Rockezine.com interview with Amaran on Mar 11, 2004

with Ronnie Bergerstahl on Mar 11, 2004

Amaran surprised with their sophomore album Pristine In Bondage. This band is ready to conquer the world with their excellent Swedish style melodic metal. Time for some questions. Bassist Ronnie Bergerståhl answers.
		Please introduce the band. Amaran is a 5 piece band from Stockholm/Sweden. Kari Kainulainen and Ronnie Backlund (guitars), Johanna DePierre (vocals), Robin Bergh (drums) and myself, Ronnie Bergerståhl (bass). Kari and Ronnie Backlund formed the band in the spring of 2000. They studied together and finally discovered that they had much in common music wise, so they decided to start writing music together. The songs were so strong that they decided to form a ‘real’ band and they found the rest of the members through ads. The debut album A World Depraved is released in 2002 and the second album, Pristine In Bondage is released in Januari 2004.
		A female singer, metal. My first thought was, here we go with another gothic band. What can you tell anyone who thinks Amaran is a gothic band? They’re wrong, simple as that, haha. In my opinion, Amaran has nothing to do with gothic bands. We don’t dress like a gothic band, we definitely don’t sound like a gothic band and our image is so far from gothic that it’s ridiculous.
		Should be a marketing nightmare, not? Clean female vocals, metalband, no keyboards and not playing gothic type metal. Hahaha, well maybe, but we haven’t gotten any negative reactions so far regarding this.
		What I also find very fresh is that your sound doesn’t just rely on Johanna’s vocals, but the music itself, the riffs make up for a quality album all the way. Any comments on that? Thanks. The songs are very guitar based so to say. There are constantly new things happening within the music and especially guitar wise. The vocals are very important but I think many bands push the instruments too much to the back and that’s something we don’t do. For an untrained ear it might sound like a mess in the beginning but when you get used to it, it really gives the music another dimension. We’re extremely satisfied with the production on the new album. Pelle Saether in Studio Underground did an amazing job. The sound is very raw and heavy, yet crystal clear.
		Please tell us all we need to know of your new album… Well, it’s called Pristine In Bondage and it kicks ass hehe.  It’s recorded in Studio Underground in Västerås by Pelle Saether, a quite unknown studio so far actually but very good. Carnal Forge record all their albums there, just an example. It contains 10 songs and there’s also going to be a Japanese release with 3 bonus tracks and one slipcase version with 1 bonus track. The same guy that we used on A World Depraved, Daniel Long, does the artwork and I think it’s quite spectacular.
		In what part of the metal scene would you place yourself? Obviously not in the gothic scene, hahaha. No seriously, I tend to use the phrase ‘melodic metal’ when I get that question. I think it’s very hard to put yourself in a genre…
		Tell us something about your influences? Good music! All five of us in the band have such a different taste in metal and music in general so there’s no ‘universal’ influence for all of us.
		How does songwriting work for Amaran. Rehearsel room or one main song writer? Kari wrote all the music for Pristine In Bondage and Johanna wrote the main part of the lyrics. On A World Depraved Kari and Ronnie Backlund co-wrote some of the music. However, we arrange all the songs together in the rehearsel room.
		Is Amaran the type of band that needs to develop and explore different styles within metal or do you feel comfortable in what you do right now? Of course we want to push ourselves forward constantly, but we will always sound like Amaran. I mean, there’s no chance in hell that you’ll hear rapping and shit like that on the next album but we really don’t see and have any limits in what we can and will do within the Amaran sound.
		Amaran is often compared to In Flames. What do you think of that comparison? I can understand it and it’s ok. There are far worse bands out there to be compared to and our music doesn’t sound too different from theirs so…I’d rather be compared to them then say…The Gathering or Theater Of Tragedy.
		What’s in the future for Amaran? Tours? Summer festivals? We did a 2-week tour in Januari with After Forever, Nightmare and Dark Moor. It was called Metalian Festival Tour No. 1 and we had the time of our life. Unfortunately Ronnie Backlund fractured his right arm 5 days before the tour was supposed to take off. Esa Orjatsalo from the Finnish band Dreamtale helped us out. After that we’ve done some gigs in Finland, Norway and Sweden with Katatonia and we do plan to do some more gigs in the end of April, early May. Only one festival is booked so far this summer, Decibel 2004. We hope to do more tours. Summer festivals would be awesome but I think we have to wait until next summer for that.
		Any last words? Check out the new album Pristine In Bondage and hopefully we’ll see you on tour really, really soon.
		(Marc Lochs)