The Power Of Rock
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inside story: ECLIPSE
When Sweden's Eclipse released the amazing 'Bleed And Scream' album in 2012 it pushed them to the forefront of the Melodic Rock scene, further enhancing the reputation of front-man Erik Mårtensson as one of the genre's leading lights. His writing, playing and production work seeing the likes of W.E.T., Jimi Jamison, Toby Hitchcock, Adrenaline Rush and Dalton are all recent impressive additions to his C.V. Now in 2015 the release of Eclipse's 'Armageddonize' will further cement that reputation. Erik kindly took time out from his holiday in Tobago to chat to Ant Heeks.
'Bleed And Scream' was such a critically acclaimed album, was there any added pressure when it came to doing the follow-up?
No, not really, I always say the same thing and it's true, we always write for ourselves and we always try to make the kind of record we want to listen to. If we think it's a good song we settle for that and we don't care so much about what anybody wants us to write. We write our own record and if we like it then we release it.
So Frontiers give you the freedom to do what you want?
We have total freedom from Frontiers. They heard the record the first time when it was finished, they didn't hear a demo or anything, so they let us do whatever we want to do and they have full confidence in the band.
Did you have to approach the song-writing process any differently for this album?
We had much less time to write this record, for an Eclipse record it was made real fast, I think we spent about two and a half to three months from writing to the end of the sessions and the mixing. We started writing the record late September/early October, we had a couple of songs from before but most of the stuff we wrote during that period. There's no time to think, just write and record, and it turned out real good.
Do you just write all the songs that you need for an album or do you have a few left in reserve?
We rarely have any tracks left over, we didn't have any left over from 'Bleed And Scream', maybe some unfinished ideas, but if we don't like the song when we start recording it then we throw it away. We don't finish songs that we don't like. So if we have second thoughts about anything we just throw it away and start working on a new one. It's just a waste of time to finish anything you don't like, when you're making the first demo of the song, if it ain't good as a demo it won't be good on an album. I always know from my gut feeling, if I think it's a good song then I guess somebody else will think it's a good song.
So do you write specifically for the project you're working on, or do you just write songs and then decide which band or artist they would be suitable for?
I always set myself in a writing mode, when I'm writing for Eclipse I write just Eclipse songs and I don't focus on anything else. If it doesn't sound like an Eclipse song then I write something different instead. I rarely write songs and put them in a folder; before this Eclipse album I did an album with the singer from Wig Wam, Ammunition, and when we were writing for that I didn't write Eclipse style songs, I wrote Ammunition style songs. I try to focus on one thing at a time.
As you've mentioned Ammunition, how did you get involved with the project?
?ge (Sten Nilsen) contacted me and wanted to have a meeting in the studio. He wanted me to produce his new solo record - he didn't know whether it was going to be a solo record or a new Wig Wam record at the time - so we started writing stuff but even at the beginning he knew it wasn't going to be a Wig Wam record, so we focused on making it his solo album. We wrote the songs for it and then we kind of found our own style. It's Classic Rock but it's our take on the Classic Rock thing, so it felt more like a band than just a solo record. One thing led to another and it became Ammunition.
So will you be involved in any live shows with Ammunition?
Yes, as much as I can, I'm gonna be playing guitar. It feels really good to just play guitar and not do any lead vocals, it's just having fun and it's great.
Well that leads onto my next question, you are involved with so many different bands and projects, but would you say Eclipse were the band that said the most about you as a writer and performer?
Yeah, Eclipse is closest to my heart, Eclipse music is my music. As I said, we always write the album we wanna have ourselves and Eclipse is our sound. It's me and Magnus (Henriksson), the guitarist, it's our sound, it's what happens when we write songs, it ends up sounding like Eclipse. You always have this one band that gets you and reminds you why you started doing music in the first place and Eclipse is mine. It's my childhood dream of having my own band and we're still having the same band and that's why it's extra important, it's not work for me, it's the reason I'm doing music.
The sound of the band has changed considerably since the first two albums, why did you
decide to go in a different direction?
We see 'Are You Ready To Rock' as the first Eclipse album, that's the first album that we wrote where we didn't think of anything else than what we wanted to hear ourselves. That's where the whole thing of writing for ourselves started. First of all I was really young when we did the first two albums and we had zero budget, I had to mix them myself and I'd never seen a studio in my whole life, so it was just a strange but very learning experience. We had no producer, maybe we had some good ideas but we were in desperate need of a producer but we didn't have one. The first two albums sound like rubbish and the songs are rubbish, we don't really like them. We see them more like official demos, works in progress! (laughs)
You've come a long way since then though!
Yeah, but that's how I learned recording, I had to force myself to learn how to mic guitars and mix and compressors and EQ's and stuff, that's how I learned it, the hard way. We had no budget so we had to do it ourselves. I make my living out of it now so it's really good in that sense.
So music is a full-time job for you?
Yeah, I've been doing it full time for seven or eight years now. I've been doing a lot of live stuff; in the beginning I had to do a lot of covers gigs and stuff, and I still do some, I really enjoy doing that, I love playing live and we still do cover bands. However nowadays it's almost always my own material, be it Eclipse or Ammunition or W.E.T. I'm really happy to be one of the few that can do this full-time, but it's hard work, and you have to work very fast, that's how you make your budgets work.
Onto the new album then, would you say there was a different direction between 'Bleed And Scream' and 'Armageddonize'?
I think 'Armageddonize' is even more melodic and I think it sounds even more Eclipse, on the 'Bleed And Scream' album you can still hear a lot of the influences. The goal we really want to have is that when people hear another band they're gonna say "oh they sound like Eclipse", we want to have a signature sound and I think we made it even more of our signature sound on this one than we did on 'Bleed And Scream'. We just write songs and these are the songs that came out this time. We want to have melodies that are timeless, you can pick out this album in thirty years and even if it sounds dated and old we want people to think that we had really good melodies. If you listen to a really good song from the sixties or even from the fifteenth century, if it has good melodies then it's still a good song and it doesn't matter if it's old. We always want to have melodies to make it memorable and timeless.
So do you have any particular favourites or are you too close to the songs to be subjective?
Yeah, I think I'm too close. It sounds clichéd but I like every song on the album, otherwise it wouldn't be on there. We chose 'Stand On Your Feet' as the first single, I don't know if it's the right choice or not, but we all liked that song and when we wrote it we thought it was kinda special. It's a crazy mix of styles, it doesn't sound so crazy now but when we wrote it we were like "how can this work?" but it worked out. It makes it kinda special. I enjoy the ballad too, 'Live Like I'm Dying', I usually don't like ballads that much and I think I'm a terrible ballad writer, but someone told me a couple of weeks ago that I'm a good ballad writer and I was like "am I?" I usually think I'm a shit ballad writer! (laughs) I always think I suck at it so I try twice as hard when I write a ballad!
What's the story behind the Def Leppard-ish album title?
That is the story behind it, you're spot on! We wanted one of those titles that you can remember that's just one word, like 'Hysteria', you had 'Animalize' from Kiss, we wanted one of those to give a real hint of the eighties because we have one of our feet buried deep in the eighties. It's like a silly name but you can remember it. Our new bass player (Magnus Ulfstedt) came up with the name 'Armageddon' but I thought it was so boring, then I said "what about 'Armageddonize'". We looked it up on the internet but it's just a made-up word so it's unique - if people are going to search on the internet for Eclipse they're gonna find a million hits, but if they search for Eclipse 'Armageddonize' they're gonna find our album. We've got to make it stand out, there are too many "Eclipse" around on Spotify and on the web. It's a really bad name for a band! (laughs)
You and Magnus have been working together for some years now, what is the key to your
successful working relationship?
We like the same stuff, we accept the same music, we don't fight over many musical directions at all. We're big fans of AC/DC, that's how it all started, we went to this one year music school many years ago and at music schools there are always music nerds playing Fusion and Jazz and stuff and we were almost the only people playing Hard Rock. That's how we met, he could play AC/DC and he was impressed that I knew all the AC/DC songs as well. And we played them exactly as they should be, most people played them totally wrong! Maybe that was our musical love at first sight! (laughs) He's very easy to work with, we were very different at first, I am very energetic and always have tons of energy and he's a more laid-back person who follows along, but he has so much musicality, he's so good at guitar and he has so many good ideas, we work well together.
You already have a number of shows planned for 2015, is this going to be your biggest tour to date?
Absolutely, it's gonna be our first real, proper tour, we've always just played one gig here and one gig there, maybe a small tour, but this is the first time we will have a bigger run. It's a big thing. I think we have six or seven dates in the U.K. which is probably more than the U.K. actually wants! (laughs)
I have to ask while I have you, is there a possibility of a new W.E.T. album in the near future?
Not at the moment, we're tied up with Eclipse, Robert has Work Of Art, Jeff is starting his new Metal-style career with SOTO. I have no idea what's going to happen. We haven't put the band to death, it's still live, but at the moment we have it in the freezer.
It must be great to be part of the movement that is happening in Sweden and the rest of
Scandinavia right now, there are so many great bands.
Yeah, there are a lot of Melodic Rock bands, I don't know the reason why. When we started,
although we don't like the first two albums at all, back then if you played Melodic Rock people laughed at you and thought you were an idiot for doing it, but less than ten years ago it all changed and if you say you play Melodic Rock no-one laughs anymore, they respect the music style and it's spilled over so a lot of young musicians play this type of music. They feel confident to start working with it, that's a big difference, and when there's a lot of bands, it gets competitive.
What advice would you give to young bands?
Write good songs. That's the only thing people care about, good songs. Production and musical skills are second to that, if you have good songs people listen, if you have bad songs no-one cares, doesn't matter how good you are playing guitar or singing. Look at The Ramones, they're crappy musicians but they have good songs. It's always about songs, that's the main focus.
This article was used with kind permission and co-operation from FIREWORKS MAGAZINE
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Current issue: #68:
No, not really, I always say the same thing and it's true, we always write for ourselves and we always try to make the kind of record we want to listen to. If we think it's a good song we settle for that and we don't care so much about what anybody wants us to write. We write our own record and if we like it then we release it.
So Frontiers give you the freedom to do what you want?
We have total freedom from Frontiers. They heard the record the first time when it was finished, they didn't hear a demo or anything, so they let us do whatever we want to do and they have full confidence in the band.
Did you have to approach the song-writing process any differently for this album?
We had much less time to write this record, for an Eclipse record it was made real fast, I think we spent about two and a half to three months from writing to the end of the sessions and the mixing. We started writing the record late September/early October, we had a couple of songs from before but most of the stuff we wrote during that period. There's no time to think, just write and record, and it turned out real good.
Do you just write all the songs that you need for an album or do you have a few left in reserve?
We rarely have any tracks left over, we didn't have any left over from 'Bleed And Scream', maybe some unfinished ideas, but if we don't like the song when we start recording it then we throw it away. We don't finish songs that we don't like. So if we have second thoughts about anything we just throw it away and start working on a new one. It's just a waste of time to finish anything you don't like, when you're making the first demo of the song, if it ain't good as a demo it won't be good on an album. I always know from my gut feeling, if I think it's a good song then I guess somebody else will think it's a good song.
So do you write specifically for the project you're working on, or do you just write songs and then decide which band or artist they would be suitable for?
I always set myself in a writing mode, when I'm writing for Eclipse I write just Eclipse songs and I don't focus on anything else. If it doesn't sound like an Eclipse song then I write something different instead. I rarely write songs and put them in a folder; before this Eclipse album I did an album with the singer from Wig Wam, Ammunition, and when we were writing for that I didn't write Eclipse style songs, I wrote Ammunition style songs. I try to focus on one thing at a time.
As you've mentioned Ammunition, how did you get involved with the project?
?ge (Sten Nilsen) contacted me and wanted to have a meeting in the studio. He wanted me to produce his new solo record - he didn't know whether it was going to be a solo record or a new Wig Wam record at the time - so we started writing stuff but even at the beginning he knew it wasn't going to be a Wig Wam record, so we focused on making it his solo album. We wrote the songs for it and then we kind of found our own style. It's Classic Rock but it's our take on the Classic Rock thing, so it felt more like a band than just a solo record. One thing led to another and it became Ammunition.
So will you be involved in any live shows with Ammunition?
Yes, as much as I can, I'm gonna be playing guitar. It feels really good to just play guitar and not do any lead vocals, it's just having fun and it's great.
Well that leads onto my next question, you are involved with so many different bands and projects, but would you say Eclipse were the band that said the most about you as a writer and performer?
Yeah, Eclipse is closest to my heart, Eclipse music is my music. As I said, we always write the album we wanna have ourselves and Eclipse is our sound. It's me and Magnus (Henriksson), the guitarist, it's our sound, it's what happens when we write songs, it ends up sounding like Eclipse. You always have this one band that gets you and reminds you why you started doing music in the first place and Eclipse is mine. It's my childhood dream of having my own band and we're still having the same band and that's why it's extra important, it's not work for me, it's the reason I'm doing music.
The sound of the band has changed considerably since the first two albums, why did you
decide to go in a different direction?
We see 'Are You Ready To Rock' as the first Eclipse album, that's the first album that we wrote where we didn't think of anything else than what we wanted to hear ourselves. That's where the whole thing of writing for ourselves started. First of all I was really young when we did the first two albums and we had zero budget, I had to mix them myself and I'd never seen a studio in my whole life, so it was just a strange but very learning experience. We had no producer, maybe we had some good ideas but we were in desperate need of a producer but we didn't have one. The first two albums sound like rubbish and the songs are rubbish, we don't really like them. We see them more like official demos, works in progress! (laughs)
You've come a long way since then though!
Yeah, but that's how I learned recording, I had to force myself to learn how to mic guitars and mix and compressors and EQ's and stuff, that's how I learned it, the hard way. We had no budget so we had to do it ourselves. I make my living out of it now so it's really good in that sense.
So music is a full-time job for you?
Yeah, I've been doing it full time for seven or eight years now. I've been doing a lot of live stuff; in the beginning I had to do a lot of covers gigs and stuff, and I still do some, I really enjoy doing that, I love playing live and we still do cover bands. However nowadays it's almost always my own material, be it Eclipse or Ammunition or W.E.T. I'm really happy to be one of the few that can do this full-time, but it's hard work, and you have to work very fast, that's how you make your budgets work.
Onto the new album then, would you say there was a different direction between 'Bleed And Scream' and 'Armageddonize'?
I think 'Armageddonize' is even more melodic and I think it sounds even more Eclipse, on the 'Bleed And Scream' album you can still hear a lot of the influences. The goal we really want to have is that when people hear another band they're gonna say "oh they sound like Eclipse", we want to have a signature sound and I think we made it even more of our signature sound on this one than we did on 'Bleed And Scream'. We just write songs and these are the songs that came out this time. We want to have melodies that are timeless, you can pick out this album in thirty years and even if it sounds dated and old we want people to think that we had really good melodies. If you listen to a really good song from the sixties or even from the fifteenth century, if it has good melodies then it's still a good song and it doesn't matter if it's old. We always want to have melodies to make it memorable and timeless.
So do you have any particular favourites or are you too close to the songs to be subjective?
Yeah, I think I'm too close. It sounds clichéd but I like every song on the album, otherwise it wouldn't be on there. We chose 'Stand On Your Feet' as the first single, I don't know if it's the right choice or not, but we all liked that song and when we wrote it we thought it was kinda special. It's a crazy mix of styles, it doesn't sound so crazy now but when we wrote it we were like "how can this work?" but it worked out. It makes it kinda special. I enjoy the ballad too, 'Live Like I'm Dying', I usually don't like ballads that much and I think I'm a terrible ballad writer, but someone told me a couple of weeks ago that I'm a good ballad writer and I was like "am I?" I usually think I'm a shit ballad writer! (laughs) I always think I suck at it so I try twice as hard when I write a ballad!
What's the story behind the Def Leppard-ish album title?
That is the story behind it, you're spot on! We wanted one of those titles that you can remember that's just one word, like 'Hysteria', you had 'Animalize' from Kiss, we wanted one of those to give a real hint of the eighties because we have one of our feet buried deep in the eighties. It's like a silly name but you can remember it. Our new bass player (Magnus Ulfstedt) came up with the name 'Armageddon' but I thought it was so boring, then I said "what about 'Armageddonize'". We looked it up on the internet but it's just a made-up word so it's unique - if people are going to search on the internet for Eclipse they're gonna find a million hits, but if they search for Eclipse 'Armageddonize' they're gonna find our album. We've got to make it stand out, there are too many "Eclipse" around on Spotify and on the web. It's a really bad name for a band! (laughs)
You and Magnus have been working together for some years now, what is the key to your
successful working relationship?
We like the same stuff, we accept the same music, we don't fight over many musical directions at all. We're big fans of AC/DC, that's how it all started, we went to this one year music school many years ago and at music schools there are always music nerds playing Fusion and Jazz and stuff and we were almost the only people playing Hard Rock. That's how we met, he could play AC/DC and he was impressed that I knew all the AC/DC songs as well. And we played them exactly as they should be, most people played them totally wrong! Maybe that was our musical love at first sight! (laughs) He's very easy to work with, we were very different at first, I am very energetic and always have tons of energy and he's a more laid-back person who follows along, but he has so much musicality, he's so good at guitar and he has so many good ideas, we work well together.
You already have a number of shows planned for 2015, is this going to be your biggest tour to date?
Absolutely, it's gonna be our first real, proper tour, we've always just played one gig here and one gig there, maybe a small tour, but this is the first time we will have a bigger run. It's a big thing. I think we have six or seven dates in the U.K. which is probably more than the U.K. actually wants! (laughs)
I have to ask while I have you, is there a possibility of a new W.E.T. album in the near future?
Not at the moment, we're tied up with Eclipse, Robert has Work Of Art, Jeff is starting his new Metal-style career with SOTO. I have no idea what's going to happen. We haven't put the band to death, it's still live, but at the moment we have it in the freezer.
It must be great to be part of the movement that is happening in Sweden and the rest of
Scandinavia right now, there are so many great bands.
Yeah, there are a lot of Melodic Rock bands, I don't know the reason why. When we started,
although we don't like the first two albums at all, back then if you played Melodic Rock people laughed at you and thought you were an idiot for doing it, but less than ten years ago it all changed and if you say you play Melodic Rock no-one laughs anymore, they respect the music style and it's spilled over so a lot of young musicians play this type of music. They feel confident to start working with it, that's a big difference, and when there's a lot of bands, it gets competitive.
What advice would you give to young bands?
Write good songs. That's the only thing people care about, good songs. Production and musical skills are second to that, if you have good songs people listen, if you have bad songs no-one cares, doesn't matter how good you are playing guitar or singing. Look at The Ramones, they're crappy musicians but they have good songs. It's always about songs, that's the main focus.
This article was used with kind permission and co-operation from FIREWORKS MAGAZINE
Buy the current issue
Current issue: #68:
