Övergivenheten
Nuclear Blast
Soilwork’s musical legacy continues with their most recent album, titled Övergivenheten, translating somewhat poignantly to The Abandonment. Recorded at Nordic Sound Lab in Skara, Sweden, and again co-produced by Thomas ‘Plec’ Johansson and the band, it is a musical expression that delves into dark territory, yet with a sense of hope. It is lyrically confronting, partially reflective of the wrenching conditions that the pandemic created worldwide. The musicianship on this album is stunning and suitably reinforces the lyrical themes with musical energy and an atmosphere that is enhanced by some inspiring instrumentation.
It is deeply saddening to report that highly valued guitarist, song writer and medical practitioner, David Andersson, seemingly took his own life in mid-September. His contributions to both Soilwork and successful breakaway side project The Night Flight Orchestra cannot be understated. Loud Online (Paul Southwell) spoke to front man and song writer Björn ‘Speed’ Strid shortly before the new Soilwork album was released. The interview provides some context of the album’s overall theme but also informs a means of celebrating a remarkable life that ultimately helped people, no doubt internationally. Soilwork will honour their touring commitments despite their difficult circumstances, and it should offer a collective way to grieve. Övergivenheten is an extremely strong album and also one that shines a light into some harsh realities.
The new album, Övergivenheten has a lot of music to take in but it is excellent.
It is probably the longest album that we made, aside from the double album [The Living Infinite]. It all makes sense to me, when you listen through the whole album, it definitely takes you on a journey and it is very diverse. I was going to say that it was different music styles on the same album as it almost has that kind of feel. It really ties in nicely together, is really making sense and I think that there are a lot of dynamics to make it work, for sixty five minutes. Like you mentioned, it is a lot to take in, but there are so many great melodies, I feel. I am very pleased with the melodies that are running through the album and I think they are some of the best melodies we have ever written.
You’ve coming back to Australia, do you think many of the tracks will make the set list?
There will be quite a few, I guess. Of course, you always want to please everyone but that is just impossible. We are there to promote the new album so it will be a bit more focussed on the new album and sort of later years. Of course, we will have some old gems in there as well.
It is interesting that you mentioned the melodies. In the first track [Övergivenheten] alone, aside from the instrumentation, it has Pink Floyd drone elements.
Yeah, I hear you. I do listen to Pink Floyd. I cannot say that I am a huge fan and I haven’t really been digging into the catalogue that much, strangely enough, and I probably should. But the intro is quite spectacular, I would say, you know, we did all these choirs and stuff, there is banjo, and this and that, and yeah, maybe some drone elements, which are cool, I like that. That is also something that runs through the whole album, I guess, with these passages and interludes; that sort of ties everything together.
Those interludes include one minute tracks like a guitar solo figure or keyboard wash. How do these little segments come about? Is it something done in the studio with the production team thinking about track flow?
No, that’s all the band, for sure. We are definitely co-producing our albums with Thomas and he has ideas as well. The band’s ideas start making sense to the album and these interludes are almost sort of bringing things down but they are also building things up. I think that makes it quite interesting.
It sort of works structurally as a stage play would with various acts, in a way.
Yeah, true, and I think that it is needed on an album like this – it is pretty intense, there is a lot, you know.
Lyrically, I guess David came up some rather dark lyrics, more so than previously. How do you view the lyrics because it seems to be quite a dark album?
Yeah, I mean it is a dark album in many ways. David and I have been on different planets in the latest years. I mean, my situation has become a lot more stable and I am feeling better than ever, whereas he has been doing through some of the darkest times of his life and still is, you know. We are really close as people, but we’ve needed some distance as well, but we keep coming back. It is like he is trying to escape reality and I had to sort of pull him down, so to speak, and mostly in a positive way, I don’t mean bringing him down in to depression, yeah. Whereas I want to be in reality as much as possible and it is weird to say that in these times, which are really weird, but somehow I just feel better by not escaping but facing every day. I wish I could help him do that but there is this exchange lyrically that creates really contrasts, both musically and lyrically. I also have some dark stuff in my songs as well but they are slightly more empowering and uplifting, I would say, which is really important for me. I am not trying to ignore the darkness or pretending that it doesn’t exist, and you can let it in but it is all about what you do with it once it is in there.
How did you find the sort of juxtaposition of the blast beats with sustained melody lines? It is a unique sound.
Yeah, it creates something quite special and I think that we were maybe, I don’t know, one of the originators of that. It is hard to say, you know, but I guess that it started with Spectrum of Eternity on The Living Infinite – we started doing blast beats over more unexpected melodies and all the clean vocals over it. It is an interesting element that we like to experiment with and sometimes when we end up doing it, it is like, ‘No, it doesn’t really work,’ and we don’t want it to sound forced, you know, forced blast beats, there is no point to do that. I think that we have found a perfect balance on how we build up our songs and where blast beats work so it becomes almost therapeutic in how it rolls or transitions to those parts.
The rhythm section is comparatively new but you’ve obviously been in the band since the start. When you get a new rhythm section, does it take a while for them to settle in to the whole groove, if you’ll pardon the pun?
I think so, I mean Dirk’s [Verbeuren – now drummer in Megadeth] shoes were some big shoes to fill, obviously, and is a fantastic drummer. Bastian [Thusgaard] was his student, but it takes time for a drummer to lock in with the rest of the band. We played for so many years with Dirk and then Bastian came in there and he was so good from the get-go but it definitely takes time to be really one with the sound and strict with certain trademarks that you have, you know. But we really gave him free hands and feet to do whatever he wanted to do. In the beginning, of course, I think that we had some pointers but I think that it is important that when somebody comes in, that you give them the freedom to express themselves and not saying, ‘No, no, no, we don’t do that in this band, you should keep doing that,’ and so on. That doesn’t work for us and I don’t think that anybody is getting any advantages out of that. So he came in and it took a while, which it always does, but listen to the new album, I mean the drumming is absolutely amazing. It was really good on Verkligheten but this is on a whole new level on Övergivenheten.
The time signature changes are executed perfectly. Two notable examples are firstly Golgata with the riff is out there timing wise but the drums fit, and secondly the last track, On the Wings of a Goddess Through Flaming Sheets of Rain is expansive, yet the has sudden changes. Is there a lot of rehearsal required to get to that level?
Well, we haven’t done any rehearsals at all, we’ve been rehearsing on our own, which is, I don’t know, it is like, when you think about it, it shouldn’t work. If we are not rehearsing these songs as a band before we record them, it shouldn’t work. It should not have the feeling that they would deserve, yet somehow, it just works, you know, and we play a lot in the studio. Like you said, there’s some weird time signatures as well, every now and then, and I don’t know, it is a real band playing and I am glad that the production is giving that justice. It is quite organic, you know, and of course, it is very hard hitting bit if you really feel like the band is playing in your living room, that is sort of like the goal. It is still very hard hitting so I think that we succeeded in doing that.
What are your thoughts of doubling and layering vocals these days? What is your approach to it in your music lately?
Well, it depends on the song, I think. Sometimes you just want to have one vocal track, especially in verses. It depends on what I am singing and on the way that I am singing. I do a little bit of both, you know, and sometimes you want a lot of layers and doubling up of the vocals. It is really hard to say because it depends on the part, it depends on the lyric and I like to experiment. There is no set formula there either.
By contrast, looking at the work you’ve done with The Night Flight Orchestra [TNFO] and At the Movies [ATM], clearly there are influences of massive producers for hit machine tracks. The formula of layered and plentiful backing vocals is everywhere. Do you learn techniques from covering those big hit songs?
Yeah, it is hard to say. I have learned a lot through the years and I am mostly doing my own backups, you know, and I’ve learned to sound like other people because it is usually not a very good thing if you can tell it is the lead singer who is doing all the back-up vocals as well. I managed to find some different voices there as well so I think that I have learned a lot from that. I have definitely been doing that a lot, especially with choir back-up arrangements, with back-up vocals I have learned a lot from that and built up a pretty strong falsetto through the years. I like to experiment with that and sometimes it is nice if the lead vocals fades and just in the background this ginormous backing vocal thing, like a three-piece harmony, or even more, happens. I like to experiment with that kind of stuff.
Swedish hit machine producers tend to come from a metal background.
Yeah, I would say most of them. Shellback [Karl Johan Schuster] used to play in a melodic death metal band, and then Max Martin was the singer in It’s Alive and my friend played the drums in that band. So it is yeah, I don’t know what it is but I think that it is quite interesting.
When you do projects like ATM and TNFO would you say you’ve got an affinity to pop hits because you know how these things work?
I don’t know, I think it is that I have always been in to melodies. They always…even as a kid, when I heard melodies on the radio, even how it made me feel, you know, so it has been a natural thing for me to express feelings through melodies. I think that I am better at that than at writing lyrics. Don’t get me wrong, I still write some good lyrics and I think that I have written a lot of lyrics that I am proud of but sometimes I still think, I cannot put verses in, I need to write a melody. That is how it has been for me but it is quite remarkable to me that there are so many Swedish song writers and that they are so successful. Doing the ATM thing was cool and it is still an ongoing thing, there might be album number three but for me that was a great school of pop and rock by doing that. I learned a lot and some of those songs, some of that stuff is really tough to sing and everything that we recorded was in the original keys as well. So, it was fun, it was a nice challenge.
With respect to TNFO, there’s certainly an overlap into pop. That band can exist on its own without people knowing you’re from the metal scene.
Yeah, it is such a different musical expression. TNFO means just as much in my life as Soilwork. It is sort of like a Yin and Yang situation there where I really feel like I need both bands but I also feel like I have the best of both worlds. I can express just about everything through those two bands.
The balance is just great but the logistics are a nightmare to get it happening.
What would be your favourite work from TNFO?
My favourite track is a tough one, there is one song that really sticks out, which David has written is The Last of the Independent Romantics. That melody is bigger than life itself, seriously, that main thing running through that song. Wow.
It must be fun to do something different in that music and in those film clips.
It is really nice, it is a nice vacation from metal.
Back to Soilwork, is there a way to approach the latest album in that it should be heard in one sitting or digested in parts?
With music you can do both, I have done a little bit of both in that I pick my favourites and then I just force myself to pick some other songs the next day. But I have also been going through the whole album as a unit and I like that journey that it takes you on. Sometimes though, you’re not really ready for it and that is when I start picking out some of the songs. I have had a break now for a month of not listening to the whole album but I have just been inspired to that again so it has been a while.
Death, I Hear You Calling is an impressive track. Is there a particular song in the back end of the album that stands out for you?
I mean, that is one of my favourites and it sticks out quite a bit since it almost has a kind of rock and heavy metal stomp to it. Also, the hint to Kiss in ‘Beth, I Hear You Calling’ is also quite brilliant. David came up with that one. So yeah, that is definitely one of those songs that sticks out and yeah, I love that song. There are some pretty high falsettos on that one as well. It will be quite interesting to do live.
Aside from death metal aspects, you’ve also got some black metal stylings in there, plus atmospherics. Is that large influence?
Yeah, I grew up in the nineties liking a lot of it. I was very into black metal in general, like the Swedish and Norwegian scene. So I definitely got influence from that and an album like Storm over the Light’s Bane by Dissection is an album that keeps on giving and inspires me. It is just one of my favourites and just with the atmosphere running through that album, it is just fantastic. It is mind blowing because they recorded that whole album in twelve days, you know, it is kind of hard to believe. These days it is like, ‘Oh we are going to be able to make in six weeks?’ you know what I mean?
Guitar wise, those tremolo picked guitar figures are throughout this Soilwork album. Plus some of the EQ or mix has that feel to it.
Those things are definitely in there. Some songs are more like open chords and some of them are more riff based and even a bit bluesier, when it comes to the riffing, but some of them are just like pure black metal. It just works together somehow and it is nice to experiment on the guitar as well, the way you sort of riff, and it brings a whole new flavour to it.
On the other side of it, you’ve got more radio friendly, pop elements in the track Valleys of Gloam.
Yeah, it definitely has and even has some hints that go back to mid-2000’s Soilwork. It is a very catchy song, for sure. I wrote that song and right there and then, it was not a thought of, ‘Oh, I am going to write a radio hit.’ No, I just felt like doing something quite straightforward and almost like rock oriented but with a slight metal feel. It turned out to be really catchy sounding and I am really proud of that one.
There’s a couple or tracks in there with some French dialogue.
Yeah, well, David has a little bit of a fascination for the French language and he is quite good at French, and we do have a French guitarist [Sylvain Coudret]. Nous sommes la guerre me translates to We Are the War but it is not connected to the ongoing war that we have right now. I don’t know though, we would have to pick David’s brain to find out exactly what it is that he means with that song but it is really his fascination for the French language. I think it is also pretty cool that it sort of represents the French part of the band since we have had a lot of Swedish song titles and album titles. Now we have some French in there as well, so we are making Sylvain happy.
The artwork is striking and bleak. What was the story behind that?
Well, first of all, if you look at Verkligheten, it is almost like a prog album from the seventies. It has these amazing colours and creatures on it. I guess that it was almost like a reaction to the album when we approached the new album artwork. David had a friend [David Palmqvist] who was really good at drawing and we thought, ‘Should we go for a drawn cover?’ and decided that we could try it out. We gave them some key words such as the title, obviously, Övergivenheten being about abandonment and I gave him this drawing. If you see those trees on the cover, that are in an alley, those tree are unique for the southern part of Sweden, where I am from, and they look kind of desolate, when you see them. Being sort of abandoned I thought that we should have those in there, you know. So he put those in there and then there is the bird in the middle, sort of symbolising abandonment. From the beginning it was a black and great drawing, it was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.’ I asked my girlfriend [Giorgia Carteri], who is a graphic designer, to play around with the colours, just to see what it would be like and I think that then it all fell into place. It was quite nice with colours and yeah, I am really pleased with how it turned out, it really connects with the album and the title.
What would be your most enjoyable guest appearance with another band? You’ve appeared on albums by numerous artists such as Demon Hunter, Tarja, Kamelot, and recently Powerwolf.
That is a very good question but I think the Powerwolf album [Call of the Wild’s Earbook bonus disc, Missa Cantorem] is great. I did both in that I performed as Mr. Soilwork [Killers with the Cross] and as Mr. TNFO on that album. So I got a request to do two songs as different people, or as different singers. That was quite a challenge. The album was them getting their favourite singers to interpret their songs and release it as Powerwolf, of course.
Finally, looking across your entire Soilwork discography, which album represents your musical vision achieved?
I am very proud of our double album, The Living Infinite. That was not easy to make, even though it was one of the best recording sessions that we have had through the years but we were firing on all cylinders there. I think that was a great experiment that led us somehow into where we are now. I think that we needed to make that album, it was a crucial thing, it turned out really well and it is something to be proud of, being able to release a double album that, you know, can stand the test of time and that you don’t get sick of, so I think that one deserved a lot more attention too. I feel that one sort of almost went under the radar compared to the more recent albums that we have released.
We look forward to seeing you back down here soon.
Yes, it is going to be awesome. Thanks for having me, I hope to see you soon.