By BRIAN GIFFIN
SWEDISH metal chameleons Avatar are returning to Australia next week for their second tour. Taking a short break between tours before winding down here, vocalist Johannes Eckerström chatted with us about his band’s origins and evolution – and that big praise from Metallica.
Hot Metal: It seems that a lot of the European bands start doing their heavy touring now – but that’s not your concern right now.
Johannes Eckstrom: “No. Since the album came out, at the end of October last year, it’s been one thing after another, really and we only really slowed down in July. Actually. I’m going to Poland tomorrow so – here we go again!”
HM: I was forewarned by your publicist that you like to be asked interesting questions and then he followed it up with that press release about the praise you got from Metallica. We’ve already run a story about that. I’ve interviewed a lot of bands that have toured with Metallica, and they always talk about how generous they are as hosts.
JE: “Yes! 100 percent.”
HM: But it’s rare for them to come out and publicly praise a band the way they did you guys.
JE: “Yeah, and the best way I can describe it is … you know, speaking of going to Australia, my first real concert I went to was AC/DC, when I was 14. With that came the 14 year old’s naive, “What if I get to meet them?” Of course, I didn’t. But, if I did get to meet them, what if they think I’m really cool? Would they give me a guitar? You know, all those childish dreams you have about meeting your heroes. Usually it doesn’t happen like that. I’ve met a bunch of my heroes and had a great time and befriended some and it’s cool. But Metallica really hit that note. When we got off stage and someone showed us that someone had filmed James Hetfield singing along to our set, and came back for more next time, and the next time… that’s just arm-pinch childhood dream type of thing to get that stamp of approval. Because of course, you cannot build a career around that. We have to find our thing and our audience and satisfy ourselves. So maybe when you turn 15 you let go of that idea that you’ll play music that makes James Hetfield think I’m really cool. But fast forward and that kind of happened! It’s pretty awesome. But the whole treatment is just like, as many bands have said, they ramped it up from Day One. A signed card, a cake. James and Rob came and said hi. It doesn’t get much better. But then next time we met all of them, took a picture, got to hang out. Third show, a private dinner… it just kept ramping up. Very friendly and the crew to crew relationship, and how we get to do our show and the generosity around that, was number one. That was also amazing.”
HM: It’s probably going to take a long time to top something like that. It actually takes some bands a lot longer to say they’ve toured with Metallica. But of course Avatar has already been around for 20 years. A lot of people may not be aware of that, and if people go right back to the beginning of your catalogue, you had a very different sound when you first started.
JE: “Well I think it comes pretty natural. I think, when a band is formed by a bunch of 15 and 16-year-olds, of course we went through some changes. Very few member changes. From when we started to write and record our own material and play a bit more shows, doing that real band stuff as kids, we only made one member change. Simon left and Tim has been with us forever now, as well. We knew him back then, as well, so it was a relatively small change to make. But still, I sometimes think about what I read about Rammstein – or even Black Sabbath – Ozzy and Geezer were in Rare Breed and two were in another band, and they met each other … and I feel like that’s usually how it goes. Some friends start a band, and they suck. Two members with a bit more drive and ambition, and down the street there’s another band that also sucks, but those two or three members with drive and ambition meet those two guys and then they start the real band. And us in Avatar, we were all those bands, and we went through those changes, internally, without any member changes. We were too dumb to quit, so we started to figure things out along the way. Now it’s more real and outspoken part of our band that we don’t want to repeat the same songs, or write the same song over and over, and see changes as we change, and take the music in whatever direction we are most interested in. That wasn’t as well articulated back then. Those personalities were always there, if you look in hindsight, but they are a bit more well cultivated at this point.”
HM: Obviously bands are allowed to make those transitions, and you were all very young. But some bands can cop heat when changing too much. That doesn’t seem to have happened with Avatar, because it seems like a very natural progression. A lot of your fans have matured with the band too – would that be part of it?
JE: “Yeah I think so. But I like to think it’s because we’ve trained people to expect the unexpected, with us. As long as it’s called Avatar, it will be some kind of metal, and it will be … when we started playing, we played death metal together. And when we don’t play death metal now, that is part of the DNA, that’s part of how the hands move, it’s part of… the kind of guitars they have, the tuning is really low, but still built in that way that you work to make a D-tuned guitar sound like a normal guitar. Those are part of the tools in the tool box. It’s gonna be some kind of metal, and it’s gonna be some kind of music that we’re fans of. So that keeps some consistency. If I ever end up writing just big band jazz tunes, we should probably rename the project at that point, and that’s fine. But Avatar is a metal band!”
HM: Can it be a little confusing with a band called Avatar now there’s so many aspects of popular culture that share the same name? There’s the movies, the games…
JE: “I blame John. The band was named before I joined.”
HM: Has there ever been any confusion with the name of the band?
JE: “At this point, we are established enough that we don’t see it affecting what we’re doing. There’s enough awareness of our existence that I don’t feel there’s an issue there. But I do know that way back when, and I’m talking 17 years ago a fan wrote us … she had discovered us opening for another band, and therefore asked for the Avatar CD as a Christmas present and she received the soundtrack to the movie that had come out that year. That’s the only real example I can think of. If you name your baby and then three years later you walk around thinking, That’s a stupid name. You can’t really change it. It’s kind of hard.”
HM: You must be looking forward to getting back to Australia. There was a lot of hype behind the first tour because there were a lot of people here who didn’t really know much about Avatar back then. But the tour went pretty well and of course since then, it’s snowballed a little bit.
JE: “Going somewhere for the first time is always the hardest. That clearly was a long time in the making. I don’t know how many European and North American tours we have done trying to get to Australia. But now coming down a second time is a little easier. But I would also argue maybe there’s even more to prove now. Every show is an audition to see if we may come back one more time. There’s a lot to prove. The novelty of us being there at all is not enough now. Now we are a band that get to tour Australia. So now we really gotta earn it!”
HM: And you’re coming from Finland too, so it’s about as far as away from home as you can get, so you have to make sure it’s going to be worth it.
JE: “Yes, of course, but it’s cool. We did three cities last time. This time we’re doing four, so that’s a 33 percent increase of Australia covered, and we swim over to your neighbours in New Zealand this time too. So it’s going places we haven’t been yet. It’s exciting. It’s a good time.”
AUGUST 26: Fowlers Live, Adelaide
AUGUST 28: Northcote Theatre, Melbourne
AUGUST 29: Manning Bar, Sydney
AUGUST 30: Princess Theatre, Brisbane