Scar Symmetry Interview

The Gauntlet: What's new with Scar Symmetry?

Henrik: Well, the album is due for release and we recorded it from August to November of last year. We recorded two videos for the same song believe it or not. Now we are about to go on tour with the Neckbreaker's Ball Tour.

The Gauntlet: For the video, it was shot for 'The Illusionist'. Why was it re-shot?

Henrik: I think Nuclear Blast thought it would come out differently. They decided to put more of a priority to the band so they wanted a more professional looking video than the first one. We had to fly to Serbia to re-do it. It was interesting.

The Gauntlet: Don't they realize it is metal and should look low budget?

Henrik: [laughs] It had to have some computer animated stuff that the first video didn't have. The first video was just us playing basically. They finished it up this week so I think we will see it on all the TV channels that play metal in the coming weeks�I hope so anyways.

The Gauntlet: The new album "Pitch Black Progress" hits the stores in the US on April 21. Was there ever pressure to make another album that would be as well received by both fans and critics like "Symmetric In Design"?

Henrik: With the first album, we didn't know what we were doing. We just recorded songs we liked and didn't think much about it. With the second album, we felt more pressure obviously. One thing was we signed to Nuclear Blast which is a big label and also has a cult status. The other thing was we wanted to follow up with an even better album. That was two factors that made us feel a bit more pressure.

The Gauntlet: I assume you had more money this time around to tweak the album?

Henrik: Well, the promotion for the album is a lot bigger. But recording wise we didn't have much more money.

The Gauntlet: "Pitch Black Progress" was darker in both the lyrics and music than its predecessor.

Henrik: We don't really plan this stuff. We are writing so fast so we just go with what happens. It just sort of happened this way.

The Gauntlet: So many bands from around the world are trying to emulate that Swedish Black/ Death sound in their music. Being from Sweden, Scar Symmetry doesn't do this, or maybe it's just you guys are pushing that sound further.

Henrik: Yeah. We played all that extreme stuff in the past. When we formed this band we wanted to do something totally new compared to what was done before. That's the reason we sound more melodic and all that. We are trying to explore every side of Christians voice. This time we added more heavy metal vocals there. I don't know if we are going to evolve it even further as I think it sounds pretty good right now. We will see what happens. We never know what direction we are going in the future.

The Gauntlet: You stated earlier that Scar Symmetry will be going out on the Neckbreakers Ball.

Henrik: Its actually like a festival tour. Most of the shows will be with festivals. They call them Euro Festival Tours. They will be cool.

The Gauntlet: Is it a tour that the label put together? All the bands are Nuclear Blast bands.

Henrik: I don't know, but yeah, all the bands are on Nuclear Blast.

The Gauntlet: Is it difficult to get the band together to tour and record with all members being in other bands?

Henrik: Yeah, sometimes it's a problem to fit all the schedules together to make everything work as smoothly as possible. So that's always a problem. We haven't played much live yet so it hasn't been a really big problem. In the future if we are going to play live a lot it will be more of a problem.


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Tags:  Scar Symmetry  , Henrik, interviews

Jason Fisher    April 19, 2006