music at all to try
to become more popular – you do what you want to do
Yes, changes that we’ve made have been a progress to get better
Yes, you’ve improved but you haven’t gone, oh
should we have a female vocalist (not that I can see Amon Amarth with
a female vocalist myself!)
We like the way we are and we wouldn’t really be interested in change
- it wouldn’t be Amon Amarth anymore so we would have to quit and do
something else instead.
Have you ever thought about tracing back your
family tree to discover whether you were descended from Vikings?
Not really but I do have an ancestor who has done that, I have a tree
that goes back to the sixteenth century in Sweden and that’s really
cool. I’m guessing that I’m Swedish all the way.
What sort of role do you think the Norse Gods
should play in today’s world?
I think they should teach people to have a more relaxed view on life
and religion in general, you don’t have to be afraid of believing in
your gods. They are basically persons just like us, not high almighty
gods. I think that people need to get more relaxed in their views and
if they believe in something there’s definitely no need to fight wars
about it. I mean there’s nothing more dangerous than justifying your
war by religion, that’s ridiculous.
What do you think a modern day Viking would do?
Should he carry on with his longboat or would he use commercial
airlines to jet off to foreign countries and rape and pillage?
I think Vikings were expert at what they were doing, building boats so
if Vikings were around now they would be experts at building planes,
something like your faster silent planes, stealth planes, something
like that
Finally, the last question. What time tonight do
you expect everything to go black?
It’s an early show we’re done by ten something and the pub here is
open till 2:30 so I’m guessing 3:30ish
Thanks a lot for your time
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