Creature Feature HorrorMoat

The vocals are the first thing that caught the Crowgrrl’s attention from the get-go – the balance between the two vocal styles (from harsh guttural growls to crystal clear soaring vox) is stunning! Even more so when you realize it’s one person - Christian Älvestam - doing both and not two separate singers working in harmony! Add to that the guitar artistry of Jonas Kjellgren and Per Nilsson and the rock solid foundations of bassist Kenneth Seil and the aforementioned skinsman Ohlsson.

These Swedes are back with a third release, Holographic Universe (Nuclear Blast), still with the signature sound and profound, futuristic lyrics but this time delivered with more maturity and a heavier edge.

The band generated a lot of excitement online leading up to the release, with a Studio Report and a couple Official Album Trailers: Part One and Part Two. The first official video from the album is due to be released soon, but in the meantime you can check out their excellent The Illusionist from their previous release.

The Crowgrrl recently caught up with Per by phone to find out more!

This new album, Holographic Universe, is great! You were generating a lot of excitement leading up to it with the online promotions, right?

Yep!

So exactly what did you do and what was the fan response?

What did we do? We did some videos, some album trailers were posted online. I think we had all the songs from the album posted online, too.

Has the fan reaction been positive?

Yeah. About 95% positive. But there are always some people who are whining. “There’s too many clean vocals” or “there’s too many growls” or “too many guitar solos” or whatever.

You can’t please everybody! But that double vocal style is what makes you unique! Your previous album, Pitch Black Progress, is still in my personal Heavy Rotation stack. OK, for this album you’ve already made a full-length video for the song Artificial Sun Projection?

We were supposed to do it, the video for Artificial, but it ended up the first song, Morphogenesis.

How did it turn out? When are we going to see it?

It’s not exactly finished. It’s being edited as we speak. So I haven’t seen the final results myself.

Any fun stories behind making it?

We used stunt men in the video. We didn’t use stunt doubles, but there’s a lot of fighting going on in the video, so we had stunt men who were fighting each other.

OK, but that doesn’t necessarily go along with the lyrics of Morphogenesis, does it?! The song feels like you’re ushering in a Brave New World; a world of freedom.

Yeah, exactly! I think the video concept was more like the director thought it was a cool thing to do. But it’s not exactly linked to the lyrics of the song or anything. Perhaps the lyrics are too weird to do a video based on the lyrics. I don’t know.

Your songs are very profound anyway. This album and the previous album are about freeing the mind.

Everything like that comes from Henrik, who writes all of our lyrics.

Do they come first or does the music come first? What is the songwriting process like for you guys?

The music comes first always. The first thing we come up with are the guitar riffs and the drums arrangements. Then usually Christian puts his vocal stuff up on top of the songs. He comes up with the melodies and if it’s growls or clean vocals. Then Christian records his vocals onto the demo track where he uses phony words that don’t mean anything.

Then he sends that to Henrik who tries to write lyrics that fit the melodies.

Interesting!

Yes, and quite impressive, too, I think, to write those kinds of lyrics, and to have them fit the melodies. I couldn’t do it!

I don’t think many people could at all!

No! And sometimes when Henrik has written the lyrics, Christian will call Henrik up and says, “You can’t use that word. It has to have a different sound to it.” Because of the phony words he used for the demo – sometimes he needs that exact same vowel. Then Henrik has to rewrite a lot of the lyrics. So the lyrics also have to sound right from Christian’s mouth.

Right! Now the musicianship has really been kicked up on this one. It’s brilliant! It’s faster and stronger. Is that the natural evolution for the direction you guys are going in?

I guess it just happened. I don’t think we’re that much better players now than we were like on the first album. I think it’s more of being a little bit more crazy I the studio. “Let’s do that again! You have to come up with a better drum fill.”

So perhaps we were a little bit less sloppy in the studio this time.

Do you have a personal favorite song on the new album?

I like the title track the most, I think.

OK. The Missing Coordinates was almost like a Science Fiction story – about the “psy experiments to seek out the enemy”?

Yeah! I can’t tell you too much about the lyrics. I’m sorry.

That’s OK. I love the dark outro and the surreal breaks in The Missing Coordinates, too. Any stories behind writing the music for that song?

No, because Jonas wrote that song. I don’t know what he was thinking.

Are you going to be doing a second video from the album?

I think it depends on how much the album sells and stuff like that. How much money our record label is willing to put into it.

Yeah, that’s always a concern. You actually had 13 songs written but you scratched one?

Yeah. We thought the album was too long.

So it wasn’t to avoid bad luck like some reports said?

No, no. Nothing like that. It was just too long. We had like 5 or 6 more songs written – we have those songs in a demo version. So there are 6 Scar Symmetry songs that no one has heard.

Are you possibly going to be releasing those on an EP or the next album?

The song that was excluded from this album, that song is recorded and mixed and everything. So that one is ready to be released in some format. I guess our label might use it for some special edition or something someday.

The other songs will have to be properly recorded. We might use some of them for the next album perhaps. I don’t think we will do an EP or something like that. I think we will wait for the next time we do a full album.

Any stories behind the cover art?

It was our record label who contacted the artist. (I forgot the name. That is too bad!) They came up with a cover that was awful! It looked like a 5-year-old did that in Photoshop. We were like, “You’ve got to be kidding! We can’t possibly use this!”

So they took it away, and a few days later they sent up the artwork that we ended up using. We were like, “Wow! This really fits the concept.”

Yeah, it’s abstract enough that you can put feelings to it.

Yeah, exactly!

I know you guys have a couple European Festivals booked, but any long-form tour plans yet?

It’s in the making, but there’s nothing confirmed yet. We didn’t tour Europe last year, so I think that’s our first priority – to do a full scale European tour. Then I guess we will head back to North America to see you guys.

OK. Are you going to film any of the shows for a possible long-form DVD?

I don’t know. It would be really cool to do it. But I think it depends on costs. You have to have the camera and crew.

Right. Plus the editing afterwards.

Yeah. So perhaps it would be cooler to do a DVD from a festival show – have like the bigger crowd and the bigger stage.

I think we might actually – we’ve been talking about just recording the audio from a tour; bring a laptop with us with a multi channel recording end. We could record every night the shows. Then we can put out a live CD.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s too early after just 3 albums to do something like that, because a live album is almost like a “Greatest Hits”.

Yeah, but they’re a great 3 albums!

Thanks! I think so, too. All 3 albums are already like 3 “Greatest Hits” albums.

Yeah! Especially Pitch Black Progress! I love the song The Illusionist!

That song is really meaning stuff to people. That’s weird.

So how many songs from each album are you including in your live set?

We haven’t started planning the live set yet. But I think my best guess is that we will do a lot of new songs and a lot of Pitch Black Progress songs. Just a few from the first album because we’ve been playing songs from the first album for such a long time now, so we’re starting to get a bit bored.

Perhaps we’ll take some other songs from the first album that we’ve never played. That would be cool!

Definitely! Are you already working on merch to bring on tour?

No, not really.

What do you guys do on your “down time” on the road? Do you bring movies or videogames with you?

Yeah, we bring movies, videogames, and a lot of hard liquor.

How hands-on are you guys with your website and MySpace pages?

We don’t update them too much, which is a pity I think. But we’re going to start working on a new website because the one we’ve got is so crappy. I mean, it doesn’t contain anything. Some pictures and some news. Maybe once a year we’ll post some news. So I think we’re going to have to do a little bit better in that department.

Yeah, because that could be a great marketing tool for you!

Yeah, it is! But I think we’re too lazy.

OK, so why don’t you get somebody to do it for you?

Because we’re too cheap. We’re too poor – we don’t have any money. We have to do everything ourselves.

Speaking of how expensive everything’s getting lately – do the rising gas prices hurt touring?

Not that we have experienced so far, but I just read about it the other day – that touring is getting so expensive that some bands just can’t afford it. If the fees are too low, they won’t even cover getting to the venue. That’s really weird, I think.

Are the gas prices in Sweden as bad as they are in the ‘States?

Yeah, they’re horrible here! It’s like 2 dollars for a liter. I’m not sure what that translates to.

Here it’s over $4 a gallon. I’m not sure how that translates to liters.

I thought that gas was always cheaper in the U.S. because we have really super high gas taxes. It’s like 95% of what you pay for the gas is taxes.