Sweden’s heavy doom rockers AVATARIUM might not have been able to set the European stages on fire with their magical live show this year due to obvious reasons – however, instead, they’ll bring the best tracks from their four studio albums right into our living room…
I spent an evening with Marcus at the Sky at the Bottom of the Sea.
Welcome to MHF magazine.
If you had to describe the album ‘An Evening with Avatarium’ to a deaf person how would you describe it?
Music’s dark, heavy and the lyrics are poetic. We are very interested in life’s big questions, life and death. Our music always follows the lyrics, we get inspired by the songs story and try to make the arrangements a soundtrack of that. It’s about emotions that we all feel transcribed into music. If you check out our concert movie at www.avatarium.solidtango.com you’ll understand what we are about even without the sound!
There’s a lot of lyricism and poetic expression in your work. Is it draining to put so much emotion into your job?
I don’t think it’s draining in that sense for me but actually more like an energizer. To me, music always was a good way to deal with my different feelings and experiences in life. I usually get happy when I play really heavy music and calm and in a good mood when we play more ambient and soft songs.
Say we could have a covid-free evening. And you can pick one activity to do. What would that be? What did you miss the most due to the virus restrictions?
Of course the answer is play a live show and the day after that I would go and visit my brother and his kids with my son. It is a very weird situation to be scared when people are too close I must say. The vibe is not as friendly as it usually is where I live and I think it’s really important to try to stay positive, give away random smiles and be polite. Specially older people are of course afraid of getting corona and because of that they sometimes behave in a bad way. I try not to be angry and still be positive as much as I can.
Have you been pleasantly surprised by anything in the music world/industry lately?
I was very impressed with the latest Rammstein album, and that video for Deutschland is amazing!!
What’s something you want to do in the next year, career-wise that you’ve never done before?
I want to produce a Behemoth album, that would be very cool! They are doing some really cool stuff but I think I could contribute in a good way!
After previously releasing their “Live In Stockholm” show as downloadable concert via Blackbox in August (still available here: https://avatarium.solidtango.com), the band has now announced that their first official live release titled “An Evening With Avatarium” will be available on all streaming platforms on December 4th.
In case you weren’t able to download the full show yet, get a glimpse of AVATARIUM’s live show with the haunting classic, ‘Moonhorse (live)’:
Check out “An Evening With Avatarium“
on the streaming service of your choice now:
http://nblast.de/Avatarium-AnEvening
AVATARIUM are:
Jennie-Ann Smith | Vocals
Marcus Jidell | Guitar
Andreas ‘Habo’ Johansson | Drums
Rickard Nilsson | Organ
Mats Rydström | Live Bass
Until we meet again,
