Olavi Mikkonen of Amon Amarth

AMON AMARTH is the only band that reached the desired success through a slight detour, in the shape of a release on an Asian label (Pulverised). With their unique brand of metal they soon became one of the most talked-about bands of the European underground. Around that time, the once flourishing death metal scene in their hometown of Stockholm – the band members all come from the residential suburb Tumba – had become but a shadow of its former self. Iconic bands like Entombed were trying to reinvent themselves through experiments like death'n'roll, while others had cowardly opted to call it a day. AMON AMARTH neither represented the city's old school sound, nor did they follow any modern trends. Their style was aggressive, yet always melodic. At the time Hegg's vocals may have been reminiscent of black metal due to their high pitch, but the only "satanic" song was, and is to this day, the old demo track "Risen From The Sea".

Chris- How is the tour going so far?
Olavi- Really good.  I think we have a great package.  All the bands are well received by the audience.  Yeah, we are having a great time.  Tour is going actually better than expected.  Everyone is concerned about the economic crisis today.  There is a lot of touring going on.  As far as I know we are one of the tours doing well.  This looks like good crowd.  I haven’t been inside yet, but it looks promising. 

Chris- The line is going around the corner. 
Olavi- Yeah, we have never played here before.  Don’t really know what to expect.  Played Connecticut yesterday and New York the other day, both were packed.

Chris- That’s cool.  How big of venues have you been playing?
Olavi- We have been playing about 1000 capacity. Yeah, the tour has been really good.  We did a European tour right before this one.  Everyone was talking about the crisis and all that.  We were a bit scared.  I think when stuff like that happens people still want to have a little fun. 

Chris- I think with stress, work, bills and such, going to one of your shows is a good way to vent. 
Olavi- You don’t want to cut the fun part.  You might cut back and eat cheaper food. 

Chris- When you guys tour, do you guys get to pick the bands that come out with you?
Olavi- Yeah, we always get to choose, more or less.  We sort of get a list of bands to choose from, but yes we always approve of the bands we tour with.

Chris- Have you guys toured with these bands before? (Goatwhore, Skeletonwitch, Lazarus AD)
Olavi- Yeah, Goatwhore, this is the third time we toured with them.  We know these guys.  We think they are great guys.  Lazarus AD is a fairly new band to us.  The songs we heard, we thought sounded really good.  Than Skeletonwitch I think is totally amazing.

Chris- I saw Skeletonwitch one other time, on a tour with Darkest Hour, The Red Chord, Rose Funeral.  They put on a very cool show. Do you guys mingle with the other bands?
Olavi- Yeah, compared to the youngsters in Lazarus AD, we might not be partying that much.  Once we do have a party, we will of course invite everyone.  A couple of times a week we will have a gathering.  In New York City we had a big party in a parking lot there all night.

Chris- It would be pretty cool to be out touring with bands you like, because sometimes not everyone clicks together real good.
Olavi- Yeah, in this case we knew Goathwhore, we wanted to have them on the tour, and knew they were great guys.  It makes tour so much smoother if everyone is cool. 

Chris- How did you guys get signed to Metal Blade Records?
Olavi- Wow, that was back in ’97.  I think the first record came out in ’98 but we actually signed in ’97.  The thing is we made our first album on a label in Singapore.  We didn’t want to have to do a demo.  We wanted to cut a disc, than we were hoping to draw the attention of a bigger label.  When we released that we had tons of offers coming in.  The thing is we accepted Metalblade’s offer because we were the only band on there from Sweden sounding the way we do, our kind of music style, our niche.  There were Dissection, Inflames on another label.  We didn’t want to compete with those bands.   Metalblade didn’t really have a band with our style of music.  We will be alone on metalblade, and they already offered a really good deal from the start.  Unlike other labels that gave us some really bad offers, because they thought we would be stupid and sign whatever.  We hired a lawyer to help us in signing our first contract.  We changed a lot of stuff around in the contract.  Usually young bands sign whatever.  We saw some other Swedish bands like Dismembered sign contracts for 9 records each.  They admit they made a mistake when they signed.  So yeah, back than Metalblade records was definitely the coolest. 

Chris- Did you have to send a demo in to them?
Olavi- I remember back than we didn’t send demos out to anyone except fanzines and magazines and such.  We wanted labels to contact us.  That was a main policy with the band.  That’s why it took the band several years to sign.  I think in the long run it benefited us.

Chris- When you guys sit down to write an album, do you decide on what the theme of the album will be first?
Olavi- No, I think the theme comes in the middle of the process.  For instance Twilight, we were about five songs in when we decided on it.  When designing the cover it has to be started so early.  We kind of decide that the cover is going to be based on Twilight of the Thunder God, that song, but we weren’t sure about the title yet, but that would be the story of the cover.  The guy that was doing the cover, I think for us took 5 months.  We changed a lot and we had a lot of ideas.  We knew it was going to take a long time that’s why we need to start planning so much ahead. 

Chris- The artwork on your albums looks very cool.  Who is it that does it? Everhard?
Olavi- Yeah, he’s doing the side and layouts.  The guy who is actually drawing the picture is Compteal (sp?)He is also a German guy.

Chris- So you have one guy does the drawing and another guy does colors?
Olavi- Yeah, there is actually one guy drawing everything, and the other does the colors and such on computer.

Chris- How did you guys get hooked up with him?
Olavi-We were working with Everhard on all our albums and I think The Crusher album is the first time Compteal worked with us.  He made the Viking looking guy.  That was our first album we did with him.  Than we did ‘vs the world’ He did the big barbarian. 

Chris- I’ve been listening to Twilight of the Thunder God, what’s next story-wise?
Olavi- We haven’t really started talking about it.  Thor is on the cover of that, and the last one had Odin.  That wasn’t really planned.  Of course we made jokes about it.  Next time we are going to make a Thor album, but they were just jokes, than it happened.

Chris- Or maybe Loki?
Olavi- Yeah, I don’t know…..naaaaahhhh. 

Chris- When you guys play do you guys prefer clubs like this or playing big festivals?
Olavi- Clubs are more intense, and you are so much closer to the audience.  Usually it is very hot and sweaty.  It is more fun to play.  If you play a huge festival, from the stage to the fence is I don’t know how many feet, but longer to get a personal connection to anyone.  Then you have like 50-60, 000 people.  Insane, but you don’t really get the same connection that you would at a club.  On the other hand, big shows you can have lots of pyro and lots of other cool stuff going on.  That’s also cool. 

Chris- I was going to ask you, I’ve seen videos of your live performing.  Playing in a club, does that restrain you? I mean, I’ve seen a big giant platform with drums on it.  Olavi- Even when you play Europe it is hard to find clubs that will be able to fit that kind of thing. We have this Viking ship that we used only once so far.  It’s too big for stages like this, but that is a festival setup. 

Chris- Where is that that you used that setup?
Olavi- We used it at Stockenbridge festival.  We will bring it onstage on Wocken this summer.

Chris- Will you be using it for Hammer of The Golden Gods?
Olavi- Its way too big for that.

Chris- I hear you guys are getting ready to tour South America for the first time.  That is very cool!  You guys have toured all over the world.  Is there anywhere you haven’t toured yet, that you would want to?
Olavi- There is places we haven’t been to.  We haven’t been to India.  We haven’t even been to Japan. 

Chris- I hear Japan would be very cool to go to.  They seem to be pretty big fans of rock music.
Olavi- Yeah, I would really like to go there.  I’m not sure why we haven’t yet.  I don’t even know if our records are released there.  After we tour South America Japan would be cool.   It seems India would be fun.

Chris- India?  I wasn’t sure how their audiences are.
Olavi- Opeth toured there before, so there has to be something going on there. 

Chris- You always hear about Japan being very big into rock.  Even though you would think the language barrier would be an issue.  They seem to get it.  They feed off the energy of the bands and seem to really dig it.   
Olavi- I hear about bands going to China as well.

Chris- What was it like working with LG from Entombed?
Olavi- That was actually pretty cool.  He is a very cool and mellow guy.  We had a lot of fun in the studio.  I think the idea with him came up when we were hanging out, came about at a local pub and we just got shitfaced and thought it would be a cool idea.  We have known him for years. 

Chris- I saw the video.  It looked awesome!
Olavi- It was awesome to record the video with him too.  He is very cool guy.

Chris- Did you guys become friends touring together?
Olavi- Nah.  I think it was two of the other guys (Seph, Johan) are very much into football.  LG is into the same team, they travel a lot.

Chris- I know Apocalyptica played on a song.  How was that?
Olavi- They actually recorded in Finland.  We were not involved on that end.  We sent them the melody. They recorded in their own studio in Finland. They sent us the file.  We sent them the riff, they did the music all with cellos.

Chris- Were you concerned with what your fans would think?
Olavi- We thought with that song we would need something like that cello part.  The idea first was to use some local guys.  We thought it would be cooler to have Apocalyptica do that part since they do metal with cellos.  That was just a long shot on our side, because we didn’t know them.  They obviously liked our band and wanted to do it.  I don’t think our fans would be disappointed.  We aren’t changing that much.  We are just doing what we do with guitar, than we break, than they fill it up with cellos.  When our fans have heard it they had nothing but good to say about it.

Chris- Have you actually met them?
Olavi- One month after the recording we played a show with them in Czech Republic and it was good.  We hope to at some point be able to do that song with them.

Chris- It would be good to do so at maybe an awards show or something where you have a few songs to do.  They could come up and join.  It would be great to see.  I have seen them perform before.  They bring a lot of energy to their show.  They swing their cellos around like guitars, they bang their heads.  I appreciate the time can’t wait to see you guys play tonight.
Olavi- Anytime!  It was great to talk to you.  Hope you enjoy the show.