Avatarium: Life After Death
Like a slice of bread to beans on a plate, AVATARIUM mop up the dreariness of doom metal with the psychedelic haze of 60s and 70s soft rock. Since 2013’s self-titled debut, the supergroup have stitched together a blueprint for doom’s evolution. If 2019’s The Fire I Long For was bluesy, groovy fireworks firing off into the distance, new album Death, Where Is Your Sting twists together psychedelic pop, soft-rock, and doom into a theatrical wonderland.
“That’s what stands out with AVATARIUM, that ability to shift the tradition a bit, because when Marcus [Jidell, guitars], Leif [Edling, founder] and I got together for the first time, it was like something different happened; we bought my jazzy sound and styling to the Edling landscape,” reflects vocalist Jennie-Ann Smith, sipping on cups of coffee in the kitchen she shares with husband and bandmate Marcus. “After nine years I think it’s fair to say we’ve contributed to the development of doom.”
AVATARIUM’s descent down the doom-rock rabbit hole in less than a decade is described by Jidell as a “lucky accident.” Whilst the guitarist admits, “you can’t plan these things,” there’s something about the song writing trio that helped shape the sound into something special. Even with Edling leaving the flock a few albums back for health issues, his spirit lives on as Death, Where Is Your Sting offers both their greatest departure and their first time writing the album entirely as a duo.
“One of the reasons why it works is the three of us live in it; Leif’s spirit is still in the band, his spirit is always hovering over us, and it’s inspiring to work with him,” Jidell adds. “The combination of the three of us is something to be grateful about, because when I go back and listen to our songs, I’m like this song is okay, and this song is good, but these songs, these songs make me think ‘wow, it’s amazing we get to do this’ and that feeling is wonderful.”
Whist Edling’s spirit can be heard throughout Death, Where Is Your Sting’s eight songs, it wasn’t easy steadying the ship as sole songwriters. Having started down the path on The Fire I Long For, which to Jidell felt had “a lot of tension” as they found the pressure of taking over from Edling “quite a big weight to carry,” AVATARIUM have gained confidence which led to them experimenting more than ever. “We’re even more daring on this album, we try to push the boundaries and challenge ourselves and our audience. When we look back, it’s like okay, maybe it wasn’t that big a step but if you listen to all our albums, every album has a unique sound, it’s own identity.”
“To take full responsibility of the songwriting process, you have to have a lot of courage and faith to take on that challenge, and to trust your compass is okay, and trust that my best will do” Smith thoughtfully adds, as Jidell counters, “it’s a very good thing to have this kind of pressure if you can learn to live with it.”
Rather than just learn to live with it, AVATARIUM – completed by bassist Mats Rydström, drummer Andreas Habo Johansson, and keyboardist Daniel Karlsson – took the challenge, the pressure, the responsibility, and ran with it. It’s resulted in an album that’s like a waltz, a journey across dancefloors and stages, a play that unfolds track-by-track. Death, Where Is Your Sting is a tapestry woven together with strings of gothic folk, soft-rock, art-pop, Americana, prog, and good old-fashioned heavy metal. So much so, the title track will have you calling AVATARIUM ‘the gothic FLEETWOOD MAC.’
“FLEETWOOD MAC was very present when we were talking about this album,” confesses Smith, smiling as she lets out their trade secrets. “But I’m also very influenced by traditional Swedish pop writing style, which means we have sequences of major chords with melancholic lyrics, it’s the contrast that’s interesting to me. Of course, folk music does the same and so I wrote the chorus in that way and I sent it to Marcus and said ‘do you think we can fit this into AVATARIUM?’ and I was quite optimistic about it.”
Jidell and Smith are like surgical scientists, splicing ideas from across music’s spectrum into AVATARIUM’s DNA. It’s why Death, Where Is Your Sting, despite not being a concept album in the traditional sense, should be listened to from start to finish – it comes alive as it ebbs and flows together.
“It really is like a map or a puzzle, take out one piece and replace it with another and you get something totally different, so the energy of the whole album with these songs has taken us and now the listeners in one direction” Smith suggests, as Jidell finishes her thought trail. “The wish is for people to listen to the album and experience an emotional journey. The best way to listen to it is to sit down and listen, and just be there, because it’s not a party mood album, but it has elements of classic metal and doom. You could take out some songs like Nocturne, like if you want to drink beer tonight and listen to AC/DC and IRON MAIDEN, you could throw in one or two songs from our album.”
Beyond just sound, Death, Where Is Your Sting challenges listeners to take that emotional journey for themselves. It explores life’s biggest existential questions, and it asks you to consider the relationship between life and death, the very meaning of your own being and purpose. Sparked by Jidell’s supermarket trips during the global pandemic and Smith’s day-job as a psychotherapist, AVATARIUM found themselves questioning the very things that had engulfed their lives yet had never dedicated time to discussing.
“I’ve been thinking about what happened during the pandemic, about how normal people who were not sick were starting to worry about death, people who would never do that otherwise. Everyone suddenly got so afraid, like if the guy behind me in the supermarket coughs, I will die tomorrow so it’s interesting to me that in ordinary cases we never talk about these thing. When someone dies, we get angry, and whilst it is terrible, and extremely sad and horrible when people die, but it is also part of life. And if you’re not interested in death, you’re probably not interested in life; I don’t think you can learn about how to live a good life if you’re not interested in death.”
Whilst Jidell accepted mortality for what it is, seeing it in a new light, Smith found the irony in the correlation between her day-job as a psychotherapist and her role in AVATARIUM. “I’ve worked 16, 17 years as a therapist and I’m quite amazed – I come from a different musical background so I never thought I would fall into the doom metal world, but of course I should because it’s very close to what I do – I’ve been occupied with questions concerning death, and my own life since I was a kid.”
“I was never a depressed child or been a depressed adult, I’ve kept a good balance, but I’ve been always occupied by these questions. That’s what I like about doom; it’s very powerful but it’s not depressive, it has this energy, this drive, this force and still it handles all these big, serious questions; our music is a vessel for these great questions.”
A vessel is exactly the purpose AVATARIUM provides Death, Where Is Your Sting with as it transitions from their hands to ours. Whether you scratch away at the surface and dig below into the subject matter, or simply submerge yourself in their soundscapes, Jidell and Smith hope you find a light at the end of a tunnel. “For me, it’s important to bring out light from the darkness. It’s dark, it’s heavy, but it should always be like a ray of sun that you see somewhere like hope” says Jidell. “I need to listen to heavy music sometimes just to feel good. Some people like watching action movies or sports, for me, I need that element of aggressive music, but I also need more tender, more soft, emotional, and hopeful music as well.”
It’s that ray of sunshine, that element of hope, that keeps them from delving too far into what their music really means. It’s an open door for adventurers to step through and discover. “In Sweden, we have this saying that you shouldn’t write anything on anyone’s notes, and that means you shouldn’t tell people what to think. It’s important for me that when it comes to art, the art will give you space and freedom to reflect,” Smith admits, smiling at the thought of helping someone, somewhere. “Our music is multidimensional, to make you feel that you can open this door and explore a landscape, or you can enjoy it just as a song, you can drink a beer on Friday to one song, but maybe listen to it another day and find something else for yourself.”
Death, Where Is Your Sting is out now via AFM Records.
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