Culture
Avatar’s lead singer and circus master, Johannes Eckerström, talks about hitting #1 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Airplay chart and the importance of artistic evolution
By: Nicholas Kobe
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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (WOUB) – While Swedish metal band Avatar has kept pretty much the same lineup since their formation in 2001, their music has been anything but predictable.
Starting as an extreme metal act, the band released three records through 2009. Their fourth record, 2013’s Black Waltz introduced what would become the group’s most defining aesthetic: the circus. Frontman Johannes Eckerström began to dawn a ringmaster’s red outfit and sport face paint with an aesthetic someplace between corpse paint and clown.
The band’s extravagant live show has earned them a dedicated following. All this has culminated with the release of their Dance Devil Dance album earlier this year; which notably features Lzzy Hale of Halestorm on Violence No Matter What. The record also includes the single The Dirt I’m Buried In, which hit #1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay charts earlier this month.
With Avatar progressively getting bigger and bigger, it seems the show is only beginning. WOUB’s Nicholas Kobe got to chat with Avatar’s ringleader and lead singer Johannes Eckerström before the group’s performance at the Louder Than Life Festival in Louisville. Avatar performs the festival’s second day, September 22 alongside Tool, Megadeth, Limp Bizkit, and Godsmack.
Read a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below. The conversation contains language which may be offensive to some readers.
If you had to describe Avatar in one sentence, what would you say?
Johannes Eckerström:
I think at this point, two words sum it up pretty well: ‘metal circus.’ I don’t know what that is and it’s silly, but we are metal and the way we do things, it’s like goddamn circus. So yeah.
Nicholas Kobe:
The Dirt I’m Buried In hit number one on the mainstream rock charts. How does that feel?
Johannes Eckerström:
Well, short answer: it feels good. We move musically in a fairly strange space. We turn our partly extreme metal roots into some kind of rock ‘n’ roll. We make you dance, but it’s rooted in something pretty raw and then that dance friendly factor goes all the way into radio airwaves, which especially where we come from, there is very little radio for our kind of stuff. Anyway, it’s such an alien concept. So when it started to chart, a while back ago, for us it was a “huh, neat” moment – when it hit number one it was a “double neat.”
Nicholas Kobe:
Yeah. Did it surprise you that out of all the songs on the new record, that was the one to gain that kind of popularity?
Johannes Eckerström:
No, actually, because for most of the history of the band myself, and I think all the guys in the band, we shield ourselves from thinking of singles or radio tracks while working on the music. We worried about the feeling that we needed to do that to protect the integrity of why we were writing a song. Now in more recent days, I think we’ve become better at having two thoughts in the head at once to write the songs with the reasons that you want to write them, but at the same time, kind of being able to hear it from the outside to say, ‘this would be a good single,’ and to participate in that. I think it was pretty obvious with this one, it has the playfulness, the huge chorus, those kinds of things, aside from being a good song because that album is full of great songs. It also was a good song in a way that I’m not blind to, that it could work between car commercials and insurance commercials and whatnot. So no, it made sense and I take great pride in having had a feeling that this was going to happen to some extent.
Nicholas Kobe:
Yeah, especially considering your guys’ more extreme roots, that’s definitely not something that happens very often.
Johannes Eckerström:
Exactly. Because we started out listening to and trying to learn to play extreme metal like the Haunted, Vader, and Cannibal Corpse – but mixing in with also being crazy about Ozzy Osborne and Judas Priest. I guess more than anything, all these classics that we always loved were at the time of their release totally cutting edge. So how do we do something that makes us feel the way the classics make us feel, but pays proper tribute to them by trying to be cutting edge with it and bringing metal that makes you move forward to the next thing it can be.
Nicholas Kobe:
Is that kind of idea of metal that makes you move, is that what you guys think you’re pushing forward on an album like Dance Devil Dance?
Johannes Eckerström:
I mean, to some degree it’s always there and what’s always there is like, ‘oh, this riff makes me want to bang my head.’ That’s a measuring stick as good as any for what stuff we liked when we tried to come up with songs. But it was more outspoken than ever, going deep into that. That’s the purpose really. The basics of if you have a bass guitar and a drummer playing it in your band, that’s a rhythm section. Why is it there if it’s not there, to make people move, to create movement in music, to make the music suitable for a dance floor as much as a mosh pit, the gym as much as the bedroom. This music has that forward motion that you can do whatever you feel is appropriate with it. That became more outspoken than ever before. So that made the songs more cohesive that you stuck around the same groove and the same drive in each song to also make it emotionally consistent and rhythmically consistent. So yeah, there’s definitely that old timey rock ‘n’ roll dance vibe that went into it. Also with the more extreme songs, it was important to maintain that.
Nicholas Kobe:
Speaking of the new record, Dance Devil Dance, now that you guys are on the road and you’ve been touring with that record and that material, what’s something you’ve learned about that record that you kind of didn’t realize?
Johannes Eckerström:
Well, the title track is a very rough song to start to set with and we start the set with that every night. For me what’s tough is basically the phrasing and the way I constantly sing it. I basically hyperventilate for four minutes straight, but that makes the rest of the set a breeze. There’s always that. Sometimes you make decisions when you sit at home working on a song, doing demos for it, and then recording in a studio where you do it piece by piece. That’s the nature of how you do it and figure this is going to be a bit heavy to do all at once, but I’ll come out of this being better at my job once I nail it and it’s getting better and better, but it really puts a physical demand on me. So that’s the thing. I don’t know, what else do we learn about the songs we do like that? Well, they certainly make people move, mission accomplished, I guess.
Nicholas Kobe:
Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve seen in some previous interviews where you talk about what the face paint represents to you on each of the different albums. What did it mean to you when working on this record?
Johannes Eckerström:
There’s a spiritual side to it and an atheist’s interpretation of what spirituality can be and also what symbols and rituals can mean and how they have power or a life, even if you don’t believe in the supernatural. With that comes the symbol of Satan as a very prominent and important figure at this time. We celebrate that and we have fun with it. There’s an inner journey that leads to an escape and a rebirth and an arrival as the antichrist essentially, but in a circus tent, and that’s celebration of it. So I guess Lucifer is a clown!
Nicholas Kobe:
A good way to sum it up. So kind of a somewhat off topic question about the whole clown aesthetic, but if you could learn one actual circus trick, which one would you want to learn?
Johannes Eckerström:
I always think that I would, if I really put time and effort into becoming fitter, stronger, faster, better cardio, more agile, all those things that benefit the show and life at large. Part of me would think that if I would be more acrobatic, if I would get those skills at some point along the way, I’d sing while doing a handstand or whatever, just create freer movement on stage, In general more acrobatic with my own body would be number one. Then if we zoom in on specific classic circus tricks, I dunno, fire eating has been overdone. It feels redundant in a metal show today. So I mean, juggling opens up a whole lot of doors, having your microphone and a couple of knives that go around and around or something.
Nicholas Kobe:
That would be cool.
Johannes Eckerström:
Yeah, that would be something. But I guess the number one would be just, I dunno when thinking out loud, maybe I’m old to learn this, but the kind of gymnastics that lends to a more acrobatic performance and then having the lungs of steel to pull that off while doing everything else, that’s probably the real answer.
Nicholas Kobe:
Absolutely. So as you guys have kept going further in the different music directions you’ve gone in, what’s your relationship with before you guys were doing the circus aesthetic. What’s your relationship with those first three or so albums?
Johannes Eckerström:
I look back at that very fondly. In a way, it feels like two different bands, but in another way it’s totally the same band all the way. It feels like both things at the same time. I think if you look at a history of most known groups, aside from maybe Metallica or a handful like that, they all start out as a couple of kids in the neighborhood that form a band together and they suck. But there are two of those kids that are a bit more ambitious, a bit more driven, that go on to find the two kids in that other shitty band down the street or one next town over, and then they form that band. That becomes something. And somehow we were the same guys who went through that with each other. We started out young.
We didn’t wait for someone’s permission to put music out. So we did a lot of that in public, very much in a way. Then when a lot of changes, when you reach a point when, you have new ideas, you have gathered enough experience to start to have a better vision of what you want to achieve with your band. Instead of quitting or firing someone and stuff, we went through that, all of us together. I don’t see how there could be any other way this would’ve happened. This is the happiest way, we were able to do that transition much with every one of us still there, but it’s just an accumulation of experience. I mean, if you make sure to stay hungry, driven and curious, there’s no reason for that fire to ever go out ever in your songwriting career. That being said, there’s a certain kind of enthusiasm that comes with not having a clue about what you’re doing and the kind of songwriting choices you make when you’re like that. You could make better decisions on paper for what a song would’ve needed, because you didn’t have the tools, you make some strange decisions in its place and you only get to do that kind of music once in your life and that is when you start out. Then the option is to evolve and find new challenges built on that or you just try to force yourself to pretend artistically. I guess it’s a case of stunted growth.
‘What we did when we were 20 was pretty cool. Now we have to pretend that we’re 20 every time we pick up our instruments.’ That was never for us or never for any of the artists I truly admire and respect. It’s something to be said really about that, the chaos of creative direction in the beginning. So yeah, I look at it very fondly, but I also think we are much better now, and both can be true at the same time.
“[…] most groups start out as a couple of kids in the neighborhood that form a band together and they suck. But there are two of those kids that are a bit more ambitious, a bit more driven, that go on to find the two kids in that other sh*tty band down the street or one next town over, and then they form that band. That becomes something. And somehow we were the same guys who went through that with each other. We started out young.” – Johannes Eckerström
Nicholas Kobe:
Absolutely. Both can be true. I mean you mentioned that you’ve been friends with the guys that have been in the band for a long time. How has that kind of friendship developed over those years?
Johannes Eckerström:
Well, we grew up together. I think that’s the cool part with this is we were in the midst of puberty when we got to know each other. You step into people, start having serious relationships, move out from home and roar through your twenties the way young men do, being immortal and insane. We did most of those fun, awesome things together and survived it and continued being a band. Now there are people with rings on their fingers and homeowners or whatnot. We transitioned into another thing, but we kept the pirate ship intact and with all of us there. No one felt the need to go and look for greener pastures elsewhere when these things happened. It has evolved as life evolves and changes for anyone. It’s just uniquely cool because the crazy thing is when you’re in a band, you’re friends, you’re colleagues, you’re fellow artists, you’re business partners, all these things at once. We were able to keep all those parallel relationships going pretty consistently while life changes the way life is supposed to change. We never got stuck in again, the pathetic phase of being a bunch of 22-year-olds forever. Being 22 is the best. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who’s less than 22, but you should only do that for a year – any longer and it gets sad.
Nicholas Kobe:
Yeah, I’ll definitely give it a go in a few years.
Johannes Eckerström:
Alright, good for you.
Nicholas Kobe:
So one more question before we wrap up and that is, what is the future for Avatar? What are you guys looking forward to doing next?
Johannes Eckerström:
Well, I’m having a good time, so it’s all about rinse and repeat at this point. We have plenty of touring left to do that will keep us busy for at least another year when it comes to this album. At the same time, we’re starting to noodle around with new stuff. It’s early to say exactly what it is. That’s how it’s supposed to be. We start very open-ended and it’s kind of like a funnel or a filter where things go through and after a while you start to see what you’re actually creating together. Every album so far I feel represents a specific era in our lives and in the life of the band and more than anything else, I find it necessary for that to continue. I look forward to figuring out what that is and creating some distance with Dance, Devil, Dance, because you live in that cloud of all those ideas and feelings. Then life will start feeding you new bits and pieces that will inspire you for another direction. We are just starting to find out what that is and that’s one of my favorite parts.