Taipei Metal

Interview: Soilwork's Bjorn “Speed” Strid

Soilwork’s world tour in support of their seventh full-length album, Sworn to a Great Divide, brought them to Taipei on Saturday, May 24th. The band’s front man, Bjorn “Speed” Strid, took some time to talk to TaipeiMetal.com before the show about the band’s history, evolving musical direction, and of course, the impact of increasingly severe hangovers as the band gets a little older.

TM: Your name, Soilwork, is a play on words meaning “Working from the ground up.” After more than 10 years as a band, do you still view Soilwork as a band that is working its way from the ground up now that you’ve reached a certain level in the metal world, playing Ozzfest and Wacken Open Air?

Speed: Well, it’s been a long road and I would say that I’m really grateful that we’ve come this far and I definitely think we deserve it. We’ve been working really hard and taking the long road, and it’s been going up small steps for each record up to the seventh album now, and as you mentioned Ozzfest and stuff like that, of course, has been really important to our career. As long as it’s going up and we feel that we have something to say with our music there’s no reason to stop.

TM: Speaking of going up, the critics always seem to embrace each new album as a positive step forward, but certain fans out there, mostly people who talk shit online…

Speed: Blabbermouth.

TM: Exactly. Sometimes they scrutinize Soilwork for supposedly going in this lighter more melodic direction. Do you pay any attention to that sort of criticism?

Speed: Not really. I do expect it for every album we make because we can’t really make the same album twice. We always develop our sound, otherwise it would be pretty boring. It’s gotta be a challenge every time. I still feel that most of the Soilwork fans out there, they grow with the sound. They are loyal fans that expect that slight change in the sound and development.

TM: When you guys were doing A Predator’s Portrait, which was the first time you used clean vocals, what led to the decision to go in that direction?

Speed: Basically we did a Japanese bonus track for The Chainheart Machine and I tried out doing some melodic vocals, it was actually “Shadowchild,” and I felt really comfortable. It felt like something different; something unique. The other guys in the band they develop on guitar, and bass, and drums and keyboard. I felt that I wanted to take another step as far as the vocals as well. I always wanted to try out different kinds of vocals and I think I managed to do that. There’s a lot of stuff going on, especially on this new record. I think there’s more different voices than ever before. I like it that way.

TM: In previous interviews you described Soilwork’s music as being a balance between melodies and intensity. Obviously these two things are polar opposites, so how do you go about achieving a balance between the two?

Speed: I won’t say that it’s very easy to find that perfect balance. I would say that every now and then, I mean Figure Number Five that’s a great album, but I feel that we kind of lost a little bit of the intensity there. We just love to build it up and break it down and find a passage there through the softer parts up to the more intense parts and build it up instead of coming to the point straight away. It’s a lot more interesting creating music that way.

TM: So how do you avoid having too much of one or the other when you guys are writing songs?

Speed: I don’t really think about it anymore. I write some songs on the guitar as well, and then I add vocals and melodies. I guess it has just become a natural recipe even though we always need a challenge when it comes to the songwriting. I think we’ve always triggered ourselves to come up with something new and try to change the structure a little bit for the songs.

TM: You mentioned a recipe. Do you think you have the recipe down now, or are you always looking to take yourself outside of that?

Speed: It’s an ongoing journey. I think we’ve become a lot better songwriters and I think we have the recipe there, but we tend to change a little bit on each release. It would be pretty boring if we just had a recipe, like Manowar, but we know how to write a Soilwork song but we always need a challenge.

TM: Over your career you guys have toured with a lot of different bands from Cannibal Corpse to other more melodic bands like Dark Tranquility, In Flames and Killswitch Engage. When you are playing with a straight-ahead death metal band like Cannibal Corpse, how do fans of their music react to your music?

Speed: I actually remember that tour, talking about Cannibal Corpse. And we heard a little bit of “Go home,” and stuff like that, but it’s getting more and more accepted. People seem to be more open-minded now in the metal crowd. You can listen to some kind of softer, hard rock and you can still listen to Cannibal Corpse and people would still be ok with it.

TM: So you do think metal fans are becoming more open-minded nowadays?

Speed: I think so. There’s also a new generation growing up, younger kids listening to metal. They seem to be more open-minded than my generation. When we were growing up it was like, Entombed, Dismember. You couldn’t listen to other stuff. It was like “Are you death metal?” It was different back then.

TM: So these days do you have any preference as to the type of bands that you tour with?

Speed: When we do a headlining tour of course we want a band that we know; that we met before, people that we like. Still, if it’s a great band and we’ve never met the guys, it would be interesting still. As far as not headlining and jumping on tours, of course we want exposure and to play to more people. So we don’t really have a preference. But we can’t just join whatever tour. They asked us to join Nightwish and I’m not quite sure that would be our tour.

TM: Of all the places you’ve toured with Soilwork over the years, which one of them has been your favorite?

Speed: Australia is one of my favorites. It’s really cool. It’s just a great place and a really interesting crowd because it’s like a mixture of European, American and Japanese crowds in one. You have the violent mosh and circle pits like they have in America, and they have the fist-banging mania that they have in Europe, and then they’re loud as Japanese people during the song. It’s really weird. It’s everything at once. That’s one of my favorite places.

TM: Your guitar player Ola Frenning, he left in 2008 after being in Soilwork for 10 years, and it was reported it was in part due to touring exhaustion, as did Peter Wichers back in 2005, so being a band that tours so heavily do you ever feel similarly exhausted with touring?

Speed: It is tough. And I just want to clarify that a little bit. The difference between Peter and Ola was that Peter made that decision for himself. With Ola, he didn’t really leave the band. We made him go because he couldn’t really cope with the touring and also had personal issues and musical issues. But it is hard. We did 250 shows for Stabbing the Drama. We released the latest album in October and we’ve already done over 100 shows, so it’s been crazy. What really kills you is the boredom in the afternoons when there is nothing to do. When we do a tour like this, we’ve just been to Australia and we’re flying every day between the cities in Australia and it took us like 40 hours to get to Australia and then do all those shows. We went straight from the airport, had two hours of sleep at the hotel, and went on stage in Brisbane after 40 hours of flying. So stuff like that kills you. When you’re on a tour bus you don’t have to fly every day and you can sleep as long as you want to, but when you get up and you brush your teeth, then you just sit around. That’s what kills you, the boredom in the afternoons; waiting to play.

TM: Speaking of traveling for 40 hours and then playing right away, how do you keep your energy up after so much travel?

Speed: You just have to. You’ve got a show to do. The show must go on, to use an old cliché. These kids are there to see you and you can’t say, “Sorry, I’m so tired.” Fuck that. That’s really tough. That’s gotta be the worst trip ever.

TM: You mentioned the boredom being the worst part. How do you kill time when you show up in a city and you have to sit around all day and wait to play?

Speed: If it’s a cool city I would like to check the town out. That’s what I usually do. I would read a book maybe and do some exercise. We bring boxing gloves on tour.

TM: Do you guys spar?

Speed: Yeah, a little bit.

TM: With each other?

Speed: Yeah me and Flink, our bass player. We started doing that on the American tour. It’s pretty cool. It keeps you going a little bit. What else is there to do? I don’t really start drinking until 6 normally. (Holds up his beer and glances at his watch, noting seeing that it is approximately 4 p.m.) Close enough.

TM: Can you ever foresee a point in your life when you’re going to get tired of touring or maybe just scale it back a little bit?

Speed: Well, I’m going 30 this year. You really need to stay in shape to be able pull it off. I really feel that more and more because I just stopped doing Swedish tobacco and gained fucking 10 kilos because you start eating, but I try to cope with it. You can stay pretty healthy, but I would never ever stop drinking booze and beer. I always do that on tour otherwise I can’t tour. But hangovers are getting worse and worse.

TM: Do you think that’s just because you’re getting older?

Speed: Probably, yeah. It’s getting worse and worse. I need to drink to be able to tour, otherwise I’d be bored to death. You only get to have fun one hour a day on stage. I would be so bored. Then again I shouldn’t complain. I really do what I like the most.

TM: But the hangovers are getting worse.

Speed: Oh yeah, definitely.

TM: I’m 25 and I even notice a difference between 20 and 25.

Speed: No, there’s no difference there. Just wait a couple of years.

TM: Well, that’s something to look forward to. Going back to the personnel situation, you brought in David Andersson on guitar now. Is he going to be a permanent addition to the band or is he a temporary replacement?

Speed: He’s doing session work now. We’ll try some other guitarists as well and hopefully decide after this summer. But he’s a good friend of ours and a good guitar player. He’s doing a great job.

TM: Your latest album, Sworn to a Great Divide, it’s your seventh album. Critics once again have described it as a positive step in the evolution of Soilwork, and they’ve even used terms like “accessible” and “mass appeal” in describing it. Are these descriptions something you could have foreseen back in 1995 when Soilwork was a death metal band called Inferior Breed?

Speed: Not really, no. I mean, from the beginning we wanted to make something different. I think one of those albums that we couldn’t have lived without is City by Strapping Young Lad because it was so different when it came out, and that really inspired us to do something different even though we didn’t really know how to in the beginning.

TM: So how did you go about that? Was it a conscious effort to become more melodic and to do something different or is it just something that occurred naturally with each new album?

Speed: I think it was pretty natural. I haven’t really thought about it. We haven’t been sitting around saying, “Ok, let’s go commercial. Let’s sell more records.” We haven’t really thought about that but we developed as musicians and songwriters and of course when you add melodic vocals it sounds more melodic in general. We also realized that you can work with intensity and brutality in so many different ways. Just because it’s not screaming vocals all the time doesn’t mean that it’s less brutal or intense, to me, personally.

TM: Were you ever worried about any of the potential fallout of taking the musical path that you did in becoming more melodic?

Speed: Of course you get a little bit worried, but it’s nothing really that has been affecting me in a negative way really.

TM: Virtually every critic who has reviewed Soilwork’s albums have remarked on how your clean vocals have improved over the years while you’ve lost nothing of the brutality of your screams. What steps have you taken not only to maintain but improve your vocal technique?

Speed: I’ve been practicing on my own to a lot of different types of music. I’m also playing with a band called Highball Shooters which is more like 70’s rock, funk, and I just like to sing in general. I’ve been practicing a lot. I had a vocal coach but that was way back, just before the recording of A Predator’s Portrait. So I got some advice from him and then I’ve been practicing like crazy on my own since then. And of course, a lot of touring with Soilwork, so you get to know your own voice a lot better.

TM: What direction can fans expect Soilwork to go in on your next release?

Speed: There’s something that tells me it’s gonna be a little more intense. More smart-structured intensity; intense album. But still really melodic, maybe even more like an atmospheric feeling.

TM: This being your first time in Taiwan, what would you like to say to the fans here?

Speed: I’m really psyched to be here. We heard some good words from both Dark Tranquility and In Flames, so I’m definitely looking forward to it.

by Joe Henley