By Andrew Bansal
Swedish old-school heavy metal band Enforcer look set to take our world by storm with their new release ‘Death By Fire’, coming out today February 1st in Europe and on March 5th in North America. Their third studio album, following up the 2008 release ‘Into The Night’ and 2010’s ‘Diamonds’, this will be their first release through perennial old-school metal supporters Nuclear Blast Records, having signed to the label a couple of months ago. As soon as I started listening to the album a few days ago, I knew this is quite a special offering that would go down extremely well amongst true heavy metal fans all over the world. Immediately, I contacted the label to set up an interview with guitarist/vocalist Olof Wikstrand, and had a detailed conversation with him earlier today. Read it below, and visit the band on the web using the links at the bottom of this page, for tour dates, album order info and more.
Right now you must be busy preparations for the Europe tour coming up. How’s it going man?
Yeah, it’s going alright. We’ve rehearsed pretty much all of this week, pretty intensely, doing some other preparations, fixing all the merch and fixing all the stuff that we’re going to take on tour. So it’s a busy time!
That’s cool man. You’re doing this tour with Grand Magus and Angel Witch. It’s always good when touring bands have good new albums out, and I feel both these bands have great new albums. Have you heard them yet?
I’ve heard some of the new Grand Magus record, but I’ve heard lots of the new Angel Witch record, and I like that record a lot!
Talking of new albums, yours is sounding fantastic. I’ve been listening to it constantly ever since I got it from Nuclear Blast. But what’s the response been from people in general? Does everybody else also liking the album?
Yeah, the response so far has been incredible! Because you really don’t think about what other people would think of it when you do a record. You just focus on doing the best you can and to satisfy yourself. We don’t really think about any external expectations of what we would do. We only thing that’s essential is to doing something that we can stand for ourselves. But then, after everything is done you start to get a distance from the record. So I didn’t expect anything at all from what people would think of it, but the response has been amazingly good, to be honest.
Right, and it’s a 35-minute album which is perfect, because people can actually listen to the whole thing in one sitting. Has that always been your aim when you cut the album for its final product?
Well, yeah. The goal in some way is that the listener should love the album the first time he hears it, you know. So, we’ve been working a lot on how to build the album and to create a flow and dramaturgy throughout the whole album. Then I think it’s very important not to overdo anything and not to put in any fillers. We don’t write any fillers, we write good songs. And then for the flow of the record I love to build it almost in two acts, A side and B side, and then you create a certain flow throughout the whole record by doing that.
That’s interesting, man. So, while writing the album did you write any more songs that were not used because of the length, or is this all you wrote?
We had some more recorded but it didn’t turn out the way we wanted, so we dropped it in a pretty early state of the recording. But you always do that, you know. You drop some stuff and you record something new until you get some distance to the songs and you can hear them in another context.
Yeah, exactly. One of the things that you said in the press release for this new album was, a 35-minute album is meant to be played on vinyl LP. Are you releasing this album on vinyl? If you are, will there be any difference in the sound as compared to the MP3 or the CD?
Yeah, it’s definitely meant to be played on vinyl and I think it’s already released. The release date in Europe is today, and I’ve already heard about people buying it on vinyl, so it’s available on vinyl already. The thing with this record is, we’ve recorded the whole thing ourselves. We produced, recorded, mixed and mastered the album completely by ourselves in order to create the perfect Enforcer sound. By doing that, we’ve accomplished to have control over 100 per cent of the sound instead of 99. The vinyl version as well as the CD version is mixed not as any other modern music today. It’s mixed with lots of dynamics, you know. When you listen to it, you probably have to turn up the volume 30% compared to any other modern metal recording. That’s also the 30% extra that we have to give to push it. So it’s much more dynamic than any other records of today, and then we can bring out reverberation and all that kind of stuff to create the certain vibe on the record. I don’t think I’ve heard so much reverb on a record in 25 years!
You also talked about how some of your favorite albums fit perfectly into the ideal vinyl length of 19 minutes each side, after which you start losing sound quality. Can you name a couple of such albums that inspired you in your early days?
How long is the first Iron Maiden record? It’s just about 30 minutes and it sounds great. But also Scorpions’ ‘Taken By Force’ and Judas Priest’s ‘Sad Wings Of Destiny’, those are albums with lots of flow throughout them. They are made to be played in a certain order. You should listen to the record from the start to the very end, then you’ve got the complete experience. You don’t pick out any songs from those albums. Those are your great albums, you know.
Totally agreed! Coming back to this new album of yours, you’ve chosen ‘Mesmerized By Fire’ as the single and you made a music video for it. The whole album itself is one piece of music in my opinion, but perhaps ‘Take Me Out Of This Nightmare’ is a catchier song. So, was it a case of saving the best for people who buy the album or come to see you play?
I think that all the songs on the record are the best we can do. I can’t say that any song is better than anything else, you know. I think all the songs are just as good, otherwise it would be completely useless to do another song. If some song was better, than we have to do all the other songs as good as that one. So, all the songs play their role on the record. We felt that ‘Mesmerized By Fire’ was pretty much the song that had everything in it in order to be the typical Enforcer song, the song that summarizes the whole album. ‘Take Me Out Of This Nightmare’ is a catchy tune and it’s done to be a very catchy tune, but that’s not only what we’re doing. Mesmerized is both melodic and catchy, and it has a B-part which is like a total outlet of energy in a very typical old Enforcer way. So we felt that the song had everything.
Right, I have to agree with that. It’s a good explanation. So, this is your first release on Nuclear Blast, which is awesome because I’ve been doing review and interview features on their bands for a while now and they’ve always been one of the strongest supporters of classic metal. It’s very fitting for you to be on that label.
Yeah! I mean, I can’t really say that I know or listen to any other bands on their roster but at least they seem to do a good job and they work very professionally as far as I know. It was a natural step for us to take after the first two albums. We wanted to go to a bigger label and give everything we’ve got.
Coming to the music on the album, I feel that the guitar tone and the overall sound of the guitars is very similar to the first couple of Iron Maiden albums, the Di’Anno era. That’s the most striking feature of the album for me. Was that a deliberate thing or did it just come out naturally when you were laying down the sound?
We definitely wanted to have a heavier guitar sound. I think on the last record we were not very happy with the guitar sound in the end. We wanted to bring back the raw type of guitar sound that we had in the beginning. Actually the reference to the guitar sound on the new album is like the first demos that we did. It’s basically old Marshall GMPs with an overdrive pedal in it, just to push it. It’s a very special sound and it makes the riffs stand out a lot more. We hate this new modern guitar tone that every band in the whole world uses. It’s like you can’t even hear the riffs because the guitar tone is so flat and overly distorted. We can have plenty of distortion but it’s still the dynamics that we really like, to make the riffs stand out as possible.
Your vocals as well, are sounding as good as they ever have when compared to the previous two albums. Has it taken a lot of effort and practice to achieve this level?
I think you practice when you play, and we played a lot since the last album. So I guess I’ve learned from that, but in the last albums we didn’t really focus on the vocal patterns until everything was recorded. This time we wanted to write every song and put the vocals in a way that really exaggerates my kind of singing, you know. Like, many songs on the ‘Diamonds’ album are high pitched and it’s really, really hard to sing. We wanted to have songs that felt natural for me to sing so I could sing it my own way instead of trying to act like a Bruce Dickinson or someone that I’m not. So that’s probably why you think it’s better, because it’s more me, much more me.
Do you think the upcoming touring cycle will be easier for you then, as you don’t have to hit crazy high pitches? I guess this album is more comfortable for your range.
Well, it’s not exactly that. It’s just that I use all of my power instead of trying to be something that I’m not. We still have very high-pitched parts but they are also made to be able to sung, not extremely high all the time but more flowing.
I think you toured the US with Cauldron in 2009. Do you have plans to go back there on this album cycle any time soon?
Yeah, we do have that but we just don’t know when or under what conditions yet. We’re definitely looking into the idea of getting back to America. It’s a big market for us there too, just as much as Europe. Our aim is not to be able to play just because. The aim is to get out to people who like what we do, and give them the heavy metal show they deserve to see.
How was it touring with Cauldron? They’re also a band with a similar approach.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever met any other band that shares the attitude towards music the same way we share with Cauldron. They’re probably the best guys we’ve ever toured with. It’s just something special, you know.
Links:
‘Death By Fire’ album review
www.enforcer.se
Enforcer facebook page
twitter.com/enforcermetal
www.youtube.com/olofwikstrand