Scar Symmetry – דת' מטאל הולוגרפי

Sweden has provided us with many interesting bands over the years, one of them is Scar Symmetry, this sort of a super-group with some very talented musicians from such bands as Solar Dawn, Theory In Practice, Carnal Forge and Altered Aeon. The band's basis is Melodic Death Metal, but they're not afraid to experiment with new sounds, such as electronic keyboards, clean heavy metal singing and great progressive riffs – no wonder that since their foundation 4 years ago, and after 2 successful albums, the band had seemingly conquered a large portion of the world.

Some might say this has something to do with Jonas Kjellgren, a major metal producer who worked with numerous bands (even with our own The Fading), who founded the band, but some claim its all about the members' long years of experience. Whatever the cause is, Scar Symmetry are about to unleash their 3rd album, and that’s a good reason for us to speak with drummer Henrik Ohlsson about the band's evil deeds.

Hey Henrik, for those who only heard about Scar Symmetry by name, can you please explain a little bit about the band and the background of its members?

Scar Symmetry was formed in 2004, we basically met in Jonas's studio (Black Lounge), where all the Scar Symmetry albums have been recorded. I went there to record with another band, Jonas asked me if I wanted to start a new band and that's how it all began. Then, Jonas had a friend named Christian who recorded in the studio with another band. We knew about him and listened to his demos that sounded good, and he was really eager to be in a band, so we accepted him. That's how basically the band was born.

Your 3rd album is about to be released, how excited are you about it?

We're really excited about it – it's the only thing we've done in the past half year [Laughs]… Its been a recording that lasted for a couple of months, and then the last work is the release, deciding how it should look, discussing videos, etc'… that's what we've been doing since December last year, and we're really looking forward to it's release. It's been a really long time for us as well because we used to release albums pretty fast.

I understand there's a strong and complex concept behind "Holographic Universe". Can you explain what the album is about and what is the meaning behind the album's name?

There is somewhat of a concept behind all of our albums, they all deal with quantum physics and how it relates to eastern philosophy – the new science is pretty similar to what the eastern philosophers has been saying for a long time, so it's interesting to see how it connects. The album is basically about that in base level, but then it branches out to a lot of other stuff as well.

It's like a story, there's a continuation of the theme from "Pitch Black Progress" – There it was about how the population of the world is enslaved by its governments, and on the new album, everyone is stating to wake up and to realize this is a holographic universe and not a mechanical universe that the world governments want to sell to people. Everyone accepted it until now, but then they realize no one can really tell them what to think and do and that you don't have to act and think in a certain way – you're free to choose after all.

The band always had something to do with these sorts of sci-fi mystical themes… where do all these ideas come from?

Basically when I wrote this album, a lot of it was actually taken from the ideas around quantum physics and also books on Buddhism. I don't really want to say it has something to do with established religion, but in some ways it reminds of it because everyone knows about it. So the themes are taken from literature like that.

While your first album was very catchy, your second release was more complex, and had very solid songs with more aggressiveness and melody in them. Where does the new album stand in between your 2 previous albums?

I think it's sort of a mix in between the 2 previous albums, but it also comes forward, we tried a lot of new stuff on the album just to make sure we're not recording the same album over and over again. Its important to try new stuff with every release, as long as you don't forget about the key ingredients that are the base of the band in the beginning, because we know what Scar Symmetry is about and what people expect, and we want to keep that along all the experimenting that we do sometimes [Laughs]… We try a lot of stuff in the studio and the stuff that works is what we keep and the rest we just forget ever happening… [Laughs]

While watching your latest studio report I came to notice a few things that I'll be glad if you can shed more light on them. First, do you combine "Breakdance" in the album?

[Laughs]… Well that's a little joke from Jonas's side, he's a happy kind of guy so he put a marker named "Breakdance", and it's just something he wrote that was funny. A lot of stuff like that happens when we're in the studio, we're not so serious, except when we record an album, everything around it is pretty much in a light manner and we don't really act like super serious people all the time, so that what you get to see while watching the studio report.

Second, although it has more to do with your vocalist, I heard him doing some very strong heavy metal singing and also some crazy opera tunes. What is this all about?

Well that's one of the thing that we experimented with a lot, you could hear a change between the first and the second album as well, when he started doing the heavy metal kind of vocals instead of just this groove voice that he did on the first album and now we take it one step further. That's what we do, we try a lot of things out and we all like this Heavy Metal and we all try to bring as much of that as possible into the music without making it purely 80's music, but we really like this blend.

Now that I got those things covered, what can you tell us in general about the new ideas you have put into the album besides the traditional metal riffs?

The songs are twisting and turning a lot than in "Pitch Black Progress", there are many different parts during a song. That's one thing, the other is that the production is a little bit more organic compared to the previous album – "Pitch Black Progress" had really cold mechanical sound to it that went in line with the whole lyrical theme on that album, but this one is more organic and human I think.

We also tried a lot of vocal stuff, a lot of guitars and also a lot of keyboards with strange sound as well – so it may take few listening before you really get through all the layers in the music. There are a lot of progressive elements as well – we're trying to let that shine through because it's another really important thing for us as far as influences can go. Besides the 80's Heavy Metal, we really like progressive music, and we try to mix everything with death metal, so it will become Scar Symmetry.

…Is it similar to what Opeth does or to other progressive styles?

Opeth? Nah, I heard people say something like that but I think we do it in different way, it's more mathematical in a way.

Who's doing the keyboard and electronic parts on the album?

The keyboards done by Per and Jonas, the guitarists. They always do it, so it's no different this time.

While it was more noticeable on your first album, it seems that some of your keyboard parts are inspired by computer games. Is it true?

[Laughs]… No, not really. We're experimenting with the sound, and if something sounds cool then we use it. Usually the keyboard adds something to the guitar – for example, you can have really aggressive keyboard sound that just intensify the guitar or make it more atmospheric. But it doesn't really have anything to do with computer games, even though it may sound similar in times. Sometimes we say that Per's guitar playing sound a bit like computer game – we call it "computer game guitars".

Was the recording process any different than in previous years?

It wasn't different as far as the studio went, because we recorded at Jonas's place again, but as far as the band, we're very different these days, after 2 years of touring and doing festivals. When we recorded "Pitch Black Progress" we haven't toured at all, and when we went to the studio this time, we've done a lot of live shows so we're more secure as a band, and I think that help a lot when we recorded the stuff, because personally I feel more inspired now and excited throughout the recording.

Do you think that because Jonas works with so many bands in his studio, he knows how to make a unique impact on his own band's sound and music, or does actually makes his work in the band similar to the others?

I think he tries to push himself a lot when he's doing a Scar Symmetry album, because obviously, it's his band and he can affect it more in comparison to other bands. The other bands have a will of their own, but when he does a song of Scar Symmetry he wants it in a certain way and he can affect it more. In the production of course he really make sure that it sound as good as it can be every time, there is no laziness involved there even though Jonas may not be the most active person in the world. So I guess it's different because it's his own band but basically everything he records sounds good, and I don't think it affects other bands negatively.

How do you combine your work with Scar Symmetry with all of your other bands and projects? Is it considered as project or as your main priority band?

That's a good question… When we started Scar Symmetry, we all had other bands and everyone was on the same level – everyone have released albums and didn't do that many live shows, but now the band has grown so much over the years that its obviously takes more and more time. Therefore the other bands have to maintain on a bit low level to keep everything working as it should with Scar Symmetry. But I guess that if we want to continue with this band we have to give it more priority than with other bands because Scar Symmetry demands a lot of time from everyone.

A couple of years ago you said that you had a daily job in a Steel Factory. Do you still work there or did the band's success affect your personal life?

No, I've stayed in the same situation as far as day job, everyone works in the band because we're still not making much money out of it. That's the way it goes with a band – starting up, it takes a lot of time before you can get out of the debt to the label because as long as you do something, you owe the label money [Laughs]… so we have to sell a lot of albums in order to do it full time, and we're hoping to achieve it a couple of months after "Holographic Universe" comes out. Hopefully we can focus on this band with 100% when the 3rd album is released.

For the new album, do you plan to shot video clips for any of the songs? Are there any special concepts you would want to show on your next videos?

We just discussed stuff about our upcoming video and we already set a date for it as well, we'll go to Finland to shot it. We've chosen the track "Morphogenesis" which has been released on MySpace and the concept is actually put together by the video director [Laughs] – we haven't really influenced him in any way, so his coming up with his own ideas. We actually had another song in mind at first, but for some reason we changed it along the way. I actually did a video concept for the other song, but we didn't use it, even though everyone thought the idea was good. I guess "Morphogenesis" was more convenient to be a hit or a video.

Maybe after you earn some money you can make the video you wanted.

Yeah, I hope so, it would be really nice for a change. There's so many people involved in all of this, in producing the album, and they all have opinions, so for now, we need to compromise a little bit.

Speaking of videos and since I haven't seen any explanation about it, why did you shoot 2 video clips for the song "The Illusionist"?

That's something that just happened, at first we were supposed to shot a video in Sweden, and a guy – who's actually the guitarist from Legion Of The Damned, I believe, Maurice – he came up to Sweden and shot the first video. Then, Nuclear Blast felt that it didn't really hold the standards that they wanted, because they realized there was something going on with he band, and "The Illusionist" was really appreciated by people, so they ordered us to travel to Serbia and shot a video that had all the computer graphics and animated stuff which looked a little bit better.

Personally, I like both of them, each in different way.

Yeah, the first video is a little bit more underground live looking. It's like we're doing a live show in an abandoned building or something.

You guys come from Sweden which has very strong legacy of bands and styles. Do you see yourselves as part of the Death metal scene or as part of something else closer to the less-traditional Soilwork and similar bands?

It's hard to define our band, but everyone does it for us, and so we don't have to worry about it. We sort of belong in the Death Metal category, if you count all the Melodic Death Metal bands into it, but some people don't count the melodic bands, so in that case we're just Metal. We started with the term Melodic Death Metal, that's basically how we see ourselves, but I guess we have more in common with Soilwork and bands like that in compare to Morbid Angel or more brutal stuff – that something we have to accept. We never really saw ourselves similar to Soilwork, that's just what people telling us. I guess as long as they like our music its Ok, but if they want to put us down and they use it in negative term, then its not Ok [Laughs]…

Where do you see the band in 5 years from now? Do you have any plans for the music or concept of your next albums?

That's the case with Scar Symmetry, we never plan anything – when we go into the studio we hardly know the songs [Laughs]… We work a lot with the songs in the studio, we basically have no idea when we started recording the album, and how it will sound at the end. So 5 years it seem so far away for us that it's impossible to say what will happen actually, maybe we'll do acoustic albums or one song epic kind of stuff… I don't know… maybe even MTV unplugged [Laughs]…

Are there any plans for the summer festival season or later this year?

We're having some problems with that. Because we worked on the album in the past 4-6 months, it hasn't really given us the chance to concentrate on that and no one else has done it either, so its kind of hard for us now because its too late to apply for festivals. We'll have a couple of festivals in Germany and that's about it at the moment, but I know that Nuclear Blast is planning something for when the album is coming out and they're having a meeting – today actually – talking about tours and how they're going to help us to promote the album. This is something that would be really interesting to hear about once they decide what the option for us.

Last, please tell our Israeli readers why do you think they should listen to Scar Symmetry and especially the new album.

This is the album with that kind of Metal, it has a little bit of everything, and everything sounds fantastically good if you ask me. I don't think there's anyone who can say this new album sounds bad in any way – you might have opinions about the music, but it really sounds good and I think all Metal fans will like it. It's just really good music, produced in a very professional way, and can inspire a lot people… so give it a chance!