Amon Amarth
Swedish Standard

08.09.2010

A year ago Moscow’s Club Tochka was nearly razed to the ground by the powerful performance delivered by Swedish death metallers Amon Amarth. As if that wasn’t enough, the Swedes came back for more. And even though the work on the band’s new record is yet at early stages, and the previous album “Twilight Of The Thunder God” came out as early as 2008, we couldn’t give up the opportunity to talk to frontman Johan Hegg. When approached in person, gigantic Johan turned out a very friendly and endearing guy, not having a single bit of rock stardom or megalomania, so only a few persons might be able to resist his charm. Johan seemed to enjoy answering the questions which he had apparently been asked quite a few times before, and showed no signs of being in a hurry to get ready for the show that would start in a couple of hours. The transcript of the conversation is now here at your disposal.

Last year you toured a lot. Don’t you get tired from doing many shows and travels?

The shows are always fun. I mean that’s why we’re in this business in the first place - to be able to play shows and meet fans and just have a good time. The traveling can be tedious us and of course being away from home during extend periods of time is tough. But the shows are always great. So it’s always a pleasure to come to the cities and play.

This tour also marked your first visit to such countries as China and India. What are you best impressions from these lands?

Well, perhaps, that wasn’t the greatest show in China, but the audience was great, they were really into it. It was very interesting to go to Beijing for first time and to play there. India was crazy, it was a great show. I really like this country, I like the people and the fans were just fanatics. It was really cool to go there. It is always nice to go place you’ve never been before be cause you never know what expect. It’s always surprise for you. Chinese metal fans behave differently than European or American metal fans. They don’t really go to shows except those that happen in China, but they definitely were into it and had a good time.

Your bass player Ted Lundstrom missed the first three dates of the North American tour. What happened to him?

He became a father. So he had to stay for the birth of the second child.

He must be very happy now!

(laughs) I think yes, he is. Maybe he can’t sleep now, but that’s why you like to go away. (laughs).

What about a new album? Do you already have any written stuff?

We have just started working on stuff actually. I think we have one song more or less finished and three or four more songs we’re kinda working on. Hopefully we’ll be able to record in October if everything turns out the way we hope.

Did you already confirm studio and producer for the new record?

We’ve been thinking about different opinions but it looks like we will go back to the same studio where we did previous two albums. We worked really well with Jens (Bogren) as a producer and hopefully he can bring us to another level – he is good producer, he has good ideas, and he is technically very good.

The album “With Oden On Our Side” paved the way to a bigger success for Amon Amarth. In your opinion, why did it happen only in 2006, and not earlier?

I think there are many reasons. We were struggling in the past with the style of music that we were playing, perhaps we were not the stuff the people would listen to. There were a lot of other styles of music that were more popular and than our style grew slowly and became more popular. We recorded “Versus The World” (2002) and we got a small break and “Fate Of Norns” (2004) could push us to the level where we could get shows that exposed us to a lot of new fans. And the live shows and tours we were do on that album really gave us an opportunity come across to a lot of new people who got into the band and then of course bought “With Oden On Our Side” when it was recorded. That album became a huge success but it’s not only because it’s a great album with great songs, but also we started working again with this producer and the production was way better than anything we’ve ever done before. So there are many factors to why it happened just then, but mainly I think it had a lot to do with ground work. We’ve been able to build slowly and get a good reputation in the underground with a lot of people and old fans who stuck with us over the years and they’re still with us. But then we also had the possibility to get a lot of new fans with our latest four albums or so.

How do you think – does this success have some relations to your label Metal Blade? Are you satisfied with Metal Blade?

We have had a really good relationship with Metal Blade over the years. They’ve always supported us and always did a great job for us, so we’re really happy with how they’ve worked for us.

Does it mean that you will continue working with this label?

Well we have a contract now and it is over after two more albums. But look, some day is gonna come when we’re gonna have to walk separate ways. So I guess I can’t really say what the future holds. If we feel that they are the label to take us to the next level when we discuss the next contract, we can still work with them, it’s a great label to be on. But it’s difficult to tell what the future holds. We’ll see what happens.

You mentioned the album “Versus the World”. Is it true that the recording of this album was quite hard for the band? What happened to the band at that time?

Oh, definitely! I think we all felt that after touring on “The Crusher” (2000) we weren’t getting anywhere, we weren’t getting the recognition that we felt that we deserved, but probably didn’t deserve (laughs). Anyway, there was some turmoil in the band. It was just a kind of tough period for us and we said, “Well, let’s do this album and that’s it.” The working title was actually “The End” and all the songs on the album are about the end of the world in Northern mythology in one way or another. But then we did a show at Wacken when we just recorded the album and we performed at Wacken the song “Death In Fire”. There was almost 40,000 people in audience and we were like “What the hell? Where did all these people come from? It’s unbelievable!” Than we released the album and responses from press and fans were just amazing. We felt, “Alright, we have something going here so we should at least try to make it work for a couple of more albums”.

“Twilight of the Thunder God” came out about two years ago. What do you think of it now?

I think it’s a great album, it’s probably the best balanced album that we’ve done and we have some really great hits on album. It has great songs, really cool guest performances and the only thing that perhaps in retrospect could have been a little bit better is the production. It is really good but maybe it could have been a bit rougher in my opinion. But I still like it, I think it’s a great album.

Please tell us about collaboration with Lars Goran Petrov (Entombed) and Roope Latvala (Children Of Bodom). Did you already have written parts for them or did they write their parts by their-self?

L. G. Petrov came to the studio and of course I had the lyrics ready and he just sang the bits that were his in the song and we recorded it. The other stuff for Roope – we just sent him the riff that he was to put a solo on and said, “This is the solo that should go that many bars”. He recorded it at home. The same thing we did for Perttu (Kivilaakso) from Apocalyptica - we sent him the stuff for the cello part, the riff, and said: “Can you do something on this on cello, can you build something?” He built up the cello part himself, he composed and recorded it by himself and sent it back to us. It’s fucking brilliant! It’s beautiful.

You used cello for your song, but do you have any plans to use folk instruments (horns, for example) in your songs?

I use horns actually (laughs). It’s gotta be something very special for us to use that. There are many bands that already do it. We don’t wanna get mixed up with them, we let them do thir stuff and we’ll do our stuff. The cello thing was an idea we’ve had ever since we started this band, everyone wanted to use this thing but we never did it. And now we had a great opportunity to do it. So it’s a really old idea we had to use cellos. But I don’t see us using folk instruments – it’s not really our style.

Johan, your sister once contributed lyrics to an Amon Amarth song (“A Thousand Years Of Oppression” on “Versus The World”). How did it happen? What does she think about the music you’re making?

My sister is a huge fan of our band and she loves the lyrics that I write. She wrote me a story once when she was going through a kinda tough period. She wrote a story in an e-mail, and when I read it, I just said, “I gotta use this as lyrics. I just changed a small part to make it fit, but can I use this?” She said: “Sure! Go ahead”. That is how it came across.

Let’s speak a lot about your recently re-released early albums. Do you now get a different reaction to them than when they first came out?

The older albums? I don’t know. A lot of new people are discovering the new albums definitely. But the people already have them and I guess either they already like them or don’t like them (laughs). But most of the responses I’ve seen, or rather almost all the responses I’ve seen, are from the people who didn’t have them before.

Please, tell us about your tour together with Slayer. What did this tour give to the band?

It definitely gave us an opportunity to come across to new fans all over Europe and it gave us a lot of good experience. It’s a different way of touring, really, that we are use to. Plus it gave us the opportunity to meet the guys from Slayer who are really fucking cool guys. We also got to know the guys from Mastodon who are also great guys. I think it was a great opportunity for us to be able to tour – we had a great time. You know, Slayer fans are notorious for being very difficult, really hard on opening acts, bur everywhere we went at the end of our show we got really good response even from people who didn’t know us before. There was a French guy, who is a huge Slayer fan and he was at almost all shows. At the first show in London when we were playing he was standing in the front row like this (imitates a frown), looking at us, and I said, “This guy hates us”. On the second day he was standing in same spot, but (smiles expansively)… So, you know, we won him over with the first show. When you see that, you realize – it’s a good thing to be on here, because there are always who haven’t heard us before, who don’t know what we’re about, and this is a great way to introduce ourselves to these people. It was great.  

At your previous Moscow show you drank Russian beer “Baltika”. Did you like it?

(laughs) It was alright, it was alright.

And what you can say about your past Russian shows in general?

It was crazy. I mean the crowd was fucking nuts, and we had a good time. It was getting a bit chaotic at some points where there were just too many people getting on stage and it’s hard to play, but it was fucking great. We had a blast both here and in St. Petersburg, so when they asked us to come back and play we said, “Hell yeah!” (laughs).

You looked very happy on stage with beer “Baltika” and I still remember how you said “Baltika beer!” (everybody laughs)

Well, I don’t remember that, but there’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember from my first visit in Russia – we had a little bit too much of “Russkiy Standart” (everybody laughs)

You use horns on stage. Please tell us when and how you started to celebrate metalheads with horns?

The first time I used the horn as a drinking horn was when me and Ted bought two small horns and we brought them to Roskilde festival when we were just going to party and watch bands ourselves. We were drinking out of them, because you’re not allowed to bring bottles and stuff to the festival grounds. So we walked around with horns instead, drinking beer and wine and whatever. And then I started using it on stage for some reason, probably, because I thought it looked cool and some fan gave me a really nice horn with a belt holder which was fucking fantastic so I said “Alright! Cool!” At Wacken during the signing session I decided to wear that horn – then and there. From that moment on I always have it, every time we play. The when we started working it out, that we all have horns. Unfortunately we had new horns made that were taken away from us in Brazil, and the old ones are all busted up, so we don’t have any horns with us tonight. We’ll get new ones eventually, but it’s just too much stuff to think about and to take care of. Eventually we’re gonna get the new stuff, a lot of people ask about it all the time. (laughs) You know, it’s a kind of gimmick to us.  

Didn’t you ever feel any regret that you were born in our times and not in the Middle Ages?

(laughs) I don’t know. I think we have a pretty good time these days compared to back then, but it would have been interesting to take experience what it would be like to live back then. The way that we are now I don’t think that we’d survive very long in that environment. It must have been a pretty rough life.

I want to ask you about the band’s name. Some sources read that Amon Amarth title came from “The Lord Of The Rings” book while other sources read that it doesn’t have anything to do with this book.

Well, it’s kind of both ways actually, because the name is not actually in “The Lord Of The Rings”, it’s a name from another book by Tolkien called “The War Of The Ring”, but it’s anyway Tolkien, and it means “mountain of doom”. It’s not that we’re inspired by his stories lyrically, it’s mainly that we thought it was a name that had a cool meaning and sounded kinda cool when we spoke it. So that’s why we use it.

Please, say a few words to your Russian fans.

Na zdorovie, tovarisch! (everybody laughs)

Amon Amarth on the Internet: http://www.amonamarth.com

Special thanks to Vera Dmitrieva (Spika Concert Agency) for arranging this interview

Interview by Konstantin “Hirax” Chilikin, Dmitry “Ward” Kulikov
Photos by Dmitry “Ward” Kulikov
June 10, 2010
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