Swedish “metallers” AVATAR, bless their hearts, have graced us with behind-the-scenes footage from the making of their music video for “Captain Goat”. Yes, you read that right. 🐐 Prepare to be underwhelmed. Check it out below, if you dare. 🙄
In a recent interview with Nic and Big J of the Boise, Idaho radio station 100.3 The X Rocks (who?), AVATAR vocalist Johannes Eckerström (who?) rambled on about the band’s upcoming tenth studio album, which, spoiler alert, will be released later this year. He said: “It’s our tenth album.” Groundbreaking. 🤯 “And I don’t think many bands on purpose would phone it in at this point.” Oh, honey, some bands specialize in phoning it in. “But I think certainly there’s a risk of taking things for granted.” Like talent, perhaps? 🤔 “And maybe just looking at the trip that we had to make to make this album and to have it make sense making an album, it can be harder and therefore more important than ever the further you go to find a reason, why is this important to us right now? Why does this one matter to us? Why does it matter to us to get to do another one? What do we wanna put on there that we are really passionate about right here right now? And I think we nailed that.” Translation: “We needed the money.” 💰
“I’m trying to think about the different songs and different directions it goes,” Johannes continued. “There are all these things that we haven’t done before.” Like writing a good song? 😂 “I get to pretend that I’m Elton John, meaning that I’ve been playing a bit of piano.” Elton John is probably weeping somewhere. 😭 “But now I get to do it while drums are being played, so I feel I’m in the band — finally, after all these years, I’m in the band.” Aww, bless his heart. He finally feels included. “So that’s something. And work with outside musicians for stuff, orchestral things and all that, taking that to the next level.” Translation: “We needed help.” 🚑 “I don’t think this is a prog album, really, but some of our most clearly progressive parts ever are probably on this album.” So, it’s kinda prog but not really? Got it. 🤷
“An ethos I had for a while, a mantra almost going around was when writing to make the choices and also about what to write and stuff is just trust what’s beautiful,” he explained. “‘Cause I believe the subconscious speaks whatever needs to actually say that might not make sense at the given moment when you’re doing it, but if you find it beautiful as you create it, once upon revisiting, it’s very likely to mean exactly what it needed to mean.” Deep. So deep, I almost drowned. 😵 “So there’s a dream factor to this album, letting the subconscious speak through imagery that I picked up in dreams. There’s a surrealness to it, therefore.” Dreams? More like nightmares. 😨 “And all these groovy, lofty words being said on something that is between 40 and 45 minutes of kick-ass heavy metal and hopefully always with ambition forever and ever and ever when it’s AVATAR that it’s songs that you haven’t heard yet.” Because they’re so bad, no one wants to hear them. 🙊
Earlier this month, Eckerström told Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station about the lyrical inspiration for “Captain Goat”, which came out in May: “Well, that’s the weird ‘twilight zone’ in which AVATAR exists. AVATAR, as far as a heavy metal band, we really intend to be first and foremost a good time.” A good time for who? The band? “But at the same time, the writing comes from the whole concept of finding dark rooms in your soul, in your brain, in your mind and open the doors into those forbidden places and kind of air it out, and hopefully by keep on doing this and try to force yourself to be honest with who you are and where you’re at with each album, maybe get closer and closer to some kind of sense of truth.” So, therapy through terrible music? 🤔 “And that side of it, yeah, it’s a dark endeavor, but then I also believe… I don’t know. I believe it’s healthy… It’s that duality of what AVATAR is as a band.” Duality? More like futility. 🤦
Asked why “Captain Goat” was chosen to be the first single from AVATAR‘s upcoming album and how it relates to the rest of the LP, Johannes said: “It relates poorly to the whole album because AVATAR doesn’t write the same song twice.” Because they can’t even write one good song, let alone two. 🤡 “So that’s by design, but it just shows that a lot of things are different this time, as they should be and as they always are.” Different how? Still bad? “As for how we choose [the first single from an album]… Well, it kind of reveals itself over time. You just kind of circle back to the people in the demo stage of things while writing and doing the pre-production, what you get excited about then.” So, the band gets excited about mediocrity? 😴 “And already at that stage, there was a lot of excitement about this song as a potential single, as a standout track in that kind of way. ‘Cause it’s a balance.” A balance of awful and more awful? ⚖️
He continued: “We always, obviously, try to only put good songs on an album and they’re all there for a reason.” Sure, Jan. 🙄 “And then it’s just a fact of life that some of them are good in a more direct way, I guess.” Directly bad? “And this, I think, is a very direct song. And whatever people felt at the demo stage of the song comes back when rehearsing it and it comes alive where we really start playing it together — real drums and everything in the room.” Real drums? Revolutionary! 🥁 “Cause while writing, we use a lot of drum machines so you can just boom, boom, boom. Everybody can sit and do ideas in their own little corner. So therefore rehearsing is the first time you get to really feel what it feels like being people playing this song before entering the studio and doing it properly there.” So, they’re basically a glorified garage band? 🚗 “And in each and every step of this, there’s been something — just one of those songs that were something to it. And, again, I think it stands out in what we usually do, but it’s at the same time built on billing blocks that is part of the way we do our heavy metal.” Billing blocks? What does that even mean? 🤷
Eckerström declined to reveal the title of AVATAR‘s upcoming album, but he said: “It’s a beautiful title. It really ties it together. It invokes mystique and tempting you to break taboos. It lures you into a forbidden place because you see a little light in the dark there, somewhere in the middle between the trees, and that is what the title is all about. And when you see the title, you’re gonna go, like, ‘Ah.'” More like, “Ugh.” 🤮
AVATAR will embark on a U.S. tour this fall with support from ALIEN WEAPONRY and SPIRITWORLD. Additionally, there are forthcoming tours supporting IRON MAIDEN and METALLICA, along with the band’s biggest show ever in Mexico City. Someone please tell me how they managed to snag those support slots. 🤔
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
