ERIK MARTENSSON On ECLIPSE's 'Megalomanium' Albums: 'There Was Nothing Off Limits'

By Clay Marshall

When the Swedish melodic hard rock quartet ECLIPSE released its 2023 album "Megalomanium", few noticed an Easter egg in the cover artwork, where the title featured the Roman numeral for one rather than a lowercase i. A year later, it became clear why when the band announced the release of "Megalomanium II" (stylized on its cover artwork as "Megalomaniium", with two i's connoting the Roman numeral for two).

As vocalist, guitarist, producer and primary songwriter Erik Martensson explains below, the "Megalomanium" albums were written and recorded at the same time, but in a nod to how modern music is consumed, the group decided to split the material into two staggered releases. While Martensson believes they're ultimately "the same album," he feels that perhaps the newly released "Megalomanium II" "came out a little better" than its predecessor, although he's confident the band's best work is yet to come.

Blabbermouth: At what point during the "Megalomanium" writing sessions did you realize you had enough material for two albums?

Erik: "I always have this folder for demos, and all the songs we write, we just put into that folder — and all of a sudden, that folder was very full. I was listening to a lot of the tracks, and there were so many good songs. I thought, 'No one is doing double-records anymore. It's a lost thing.' I texted the guys, 'We should do a double record.' We kind of laughed about it, but we had the songs, so after a while, it got more serious — like, 'If we're ever going to make a double record, now is the time. Let's do it.' What nailed it was when we came up with the idea to split them apart, because on streaming, it makes no sense at all to release 22 songs at the same time. It's going to be four singles and 18 songs forgotten for a long time."

Blabbermouth: To confirm, both albums were written and recorded in same sessions?

Erik: "The only difference was that because of timing, we completed the mixing and mastering of the first record [first]. After that was released, I started doing the mixing for the second one."

Blabbermouth: How did you decide which songs would go on which record?

Erik: "In typical ECLIPSE manner, we didn't think that much about it. We just decide on something, and then we go for it. We did an Australian tour, and Victor [Crusner, bass], Magnus [Henriksson, guitar] and I were sitting in a bar in Sydney after the tour was finished. There were a lot of cockroaches [laughs], and we were sitting and drinking beer, and we just listened to the songs and made notes — 'This is going to be on Number One, this is going to be on Number Two.' We tried to make two good records from the demos. We decided on four singles that were going to be on the first one, and four single candidates for the second one. Not all of those songs turned out to be singles, but that's another story. It's not that we saved the best for last or the best for the first one; we just made two solid records. If we had decided on a different running order, they would have different vibes. The slight differences between them is just up to the choice of songs on I and II."

Blabbermouth: Was it difficult to shelve certain songs for a year?

Erik: "Every time your album is released, it feels kind of old, because the final masters are delivered six months before release. But it was more exciting [this time], because no one knew there was a Part II coming. It was a lot of work. It's more work doing two records at the same time than making two separate records. It was more work than I expected, actually, to stay focused on so many songs. Just doing guitar solos for 22 songs without being bored, that was challenging. [So was] writing lyrics for 22 songs — lyrics that don't suck."

Blabbermouth: Since you mentioned mixing Part II after the release of Part I, did you find that you felt differently about the material by that point?

Erik: "I felt the same, because all the songs were from the same period of time. It is actually the same album; it's just twice as many songs. If you listen to songs from [2019's] 'Paradigm' and then you listen to [2021's] 'Wired', they are very different records because they were written in different times. They're like different chapters in the diary of the band, but these were all constructed during the same [sessions], so it's kind of the same vibe. Maybe it's me, but I think Part II came out a little better. I don't know why. It's a little rockier, but still, it has two ballads. Maybe it's just because I haven't heard it as much."

Blabbermouth: It's interesting that you cited streaming as one reason to release the two records separately rather than as a true double album.

Erik: "The good thing about streaming is that it's available for everyone everywhere, which makes it super easy [to be heard]. You don't have to worry that if you don't have a good physical distributor, you're screwed. Still, the attention span is shorter. When I was a kid and bought records, they cost a lot of money, so when I bought a record, I really listened to it. Even if I didn't like it at the start, I still tried hard to like the record and listen to it as much as possible, and after a while, maybe you came to love that record. On streaming, the songs that are selected as singles for the most part are going to have the most streams, because those are the ones that are pushed to playlists. The last song on the record, it doesn't matter if it's the greatest song on earth — not a lot of people will listen to that song. But the fans will. At the end of the day, you can have however many streams and listeners a month as you want, but it's the real fans — the people who show up to concerts, that buy t-shirts, that support the band throughout the years — those are the most important people, and they will listen."

Blabbermouth: With twice as many songs to work with, did you step outside your comfort zone to try new things?

Erik: "For sure. If you do one record, you try to stay in the middle more or less, because you want to have a very focused record. But when you have 22 songs... First of all, if you make 22 songs very focused in the middle, it would be the most boring 22 songs in a row, so you have to go left and right and try different things. That was probably the most fun experience of this. We have songs on these that maybe wouldn't have been on a standard ECLIPSE record. There was nothing off limits at all. I thought it was a lot of fun to be able to do that. Every time with ECLIPSE, when we try something that didn't really sound like us and we try something new, it opens the door to something else — a new way, a new path the band can take. Even if the fans maybe initially don't love it, after a while, it will become a part of the sound."

Blabbermouth: Songs often take on new life when they're played live, but releasing 22 songs in such a short amount of time means that some "Megalomanium" tracks probably won't ever be performed on stage.

Erik: "For 'Paradigm', we played a European tour, but then the pandemic came, so we didn't play for a couple of years. Then we did 'Wired' and started to play those songs [live], which meant we never had a couple of years to play those 'Paradigm' songs. We don't play a lot of songs from that [album], because we never toured that record properly. We play a lot of songs from [2017's] 'Monumentum'. It's not our greatest or most successful album by any means, but we toured that record for a long time and played a lot of shows for that, so a lot of those songs — like 'Jaded' — turned into live staples, which is kind of interesting. It's really important that you play the new songs live, both for yourself and for the audience as well. The audience doesn't always want to hear the new songs — well, some of them do, but a lot of them want to hear the classics, the songs they know. But all the songs that they love were new back in the day. For every record, if you just play the classics, you will bore yourself, and you will eventually bore the audience as well. The whole band is super proud of these two records, and we're going to play a lot of those songs live no matter what the fans think about it, because we love them. It's key that the people in the band enjoy playing the music they play live. If you don't play new songs and you just play the old classics, you will be bored. It's just repeating yourself, and you will lose interest. I think if we lose interest, the fans will definitely lose interest. There's a lot of those bands — the classic bands — who only play their hits, and you can just look at them [and see] they're so bored of playing those songs over and over again."

Blabbermouth: In the past, you've mentioned wanting to develop a unique identity for ECLIPSE rather than simply sounding like the sum of your influences. Do you feel you've succeeded yet?

Erik: "I think we've kind of nailed what ECLIPSE are. I don't know that really for myself, but hearing people say that we have a very specific sound — 'You can instantly hear that it sounds like ECLIPSE' — and when I read reviews of other bands and they say, 'It sounds a little like ECLIPSE,' then you know it's kind of mission accomplished, because then you know that your band has a sound of its own. Which is really hard — every musician, every writer really tries to have your own identity as a writer, as a band. But having said that, I don't think the best ECLIPSE record is yet made. I think there's so many more good songs to be written. Just because you have done a lot of records doesn't mean that the best is one of them. I think in songwriting, as long as you really strive for writing the best songs possible and you have the drive, you have the energy and you have the hunger to do good stuff, then you will do good stuff. As soon as you lose that interest, and if you're not hungry doing it anymore, then it's over. I'm not there yet, for sure."

Blabbermouth: On stage, it's clear that there's a high level of camaraderie between you and your bandmates.

Erik: "If you're constantly annoyed at someone, it's really hard to be a good band. There's so many bands — especially big bands — who show up in different limousines and different everything. There's, like, hundreds of meters between their different dressing rooms. In music, when you start off as a kid, when you're a teenager and you have your band, it has nothing to do with business. You start playing guitar and listening to music because you love it, and that's the most important thing in the world. As the band grows, the percentage of music shrinks every year — it's less and less music and more and more business, because it consumes more and more time. It's super-important that when we're on stage, there's zero business. When we're on stage, it's just because we love playing music, and we enjoy playing it together. It's the same thing in the studio — when we write songs, we just write songs for the love of writing music. I think it's very important that you can't lose the love for music in this. Then it will turn into business, and then I'd rather do something else. It's very important that my initial love for music is still there."

Blabbermouth: The music video for "All I Want" — which saw you don corpse paint in a nod to your Scandinavian peers — was a blast. Any funny stories from its filming?

Erik: "There was a lot of comedy behind the scenes. We were in the middle of the forest, and the power generator constantly stopped. Every time it turned off, it was completely dark. You couldn't see your hand, like, one centimeter in front of your eyes. All the equipment — drums, amplifiers and stuff — we carried up a small mountain in the forest. We were sweating our asses off. That was daylight, and then we did the coffin scenes in the dark, and then we were like, 'Where the hell are the drums?' We had to walk around and look in the forest trying to find where we put all the gear."

Blabbermouth: You've said that there won't be a "Megalomanium III", but other than that, what does the future hold for ECLIPSE?

Erik: "We're taking it one day at a time at the moment. It's been a while since we recorded the songs, but it's been a full year of promotion. We've done two tours in Europe, and we've been playing two years of summer festivals, so we have a couple of months off now, and I think everyone's, like, [sigh of relief], because it's been on and off all the time. I run my studio here at home, and I've got kids and a house, so it's been pretty intense the last two years, to say the least. We're going to catch our breath, and then we're going to get back in the saddle somehow."

Blabbermouth: It's rare for a band to still be on an upward trajectory after 10 records. Does it feel like the best is still yet to come for ECLIPSE?

Erik: "Absolutely, 100%. I can't even imagine being 22 years old and you've already written your biggest hit, and from that one, it's just going downhill. Every year, we grow. I think that's a privilege, because we've always been the underdog band, and we still think we are the underdog band. Even if people don't see us like that anymore, we still have the same attitude — 'We're going to be the best band at the festival,' 'We're going to make a kick-ass show,' 'We're going to show the world.'"

Photo credit: Martin Darksoul