Q and A: Roger Öjersson (Katatonia)

By PAUL SOUTHWELL

SWEDISH metal band Katatonia defines musical evolution. Their discography includes around 100 songs, many of which drift unhindered between sub-genres of the wide and varied umbrella of metal. Their last official headlining tour was eight years ago, since then the world has changed immeasurably,and it is a circumstance reflected in their music. Their 12th and most recent studio album, the aptly titled Sky Void of Stars, was a means to confront an horrific pandemic and the resultant societal upheaval, taking their previous release of City Burials to the next level of musical development. We spoke to co-guitarist Roger Öjersson about the upcoming Katatonia tour and his thoughts about his musical tastes, having returned to the metal scene via Swedish friends, Tiamat.

Hot Metal: Katatonia returns to Australia very soon. The last headline tour was in 2016.

Roger Öjersson: “Oh yeah, it has been a while. We only went to Hobart once, in between, around a year ago, on a festival [Dark Mofo], which was just a one off, but otherwise, we haven’t been to Australia since 2016.”

HM: I believe that Sky Void of Stars was thematically a means to cope with the pandemic. After a good year or touring with it under your belts, is it still as effective as a therapy?

RO: “It feels good and I mean, still feels fresh in a way, even though it was released just over a year ago. We were doing a gig in Istanbul, which was really cool, and we had large venues sold out. It was really good, and I like that place, we are always really well taken care of there.”

HM: Is it fair to say that the last album was a means to cope with the pandemic?

RO: “Yeah and doing that live streaming thing as well, was a weird experience but it was nice. The last album is like one piece to me, like most albums. It is not song by song; it is a landscape. The songs have so suit each other to create a good landscape. I think that it works on that one and that we did a good job on it to get the landscape right. It was way for Jonas [Renkse – lead vocals] to cope, but probably also for all of us, a bit. I don’t know though, because everything went on pause – except that creation doesn’t – and ideas still keep rolling up in your head and so you have to do something with those ideas. But yeah, this one was Jonas’ baby all the way, whereas for all the others, we maybe added our colours to it. We added maybe some tweaks here and there, but it was mainly Jonas’ songs.”

HM: Normally Anders [Nyström – co-guitarist] would contribute as well. For the next album, do you plan on changing the songwriting arrangement you used for previous albums?

RO: “Well, let’s see how it goes. During the pandemic everybody was kind of on their own. And for the album before that, as well …  it was originally a plan to be one of Jonas’ albums. But then, because we were on a hiatus with the band, Anders starting working on an album and it turned out to become a Katatonia album in the end, because we got back together and started playing, and thought ‘yeah, this is fun, let’s do this’ and so we just recorded it. We realised the previous album just before the pandemic and then with everything on pause for three years, then Jonas wrote the songs during that period and, the latest one was written. Then we added our little things to it and then, I guess, it became what it is now.”

HM: Have set lists changed much since touring the album?

RO: “Well, we did a US tour just when it was released, not the album yet but the singles. Usually, it takes some time for people to meld with new stuff, and they usually say ‘the new album is shit, the previous one was the best one’ and then you release a new one, ‘ah, the new one is shit and the previous one was the best one’ and that is usually how it goes with people. This time, we played the song on the same evening of when the song was released. One thing that I reacted to was that the audience went apeshit. It was crazy. I have never seen that before with new songs. We did that with all of the singles that were released during that tour and then we did a European tour. That started on the same day that the album had been released and we played a lot of songs that hadn’t been singles and it was amazing how it was received by the audience. I would not have thought that would happen, you know. They had barely heard it, but they went crazy.”

HM: Logically, the way that the set list evolves indicates how the band is evolving as I gather that these days you’re not playing any of the early material that has black metal leanings?

RO: “Yeah, there is no growling anymore. I think that since I have joined, we have played one song from the first album [Dance of December Souls]. We did it once on a jubilee gig when it was like 25 years of the band. We did this gig in London and it was also when it was the 10th anniversary of The Great Cold Distance, so we did one set that was The Great Cold Distance from start to end, and the one set that was one song from each album, and I think that is the only time I’ve played that, anything with rough vocals, but it is mainly where it took shape and moved forward.”

HM: Is there now a particular song on Sky Void of Stars that is most representative of Katatonia’s style now?

RO: “That is tough because it stretches in different directions all the time but it kind of still stays sounding like Katatonia. There are the more straightforward ones like ‘Austerity’ and then there is the proggier side with ‘No Beacon to Illuminate Our Fall’. It has different styles within the same kind of vibe.”

HM: The guitar solos on the album, whilst few, do pop out of the mix well. How much of that is Jonas and Anders looking at production aspects and getting it to sound that way?

RO: “Anders hasn’t been involved on the last two albums so it has been me doing the guitars. It is mainly up to whoever mixes it [Jacob Hansen], I guess, and we want it to be kind of like the lead vocals somewhere there and it is a lead guitar, so it is supposed to pop out.”

HM: “Austerity” has a bit of a neoclassical tinge to it and you could say the same about “Author”, to some degree. Whereas “Impermanence” employs a wah pedal, with a more scalar approach, plus some counterpoint, but you get more into the vibrato. So, there are different guitar styles in there. Are you influenced by the major guitar names, such as Joe Satriani or Zakk Wylde?

RO: “Not at all, actually. It is not my thing. I am not that much of a guitar nerd but you just have to play something that fits the song. There is one guy who is kind of forgotten, one of the real greats, called Zeno Roth [brother of Uli Jon Roth], but it is kind of cheesy eighties music, but very well performed. They released an album called Zeno that has the best guitar solos I’ve ever heard on an album; it makes you cry. That and early Randy Rhoads, maybe, or you play stuff that adds to the song. The guitar solo has to make sense, otherwise there is no point. If it is just showing off or shredding, then there is no point to it, it has to have hooks and melodies that you remember. Neil Young is one of my absolute favourite guitar players.”

HM: “Colossal Shade” is inspired by KISS apparently?

RO: “Ha-ha. I think that Jonas is the guy that likes KISS, which has never really been my thing. I come from an old blues and seventies prog and stuff like that but I grew up with the NWOBHM and the early eighties with Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. But then every solo there made sense, there were so many melodies. Look at the old Accept solos, for instance, there has got to be a hook in there and it has got to be memorable. Otherwise, I don’t see the point really.”

HM: What got you into metal in the first place? Was it from joining the band Tiamat?

RO: “Yeah, I kind of stumbled into it. There was a friend of mine who played with them before, Fredrik [Åkesson], who plays with Opeth nowadays. He kind of nagged them and told them they should have me and I had no idea, thinking ‘who are these guys?’ and they called me and asked me if I wanted to do a European tour with me. And I thought ‘what the hell, why not? I haven’t played metal for years, let’s do it’. It kind of just happened and then they asked me if I wanted to go down to Germany and record an album [The Scarred People] and we did. Johan [Edlund – front man] and I lived there for a couple of months. It was kind of an old school production where you let everything grow in the studio [Woodhouse Studios, Hagen, Germany]. You come in with half-ready ideas of the songs. And yeah, they kind of grow in the studio, into what they become. (As) opposed to like what we do now with Katatonia, where we come into the studio very well prepared and know very much what we want and what we want to do, and most of the things that you are going to do are clear in your head. Some stuff, such as guitar solos, of course and stuff like that, happens in the studio but you still have an idea of what you are after, and are well rehearsed with the song per se. So it goes really quickly in the studio, so it just press record and play through the songs a few times and then you’re done.”

HM: There is quite a bit of underlying keyboard work in the album, such as keyboard washes or a melody line, or even just a synth bass line. How you do that in a live setting?

RO: “Oh, we do it with back tracks of course, otherwise we would have to have seven keyboard players and that is not possible. Live we just have guitars, bass, vocals, drums and tracks, and then I do the backing vocals.”

HM: The use of spatial dynamics in the album is effective, having parts where the rhythm section drops out, but the sense of musical time signature continues. There is some sort of internal clock to come back in. For example, a song like “Sclera” gets quite sparse in parts.

RO: “There is always a beat in it, one way or another. There is always some sort of rhythm in it. If drums are out, you’ve still got vocals and keys. Live is a different setting to studio but Jonas is the keys guy and he pretty much has that ready when you go into the studio. There might be some changes to sounds and polishing but we have that as a base to build on, so that you know what spots you have and where to put things in, so it doesn’t clash with anything like that.”

HM: Technology and guitar have moved massively over the decades. Do you enjoy all the new digital gear trend, even with a blues background?

RO: “It is brilliant. I mean take like the MLC amplifier which I would use in the studio, and it is fantastic. I have never played anything like but it weighs at least 35 kilograms without the case. So, carrying that stuff around and having to dance on three or four different pedals for every sound change, whilst singing and playing in some weird polyrhythmic; that is just too much. Here you just push one button and it sounds great. So it is making things easier and in the studio I am such a nerd. On the albums I will still use my completely analogue pedalboard and analogue amps but in a live setting it is just too much work, just having to set the bpms, on the delay on each song, or setting the rhythm of the effects such as phasers or flangers, and then there would be too much space between the songs live to do that manually. Or you would have to build a robot like Neil Young had to turn the knobs on this amps for different sounds.”

HM: What sort of guitars are you using nowadays?

RO: “I just stumbled across those Schecter Ultras and I fell in love with them. They are just so smooth to play. It is like the perfect mix between a Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul. It has got the kind of Les Paul straightness of the neck but has got the scale of the Strat and more of a Strat feel, maybe, not really in the radius. It is a 14 [inch] radius so it is still pretty flat but it is solid. It feels like a vintage guitar, which is what I am used to since before. I just saw them and they looked so awesome. ‘I want those’ so I contacted Schecter and they sent me a couple and I had no idea how they would feel to play or how they would sound. But it turned out that they were brilliant. It didn’t just look good, they were really great guitars as well.”

HM: Did you get into active pickups?

RO: “Not really. I’ve got one Strat from the era that has EMGs. I think it was ’78 or something so it sounds like a vintage guitar but with a shitload more output, of course. But that is not really my thing, I tend to go for vintage style microphones and my favourites are the Filtertrons [Gretsch pickups], any day of the week. But on the guitars that I have the Filtertrons on, they have the complicated switching so I tend to go for just two humbuckers, the classic sound and Seymour [Duncan pickups] own favourite ones from ’78, SH-2 [aka SD Jazz] in front and an SH-4 [aka JB humbucker] at the bridge. If it worked for Randy Rhoads…”

HM: Indeed. Guitar performance wise, which songs are you most proud of from Sky Void of Stars?

RO: “I always try to put in the effort. But I like it when it just happens when there is less planning and just go with the vibe. I am trying to think of a song now, on the previous album there was one of those where we pressed record and just to see where we would end up. Yeah, it was on City Burials, “Untrodden”, that was the one where we said ‘OK let’s see what we get and just play’ and I like that when it is improvised. Then once it is played, then that is the way it goes so I try to play it live afterwards, then I have to sit down and figure out what you yourself were playing on the album because you don’t know, you just played.”

HM: Finally, do you prefer playing club shows or festivals?

RO: “I like club shows because festival shows tend to be a little bit stressful, or you never get the time you need to prepare properly. You know, you’ve got this quick changeover. But if you do a club tour, you get a soundcheck, you can make sure everything is perfect, and you have a closeness to the audience. I am actually more nervous on a smaller club stage than on a huge festival stage because of the distance to the audience, you kind of lose it. You cannot take in how many people there are because they are just so far away, so they are just dots out there. But if you have them in your face in a club, that is when I get nervous. Playing to 500 to a thousand people is way worse than playing to 15,000 on a festival stage. “

HM: Sounds daunting when you put it like that. Looking forward to seeing you very soon.

RO: “Alright, cheers. See you there.”

GET TICKETS.

KATATONIA AUSTRALIA TOUR:

9/2: The Metro, Sydney

10/2: Croxton, Melbourne

11/2: The Triffid, Brisbane

12/2: The Gov, Adelaide

13/4: Rosemount Hotel, Perth