February 2026
Metal Covenant pratade med Clawfinger-sångaren Zak Tell precis före att bandet spelade ett releasegig i Stockholm den 19:e februari för sitt nya album Before We All Die.
Jag tänkte börja med ett konstaterande bara. Det var fan inte igår ni släppte en platta.
Ja, det finns ju massor med svar på det. Ett svar är att när vi gjorde vår sista turné precis i slutet på 2007 så visste vi att våra pengar skulle ta slut någon gång i början på 2008. Och vi har haft den lyxen att leva på musik i 18–19 år vid det här tillfället. Ja, vi visste helt enkelt att det skulle komma en realitet där vi behövde söka jobb. Och det i sig är ju inget konstigt. Det gör ju folk hela tiden. Så det är ingen sådan här bu-hu-historia. Vi är ju snarare jävligt glada att vi kunde leva på det så länge. Men det ändrar ju spelreglerna, när man helt plötsligt ska jobba 9–5 måndag till fredag och man helt plötsligt inte kan ha kvar studion i Spånga med Meshuggah. Så det var ju en realitet. Och man sålde inte skivor längre. Alla laddade ner, streaming började komma, skivbolagen gick på knäna för de visste inte hur de skulle tackla allt det där. Ärligt talat, ända sedan första skivan… Nej, kanske inte första, men andra, tredje skivan, redan där började en sakta nedåtkurva. Vi har alltid haft fans och vi har alltid fortsatt att spela, med ett glapp på ett år där vi la av, så vi har liksom aldrig slutat helt. Så livet, helt enkelt. Många av oss hade små barn, och relationer som tar slut och börjar, och familj kommer och går, och vänner. Det korta svaret är ju bara livet. Vi hade ändå släppt sju plattor, hållit på med det här i 20 år, gjort hela ekorrhjulet om och om igen, och jag tror att vi var nog rätt trötta, kanske utan att helt fatta det själva. Alltså, det infinner sig en viss autopilotsrutin när man gör någonting länge, och det kan ju vara jävligt bra, och vissa sidor av det är ju bra, men när låtskrivarprocessen inte heller känns lika kul, så… Alla de här grejerna är ju olika orsaker liksom som alla bidrog till att vi la av. Vi la ju faktiskt bara av i ett år i verkligheten. Det är ju det som är så larvigt. Även när vi började jobba så fortsatte vi att göra sommarfestivaler och något enstaka gig. Men det blev liksom mindre och mindre och sedan 2013 bara ”Äh. Vi lägger ner. Vi kanske har gjort vårt.”. Och så hade vi ett år, då gjorde vi inga gig. Och sedan sommaren efter det, då fick vi ett erbjudande om att spela en välbetald festival på en sådan där snygg amfiteater utomhus. Då var vi så här ”Ah, va fan, ett gig kan man ju göra. Det är ju ingen som bestämmer hur mycket eller lite vi spelar.”. Sedan gjorde vi det där gigget och givetvis var det skitkul. Adrenalin och hela klassiska kittet och bara ”Fan vad kul det är att vara i band.” och så fick folk upp ögonen, ”Okej, de spelar igen.”. Och då började vi ju sakta men säkert göra några fler festivaler varje år. Och sedan så hörde vår manager av sig, ”Jag ska komma till Stockholm. Vi behöver ha möte om det här.”. Även om han liksom inte är så aktiv, men vi säljer ju skivor och vi har ett namn, så har vi ju faktiskt kvar en manager som vi har haft hela tiden. Och han bara ”Om jag hyr lägenhetshotell, kan ni testa att skriva en ny låt då?” och vi bara ”Jamen, det kan vi väl göra. Vi ska ju ändå träffas. Alla kommer till stan, som inte bor i stan.”. Så gjorde vi det och så gick det ju liksom enkelt. Det var en kväll och en dag och så hade vi en ny låt. Inte vår bästa låt. Save Our Souls heter den. Det var ett ganska långt glapp där när vi inte hade skrivit några nya låtar alls, så det var vårt första trevande försök, och vi var ju nöjda. Men anledningen till att den inte hamnade på plattan är att vi kände att den var innan vi hade liksom hittat tillbaka till det som ändå var oss, medan för de två singlarna, Tear You Down och Environmental Patients, som kom några år senare, var vi liksom tillbaka i Clawfinger-världen igen på något sätt. Och däremellan så fyllde ju Deaf Dumb Blind 25 år och det borde ju då ha varit 2018 och då stack vi ut på en sväng och körde hela den plattan från början till slut. Men någonstans i den vevan så har vi sakta men säkert börjat skriva låtar igen, bara för att det liksom kommer idéer. Det finns ingen tanke på en platta alls, överhuvudtaget. Sedan när vi har fyra eller fem låtar så börjar vi snacka om en EP kanske. Sedan går det ett tag till och sedan någon gång i början på 2023, kan det kanske ha varit, så har vi ett Zoom-möte med vår manager och han säger ”Grabbar. Jag vet att ni har typ sex eller sju låtar gjorda. Kanske ni kan försöka att skriva två eller tre fler och kanske släppa ett nytt album innan vi alla dör.”. Och så garvade vi allihop för vi visste ju själva att det var skitlänge sedan vi gjorde en platta, och vi börjar alla bli äldre, och sedan så sa vi ”Jamen, det kan vi. Absolut. Funkar det så funkar det, och gör det inte det så är väl inte det i hela världen heller. Och förresten, Before We All Die, det är ju en bra titel på en platta.”. Det var inte speciellt genomtänkt alls. När jag kollar tillbaka nu så är det ju ändå lite kul, för sista plattan vi gjorde hette Life Will Kill You, så det blir ju någon slags liksom fortsättning på den, helt ogenomtänkt. Ja, här sitter vi nu. Det var ett väldigt långt svar på en ganska kort fråga. (Skrattar)
Men nu då, när det äntligen har kommit ut en fullängdare, känner ni att det är nästan viktigare för er någonsin att den här plattan tas emot väl, med tanke på den möda ni har lagt ner nu ändå?
Jag kan ju bara prata för mig själv. Nej, jag känner inte det. Såklart vill man ju det. Det vill ju alla som är med i band, att deras platta ska bli väl mottagen såklart. Ärligt talat, för min del var det mest bara kul att vi lyckades göra en platta och att vi hade så jävla kul när vi gjorde det och att vi fick ihop låtar liksom. Alltså, redan från början så hittade vi ju egentligen vår stil, det vi gillade, vårt sätt att skriva låtar på, så det spelar ingen roll om vissa låtar är fyra år gamla och den senaste är skriven i somras, det blir ju enhetligt ändå bara för att vi låter som vi låter. Precis som alla band gör. Jag brukar skämta och säga att vi är crossover / rapmetalens svar på AC/DC. Man vet ungefär vad man får liksom.
När du plitade ihop texter till de här låtarna, var det fortfarande lika intensivt och argt inombords som det en gång var?
Alltså, tar man upp rätt ämnen så är det ju hur enkelt som helst. Sedan är ju inte allting jätteargt heller. Nämen, vi jobbar ju lite så att om det inte kommer någon text så blir det ingen låt. Det är lite grann så vi funkar. Så den börden ligger ju på mig liksom. Och det är också, apropå din tidigare fråga, en anledning till att det tar tid, för att om inte jag har någon inspiration så händer det ju inte ett jävla skit. De kan skicka hur mycket beats och gitarriff de vill. Men alltså, jag har nog inte tyckt det, men sedan när jag har lyssnat på plattan som helhet, när den var klar, så har jag insett att vi låter ju fan fortfarande lika jävla arga. Sedan har vi ju alltid haft lite berg- och dalbana i stämningar och vi har alltid försökt att ha någon låt som diffar lite liksom, och det handlar ju dels om att man behöver det för sig själv och så handlar det också om att en platta behöver ju ha lite variation. Men när man väl sitter ner och får inspiration till en text så är det ju inte så svårt att hitta det där arga. Jag tyckte och trodde länge att den här platten var mer introvert än de tidigare, och det kanske stämmer på ett par spår liksom, men i det stora hela så är det nog samma gamla jävla Clawfinger som det alltid har varit. Och jag tror att en av anledningarna till det, trots att det har gått 19 år och bortsett från det året vi hade uppehåll, är att vi har fortsatt att spela. Vi har fortsatt att åka på stora europeiska festivaler och fortsatt att liksom grinda det vi gör. Så bortsett från att det tog lite tid att komma in i låtskrivarfasen igen så var det ingenting som kändes konstigt eller onaturligt liksom, inbillar jag mig. Jag kanske bara efterkonstruerar. Det är ingen som vet.
Må så vara. Och var det helt givet att den nuvarande amerikanske presidenten skulle få en text (Scum) om sig själv?
Alltså, det är ju ganska svårt att inte adressera honom om man ska ha texter som handlar om världsläget. Den släpptes ju förra sommaren redan. Javisst, det är ju att sparka in öppna dörrar. Alla vet ju att han är dum i huvudet, förutom de som stöder honom. Nä, det kändes bara jätteskönt. Det är en frigörelse liksom, att få ur sig lite skit ur sitt system. Den började ju faktiskt som en allmän hattext om typ vem som helst och ingen. Och så ändrade jag den, det var nog förra våren, för det kändes bara ”Men det är så jävla tråkigt att skrika på ingen speciell.”. Så då tänkte jag ”Äh, fan, jag gör om bryggan och så gör jag om texten så att den handlar typ om honom.”. Men samtidigt så handlar den ju om fenomenet korrupta världsledare som sätter sina egna syften före människans bästa. Han blir ju syndabocken, men det finns ju tyvärr många fler som har den titeln, men han är ju den självklara.
Du nämnde ju studion i Spånga där ni inte är kvar längre, så hur och var har ni spelat in den här plattan då?
Överallt. Grejen är att nu för tiden har ju alla små, egna hemmastudior, så jag har spelat in i mitt lilla krypin eller uppe i gästrummet i bostadsrättsföreningen, därav så står det Gastroom på skivan, och det är ju ingen som kommer att fatta det, det spelar ingen roll, men det är bara en sådan här interngrej. Men vi har ju aldrig varit ett band som skriver låtar när vi repar. Vi har aldrig varit ett band som står med Marshall-stackar med bedövande volym och bara ”Öh, det här riffet är ju bra.”, utan vi har alltid pusslat ihop bitar, ända från början. Skillnaden nu är att det är så jävla enkelt. Teknologin har ju kommit så långt jämfört med ’93. Men vi har alltid pusslat. Enda skillnaden nu är att vi har pusslat på varsitt håll. Sedan sitter Jocke och mixar ihop allting och producerar. Jocke är ju liksom en totalnörd på det där. Han kan det där som sin egen bakficka liksom. Jocke är ju fantastisk på det där. Jag tror inte att en studio hade tjänat något syfte för oss ens. Och det många inte vet heller är att alla våra trummor är programmerade liksom, och har varit det sedan dag 1. Ibland har vi grejer som ligger ovanpå det programmerade. Alla gitarrer är ju direktlinade. Det är inga förstärkare. Så att det är ju klippa och klistra, och plocka ihop bitar. Det är så vi alltid har jobbat. Det är ingenting jag ens har tänkt på förrän folk börjar fråga. Folk utgår ju från att man har liksom gått till en studio och haft en session och spelat in, men det har vi inte.
Är det Jocke som har lagt all bas på plattan?
Det vågar inte jag svara på. Jag har i alla fall inte varit med när det har skett. Det är nog inte omöjligt. Det får du fan fråga honom om. Du kan ju bara slänga in en sidofråga till honom. Han svarar nog gladeligen på den.
Vi återkommer till den här frågan senare då Jocke av en händelse stannar till vid bordet där intervjun sker.
Skivomslaget. Förutom att världen är en tickande bomb, som man kan tycka, vilket man har tyckt väldigt länge, säkert i tusentals år, vad vill ni mer få fram med framsidan?
Ja ja, det är inget nytt. Som jag sa, det är både ett skämt för att vi börjar bli äldre och vi har inte släppt en platta på tre miljarder år, och det är också bara ett konstaterande att så som vi beter oss så håller vi på att förstöra den enda planeten vi har där vi vet att vi kan bo. Den håller vi på att sakta men säkert förstöra. Men, som du själv säger, det är inget nytt. Det kanske dröjer många år än. Vi är garanterat inte kvar när / om det händer. Men om ingenting vänder, om ingenting händer, så kommer det att vara slutklämmen på den mänskliga rasen. Det är jag helt övertygad om. Men det behöver inte bli så. Och jag hoppas jag har fel. Men det känns ju så. När managern sa det där på skoj, då började man ju tänka omslag såklart, och så började jag ändå kolla de texter jag hade klara då, och merparten av dem var ju ganska dystopiska och ganska mörka. Okej, lite humor, kan man ju tycka, men det är ganska mörkt liksom, vare sig det handlar om utåt eller vare sig det handlar om att jag adresserar mig själv så är det ju ganska mörkt. Så det kändes rätt passande med det omslaget, helt enkelt.
Planeten kommer ju att överleva. Det är ju mänskligheten och vissa djurraser som vi kommer att plocka med oss in i graven.
Stubinen är ju bara symbolisk. Det är inte så att jag tror att jorden kommer att sprängas. Vi kommer att förstöra för oss själva. Djuren, de som överlever, kommer att bli de dominerande. Vi hoppas att det inte är så såklart. Det kommer vi aldrig få reda på, för vi är döda sedan länge då. Men vi gör inte oss själva några tjänster så som vi beter oss mot vår omgivning och mot varandra. Om man kollar till den stora bilden så är vi ju rätt så jävla dumma i huvudet allihopa. Vissa mer, vissa mindre. Vi har ju extremt jobbigt med det här med medlidande och medkänsla, och alla är så upptagna med sitt och sin egen framgång, sin egen lycka, sin egen rikedom. Jag tycker inte att vi är så öppensinnade och så tillmötesgående som vi ofta tror att vi är. Och jag är inte bättre än någon annan. Skillnaden är väl kanske att vissa inte ens är medvetna om det eller ens tänker i de banorna. En sådan som Trump, till exempel, skulle jag gissa, tänker inte ens i de banorna.
Hur har ni tänkt när ni har gjort videorna till plattan?
Jag har mest tänkt ”Va i helvete. Varför gör man så jävla många videor nu i tiden?”. Nämen, så som det fungerade förr i världen, att Metallica släpper svarta plattan och de släpper en singel innan den kommer, och en video till den. Sedan när skivan är släppt, då släpper man eventuellt några singlar till. Men det funkar ju liksom annorlunda nu. Nu ska man ju hålla intresset uppe. Det är algoritmer, det är sociala medier, och där får man bara försöka att lira med. I slutändan så vill ju vi ändå att folk ska se och höra oss, och vi vill att vår produkt ska synas. Så det är inga konstigheter. Sedan att jag inte förstår det fullt ut är en annan sak. Men jag har inga problem. Så länge vi får vara med och bestämma hur videorna ser ut och görs så har jag inga problem med att göra fler videor. Det är ju fortfarande en jävla egotripp. (Skrattar) Hur man än vrider och vänder på det, att vara i ett band är ju en egotripp. Men det funkar annorlunda idag. Jag är för gammal för att fullt ut begripa det, jag är ödmjuk inför det och jag fattar det. Så länge inte någon säger att ”Det här måste ni göra.”, för då blir man ju förbannad direkt och vill göra motsatsen. (Skrattar)
Vi hoppar tillbaka till första plattan. Alltså, ni är ju lite mognare nu än på första plattan. Det är ändå en bit över 30 år sedan. Ni fick ju en ganska bra framgång. Om du ser tillbaka nu, hur tacklade ni den framgången första åren där när det bara brände till?
Så gott vi jävla kunde. Hyfsat med hedern i behåll, tycker jag. Alltså, vi träffades ju ändå på ett sjukhus (Rosenlund) där vi tog hand om gamlingar. Vi träffades ju liksom inte på någon cool rockklubb och drack bärs, utan det var ju borsta tandproteser, Decubal på liggsår, byta blöjor, och ta folk på toa. Och jag tror på riktigt att det eventuellt kan ha varit lite av vår räddning. Sedan får man ju inte glömma Jantelagen heller. Den är ju rätt stark. Inte hos alla. Men, ah, det är klart att man drogs med ibland och det är klart att när det gick som bäst så kanske man svävade lite ovanför marken. Men vi har alltid varit ganska duktiga på att ta ner varandra. Det har aldrig handlat om att bli rockstjärnor för oss. Ja, framgångsrik, absolut. Det är såklart att man vill bli det. Men det har aldrig handlat om limousiner, koks och hela det där tramset. Vi är inte den typen av band liksom. Det får andra hålla på med. Ge mig några bärs och ge mig gubbarna i bandet, ge mig en scen, ge mig en publik, så är jag ganska så jävla nöjd liksom.
Men kände ni ändå att ni uppfyllde någon form av drömmar där?
Jag fick reda på när jag gjorde den där SVT-dokumentären Hård Rock På Export att vi var ju typ det mest säljande bandet. Det visste jag inte ens om när de berättade det för mig. Jag visste om att det gick bra, jag har koll på ungefär hur mycket vi har sålt, och jag vet att vi har varit stora. Men jag fattade inte att vi var typ det mest säljande svenska bandet under den perioden. Och det är ju ascoolt såklart. Nämen, vi är skitstolta över det vi har gjort. Samtidigt som alla andra så gör vi massa misstag, tar fel beslut och släpper plattor som kanske inte passar med tiden. Men vad fan ska man göra? Det enda man kan göra är det man vet att man gillar och försöka vara ärlig. Liksom, det har aldrig handlat om att försöka tillfredsställa andra.
Vilken av era skivor känner du minst för idag?
Oj. Fan vad svårt. Jag har inte sållat bland dem så där. Jag skulle nog säga Zeroes & Heroes, för min del. Den känns som den där vi kompromissade mest. Alltså, det är ju helt omöjligt att vara objektiv. Alla plattor har ju såklart favoritlåtar och låtar som man är mindre nöjd med. Det är smällar man får ta helt enkelt. Men där gick vi lite på tomgång känns det som. Vi hade andregitarristen, Erlend Ottem, som slutade sen. Han var ju inte liksom med på tåget så mycket. Han var en sådan som lämnade studion innan rusningstrafiken för att slippa sitta i köer, och när det är viktigare än att man ska göra en låt, då har man tappat något. Så av den anledningen så är det nog den plattan för mig. Sedan finns det ju skitbra låtar på den också. Men det är någonting med helhetskänslan. Jag minns den tiden som lite tuff och det var inte samma gnista liksom. Men jag tror att det är oundvikligt. Ska man göra någonting så här länge så kan ju inte allting funka skitbra hela tiden, allting kan inte låta precis som man vill ha det, allting kan inte bli helt rätt. Det spelar ingen roll om man är med i ett idiotiskt jävla rockband eller om man jobbar på ett bankkontor, livet behandlar en olika vid olika tillfällen och det är bara att försöka handskas med det och göra det bästa av det.
Jocke stannar till vid bordet precis när intervjun är på väg att avslutas, så jag frågar honom:
Spelar du all bas på nya plattan?
Jocke blir tyst och skruvar på sig, så jag skriver ett rejält JA på mitt medhavda papper. (Alla skrattar) Han svarar:
Vi kan väl säga så här, att vi har hållit på och strulat med att försöka spela in saker var och en på sitt och så märker man att man har ställt ett ljud som man har suttit och duttat med, och som funkar, och då är det som att ”Åh, han fattar inte riktigt vad jag menar.” och sedan så ska man då skicka tillbaka ”Kan du göra så här och så här?”. Då är det ju enklare att bara jävla spela det själv, och sedan får man lära honom efteråt istället. Men det är ju likadant med vissa gitarriff. Jamen, vi skickar det fram och tillbaka så jävla mycket, så att vi måste på något sätt styra upp det. Det är lättast att göra det, annars tar det så lång tid så att ingen orkar med.
I samband med att Jocke ska lämna oss sträcker han sig fram och säger:
”Hej mamma.” Hon har varit död i ett par år, men det är fortfarande värt att hälsa.
Av Tobbe – Publicerad 24:e februari 2026
British thrash metallers Sylosis played Stockholm a few weeks ago and an interview was set up with guitarist, vocalist, and bandleader Josh Middleton about the band’s new album The New Flesh, out on February 20th.
Tell me a little bit about the new album.
Yeah, it’s just kind of picking off where we left off on the last one, but trying to keep getting heavier. For me as a fan of bands when I was a kid, I always liked it when they got heavier. One of the first bands that got me into metal was Korn, and when they brought out Follow The Leader, I remember, even as a young fan who wasn’t trying to be cool or anything, just being disappointed that it wasn’t as heavy. It was too clean and polished. I was kind of bummed out, and I always looked at bands like Pantera, who got heavier with each album, or Slipknot, I liked them when they came out, and then Iowa was even heavier. I wanna go back to, like, the roots of the band. We wanted to just be really intense and heavy, and I think as the years went on, we got better at our instruments, better at writing songs, and we kind of lost that kind of energy of being a young band that just wants to make noise. So trying to get a bit more of that into the music.
But the album is a little bit diverse. It’s not just heavy. It has a couple of real heavy or fast songs and then a couple of softer songs. So what were your thoughts on how you were gonna put different songs on the album?
Yeah, it’s pretty tricky. We recorded maybe 14 and then tried to narrow it down. There is one song, like the biggest one that stands out, called Everywhere At Once, which is, like, acoustic, or it starts acoustic. It kind of is a bit odd on the album, because the album’s really heavy generally, but that one was the most personal song, and the one that has the most meaning to me, ‘cause it’s about leaving my kids when I go on tour, and I had a pretty bad experience around this time last year with that. It was one of those songs that I was like, “Oh, does it fit on the album?”, but at the same time it’s so important to me that it kind of had to go on there.
As you’re producing the album yourself, do you track pretty much all the guitars and the bass?
I recorded Ben, our bass player, at my house, and I usually just track all the guitars and vocals at home, and then we were all there for the drum recording with our co-producer Scott Atkins.
Is saving money the biggest reason for producing most of it yourself?
No, not really. I think I just know what I’m doing now, and we just don’t need someone else. But I like having someone else’s input, and Scott Atkins gave us a lot of feedback when we sent the demos to him, and with song arrangements, and all kinds of ideas around the songs. But once you record the drums, nearly everything is not gonna change from that point on, so it’s just a matter of recording it, and I do that all day, every day, so it just makes sense.
And as you sit down starting to write songs for a new album, what do you set most focus on?
I mean, I never really thought about this until recently, but one thing I’ve always kind of done is: sometimes I write music in the shower, and I will almost be thinking, like, “What if one of my favorite bands was releasing a new album, how would I want it to sound, or how would I want that first track on their next album to sound?”, and I kind of just imagine a cool way to start an album, or the intro to a song. So a lot of the time I don’t even have a guitar in my hands. I’m just kind of thinking about music as a fan, and what I would like to hear.
And when you then pick up the guitar, are you starting to play chords, or do you just noodle around a little bit?
It’s different, yeah. It can be anything. But I’ve played guitar long enough that I can kind of almost write a riff without the guitar in my hands and then pick up the guitar and just play it ‘cause I can envision the notes in my head.
A little bit like Beethoven.
No, definitely not that talented. No, I think anyone that’s done it for 20 years is probably at that level where they can kind of just imagine roughly what it is.
Your vocals are pretty harsh for normal vocalists, so when you lay down those vocals, are you able to just bang them out one by one after each other, or do you have to rest a little bit to get to the next song?
I can probably only do, like, two or three hours a day, and then that’s too much. I normally kind of chip away two or three songs a day, or I’ll just keep cycling through them and be like, “Oh, my voice sounds pretty good right now. Let me go and redo every line in every song.”. It can depend, yeah. And a lot of times I’ll record vocals over the demo, and sometimes half of those vocals I can keep ‘cause they just sounded good.
Do you keep a lot of the demos too, or do you rearrange them when you record them eventually?
A lot of what goes on to the demos, like overdubbed guitars, or ambient layers and sounds, or even guitar solos, sometimes they were so good on the demo that there’s no need to try to retrack it, so I just keep it.
Explain the album title The New Flesh.
When I wrote the song, it was never meant to be the title of the album, and the song was called Manifestations Of The New Flesh originally. We were doing some festivals last summer, and our drummer Ali just said, “We should call the album The New Flesh. Take off the first bit. It’s such a good title.”, and I was like, “Yeah. Okay. We can call it that.”. The song isn’t about this, but we’ve, you know, undergone some lineup changes. It feels really solid now in the band, and this lineup’s been just touring a lot recently, so it does kind of lend itself to where the band is. But the song was kind of about just mortality, and you know, thinking about life after death, or the lack of life. (Laughs) I grew up very atheist, and sometimes you look at the state of the world and how bad things can be, and you hear stories about people having psychedelic drug experiences, where we’re all one consciousness and everything’s good, and I found myself thinking about that kind of stuff, imagining if that was real, and it’s very similar how I view people that are religious, thinking about heaven and the afterlife. But honestly, sometimes my lyrics are just like a sketch pad. Sometimes I don’t put too much thought into it. It just kind of comes out. So, it can be interpreted in different ways, and sometimes I’ll have a song where it’s kind of about two different things at the same time.
The front cover. Is that artwork in some way AI generated?
No, it was a guy called Snakehed, who we’ve known for years, who did the last album cover. We got him to pitch a bunch of different designs. You can go on his Instagram. He shows you the process of all the paintings, all these rough sketches. But he does draw. It’s like digital painting. But he came up with that concept. I gave him some rough ideas, and then he spent a long time on that one, yeah.
So what’s your general take on AI in art, whether it’s front covers, or even music?
I mean, it’s kind of scary. I can understand why people experiment with it. It’s fascinating, and you know, interesting, but I think more and more bands will make sure that they don’t go near it. I don’t understand AI music. Why people would want to listen to it, or why people are starting to make, like, AI music. Record labels or whatever it is. Kind of scary.
So far two videos are out, Erased and the title track, and it’s mostly you guys playing live in front of a camera, and tell me why you chose that kind of appearance, and not full-on animated stuff?
I don’t really like the animated stuff. I like a lot of videos that have that look, from when I was a kid, just bands playing. But admittedly, we don’t always come up with the concept; it’s the director, and they picture us an idea, and we just say, “Yeah.”.
You mentioned Korn, Pantera, and Slipknot, but was thrash metal also something you listened to when you were younger?
Not at the start. It’s one of my favorite genres, but I got into that more a few years into the band. I was already into Metallica, obviously, but I didn’t get deeper into thrash and discovering the whole genre until a few years later. ‘Cause when we started we were, like, 12, so it was just whatever was in Kerrang!, so it was Korn, Pantera, Machine Head and Fear Factory, that kind of stuff. And obviously Sepultura. They put Roots out when I was a kid, and then I went backwards, and Arise is one of my favorite albums. And I also love death metal as well, and Arise is kind of… Some people call it death metal; some people call it thrash. It’s kind of a mix. So yeah, that’s definitely a huge part of it. It’s just incorporating some of the stuff that we left behind when we were kids, as well as the thrash.
So what kinds of influences would you say are most present in Sylosis’s music today?
Honestly, it might surprise people, because people just kind of think we’re trying to be really modern, but there’s a lot more groove to what we do. I’ve always loved Obituary, who have the fast stuff, but a lot of groove as well. I think there’s a bit more of that Pantera groove, like The Great Southern Trendkill, that kind of stuff. Yeah, I don’t think our influences are that different. It’s trying to just break out of our way of writing before, when it was very regimented, and just always writing in front of the computer, and sticking to one tempo for the entire song. So we’re just trying to put some more energy into what we do. Same kind of influences, but there’s maybe a bit more groove to what we do, like the early Machine Head. Even a song like Adorn My Throne, that has a very Type O Negative influence on it, and I think your average fan now might hear that song, and it’s quite melodic, and just say, “That sounds like a metalcore song.”. But if I tell you, if you know Type O Negative, that that’s inspired by that, you’d be like, “Oh yeah. Of course it is.”. So for me, most of the influence comes from, like, ‘90s stuff that I grew up listening to.
You mentioned Fear Factory, and in what way can pretty much an industrial metal band influence Sylosis?
There’s another song on the record called Mirror Mirror, and that’s very Fear Factory influenced, like early Fear Factory. It’s got a very stompy beat. Or even that song, Adorn My Throne: the outro is pure Fear Factory. It’s just that really mechanical kind of rhythmic stuff.
About having quite a few member changes. What has been the general reason people quit the band?
There’s various reasons. You know, we don’t make enough money to live off the band. Our other guitarist who left (Alex Bailey), that was the most recent change, had been in the band since 2008. He has two kids, two dogs, and he owns a merchandise company. He just can’t tour, you know. He’s committed to his life at home, his job, stuff like that. You know, with our old drummer Rob (Callard): we’d go on tour and we’d come back with less money than when we left, ‘cause you have to pay for food and stuff. So a lot of the time it’s that. I’m still friends with a lot of our old members, so it’s not always that we butt heads.
Maybe this is a difficult question, but to what extent would you say that Sylosis is your solo band today?
I’d say it’s less of my band than it ever has been, because in the past it was always me, and on this record our new bass player Ben brought songs in, and it’s got more of the other guys’ music than ever before. I know I’m the one constant member, and you know, you could compare it to bands like Megadeth or Death, where the lineup keeps changing, but it’s not just my music. There’s a song called Spared From The Guillotine, which is one of the heaviest songs, and a lot of people say it’s their favorite, and that’s one that Ben brought to the band, so it’s not even my song. I can see how it looks like a solo thing, but it’s not.
What made you start playing an instrument when you were young?
My dad doesn’t play an instrument, but he’s an obsessive music fan. He just loves music. He had a guitar in the house, but he didn’t really play it, so I just picked it up. He was always playing all kinds of music. He loves everything. His favorite band is Porcupine Tree though these days. So I started playing guitar when I was eight, so I was just around whatever he listened to, like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, The Beach Boys. I can’t even really remember. I was so young.
So you don’t remember how much you did struggle, I guess, with getting the notes right?
Oh, I remember the first guitar lesson I had, and feeling like I wanted to give up, ‘cause I couldn’t press. ‘Cause I was eight, playing acoustic guitar, and it was really painful. But other than that, you know, I was obsessed.
So how many hours a day did you spend on those strings?
I don’t remember as a kid. But I never did crazy hours. It was like one or two hours at the most.
By Tobbe – Published February 18th, 2026
In full makeup, Avatar singer Johannes Eckerström talked to Metal Covenant about music cruises, touring, the new album Don’t Go In The Forest, AI in music, band merch, and being able to make a living from music.
You were just on a cruise (ShipRocked). Tell us a little about it and what it’s like for you to be there.
So, we make the most of it, and then it’s really fun. You bring your wife, girlfriend, brother, someone, and during the moments you’re able to, you act like you’re on vacation. So you kayak in the mangroves and do some sightseeing. And then they have a separate area just for artists, where the jacuzzi is free during the day, and stuff like that. So you get a piece of that. Everyone is nice, but everyone wants to take pictures when you walk from one side to the other, which makes me notice that even when it’s relaxed, you’re kind of concentrating all the time. You know, you have these public, personal, and private spheres, and there are very few places where you can sink into some kind of private existence. Well, otherwise it’s fun. It’s a different way of gigging. But it’s even more fun to do what we’re gonna do tonight. Our own stuff, as long as we want to, it’s dark and everything. On the cruise you can’t even bring your own drums because there’s no room to have all that on the boat if all the bands would do that. Which makes it a bit punky for people like us, and I think that’s liberating. But different, pretty fun, and an opportunity to… Well, we were in Nassau in the Bahamas, you know, and that’s cool.
And you were on a US tour before Christmas, and now you’re starting a European tour today. In what way do you see the difference between touring in the US and in Europe?
Well, there are bigger differences from country to country, in a fun way over here, so you notice when you are in France and you notice when you are in Stockholm, in some way. Over the years, we may have started to see the nuances between different states, as you spend more time there and get to know people and so on. In the beginning, it was all a parking lot and Walmart. Whether it was Walmart in California or Walmart in Nebraska didn’t matter much. But because we have been there so much, we have gotten a more and more nuanced picture over the years. So, across the continents, there is still a division that you notice. Yes, people are a little drunker in Wisconsin and a little rowdier, and in Houston they stand a little more still than in Dallas. And that division is there both here and over there. The food over here is better, the houses are better built. (Laughs) It’s cool indoors in the summer and warm indoors in the winter in Europe a little more often, so to speak. Now that we’re at a bit over 1,000 per night, at least, it’s also a bit of a Western standard everywhere, I would say. Better buses in the US in general, because in the double-deckers here I can’t stand up straight. But they usually don’t have double-deckers in the US, so that means I get more space.
Which noticeable steps do you think you took on the new album?
There’s a bunch of stuff. So, melodic singing has been a part of what we’ve been doing, for real anyway, since the third album, so that’s always present now, like overall. On the album Dance Devil Dance, it was all about intensity, and screaming and shouting almost all the time, even though it wasn’t literally screaming and shouting that I was doing. I felt like a much more nuanced singer on this album. I have a relatively dark voice naturally, but I heard Helloween and wanted to sing in a band, which means I push and push and push with my style, and somewhere now I start to give a lot more space further down in the vocal register, and that’s where things like conveying the lyrics better and having that dynamic in the voice come in. It feels natural that when there’s a screaming, heavy riff, and if you’re gonna come up with what to sing to that, then I also wanna be screaming and heavy, so maybe I’ve relied more on the big picture. So that was a big thing. Also, we’ve had orchestral elements and such stuff before, but back then it often came from a computer box in some way. This time it was real trumpets and a real choir. So, we brought people in for that. That was also a big thing. Yes, there’s a lot. We’re constantly trying to chase the feeling that you don’t write the same songs twice. There’s also something in the process, because I think we’re a very honest band, but because you’re human, for every layer of bullshit you remove, you find another layer that you can start fiddling with. It’s kind of influenced the approaches to songwriting over the years, ”What am I comfortable saying? What am I man enough to tackle now?”. And this time around the lyrics to half of the songs were written very intuitively, meaning it wasn’t that important to know at the beginning of the process that, ”What is this about?”. You can trust the process. You know, trust the beauty, or whatever. So if it feels good, maybe it is something, and then it was just kind of like letting the subconscious write lyrics, and then when it felt like it was starting to get done, take a step back and, ”Is this something? Yes, it is something.” and so I remove another filter, in a way.
Might it happen when you write your lyrics that every time you take out pen and paper, and start writing, you end up in the same track?
I think, in all artistic endeavors, because I also feel that when you write songs, where you naturally put a good little syncopation, or where the hand moves on a guitar, and so on, that you might catch yourself doing something. We did some kind of Q&A via Avatar Country, and some fan pointed out, “Have you thought about how often you have used the word Dirt in your songs?”, and I just said, “No.”. And at that point we hadn’t released The Dirt I’m Buried In either. So I notice things like that, that you come back to certain images, that you revisit themes, but hopefully with some fresh angles. So it happens. I also realize that we have a bloody angel that has wings, and we have an eagle, and then we have an owl, and then we also have a vulture on an old song. So, I like birds, I like water. So there are a lot of things like this that come and that you become a little aware of over the years and then try to play with a little bit. So there is a balance there. You know, Stephen King, like how many psychotic people he’s written about who kill their families, so to speak. I think it’s okay to find those starting points in myself, in some cases, just because it comes so naturally. And then in other cases just go, ”What the hell?”. You know, ”Is it time to find another thing?”. One way to remedy that is that I try to never repeat or reenact anything. You know, ”Yeah, people liked Hail The Apocalypse, so we can do another one like that.”, but we don’t, and I’m trying not to be mad about the same things as I was in my ‘20s, but hopefully find new things to be mad about, so to speak.
And with the songwriting now for this new album, did you guys sometimes find yourselves in some kind of in-between state where you didn’t know whether to really take the step to doing new stuff, or stay in this little safe state that you actually just mentioned a little bit about?
We got over that pretty right away actually. I think it’s paid off, so we’ve never really had to think that way. We belong to the category of bands that come to the next album, and to new goals, and to new ideas, a little bit by finding out, ”What was wrong with the last one?”, no matter how good it felt like when we made it. Right when it’s done it feels really good, then two years later everything is wrong, and then after a few more years, then you have some healthy distance from what you’ve done and are pretty happy. But in that period, with the new one, you might feel, ”Nah, I don’t wanna do that again.”. Well, especially if you look at the previous two albums. Dance Devil Dance was very much, ”Don’t bore us. Get to the chorus.”, hard rocking rock ‘n’ roll music. Even though they’re not dance songs, but to think by that logic, that you stick to one genre at a time, so to speak. A salsa song is a salsa song, bossa nova is bossa nova, you don’t have to change halfway through. And that streamlined the songs in a way, and it felt really good, and really fun, and really important to do that there and then. And then it doesn’t become so important to do that again, and then you have those more emotional gray areas and roller coasters in the groove and stuff that it has to take a different kind of groove this time. The most obvious one is perhaps Dead And Gone And Back Again, which is very fast in the middle. As a music fan I like everything, also from an ideological point of view, but I feel like when you work on something, that thing will turn out the best if you make sure to completely devote yourself to that way of thinking there and then. So I can have a very pure ideology for a project there and then, and indulge and make the best of it, but then in reality I could have thought that the opposite was just as good. Punky and straightforward, or progressive and complicated, or, you know, Avatar Country, a comedy record, followed by a record (Hunter Gatherer) where it becomes extremely important not to joke at all. And then we joke a little bit again, and that’s how it keeps going all the time, like switching back and forth a little bit.
And in this mess, is it important for you to still do something that no one else is doing?
Yes. We make songs that people haven’t heard yet, you know. I think a lot of what I’m gonna say now falls into some kind of balancing act between two opposites and finding your way between the two. We don’t wanna write old songs, we’re not a retro band, but at the same time, we have quite old-fashioned ideals that we think are important, like using a rhythm section, guitars and singing in a room, and what production of such music means. If there’s even a drummer playing the drums on an album these days, because that’s not so common anymore, because it’s expensive, takes time, difficult. But even when they have a drummer playing, it’s very common to quantify. The computer makes everything fit like a glove. And then also sound replacement. Yes, you’ve mic’d up the drums and recorded the sounds, but then you’ve bought a sound bank where some expensive drummer has sat in Dave Grohl’s studio and hit the snare drum 10,000 times. And it sounds better on paper, but then everyone uses the same sound bank, the same compressor, and mixes the same way. Especially with drums, I feel like if you’re sitting in a rock bar and the wrong person chooses music that night, you don’t hear when a song changes into the next because they’ve erased all the drummer’s DNA. And that goes for all instruments. It’s those little mistakes, so to speak, that mess, or circumstances surrounding the recording, the things you’ve been a little lucky with and the things you’ve been a little unlucky with, that shape a sound that was only there and then. Dance Devil Dance, we rented the studio equipment and threw it up in a cabin. Well, my family’s cabin, in a separate building there, and recorded in the countryside, just us and Jay Ruston. And then we knew, ”It’s gonna be a little rougher. This creates limitations.”. But it also gives all the character. And then that one just sounds like that one, and it sounds very, very good. There are so many ways to sound good, and everyone uses the same way to sound good, and then after a while it sounds like crap because you’re so fed up with the same thing. So we’re old-fashioned in the way we record. And it’s a kind of live hybrid in the studio, that drums and bass are always recorded together. When we record it, Jonas and Henrik add sloppy guitars. Then they rearrange, so you can nerd out a little more with the sound. But that means that John never just sits and records drum parts. He always plays a song. And always relates to, ”Where’s the groove?”. Just like he always relates to the people he’s going to play live with. You know, the old bands… Damn, what a long answer I can give for this question. (Laughs) The old bands, all the ‘80s bands, have a song where they just play a muted A or E string, and even if it’s just that, you can always tell right away whether it’s Lick It Up or You’ve Got Another Thing Coming. There’s so much DNA of the musicians and the sound, and the tweaking right then and there makes all the ‘80s palm mutes sound unique in that way. And that happens less and less and less now, but we try to be that way. So in that way we’re grumpy old men, and we’ve been since we were 18 years old, and at the same time, it’s not very exciting for us to then sound exactly like Steelheart, you know.
You talked about recording techniques and how to borrow other people’s sounds. Is it so bad for bands to bring AI into the music? Because it’s not that far off, I think. People cheated a little bit back then, and if you cheat a little more, isn’t it…
Yes, I think so. So you let yourself be inspired and learn from other art. That’s how it starts for someone who wants to do something artistic, ”Oh, what a nice drawing. I wanna draw too.”, and take lessons from things you like, and then mix your own soup. I think the AI thing is just so simple-minded, how it does it. For it to be good for real… Our synapses in our brains fire so strangely and it’s those little mistakes along the way that… Well, some anecdote I heard from Konstfack (University of arts, crafts, and design.) or somewhere. A painting student who loves van Gogh says, ”But I can’t find my own style. Everything I do turns out so van Gogh, because I’m so obsessed with van Gogh.”, and, ”Well, sit in this room, you have a van Gogh painting, and you copy it in the best way you can. You really have to nail everything. And everything that goes wrong with the painting, that’s your style.”. My misinterpretations of Judas Priest, so to speak, that’s where it gets exciting, that’s where it becomes Avatar. Our limitations, and what you take with you on the road from these different bands are parts of the process you don’t get when you just prompt. If someone has made a picture of a Rottweiler, or a picture of a Volvo 240, or a naked girl, or a winter landscape, those pictures always look the same anyway. (Laughs) It kind of becomes like that, and that way is so uninteresting. And the important ideas that you have during the journey won’t materialize that way. I still haven’t seen anything that I really liked when it’s been done like this. And the day I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen, or the best thing I’ve ever heard, then what I’m saying now is no longer true. But so far, that’s how it is.
On most of your albums, it’s really just you on the cover. How do decisions like that actually come about, in the band, management, friends?
Well, it wasn’t me. (Laughs) But it goes back to Black Waltz. On the third album (self-titled), it’s all of us, but painted, and it was my cousin who painted the covers from the first demo and up to that album. Of the many things I like and find extra fun, I think ‘60s music is really fun. Dad’s record crate and all that. And back then, old rock bands, there’s always a picture of the rock band on the front. The Doors are sitting in some bar, or Sgt. Pepper. You know, back then, that’s how they did it. And then it felt like, you know, ”What’s old becomes new again.”. Having us on the front felt like a fun throwback. So that idea was planted there. And then we started experimenting around Black Waltz, because there was so much we wanted to do differently and try with it. Photography instead of painting was a thing, and then we started experimenting with pictures of just me. And it happens in parallel with the Black Waltz music video. I was painted like this just for the sake of that video, we thought, until we did it, “Aha! There it is. That’s what we’ve been looking for all these years.”. And then I get the dual role of being, yes, frontman, absolutely, because that’s how it works when you sing in a rock band. Like I’m at the front, but also kind of a mascot. I’m Eddie and Bruce in Iron Maiden. Actually when we were filming that video, John yelled, “Take a picture, damn it!”, just when I had been messing around, jumping around, and fooling around. So click, click, click, click. And one of those pictures became the front cover, like, “There it is.”. So it was pretty organic. I didn’t come to the rehearsal room one day and say, “I have an idea. That idea is me.”. (Laughs) It was something we had started toying with. Not quite settled on what it would be. And then the right coincidence came with this Black Waltz thing, and then it kind of became my job.
Do you think that you would have sold the same amount of merch without the painted face you’re sitting here with?
No, I don’t think so. But it could have been something else too, if that other thing suited us well. Because I think that’s the big secret. There are a lot of theatrical bands that we really feel for when we see them, and they look and smell like they sound, and everything fits together. Then you have bands where that doesn’t happen and then it doesn’t matter how much you smear your face; you don’t sell any T-shirts on it. And then there are the Jeans and T-shirt bands, who sound like jeans and T-shirts, move around in jeans and T-shirts, and that’s why it’s really fun to watch them when they walk around in their jeans and T-shirts. And they can also sell a lot of T-shirts. Cannibal Corpse doesn’t have fake blood on stage, for example. But in our case. No, we wouldn’t have done that, but it’s more about, I think, that we really are, ”This is how I am. This is how we are. This is how our music is.”. So that it fits together, I think, is a more important part than it being a little bit of everything. It wouldn’t have helped the Foo Fighters sell T-shirts by painting themselves like me. So it’s more about everything fitting into the same box, which we often talk about.
Yes, it’s a whole product that you’re selling.
And since you’re selling yourself, it’s good for your mental health and for the sake of honesty that it’s really yourself and the part of yourself you’re willing to sell that you’re selling, so that art and everything is connected so you can sleep at night.
You do meet & greets that you call Secret Gathering. Tell me a little bit about what happens there.
You know, in short, it’s a meet & greet, so to speak. We were very skeptical for a long time about VIP packages and things like that because we’ve always felt that, ”As important as those bands were to me when I was 15, it will never be that important again.”. I couldn’t afford VIP packages then, and think about a single mother with two jobs in a country where they have to buy their own health insurance, so to speak, that kid will never be able to afford that ticket. But now we have Avatar Country, which lives on in fan club form, and you pay a little to be a part of it. But just a little. Really a little. And through that you might be drawn to be someone who doesn’t pay anything extra to come and visit us. So then we have that side road which means that it’s not just those with the most money who like Avatar who come, but those who like Avatar the most, so to speak. It opens up a door. We always have a cap on how many people we take per show. Because that was a thing at ShipRocked, where it was a meet & greet, even though we were three bands in the same room, and it was like this (Snaps his fingers) for an hour and a half. It was like scanning items at ICA (Grocery store). And it’s mind-numbing. But now we make sure that you get those extra few seconds. Sometimes an extra 30 seconds is enough, and let everyone speak to the point, take in what they said, give a real answer, so that it actually becomes some kind of human meeting. And when we cracked the two codes together: a cap on how many people can come, and a secret door in for super fans, so that it’s not just about paying for the VIP ticket, then we were able to do it.
You mentioned that you play for over 1,000 people per night. One might say that this is kind of the break-even point for making a living from music. Do you feel like you can make a decent living from this now?
Well, we’ve been doing that for a while. It feels stable. It was sometime during Covid that we took out the calculator and just, ”But what the hell…”. We’ve been a very boring, dry, serious, business-driven band from day 1. And that has meant that we continue to pay ourselves a little too little, so to speak, contrary to maybe what someone would think. But in that way we’ve always had stability. You know, like you dare to believe in a pay raise, and that it will last the whole year, so to speak. So we’ve been doing that for a while. And regarding the audience, it’s different in different places. Here in Stockholm it’s maybe 1,700 tonight, and that’s maybe pretty close to the average for Avatar in the Western world. And in Latin America, most recently in Mexico City, it was 8,000. And when we were in Australia (in 2023), and that was the first time, it was 600. But yes, it’s manageable. But we’re a bit stupid because we like to do cool stage shows, so that means we can live a little less on it. (Laughs) But also that we run the band in a way that none of us wants to stop doing this anytime soon. We think we’ll keep going until retirement, at least.
My spontaneous thought is: if you start making money from something, you might wanna work more. But you can’t tour all year round, and you can’t play in Stockholm three times a year. But I understand that you have a plan, of course.
Yes, exactly. There is also a work/life balance. We wanna work with it today, and then we wanna work with this in a year, and in five years too, and we have found something like, “This is how long it is fun to tour at a time. This is how long it is okay to tour before they send divorce papers.”. Around the last two gigs you might be tired of one another, but no longer than that. And at that point you know, “Yes, we’re going home soon. Sweet. Go to hell. See you in four weeks.”. Anyone who runs some kind of business, even outside the music industry, probably knows something about crunch time and unpaid overtime, sometimes, although we get a round of applause at the end of the working day.
By Tobbe – Published February 13th, 2026
Norwegian hard rock unit Spidergawd’s main vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Per Borten reflects on the September 2025 album From 8 To Infinity, keeping the legacy of old rock music heroes alive, AI in art, and the first few Spidergawd albums.
Your eighth album was out in September last year, and it’s been a while since you recorded it. Tell me a little bit about it now.
Obviously, a lot of the lyrics and the title of the album itself reflect another state of mind. I was seriously ill. I got the wrong dosage and the wrong heart medicine that my body didn’t cope with. All the doctors told me, “This is what you have to do if you don’t want to die.”. And then I was so out of it that I couldn’t play, couldn’t concentrate, focus, nothing. I thought, “Maybe this is it. If this album is the last one, I wanna have a title that says something about that.”. And the lyrics and the songs on the album are pretty honest about it too.
If this album would have been a normal one for you, then what would putting out an album mean to the band today?
I’ve been doing it for so long now. This is my fourth band, and the three previous ones were pretty successful too and made me able to tour and make a living out of it. It’s just the same as with Spidergawd. So now, maybe in the last year, I started to realize that this is what I’m best at doing. I have a lot of different hobbies, and one of them is being a carpenter, like building and refurbishing old houses and stuff like that. But the other day I found out that the guys that have had that job for the same time span that I have been playing music are much better than me at doing those things. So I’m starting to realize that for every album I do, I get stuck more and more in this lane. Which probably tells me that I’m on the right path, and it tells me that it’s probably a little too late to turn now. It also becomes very evident that making a new album is one of the healthiest things I can possibly do for my mental health. (Laughs) And I think the other guys in the band feel the same way too. We don’t produce our albums. I record them in my recording studio, but I don’t work with Spidergawd as a producer. I’m the guitar player, and the singer, and the songwriter. That’s where it ends. If I was to be the producer as well, I think that the band could have been called Per Borten instead. So everybody gets to put what they want into the band and the process. I think it’s the recording of a new album, and the kind of old-school tours that we do in Europe, where you play every night, that make us a band. It gets harder and harder to do those tours with no pause. But on the last tour we did, and on this one, we have a break in the middle. We didn’t use to do that, so every time we went to Europe, we would be there for four or five weeks and play a show every night, and that’s hard. We don’t live in the same city. We’re spread all over Norway. And that says a lot. (Laughs) So we don’t meet up that often outside of the band, so it’s pretty important to embrace the two things that we have going for us that will make us grow as a band.
And today, a lot of bands, maybe not in heavy rock or hard rock, are starting to release singles instead of albums. Were you a singles guy, or were you always an album guy when you were younger, listening to albums front to back?
I was always the album kid. My mother and father, I think they were 19 years old when I came around. So obviously they had some music that I could listen to. Every now and then they would buy me an album, but often it would be an album that they could listen to as well. Stuff like Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, whatever. The first album I bought for my own money was Houses Of The Holy by Led Zeppelin. I was 10 years old. And my uncle let me borrow his guitar, and I could plug into the family cassette player and play along with the riffs on Houses Of The Holy. I love that album front to back. I know there are some tracks that are pure shit, but I love them anyway. So no, never a singles type of guy. On the fourth album, Spidergawd IV, there is a song called Is This Love..?, and I had already written that song, and to me it sounded a bit like Dire Straits, so I thought, “This will never be a Spidergawd song.”. But we were at soundcheck, touring on the third album, and Hallvard had just joined the band, and we were talking about Dire Straits, and how we all love Dire Straits, even though it’s your parents’ kind of music, and I said, “I just wrote a Dire Straits song. Do you wanna hear it?”, and the drummer said, “That’s not a Dire Straits song. That’s the new Spidergawd single.”, and I was like, “What? We can do pop music?”. And from then on, it’s been this way. If I do a whole album exclusively reaching out for single tracks, then I get the feeling that they would start eating each other, like a cannibalism thing. So for every album I write too many of those stereotype radio singles for Spidergawd, and I always leave one out so there’s always a leftover pop song for the next album. It’s really important to me to make the album work, and in which order the tracks are placed.
About where a song is placed on the album. If I look at Spotify, for every song the number of streams decreases, and Winter Song, according to me, one of your best songs ever, is the last song on the album. Was it put there because of the extended solo in the end?
No, it’s more like a traumatic thing. You know, the first song, called The Grand Slam, is about keeping up whatever you need to keep up to keep on going. Keep on keeping on, you know. Trying your best not to back down. And then Winter Song is obviously death itself. So if this was going to be my last album, that should be the last song. It’s not that I like to be really intellectual about rock ’n’ roll. There’s a lot of progressive rock bands in my hometown, and they talk about their music like it’s something academic. What the fuck! That’s not me. But lyrics are still really important. And to me they have to be personal, otherwise I cannot remember them. (Laughs)
And about that song again, Winter Song. The guitar solo part is on for the final three minutes. Except that you just explained the lyrics to me, when you wrote that guitar part, what was in your mind at that point, and what did you aim for with that solo part of the song, and was it written quickly?
There is a story to it. Jazz music is really big in Trondheim. And in the fusion between rock and jazz, I’m obviously on the rock scene. Every year there is a jazz festival. The boss, the head of the festival, always invites one rock ’n’ roll band to try to do something jazzy. So I did a commission piece of work. I can’t write notation, so I had to record it. So I recorded a jazz-ish album. It’s out there, and you can listen to it. And the guitar solo you’re talking about is really a whole song that I wrote for my wife. It’s a song called Becky Lou, if you wanna check it out on the Cobra Kraft album (The Baptism Of Pedro del Zorro). And Winter Song, the lyrics are about apologizing to my wife for the state I had been in for the past six months, being so fucking sick that she had to do everything. So the lyrics are, like, saying, “I’m sorry.”. And it culminates into the old jazz-ish song that I wrote for her. So it isn’t really a guitar solo. It’s an entire song made for my wife.
And the first half of that song, I think about the riffs and the rhythm, feels a little bit like Black Sabbath.
Oh, not just a little bit. They feel very alike. (Laughs) You know, Is This Love..?, that we talked about, obviously that’s a Thin Lizzy riff. It’s not a Thin Lizzy riff, but it is, you know. Where do you go to listen to Phil Lynott these days, or Ronnie James Dio, or Lemmy Kilminster? It’s pretty hard, isn’t it? Since they’re all dead. Somebody has to… There is a legacy. I feel like that. Plagiarism, that’s not good, but being influenced by it and trying to push on, I think that’s important. For me, it feels important. I play Spidergawd music because nobody else does. It has a purpose, you know what I mean? My record collection is so diverse. I listen to all kinds of music. To me, there’s just good and bad music. It doesn’t matter what genre. I just feel like nobody else, in Norway anyway, is playing Thin Lizzy. So, maybe I’m the one to do it. That is how I feel.
I checked out your setlists from the two nights before this night in Stockholm, and there was no Winter Song on there.
We’re gonna play Winter Song tonight though. The chorus line will not be that high-pitched. But it’s a really demanding song to sing, so I’m always out of air. Three days ago I was in bed with a fever and bronchitis. I’m feeling much better today though. Hopefully, the show today will be a little bit more energetic than the previous two. But I’m pretty pleased with Gothenburg and Malmö as well. It was not bad. And there were a lot of people there too. I’m really grateful for that. It’s not that many Norwegian bands that get to play in Sweden. My wife, who is the manager of the band, once told me that we have the same amount of listeners and album buyers in Sweden as we have in Norway. That feels pretty good.
And then you can expand to Finland, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.
My grandfather was once the Prime Minister of Norway, and he tried to unite Norway and Sweden as an alternative to the EU. If I were a politician, I would try to do the same and get rid of that stupid border. To me, it feels a little bit weird that we are supposed to be so different. I do not feel that at all.
It’s been a while now where you always have eight songs on your albums. Is that important to you, or does that just happen?
No, it’s obviously the vinyl format. That is what we started with. Our record label is a vinyl label. It is not your regular record label. It’s just one guy, who is really, really geeky about his vinyl.
I must ask you about the front covers. They have a certain style. Where do those ideas come from?
It’s a French digital artist whose name is Emile Morel. I’ve never met him and I’ve never spoken to him. He does not understand a single word of English. So we have a cover designer who digs really deep into Google Translate, and we try to communicate with this guy. So every time we get to choose from a set of illustrations that he has done lately. But the last cover is made specifically to have the infinity sign on it. You probably see just the ass when you’re looking at it.
Yeah, the first thing I saw.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. (Laughs) But there’s really an infinity sign. And you should see this French dude. He’s pretty sexist. You should have seen the original cover. God damn it.
A few bands have started to use AI for artwork. What’s your take on using AI for artwork?
It’s just started to dawn on me recently that people around me, my friends, are starting to use this. And maybe I have used it for a while, unknowingly, when I Google stuff. I don’t know. Like we talked about earlier, “What does it mean to you to make an album?”. When you get really, really deep down into it, it means having a better mental health. My head is always creative. On and off, of course, but it never stops. It’s probably some kind of ADHD. I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m just this way. If I didn’t record and fulfill the albums, I would probably grind around these 20 or 30 ideas forever. They need to get out of my head. (Laughs) So if people want to take a shortcut, that’s up to them. But I’m pretty sure the final result, and what you are doing within art, will slowly start to lose its purpose. Making art is a lot more than just the final product. It’s a steep road to get there, and if you lose that, I think you are only shooting yourself in the foot.
There are bands now who are completely AI generated. Let’s see what will happen in 10, 20, 30 years. But something that is never gonna happen with AI is the live show. That’s kind of impossible to me, to have a band of humans doing an AI generated show. Holograms maybe, but who wants that?
I’m pretty sure somebody wants it, in some kind of perverted mass hysteria. I’ve been to Japan a couple of times. I kind of think that they might be into that kind of stuff. But for me personally, never ever. I want to do it the hard way.
May it feel a little bit bitter to you that you more or less don’t play songs from the first three albums nowadays.
I have another band, called Capricorn, that plays shows in Norway. Mainly locally, like in the middle of Norway where we live. A couple of my old bands were really big there. I was going to start a side project to Spidergawd about a year ago, before I got sick, and then it just dawned on me that I have, like, 15 radio singles that I never play. So I didn’t have to start a new band. I could just find the right musicians to play my old songs, my catalog. So I’m old enough to do that now.
So those early songs still have a special place in your heart, I guess?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I feel sorry for some of our German and Dutch fans, who got really into those early albums. But the guys just don’t want to get into it, and I don’t feel like it is my place to force anything on the band. It is a democracy. And sometimes that can be difficult. When we are not on stage, I probably do 90 percent of the work. But every time there is a decision to make, I have 20 percent of the votes. But maybe that’s the price you pay. They are all extremely dedicated musicians to what they want to do, and if we can’t meet up on everything, maybe that’s just natural.
By Tobbe – Published February 2nd, 2026