SOILWORK Guitarist PETER WICHERS Talks About His Decision To Rejoin Band, Living In America

SuicideGirls.com recently conducted an interview with guitarist Peter Wichers of Swedish metallers SOILWORK. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

SuicideGirls.com: What were your reasons for leaving SOILWORK?

Wichers: I was completely fried from touring. It was just way to much for me to handle. It was nine months of touring and they ended up doing five more months after I left. That was it for me. I kind of needed a break. I just wasn't cut out for that much touring. When we started talking about me coming back, me and Björn ["Speed" Strid, SOILWORK's vocalist] were writing stuff on the side for a side project and they had a lineup change and after that, they extended an invite to come back. I thought about it, and I said I wouldn't want to do the same kind of touring as before, and everyone was kind of on the same page. Knowing that, and just the way that SOILWORK is going to be run now, coming back is definitely a different story now than it was before. Everyone is a little older and a lot of the guys have families back at home so, obviously everyone doesn't want to be on the road all of the time. I missed being onstage and the guys. I think that we still have a lot of creativity to write another phenomenal record. Also, my wife is very supportive of me coming back. She said, "I think it's a shame that you should be cooped up in the studio all of the time when you like to perform." Having my wife as a support, it was a pretty easy decision. Even though touring is always hard no matter how little or much you do it. I'm glad to be out here, we're having a good time and everyone is getting along perfectly.

SuicideGirls.com: You didn't play on SOILWORK's last album, "Sworn to a Great Divide". I know you get this question a lot so, I'm not going to ask you what you thought of the album, but does SOILWORK want to continue to go in that same direction musically with the next album?

Wichers: We talked about maybe taking a little bit of a different approach for the next record. Having me and Sylvain [Coudret, guitar] back in the band, I think that we're probably going to try to do stuff that might be a little more technical. We want to keep the element of the catchy chorus but at the same time maybe have bit more guitar solos than on "Sworn to a Great Divide" and also let Dirk [Verbeuren, drums] get more space on the record for drumming. That was one of the things I think that "Sworn to a Great Divide" was lacking a little bit. It's a good record but I think that with such talented musicians the next album definitely needs to have more performance.

SuicideGirls.com: How do you like living in America? Was it hard to adjust?

Wichers: Not really. We actually [moved] from L.A. and I think that Nashville had what me and my wife were looking for, that L.A. didn't. L.A. is a great place, but it's more of a single town, you know? The traffic just completely killed us! My wife spent probably three or four hours in the car everyday driving to and from work. We said that's not really a quality of life. So thinking about it in hindsight , you want to live in the area where you hang out. If you have friends in the valley you don't really go out there, and vice versa. If you live in the valley, you don't really go to West Hollywood to hang out with people. So, Nashville is a nice town. Great studios, and really friendly people.

SuicideGirls.com: How did you and your wife meet?

Wichers: We met in Spain, actually, when she was living abroad after she graduated college. She majored in Spanish. We were passing through and she didn't know who I was and I didn't know who she was. She was friends with another band that was out there. So we met, sat down and talked for about twenty minutes and then she took off in a cab and we exchanged emails. We kept in touch and then we did our second U.S. tour and she showed up in the town where she was living at the time and everything after that is history. I fell in love with her and went home and broke up with my girlfriend of six years and have been together with my wife ever since.

SuicideGirls.com: Moving forward, would you ever consider doing a solo album?

Wichers: I would love to do one, but I'm not actually sure what it would sound like and what direction I would take. Because if it sounds very metal, then I think it would kind of sound like SOILWORK and if I took a different music style approach, I would want to find someone I could write together with. I wouldn't say that it's in the works. I definitely have thought about it and it's not an impossibility, I just don't know when I would do it.

SuicideGirls.com: What do you see and hope for with regards to the future of SOILWORK?

Wichers: After this tour is over, everyone is going to go back home and we're going to start writing the next record. I am very positive that we are going to write the best record to date. That is a very bold statement, but I believe we can do that. It's going to be fun to start bouncing ideas. It's really hard to say when we are going to hit the studio, but I'm thinking that it might be sometime later this year, or the beginning of next year. Because we are really going to take our time and try to really analyze all of the songs and make sure that every song is perfect for us.

Read the entire interview at SuicideGirls.com.