Rising Swedish true metal stars In Solitude hit London’s Kentish Town Forum in February with unlikely tour mates Behemoth and Cradle Of Filth, pushing their muscular, melodic brand of classic heavy metal to an audience mostly there to see face-painted men in leather skirts bellowing about Satan. Ghost Cult found bassist Gottfrid Åhman at the back of their tour bus with a gin and tonic to talk about their new album Sister (Metal Blade), perceived trends and their place on an otherwise exclusively death and black metal bill.
Your earlier material very much took its cues from Mercyful Fate, but Sister seems to draw on a broader collection of influences – is that a deliberate choice, or a more natural development?
“I think it’s very natural… when we did the first album we were 16 or 18, you know – we had just learned how to make a rock song. We grew up together playing Mercyful Fate, Black Sabbath – those bands taught us how to play our instruments. It’s very natural that when you sit down to write a song, it will sound like them. I think moving on from that, as we have on Sister, is a natural thing, and a thing that comes… maybe not with age, but with knowing how to play your instruments, how to express your true self.”
When you and other like-minded bands started to emerge in the late 2000’s, you were perceived by journalists as being part of a retro heavy metal trend. How do you feel about this?
“At the time we were very annoyed – I think all of the bands who were seen as part of that were. I’ve been talking about this with Enforcer and Portrait, and everyone hated it. I think everyone started to play that kind of music, maybe not consciously, but because there was a lack of bands playing the kind of music that we grew up with. It’s a natural thing, to sound like the bands that you grew up with and loved. It wasn’t a trend, it was just that people with similar influences were getting their albums out around the same time. I really feel like the trend is coming now – in 2007, there were only three four bands doing this in Sweden, you know, but now you have lots of demo bands trying to take part in what they’ve been told is a scene.”
“It was the same way with black metal – in the early 90s every one talked about the black metal trend, but you didn’t get the trend until years later, when millions of shitty bands turned up.”
As a genre, classic heavy metal is in its fourth decade, and yet continues to find fans and musicians amongst young people. Where do you think that lasting appeal comes from?
“Because it’s just great music. People will always discover the great music, however old. I bought this Velvet Underground box set the other day – younger people have been picking up on Velvet Underground pretty much every ten years, purely because of the quality of the music – it’s the same with Mercyful Fate, they’re just one of the best bands ever, you know? It’s natural that people will keep trying to sound like them. Back in 97 and 98 we felt a real hunger for it – no-one was really sounding like that or talking about those groups. When we were 15 or 16 and picked up on it, we were really provoked by that – why aren’t people talking about these bands?”
Do you think the perception of being ‘underground’ has anything to do with that?
“Definitely not. I think Mercyful Fate should stand alongside The Beatles. I never think in terms of underground or mainstream – I think it’s an unnecessary argument, it doesn’t say anything about what the music is about. Of course, I cared about that when I was younger… all underground movements are important when it comes to exposing young people to culture, making them part of something, but when it comes to writing music it’s completely foolish to think in those terms”
The general consensus among fans and reviewers seems to be that Sister is more Gothic than your earlier material. How do you feel about that?
“Everyone uses that word! I think it’s funny, because I don’t really know what Gothic music is, to be honest. I know that people name-drop Sisters Of Mercy, who I’ve never heard… I fucking love Danzig, so that reference is not so surprising. But yes, this Gothic thing is hard to adjust to. I think something new happens and people always have to blame something… now they blame the Gothic music scene. I don’t really know what makes In Solitude more gothic than Black Sabbath or The Stooges.
Not wanting to speak for others, but personally I found the material on Sister to have more of a romantic, even a seductive feel, compared the more straight-forward heavy metal feel of your earlier material.
“It’s funny that you should say that… when we did this album we talked a lot about this. After it was finished, we thought it had a much harder attitude, you know, that it was a lot more in your face – the drum sound is a lot more natural and hard, and also the guitars. Most metal productions, to me, aren’t very extreme, or very hard. All those bands using lots of distortion – that only makes the guitars sound smooth. What makes a guitar sound really hard is playing it clean without lots of distortion, then you can really hear it smash. With Sister, we all listened to it after the production was finished, and our response was just… fuck! This is so hard-sounding!”
“It is a really hard soundscape, much harder than The World, The Flesh, The Devil, for example – which I think is a much more romantic album in a way. The arrangements are more like classical, whereas with Sister I find it more morbid. I think also our previous albums haven’t been that personal, so it was easier to connect them with other metal bands. Now something different happens, and I think people have hooked onto this idea that we’re more Gothic now… probably one person said that and others picked up on it.”
“A lot of people are name-dropping stuff that they think have been influences to us, and I have always really hated name-dropping, that you have to describe a band by reference to others. I do think that comparing bands to bands is just really pointless. In bad reviews of the album, people write “I don’t like that they’ve been influenced by this, they’re too into Sisters of Mercy” – it’s like, what the fuck? I’ve never even heard them! They’re just saying stuff that’s not true.”
Do you feel this may be attributed to many metal fans and journalists not really having a lot of experience of music beyond metal? That they may be bewildered by outside influences?
“I don’t know if people maybe get provoked by it, or if they just don’t get it. I try not to read reviews, but of course you do… most of them seem to be saying that it’s good, so that’s great. You don’t want to complain… I hate complaining. I’m glad that people seem to be enjoying it, but I find the whole Gothic thing really strange.”
This is probably a question you’ve been asked before on this tour, but you don’t seem like the most natural choice for this bill. Do you see yourselves as the odd-ones-out on this package?
“No, that’s a new question! It’s also true, and I totally agree. Of course you don’t want to sound like an asshole, you know, but it’s like… I can admire stuff that Behemoth or Inquisition are doing, but of course musically we don’t have a lot in common with them, and this tour is really not an obvious thing for us to do. To be honest it came a little out of desperation, we really wanted to do something while the album was fresh, Nergal asked us and I really respect and like him, so it was like, “okay, why not?”
“The really good thing is that we have the opportunity to play to hundreds of people every night who’ve probably never heard of us. Of course it’s safe to go out and play to people who already know you, so this feels like risky business, but I think it’s really healthy to take that kind of risk, and at the moment I’m really enjoying it. Of course I’m really looking forward to going out headlining, playing for our die-hard fans, that’s always the most rewarding thing… but hopefully we’ll win some more fans this trip!”
In Solitude on Facebook
By Richie H-R
Live photo by Ian Cashman
