Down The Garden Path With JOHANNES ECKERSTROM From AVATAR

Entering album number ten, the all-encompassing sonic realm
inhabited by Swedish musical enigma Avatar looked set to face the
band's biggest personal hurdle to date. Very much a band who have
proudly proclaimed their intention to maintain musical growth from
day one, Avatar were forced to confront the critical and commercial
success of the wildly entertaining album Dance Devil Dance. While
most bands would welcome such success, it also forced Avatar to
take stock of their music and career.
This is a band who have steadfastly refused to become a parody of
themselves, forsaking convention and expectation in pursuit of
their own musical vision from where the sonic Garden Of Eden would
forever bunker down. But the temptation would surely have been
there. The temptation to possibly rehash whatever winning formula
was at the core of Dance Devil Dance's success and squeeze that
metaphorical cash cow while the milk was still fresh and
creamy.
So what did they do on their recently released follow-up, Don't Go
In The Forest?
They did exactly what long-term fans of the band and the band
themselves would have expected and basically raised their middle
fingers in the air in an act of defiance to the Metal Gods, who
felt they had paved the way for Avatar to continue their journey
unabated to the upper layers of the global music empire.
While understandably retaining certain elements of what was created
on Dance Devil Dance, Avatar more took the challenge of continuing
their sonic evolution, exploring new and unchartered ideas
personally. Maybe not outwardly, but certainly in the dark recesses
of their brain, the band vowed to stick by their word. Stick by
their mantra, their fans, but most importantly themselves. What
they created was pure musical genius of unrestrained creativity
that is perfectly represented by the intentionally sporadic and
unexpected turn taken over the very first few songs on Don't Go In
the Forest and only gets more disturbed from there.
HEAVY was given the opportunity to journey into the creative mind
of Avatar frontman and mastermind Johannes Eckerström and relished
the chance to put some sense to the engulfing madness.
"The first couple of weeks is transpositional in the sense that you
are a writer; you're a performer, we're a bunch of stuff, right?"
he more stated than asked the question. "And release, as in putting
something out, that word has a double meaning. Because release also
means letting go. And as far as the writer in us goes, it's done.
It's gone forever. It doesn't belong to us anymore, it belongs to
everybody."
We mention that it must be hard to emotionally let go of a body of
work that has dominated their world for such a large period of
time.
"There's a thing I do for myself...," Johannes measured, choosing
his words carefully. "Ever since going back to the Black Waltz,
because that album started an... I don't know... a quarter-life
crisis kind of place in our lives, at least speaking for myself and
John (Alfredsson, drummer). We had a powerful moment of that around
that time, which, long story short, led to us really thinking,
'okay, this is the last album. Fuck it.' And that mindset of this
is the last album, fuck it, I've tried to keep that ever since. I
mean, I have some kind of confidence in that we will get to do
another one (laughs), but it's always that question. If this were
to be the last album, would I be okay with that? Did we achieve
what we want to achieve here? If the world hates it, did we do
enough to be at peace with that? And yes, I am. So, yeah, I have
that little mental exercise or whatever you want to call it to deal
with exactly that."
In the full interview, Johannes spoke deeper about the musical side
of Don't Go In The Forest, including the deliberately eclectic
nature of the music and the way they approached the order of the
songs on the album. We discussed the singles released and the
thought process that goes into their selection, and the ways in
which Avatar go against usual industry practices when it comes to
everything about their music.
Johannes explained the creative vision of Avatar and the importance
of continual progress and experimentation within their music, their
place in the sonic universe, creating an all-encompassing music
experience for themselves and the listener and Avatar's perpetual
quest for musical enlightenment.
We explored the importance and meanings behind the album title and
took a look inside the theatrical nature of the band and their
music, discovering even more layers and complexities in Avatar and
their quest. As if we needed to go down that rabbit hole…


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