AMON AMARTH – Interview with Ted Lundström

Amon Amarth, masters of melodic death metal, recently toured the United States in support of the newest album Surtur Rising. Their American tour featured no supporting acts and two whole sets per night — one live performance of their newest album, and one set of old favorites. When the band stopped by New York City to deliver us a double dose of metal, I got the chance to interview bassist Ted Lundström about the band, the tour, and everything in-between.

Basically, what I'm curious about is how exhausting it is to play two sets by yourself on this whole tour every show.

It's quite exhausting. I mean, it's — normally we play a 90-minute set and that's exhausting enough just because you give everything when you play. It's not only play. Some bands just stand in one spot and play. That's maybe not too heavy but if you run around, if you headbang a lot and you play and do that — some songs are quite physical — so 2 1/2 hours is quite tough. We can't drink as much as we used to do or would like to do, especially our singer Johan [Hegg]. His voice takes some damage, so he really has to rest and drink a lot of water and stuff.

Well, it's a good thing that he's taking care of himself.

I guess the whole band is. It's a good thing for the band, a healthy tour. But still, we've got a cold.

Are you guys going to play two sets when you play at Tuska?

Nah, that's going to be a normal, full set.

Are you guys excited about it? I don't know if you guys have played Tuska before.

Yeah, we played two times before, but on the smaller stage. Now we're one of the headliners, so it feels quite good, you know — to come there and we can do a real show. We're going to get the full stage setup and pyros and stuff, so it will be exciting.

Yeah, I'm stoked about it. I'm going — my third time!

Well, it's very nice. It's a very nice festival, I love it.

So in this latest album, I noticed a little bit of Swedish language creeping in, and I was wondering and also kind of hoping about this trend. Like, is there going to be more Swedish language, more non-English incorporated?

We used small parts in the past in our albums with Swedish. If it's a trend, that is totally up to our singer who writes all the lyrics and stuff. If he feels like it, he will do it — if people like it and ask for more, he might do it. We don't have a plan to turn in that direction. We're going to continue to do English, probably.

English is very mainstream and a lot of bands record in English, so I don't blame you.

We want to spread all the lyrics we write about Norse mythology and stuff. We want to spread those stories and get people interested. If we would start writing in Swedish, nobody would understand!

Well then maybe people would be interested in the Swedish language and then they would learn through–

Yeah, but I think it's quite tough to learn.

Regarding mythology though, are you guys interested in other forms of mythology, like African, Roman, Greek?

Not as much as we're into Norse mythology but of course. I think it's interesting with all these old stories and stuff, you know, and you can also see a lot of similarities between different countries. No matter how far apart they are, they're based on a similar foundation sometimes — it's quite interesting to read.

So are you involved in the songwriting process at all? Do you get any veto power?

Mainly, the songwriting is — most of the riffs are written by our two guitar players Olavi [Mikkonen] and Johan [Söderberg] so we sort of have a democracy system. You know, everybody does stuff at home and then we bring it to the rehearsal room, and we try things out, and everybody has a say about what's good and bad, and we try to find a middle way where everybody's happy about the songs, no matter who writes what. It's a mix of everything.

Cool. What are your favorite non-metal bands, out of curiosity?

That's a good question. I listen to some Swedish bands that are more like rock bands and stuff like that, and–

You listen to Kent?

Oh yeah, I'm not a big fan of Kent, but yeah I know them. We recorded the drums for this album in Kent's own studio in Stockholm because we needed a bigger room to get a nice drum feeling, and the rest of the album was recorded in Örebro where he only has a small room. It's good for guitars and vocals but not for drums, so we just rented their studio for a couple of weeks and did all the drums.

Cool! Yeah, I have to admit that Kent is probably the only Swedish band I've heard of aside from Amon Amarth.

They're huge in Sweden but also when we played in China and Taiwan and we just went into a record store, we could find a Kent album in a record store in Taiwan! That was quite…(laughs)

Strange!

Yeah, it was really strange.

Speaking of fame…It's hard for me to gauge how famous you all are here in the United States because I hang out with, you know, a bunch of metalheads. When you come here, do you find yourself being recognized at all, or is it a fairly anonymous kind of feeling?

Well, like, if I walk through the city, of course no one will recognize me. Our singer has a more, his look is more…he's got quite special looks. The size and the beard and everything, so I guess he gets recognized more than the rest of us, but we're quite cool with that. I can't say I've noticed any big difference. (laughs)

What about in Sweden?

In Sweden, we get more and more recognition, like a lot of people. My mom, she works at a school and a lot of the kids she's working with think it's super cool that she's my mother, you know, because there are a lot of young fans.

Right, and I feel like it's actually the same here. I don't know if you've noticed any, sort of…that your fanbase is mostly teenagers.

We got a few, like a small crowd who are the old fans who've been following us for a long time, but then we have our — most of our fans are from the last three albums, so they're mainly younger fans. In Europe, I guess we have a little bit more wider audience, crowd, maybe, I don't know.

I feel like a lot of your shows are all ages here.

Yeah, we try to do that if we can, because it's better for us and our fans. We want everybody to be able to come, of course.

Do you all enjoy touring in the US? I know that's kind of a loaded question. (laughs)

Yeah, we have a lot of fun being here. It's fun — I like to tour everywhere, but I like to be here.

Is there anything you particularly don't enjoy about it? Maybe the beer? (laughs)

I mean, it depends on what kind of beer you have. You guys got plenty of really, really good microbrewery beer, so we have that on our ride and try to get ales and stuff. The normal, the big brands like Budweiser and Miller and that, is nothing for us.

Nobody likes those. Trust me.

(laughs)

Is there anything you want to add, just for the fans?

If you have the opportunity, please come check us out and buy the new album because it rocks!

Official band website: http://www.amonamarth.com
Official MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/amonamarth
Surtur Rising landing page: http://www.surturrising.com