Metal Blast recently conducted an interview with CANDLEMASS and AVATARIUM mainman Leif Edling. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Metal Blast: Considering the success of CANDLEMASS and the fact that it stands proud as THE doom metal band, what led you to start AVATARIUM?
Leif Edling: My last year was very stressful, and I needed a break. The guitar became the vehicle for that. I sat on the sofa, playing guitar just trying to relax because I needed a few months to myself. I started to like some riffs, and those riffs became songs, and I needed to record those songs that I had. My friend Marcus [Jidell; EVERGREY, ROYAL HUNT] here at the studio not too far away where I live now, he's got a small studio, so we sat there and demoed the songs that I had. So that's how it started… me needing break. [laughs]
Metal Blast: I agree that it does represent a difference from CANDLEMASS; while it maintains the slow tempo, it's also more psychedelic or maybe stoner in terms of sound, and the lyrics aren't quite as dark as in CANDLEMASS, they're a little more poetic. This goes very well with Jennie-Ann Smith and her style of singing, you know, this jazzy vibe that she gives the songs. While it's taking a break in the sense that you're not working with the same band that you've worked with all these years, is it also therapeutic in that you touch on things that are not as dark as what you're usually writing?
Leif Edling: Yeah, man. I enjoyed writing these songs very much because I could work in a little bit broader scope when compared to CANDLEMASS. I could go "outside the box" a little bit more and write these relaxed verses and have some kind of bluesy feels in the vocals, like you said "jazzy." It's been kind of interesting for me to go outside the stuff that I normally do with CANDLEMASS and work a little bit more with the energy and atmosphere. As a songwriter, to me that is really interesting, because you can do something that you can't usually do. For instance, normally I don't like piano verses or verses like the one in "Moonhorse" where it's almost folk.
Metal Blast: But you're still unable to leave CANDLEMASS fully on the side. You mentioned "Moonhorse" which has this whole "folky" and psychedelic element, but at the same time these folk elements are "interrupted" by the harder CANDLEMASS doom sound. I thought this combination was great.
Leif Edling: Thanks! This was the whole purpose of the AVATARIUM album, to create something that was a little more organic. Something that not only had hard energy, but also soft energy. We worked pretty hard with the arrangements and tried to make the songs flow in a way that gave in to more atmospheric, more bluesy elements, sometimes a little dark, sometimes a little light. It was great to work with the different energies and atmosphere's and doom riffs [laughs] and even, sometimes, a little bit more progressive stuff. I'm just a fan of good music. Working with someone like Jennie-Ann Smith was great, because she can really sing the blues. She's a blues singer.
Metal Blast: In an interview, you mentioned her being able to reach sort of a "Ronnie James Dio sound," which reminds me of the fact that when you released the mini-LP for "Moonhorse", you had a cover of "War Pigs" (BLACK SABBATH]. When you're tackling such a classic song by a band as famous as BLACK SABBATH, and you give it a completely new sound, was there a bit of fear of how people will compare it to the original, and also how people will react to the re-imagining?
Leif Edling: Yeah, that's the trickiness. It doesn't matter how you do it; if you do it in the traditional way, people either complain and say, "Yeah, yeah, you can't do it like SABBATH, you're not as good and it's boring," and if you do an acoustic version, people will say, "Yeah… it's cool, but I don't get it. They should have done a traditional version." You can't please everybody. In the end, you can only do it for yourself. When we were talking about it, we said that there was no way we could really do "War Pigs", since is such a classic song that you simply cannot touch the original, it can't be done. The only thing we could do with it was to make it our own. We completely re-did it, and I love it. We've had a couple of complaints, but we've also had a bunch of people saying that it was a great cover and that we did the right thing.
A band made out of our wildest dreams and two support bands I hadn’t seen in years. Which better reason to attend a gig in a warm October night? Three years after their first phenomenal visit in Greece, Americans progsters Shadow Gallery came back to finish what they had started in 2010. The show was promising from the very beginning with the announcement of the support bands, Greek heavy progsters Wastefall and heavy/power metallers Dark Nova, and having seen Wastefall supporting Black Sabbath in 2005 and Dark Nova playing with bands like Rage and Testament before even the ‘00s decade, I knew what to wait from two of the most important bands of our country which for various reasons, never got the attention and publicity they deserved.
Seven minutes after eight o’clock, Wastefall entered the stage and it was a great joy to see nothing changing compared to what I knew. The quartet delivered really heavy progressive metal, mainly based on the marvellous ‘’Soulrain 21’’ album, with touches from their latest internet release ‘’Meridiem’’. Their singer was about to audition for Ark once if I’m not wrong and he showed us all how it is to be able and play great riffs and have a voice that fits the genre. The best thing about this band is that despite being a progressive one, they are even heavier than you can imagine and they are the best possible answer to progsters who sacrifice their heaviness in order to sound more mellow or emotional. Wastefall can sound like everything you want from a modern thinking metal band with a very traditional way of acting on the stage and without forgetting to power it up when needed. I also liked the use of cymbals of their drummer, the guy hit everything and he adds a lot to their sound. I hope they’ll be releasing stuff more often and they won’t miss a second chance given to them to become real leaders in the Greek scene.
Dark Nova came out with the air of the experienced band and even if the sound in the first two tracks was burying the heavy riffs somehow, the continuation was much better. They have a bassist that is the epitome of his organ, a seven string monster which looks very much like the eight string guitars Meshuggah are using. Together with the help of the relentless pounding of the drummer, they created a rhythm section many bands would be jealous about. The guitarist was always pulling new riffs from his chest and the lady in the keyboards showed how it must be to have a woman in your band. She was not just standing like a primadonna like many other ladies in bands do, but she was also headbanging while playing, showing a real metal attitude. Last but definitely not least comes the singer who helps the band and delivered a great performance. Highlights of the night were ‘’Twilight Star’’ (from the legendary ‘’Dark Rhapsodies’’ debut), ‘’Temptation’’ from the ‘’1999-A Step Beyond’’ album) and for the end, the ‘’Dark Nova’’ track which is also the title of their latest album. After forty five minutes and with the joy painted on their faces, knowing they had done the best they could and getting the applause of the crowd, they left the stage and we were ready for Shadow Gallery.
Time for magic, time for joy, time to forget all our problems, though we suspected it, we didn’t imagine it would be in such a scale. Shadow Gallery made such a performance once again that they make you believe in God, in music’s power around the world and in a better tomorrow in general. If the first time we saw them is marked as most special in our hearts, then this second visit of theirs is simply the establishment of their talent, of the transmission of countless feelings through their music and of their undisputed skill to sound even better than in their six wonderful albums. In a band where every member is a protagonist and three of them switch from guitars, keyboards and singing, then I don’t know what else someone else could expect. When Brian Ashland says ‘’this is our home’’ just at the very beginning of the show, you understand how happy they felt for coming back. When they play ‘’Don’t Ever Cry, Just Remember’’, you get the feeling that Mike Baker is up there, watching proudly his friends getting recognized in front of people amazed with the band’s shine on the stage. When they play ‘’Alaska’’ they remind us that they can offer surprises as well, when they play ‘’Pain’’ you can see why Ashland is a very expressive singer and why their latest album ‘’Digital Ghosts’’ can look the other five albums straight in the eyes.
When you know they’re going to celebrate fifteen years from the release of ‘’Tyranny’’ you expect them to unleash hymns like ‘’Stilleto In The Sand’’, ‘’War For Sale’’, ‘’Mystery’’, you even expect the guest D.C. Cooper to give an extra touch to ‘’New World Order’’ or ‘’Christmas Day’’, but you don’t imagine how much of a chemistry there is between them and the Royal Hunt frontman, about ten minutes are enough to witness the difference with his presence and the gig boosting up in colossal levels of musicianship, like watching the greatest theater performing flawlessly in front of you, like seeing something of the Savatage magic in their music (the show started with ‘’Bohemian Rhapsody’’ of Queen on the speakers, like Savatage did with other Queen tracks), you don’t expect they’ll give you a die-hard moment like ‘’2 Minutes To Midnight’’ of Iron Maiden played in a furious way (I wish Iron Maiden could sound even a bit like this today…) and when the gig closes with ‘’Gold Dust’’ with Ashland singing among the crowd and ‘’Crystalline Dream’’, you simply realize that all you lived for more than two hours was reality and not a dream. They thank the crowd collectively, though the crowd should spend years in thanking them for what they offer. You see the joy in their faces and they see the tears in the faces of many fans. The relationship between Shadow Gallery and the Greek fans can’t even be compared with the movie made loves at first sight (include first listening as well).
This night we forgot about problems, thoughts, internal conflicts, crisis and needless argues between us. This night we were free to feel happy again, like we did five, ten, fifteen years ago with such incidents. This night was added to one of the best in our entire lives until we close our eyes. There’s nothing more precious than this. Thank you Shadow Gallery for making this all happen and for letting us understand that this better second time you came here was the reason to realize that the first time was really true and not just a thought in our minds. I bet a fortune that it’s going to be a day set for many people to re-arrange their lives and think of many stuff from the beginning. Food for positive thought definitely!