SOILWORK
Swedish greats Soilwork have been devastating the metal world for the past decade with their powerful blend of melody and mayhem. While they've gone through a few changes since last they visited our shores, frontman Bjorn 'Speed' Strid assures Jake 3 they've still got the goods.
Tell us a little about the lyrical content of 'Sworn to a Great Divide'? I would say it's the most personal album, lyrically, for me so far. I mean, basically I've been growing up on the road. We started the band when I was like 18 years old and it's been going so fast. Seven albums on and I'm 29 years old, going on 30 in September, and I barely have time to just sit down and think. So I needed to go through a lot of things: how I develop as a person, how I react to things differently and bring out the negative sides and positive sides - it's kind of like a mental autobiography.
What made you decide to reunite with Devin Townsend to produce your vocals? Well, I really enjoyed it when we did 'Natural Born Chaos' together. I think he really made me develop as a singer. I learnt a lot from Devin back then. I wanted him to produce the vocals for both 'Figure Number Five' and 'Stabbing the Drama', but he was not available at that time. Now he's stopped touring, so it was the best time and he was really stoked to do it as well. So I decided to fly over to Vancouver...It was a really cool and relaxed feeling - it felt like two buddies recording vocals in the basement. [It was] very inspiring, he's very focused and skilled. He made me play around with the vocals a lot, not just nail the notes. It was definitely like a playful feeling when we were recording the vocals, and I think you can hear that on the album. There are a lot of different types of voices and spontaneous stuff...For example, on the title track, 'Sworn to a Great Divide', in the chorus there's a falsetto wail - that was like a joke from the beginning, but then it was like, 'Man, that's really cool, let's do that'. [It was] very interesting and I'll probably keep on recording my vocals with Devin - he's the best!
How has the departure of Peter Wichers changed things for Soilwork? Well, it has definitely been a challenge. We knew we could pull it off. It took some time to get over it of course, but we shouldn't really underestimate ourselves. I mean, we contributed a lot of songs in the past as well...After a while we were not very worried. We had about 30 songs and it was really hard to pick out songs that were going to make it to the album. That was really the first time we had that much material and the whole band was involved, which was really cool. I still miss Peter; we are still good friends. We talk on the phone at least once a week and, who knows, either me or someone else might do something with Peter in the future. He's a great friend and a great musician.
'Sworn to a Great Divide' is out now through Nuclear Blast/Riot.
Tuesday May 13 at The Arena, Brisbane (licensed/all ages).
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