Amaranthe: Moments Of Change
Swedish metallers AMARANTHE have spent a decade and a half carving out a unique niche, infusing metal with towering pop hooks, electronics and a sense of boundless excitement at the genres they boldly collide along with an immediately-recognisable triple vocalist setup. Now, though, they’re about to release perhaps one of their grandest statements in new album The Catalyst. Where previously they’ve held back from symphonic elements, or used them far more sparingly, this album sees them embrace symphonic metal wholeheartedly alongside their tried-and-tested sound. We caught up with guitarist Olof Mörck to get the lowdown on all things The Catalyst.
“What we initially set out to do was something that was even more open-minded,” he muses. While he recognises many bands set creative boundaries to help direct their efforts, “AMARANTHE has always been about pushing boundaries, so it’s been a very interesting challenge to try and walk that line,” he explains of their decision to push even further outside their creative space. On first listen, it’s clear The Catalyst is an AMARANTHE album; all the hallmarks are there, but as Olof suggests, there’s a restlessness and fearless attitude on display to pulling on even more sonic threads than they have before.
When it came time to write the album, they found that given the extra time they had over the past few years due to lockdowns, that it allowed them to do plenty of soul-searching about what they wanted to do next and what truly inspired them. “We decided quite early on that we’d have less boundaries, be more open minded and at least try out crazy ideas,” he smiles, “and if we felt that they don’t fit, we can decide later once we’ve seen the consequences of that.”
He singles out specific examples, like with lead single Damnation Flame; “It’s still very much AMARANTHE in terms of themes, the three singers and the way we deal with composing and arranging. It was really interesting to introduce these new elements and realise, it still sounds like AMARANTHE.” The decision wasn’t reached lightly; in fact, he remembers that in the early days, there was a very conscious decision to avoid the symphonic metal tag. “We wanted to clearly state we’re not another symphonic metal band that is lifting off NIGHTWISH just because we have a female singer,” Olof recalls. “It was important to stay away from that to define what we were about.”
It’s not just newly introduced symphonic flourishes, either; Re Vision takes a visually different tack than before. “It’s a different take on the futurism that’s always been present in our music,” Olof explains, with the band opting to shoot a music video that leaned into 80s cyberpunk like Blade Runner far more than their usual futurism. In another musical divergence, Breaking The Waves “has a lot of Scottish folk influences in the way it’s arranged.” Here, as Olof says, the band utilised chord progressions and melodies of traditional Scottish folk music but arranged it across their own instruments and singers to give it that AMARANTHE sound.
That’s all part and parcel of the decision with The Catalyst to embrace far more out-there ideas than they had before, from Scottish folk to symphonic metal becoming a far bigger part of their DNA than before. As Olof tells it, “it’s always interesting how composition and sound are two different things. In terms of what does AMARANTHE sound like, you could probably pull in some really weird influences from genres you don’t expect. As long as we arrange it like an AMARANTHE song with the three singers, growls, modern keyboard sounds, then you can always push it in the right direction.”
Lyrically The Catalyst also takes some big swings and departures from before. As the name suggests, the album is themed around the idea of a particular event that causes some kind of large change, with each song discussing something different. “Change tends to not have a moment,” he explains, “it tends to be very gradual, but there are some moments that if it was different, everything after would be too. When I met Elize [Ryd, vocals] back in 2006, we weren’t frequenting the same places, so it was unlikely we’d meet. But by going to the same bar, it set off this huge chain of events.”
On The Catalyst itself, the likes of Insatiable examines the ideas of over-consumption on climate change and a catalytic moment; but Olof stresses that could go both ways, with some technological innovation perhaps helping undo some of the damage done. Elsewhere, Damnation Flame wraps itself in a tale of vampires, the idea of their catalyst moment being the point of turning. “It’s just in a different framework and topic,” he smiles. Even the title came about because they realised they were unconsciously writing about these moments of change.
As we wrap our time together, Olof is clearly excited to get the album into the world and for fans to hear it, not just recorded but live, too; “we’re building a really elaborate stage setup to transport you to a different place,” he grins. But most of all, he wants to stress that for AMARANTHE (and surely other bands too), “it should be fun and interesting to yourself to compose, but it also has to be interesting and adventurous for others to hear it. If it’s not interesting to me, it’s probably not interesting to others!”
The Catalyst is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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