IN FLAMES Frontman Is Happy To Be A Forefather Of The 'Gothenburg Sound'

Karma E. Omowale of the FourteenG e-zine recently conducted an interview with IN FLAMES frontman Anders Fridén. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

FourteenG: How does it feel to be one of the forefathers in the Gothenburg sound, a genre…to be credited by so many as an influence? How do feel about that? Who do you look up to?

Anders: "I'm happy to be recognized as a member of that. Some guy the other day asked pretty much the same question but like ten years from now if I appeared in a metal book or something like that, that says 'IN FLAMES from a little shitty town, Gothenburg. They created, blah, blah, blah…amongst a few others,' [chuckles] then we would have made a mark in metal history that would make me proud; but today I'm not walking around as if I'm thinking I'm better than anyone else. But it's cool! [Smiles]"

FourteenG: Tell me who are you in awe of, who are you a fan of?

Anders: Uh, I look up to Martin Gore of DEPECHE MODE because I think he's a great writer, he's a great songwriter and Trent Reznor from NINE INCH NAILS. He's not with us anymore but Layne Staley from ALICE IN CHAINS, which was one of my earlier inspirations when it came to lyrics and he had such [intonation fills with ardor] an amazing voice with so much soul and passion. You can feel the pain when he's singing, so yeah…"

FourteenG: Hear you are #1 on the Swedish export charts too as you continually receive rave reviews. What do you have to say to those fans who were disappointed and or weren't feeling the last two releases wishing you’d stuck to the harder side of your music. What is your take on this?

Anders: "Listen to the other ones! [Laughs] To me it's just like it's hard for us to satisfy everybody. I mean, a lot of people are interested in what we do and [pauses] I do understand the fans as well! I'm a big fan of music; I may not agree with everything that my favorite band does with every album but then I don't listen to it. I listen to the other ones. I don't know, I don't mean to make nothing light about it but I don't scream to other people, 'These guys suck! They sold out!' To me it's like, this is our eighth album and in what, like twelve years. Our first album ['Lunar Strain'] came out in '94 and now it's 2006. If someone don't like it, fine then I understand them. It's just like, we write music for anybody, everybody's entitled to listen to IN FLAMES, we don't write for an elite group who say it should be like this or that. I guess that's why we’re here today, because we do what we feel like. We don't care so much, don't get me wrong…

FourteenG: Are you happy with the job that Ferret has done thus far?

Anders: "Yeah! We're not thinking about leaving either so I mean it's cool."

FourteenG: What convinced you to sign with them in the first place?

Anders: "Well, we were touring a lot of the time pretty much the whole year, up until today, [laughs] and we couldn't find our albums in the stores. It was a big problem and if someone hears us for the first time and they go to the record company or the record store and want to pick up the album, they can't find it, next week they'll forget about us or there's another release or they don't have enough money. It's like; we want people to be able to pick up the album that's why we do this. I want my music to be heard, you know or else I could be in the cellar just produce tapes for my friends and pass it around. [Chuckles] So, when we were down with the deal over here; we were just looking around. I know the guys from Ferret from before, I know they were and up and coming independent record label. They said the right things; to have control it's a really important thing for us to be able to produce our baby, nobody says a thing or has anything to do with except for the five of us. And they were like, 'Go ahead!' and they take care of what they know the best and we stay out it. It's the best deal that we could get."

Read the entire interview at www.fourteeng.net.