AMON AMARTH Drummer Explains SYSTEM OF A DOWN Cover

Sam Radojcin and Brian Fischer-Giffin of Australia's Loud magazine recently conducted an interview with drummer Fredrik Andersson of Swedish death metallers AMON AMARTH. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Loud: The reception for "Surtur Rising" has so far been great. Are you satisfied with the response?

Fredrik: It's been really good. We obviously thought that we had a good album, so we were 100 per cent confident and we felt satisfied with it. So far most the responses have been positive. I just read today the Blabbermouth review was a 9/10, which I think is excellent. On there you can see what the fans think about it, which is pretty good as well. It's good times.

Loud: Being the eighth album from AMON AMARTH, how do you think "Surtur Rising" stands up against the back catalogue?

Fredrik: It's our most put-together album. It feels more well thought out than anything we've done in the past. For us, it has to do with the fact that we did have a plan that we were working towards and we knew what we wanted before we started writing it, and we were always working towards that goal. And I think in some terms, the album I guess... We wanted it to be a lot more harder and aggressive than it is, but when you listen to the whole album it works. It has a natural flow that we're very happy with. Music-wise, it covers our whole background, our whole history. We were trying to write songs in the way we were writing them in the past, more old-school style. And that combined with the newer, better quality production brings out the best qualities in AMON AMARTH.

Loud: How did the writing process go down for "Surtur Rising"? Was it more individual efforts from single band members or was it more of a team effort?

Fredrik: It's a bit of a mix actually. We meet up in rehearsal room and we do most of the work in the rehearsal room. But obviously when we realize that we're not going any further, we take the decision to take a couple of days off, everybody works on theirs (songs) at home and we meet up again in a couple of days and see if we have any new ideas. I think that's the mix of that that makes it work smoother for us to record an album. A couple of years ago we would probably stay in the rehearsal room until we have the songs done, but now we say, take it away, get it some air and see if doesn't work out we'll just leave it. The main production takes place in the rehearsal room when we're all there, and also the songwriting. We need to be all gathered, and Johan [Hegg, vocals] is listening to what we're creating and he gets his inspiration from what we're doing when he's writing the songs.

Loud: I noticed there were some covers recorded for the bonus tracks in "War Machine" by KISS, "Balls To The Wall" by ACCEPT and "Aerials" by SYSTEM OF A DOWN. The SYSTEM OF A DOWN choice has definitely raised a few eyebrows.

Fredrik: [Laughs] One of the reasons was the fact that we wanted to surprise our fans and everybody. We do hear comments about us being predictable and we're always doing the same thing, so we decided to do three covers and the first two were pretty obvious to us. But the third one, we couldn't really decide what to do. We went to Japan during the recording for a show and one of the nights we ended up at a karaoke bar and that song ["Aerials"] came up. It has kind of a history with the band. We had a big argument about whether it's a good song, when it came out 3000 years ago or whenever. That song came up and we were all screaming it and having fun, and when we came back home... I can't remember who came up with it, but we thought we should give that song a try. That would be kind of a challenge for us as musicians and it would also be us doing something unexpected. So we thought, let's do it.

Read the entire interview from Loud magazine.