Amaranthe: On Manifest and Eurovision

Despite a lot of cancellations of exciting tours and festivals for 2020 due to pandemic reasons, staying inside meant that a lot of bands have artists thought of another way to create music and livestream performances. For Swedish power metal group, AMARANTHE, the year was originally filled with exciting shows, but instead, they continued work on their sixth album, Manifest, out now. As the release date gets ever close, Distorted Sound sat down over Skype with vocalist Elize Ryd and guitarist Olof Mörck to discuss the new album, the musical development of the band, and the most important question of them all: would they ever take part in the Eurovision Song Contest?

“If we would do Eurovision, we want everyone to be as excited, otherwise it wouldn’t be fun. So I say yes, I vote yes,” Elize excitedly exclaims. “It actually is funny because 50% of the band loves Eurovision and one third of the band actually performed in it. They performed in the Swedish Eurovision, but didn’t make it to the big finals.” So look out ABBA because AMARANTHE could be claiming another win for Sweden! The band would certainly have a strong following behind them, despite the fact that only a few rock and metal acts have succeeded in the contest.

From their self-titled debut all the way to their 2017 release, Helix, the band have transcended through the metal genre, exploring sounds and styles, and bringing together classic and electronic instruments throughout all of their albums thus far. Olof also brought up the changes that have happened within the albums, saying, “the biggest difference is that we’ve constantly been trying to innovate and to reinvent ourselves within the boundaries that we created already with the first album and the very first songs. So it’s, it’s always a different, I would say that it’s a little bit of a document of the of that time.”

“For example, if I listen back to Maximalism from 2014, those are emotions manifested into music that we had at the time,” Olof continues to explain. “It’s quite a powerful tool in that sense, but for the composer, it’s even more. When I go back to the very first album then I remember 10 years ago, when we were sitting in my own small apartment, stitching those first ideas together. So it’s a different collection of emotions throughout the last 10 years.” Elize adds, “we still have the same energy, we still have the same thought but the thought and the perspectives change, that’s the only difference. We learn when it comes to music and stuff, we learn more about the digital part we learn more about how we write a song or record a song It’s like practical developments, but not so much musically because like I said, I love all the albums.”

As mentioned, plans in 2020 for AMARANTHE to tour and share their music live were ruined due to the pandemic around the world. Instead, they focused their energy into finalising everything to come for their sixth release and work around the situation to still deliver content, like music videos for example. “Manifest is the result of some passionate labour and also some strange circumstance that we were working on and recording the album,” Olof illustrates. “It was quite a bit of commotion to get it done. Now it feels really, really good that we did get it recorded! It’s definitely further development of what we established with Helix, which in turn was a little bit of a recipe of our career so far, because we always had a kind of distinctive sound already from the first album, and then we went a little bit more experimental. We were trying to consolidate all those different ideas and just take it into this one really strong direction. Manifest is our new little baby just filled to the brim with our passion and our different ideas.”

Manifest is also unique as this is the first time that other artists and musicians featured on the band’s album. People like Angela Gossow and Noora Louhimo perform on the album alongside AMARANTHE on different tracks, an exciting change for the band and for their fans to hear. “It was an amazing experience,” Elize adds into the conversation, “and I’m very proud of us that we could kind of step out of our comfort zone and actually invite other people into our world. It was just like an amazing experience to be able to share these moments with someone else outside of the band because we have been together for so long, like 14 years now. I think it’s very healthy for both of us it’s refreshing.”

Technical difficulties made communication with the band tricky, but both Elize and Olof did leave strong words for younger musicians who wanted to follow in their footsteps to make the metal music they want to make. Elize put it simply by saying, “allow yourself to be yourself, don’t overthink stuff and be open-minded. Don’t listen to the wrong people. Always listen to the right people. Trust art first, and most of all, always trust yourself and your gut feelings and intuition.” Olof then adds his own words of wisdom, “it sounds like a cliche, but it’s really true; don’t give up. As a very wise man once said, when you feel like you know the most down and most like a failure, you’re the closest to actually making it. A lot of people actually give up because they get a lot of crap from their friends because now they’re 27 years old and they don’t have a real job or whatever, then they might be dangerously close to making it. But because of societal pressure, they just put it on ice instead of becoming the decisions. They always seem to be side by side.”

Manifest is out now via Nuclear Blast.

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