Aviana: A New Era
What would you do if all your band members left you? We’d be certain you’d probably pack it up and call it a day. That’s what most musicians do. However, that’s not what Joel Holmqvist did. Instead, he turned his band, AVIANA, into a solo project. It turns out that that is only half the story. When Distorted Sound sits down with Holmqvist to talk about AVIANA‘s new album, Corporation, and their future, he tells us that the solo project is not the case.
“That’s just what others have assumed, I think,” he says when asked why he continued AVIANA as a solo project. “However, I was the only official member in the band for quite some time since all the old members decided to leave the band back in March 2020, so I didn’t have much choice.”
He elaborates on this, “I wasn’t alone [when creating the album, Corporation]. I had my management, my friends and musicians around me that I always went to when I needed an opinion on something. I’m my own worst enemy and I’m never satisfied, so having someone else listening to my work and telling me that it’s good is pretty much the thing I need to feel happy about the work I put down. Also working together with producer/songwriter Vojta Pacesny on the instrumentals was such a relief, since he saw where I wanted to go with the songs and he really nailed it.”
Corporation is an album with a very distinct cover. It shows a hand covered in black paint reaching out to another hand. It is definitely an eye-catching album cover. “Whilst filming the music video for Oblivion I was standing behind the camera when this scene was filmed as the kid is being helped back on his feet by a blackened hand. At that point it hit me there and then that it would be the perfect way of representing the album cover art,” Holmqvist explains. He goes on to elaborate on the meaning behind the cover. “It represents a young kid/teen starting to see the world for what it is, being greeted and welcomed into that harsh reality of depression, fear, and anxiety.”
This makes sense. When you’re young, you are often oblivious to the harsh world around you. You often see things through rose-tinted glasses. However, as you get older – and especially to your teenage years – that is when the rose-tinted glasses are cruelly ripped off, and you see the world for what it really is; a harsh place where nothing is as completely black and white as you thought it was. Anger is the central mood for Corporation. “I was at a very dark place when the process of writing started,” Holmqvist says. “And every song, even though some are emotionally driven and heavy in that sense, comes from a first perspective of anger.”
That anger can be felt throughout the album. However, it also makes it a very passionate project as well, and that can be heard in the album. It is clear that a lot of love went into it. But Holmqvist considers the album to not be an album, but instead a collection of singles. “So at the same time as the songs were starting to take shape, the pandemic hit. At first, I didn’t really know how to tackle that. I didn’t want to sit around, have the album being released and not being able to tour it. The songs were written together as an album, but I couldn’t release them as one. So the team and I figured “‘why not just release all songs as singles’. That way we could enable a way to stay active during a pandemic without touring. That’s what we did. We released the album bit by bit. This is the collection of singles from when I rebuilt this band with a new era.”
This makes a lot of sense. In a time where a musician’s main way of gaining fans – touring – was paused, a lot of work had to happen in order to keep everyone engaged in a safe way. If AVIANA had just decided to drop the album, it could have been nothing more than a flash in a pan. Therefore, releasing each song as a single was a creative way to keep the momentum going.
That new era appears to be shaping up nicely. Corporation is part of “a storyline that we’re building through the upcoming albums. Nothing I can talk too much about without giving it away. But this name is one of two big plots in a world we’re creating and introducing.” Furthermore, it is an indication for the future sound of AVIANA.
“We’re going to continue experimenting of course,” Holmqvist elaborates, “but we’re feeling confident with what the sound has evolved into, and I personally can’t wait to keep on adding to what it is already there today.”
For fans who were worried that this was going to be the end of the line for AVIANA, don’t be. It is clear that there is much more up their sleeve. As for the near future? “We just want to tour for a while now. We’ve been cooped up in Sweden for two years and we need to compensate for those two years of not touring,” Holmqvist laughs. “Though we’re already working on album number four. But it’ll be some time before that is seeing the light of day…”
Corporation is out now via Arising Empire.
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