Soilwork
I Don’t Mind Being Normal

03.03.2013

Swedish modern melodic death metallers Soilwork made their fans happy on March 1, releasing a new set of material, and this time it’s not a regular album, but a two-CD package. The album is called “The Living Infinite”, and it contains a total of 20 branch new songs. In order to find out what caused such an outbreak of creativity, to discuss the album as well as the life in general, we arranged a phone conversation with bassist Ola Flink. Poor connection made our task quite difficult this time, and we had to waste a few precious minutes on repeating and specifying misheard questions, but we still managed to address all the current developments in Soilwork.

The title of your new album was revealed long before you started recording it. I think it was back in 2011. Did you come up with it before you actually started writing songs?

Yes, that’s true. Björn (Strid, vocalist) thought of this title and we also thought it was cool. So yeah, we had the title way before we did the music. But it kind of matches all the songs that we did. I don’t know if it makes a difference or not to have a title before you start writing. Probably it’s a bit different, but I don’t know really.

But didn’t you compose tracks to fit the title? Didn’t you keep it in your mind while writing your songs?

I don’t know. I mean, probably, not that much… I guess you have a certain mindset when you’re writing music, but it’s unintentional, you know. And also it’s like there are so many different people writing, everybody does something and everybody thinks something different about it, so it’s a bit difficult… But in the end it all makes sense, with everything like the title, the music and the production… It kind of makes sense, you know. So probably somewhere in the back of your head you think about it.

“The Living Infinite” is a double-album. Why wasn’t a regular album enough for you and what’s the concept you have behind this release?

The concept… Well, when it comes to the lyrics it’s about some existential questions… Like we’re all here trying to find some answers, but the fact is that you don’t always have answers to your questions and you just have to accept that. You’re looking for answers to things but you have to live with not having them. So that’s it when it comes to lyrics. And the music… There’s so much variety, but somehow it all makes sense. It’s smooth, it’s fast, it’s groovy and super-melodic and there are a lot of different “places” musically. It’s not like a storyline when you kind of follow someone on a journey or something, it’s more like every song raises some existential questions everybody thinks of.

I see… But talking about double-album, releasing it means that you had to compose twice as many songs as you usually do. Was it difficult?

Yes, typically you do 12-13 songs, not much more, so coming up with that many songs can be quite hard. But this time there was so much energy with the band. I don’t know what happened but everybody was just super-ready to create some stuff, so we had like 26 or 27 songs. It just happened, we didn’t have much struggle at any point. It was a lot of work, but it was more pleasure than anything.

You know, many musicians say that they compose a lot of songs before they start recording an album and then choose some of them. So if you have twice as many songs this time, does it mean that all the songs you came up with where brilliant?

Thinking back, I can say that we decided on twenty songs, like ten on each CD, pretty fast. We had to choose like 20 out of 26 or 27 songs, but it was never too bad, it just makes sense to have songs that are there… There was never big discussion or anything. We recorded all of them and maybe we’re gonna release them later. But the ones that made it to the album were there for some reason and there was never a big discussion. It could be hard to choose, but this time it was easy. Everything was easy. There can be some troubles when it comes to deciding, because there are 6 people and sometimes 6 different opinions, but it wasn’t too bad, pretty honest, it was easy.

You said that in your lyrics you deal with some existential questions. Why did you decide to write about things like that? Is it some special period in your life as a band or your lives as individuals that makes you think of things like that? I know that you’re not the main lyricist, but anyway…

Well, I did some of the lyrics also… But you know, I think everybody has these questions, some more than others… There are some things that happen throughout your life and in one way or another you’re always looking for the reason that things are the way they are and maybe looking for answers. But you never find them… It’s difficult to explain lyrics. I think some people might hear it different, you know, when you look through lyrics you can think something different about it. But that’s the core of the whole album when it comes to the lyrics and it’s hard for me to explain anything more.

Okay. As long as you contributed to the writing process, are there any things we can hear on the album that you’re really proud of?

Oh, I’m really proud of all the album, even though I didn’t write all the songs. But everybody was involved in the process. We were discussing the structure of songs and everybody was sharing their opinions, some could say there were things they wanted to change and some could come up with other ideas and everybody was really open to that. That’s cool when you can tell your opinion without having this… You know, sometimes it’s like, “I wrote this song and that’s the way it should be”, but we didn’t have things like that, we could say what we think and discuss every song all together. So we’re really proud of it, all of us. This time I did some lyrics, too. I’ve done it in the past a few times, but this time there are so many songs, so we decided that we should sit down and write some lyrics together also. That’s why they’re so different. Yeah, it’s awesome.

Is there a favourite track of yours on the record?

Probably, yeah… I was thinking about that and I think all the songs are pretty cool, but I have a couple of favorites of mine, first track probably off each CD. CD 2 is not so typical for what we usually do, and right now it’s my favorite, I’ll pick up CD2 to listen to more often. I think that’s actually a cool twist.

Why was “Spectrum of Eternity” chosen to represent the record as the first single?

We needed one song and we chose the opening track of the whole thing. It just makes sense, it’s better to open an album with a faster song, so it’s a faster song, but it’s also a kind of manifold song with clean vocals and heavier parts and good guitar work and a lot of different elements of what you can expect from the rest of the songs.

I wanted to ask you about your former guitarist Peter Wichers. What happened this time and is there any chance that he will come back in future? There was an episode like that before, as long as I remember…

No, I don’t think so. This time he’s where he needs to be and he’s doing what he wants to do, he’s got a job and ain’t coming back. He was going on with us, but I don’t think he was at the right place, where he needed to be. So I think it was better for everybody. He likes what he’s doing, he’s with his family and kid and stuff. And as long as he’s happy like that, that’s all you can ask for, you know. And we’re also super-happy about having David (Andersson) in the band, you know, the guitar player. We’ve known him for a long time and he has brought new energy and like a different way of approaching the songwriting and I think that helped us while working on the new album. He gave his energy to all of us. So Peter will not come back, he’s where he needs to be and we’re where we need to be.

As a band you had a lot of line-up changes. You said that with this new guitar player it’s like you’ve found someone you really needed to be there with you. But it can be the opposite, right? Do you agree that new people can destroy the atmosphere or some kind of “original vibe”?

Sure, the way the person is affects everybody. We toured and we had to get along for a long period of time. And when someone doesn’t feel like he’s somewhere where he needs to be or he isn’t happy with the situation, he can affect everybody. That happened in the past, not all the people got along really well. So for sure that was always like recording music wasn’t a big problem, you didn’t need to get along all the time, but being on tour was sometimes hard. Everybody is different and that makes kind of different vibe in the band for sure.

But are you satisfied with the line-up you have now?

I can say yes, for sure. I think musically we’re all on the same page and we didn’t have any troubles recording this album. So yeah, it’s super-cool. There’s been some rough times, but now it feels like everything is cool.

You recorded one of your songs, “The Windswept Mercy”, with New Model Army vocalist Justin Sullivan. Did you have a chance to know him as a person?

Only Björn did. It was his arrangement. He’s been a huge Justin Sullivan fan for years. He met him some time ago when he was in Phoenix, they talked for a bit and stayed in contact. And when we went to the studio there was this song and Björn thought it would be perfect to have Justin Sullivan’s vocal there. So Björn e-mailed him and he answered straight away that he would be happy to do that. Yeah, that was something different and it was all because of Björn, he was super-enthusiastic about it and we all thought it was a great idea. So that’s a different kind of song with a great vibe.

If you compare this album to your previous works, is there any change, anything that’s really new for you?

Yeah, when it comes to music and instrumental parts, there are some things we haven’t tried before. There are some pretty cool things like intro parts for the songs and stuff like that. And also there are some special things about the production. It’s really organic and dynamic. When you listen to it, you get some really good groove, it’s got some really natural feel. It’s super-diverse. We’ve tried to make different types of music, different kinds of songs. There are heavier ones and softer ones and so on.

And talking about the future of your band, are there any things left that you’d really like to try out?

Well, yes, on the second CD of this double-album we have some… maybe “darker” songs. That sort of vibe that you get from them is a bit more melancholic and that’s what I’d like to keep on doing. I’m more into darker side of things. That’d be cool to me. It’s progressive, but progressive in the right way. But you need to mix it up at the same time. I think we’re on to something here that we’ll keep on developing – this progressive spirit in music that’s really cool to have. While listening to music you need to get that feeling that’s really hard to describe, and if we could create that, that would be awesome. That’s something that we really need to aim for.

Were there any special things about the recording process that you’ll remember for the rest of your life? Maybe something funny?

Yeah, the whole thing was a great experience and (laughs) we “cooked a lot of food”, by food I mean music, so I’ll remember that for sure. Just the fact that there were so many songs, 27 songs that we pretty much had not rehearsed, and we go there and tried to record them. There were times like, “Man, it’s never gonna work”, and there were times when it was like, “That’s the best thing ever”. It was a fun experience altogether, you know… So just being in the studio together creating some great stuff – that was my probably favorite thing about it.

You’re one of… how can I say?... “long-staying” or “long-living” members of the band, so can you name an episode of its history that seems really important to you?

I would say that was back in the days when we took our first step to having clean vocals, that was that sort of moment when we took a turn and we’ve made it quick. We’d done more like traditional death metal and then we started with the keyboards, that was one thing, and the next thing was clean vocals. And there are so many things you can do when you have different kinds of vocals and keyboards, so you can do some samples and have different layers to your music. So I think that change was probably the deciding moment for our band.

What do you think a band needs to do to stay interesting for their fans?

You need to write music so that you like it yourself. And keep developing. If you take our band, for each album we’ve done something that’s been a little bit new, you know. We keep on developing. You need to keep your fans interested in what’s going so that they can’t be always sure of what to expect. I’m not saying that every band needs to change all the time, that’s just what we need to do. We do little changes for every album and that’s the right thing for us. It’s interesting for us.

Are there any projects you have apart from playing in Soilwork?

I work sometimes. We haven’t toured so much and we didn’t do that much after our previous album, so we had a lot of time away from music and I kind of needed a job. Everybody has some other musical projects and we do stuff to stay alive. We need to have some work. I work at a jail sometimes.

Really? Are there any special experiences you get from your work?

Oh, yeah, that’s kind of interesting. You meet a lot of different characters for sure. We all need to have a job. We don’t make a lot of money doing this, so we need some other sources of income. That’s not bad. I don’t mind being “normal”, I can do it for a while, it’s not a problem. And I can say that when you work at a normal day job and then get to go back to music, you appreciate it kind of more.

That’s an interesting idea…

Yeah! (laughter)

Can you afford yourself some spare time having a job and your music to do?

Yes, I try to keep it all active, I try to keep myself healthy and work out a bit and hang out with friends. I travel to the States quite a lot, that’s where my girlfriend lives. So when I don’t work I travel to my girlfriend. And I like to cook, I really like to cook too.

Are you going to visit Russia during your tour this time?

Oh, hopefully. We’ve been there once and that was great. That was a great experience. Nothing is planned now, but we’ll try to tour as much as possible, so maybe we can come. 2013 will be a busy year for us, we’ll try to go to as many places as possible.

Well, then good luck with your new record and hope to see you in Russia!

Yeah, thanks, hopefully you can get some answers!

Soilwork on the Internet: http://www.soilwork.org

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Ksenia Artamonova
January 16, 2013
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