Interview By: Ashley Loth
Side Stage Magazine: My first question is, where did you get the concept for Feathers and Flesh? Is this like a story that you heard growing up or something that you kind of took your own little spin to?
Johannes: It’s an original story that we made up ourselves with Inspiration from other stories which is what started the whole thing into a fable. The first idea that I had for that was to use existing fables and like I said, put kind of a twist to them to lay with the perspective of who was the good one, who was the bad one. Then I wrote a new fable for this and still kept the idea to play with the perspective of things, which is why the protagonist is this owl, meaning she is a nocturnal hunter. She’s ruler of the night. Basically our protagonist is on the dark side and she goes to war against the light side in a way that, of course in metal, it’s not that strange. The whole structure of fable, and tell an epic story like this, that the one we follow through trials and tribulations, is a creature of the night, is all about playing with perspectives.
Yeah. I really enjoy that because, it being kind of like, some people would think of it as she was the enemy, but there’s two sides to every story, so it’s really interesting that this is kind of shows, everybody has their own motives involved so it’s really giving the other side a chance to explain a view of how they see it.
Actually when I think about it, I find it interesting what you Americans will think that the bald eagle in the story is such a douche.
Well if you’ve ever met a real bald eagle, they kind of are douches.
How does the story of the owl relate to you on a personal level. I’ve read some of the things you have where it was saying it was kind of like a coming of age thing for you guys, and paying your dues in the industry. How does she influence you? Why did it help you to dedicate an entire album to her?
With it being a fable, that’s the nature of a fable, that they are metaphors for humanity. It’s more about the human experience that owl talks about, of course than an actual animal’s experience. I think what I’m saying is, each creature represents a certain frame of mind, a certain set of values, certain ideas where I can not single out that the owl is the one, that she’s the one who is the most like me. They all come from my mind. She definitely carries sides, since I was able to write her, of course it came from somewhere within me. The pike is just as much me as anything else.
How does the Character relate to you guys as a band?
I think honestly, not so much specifically. I think it’s more personal, it’s more about the experience that I would have had or could have had independently of what I’m doing in a band or not. This just gives me an opportunity to write this kind of stuff and release it. It’s not a metaphor for being in a band, if you will.
How do you think your fans will react to your protagonist and the story that you’re going to be telling?
That’s a good question. It’s really a question that I don’t ask myself so much. It has proven to be very fruitful for us career-wise to not worry too much about what other people think outside of the band. I think it’s very true for most good bands out there, and most successful bands. You write and you play for each other first. When we wrote it, it was definitely more than a personal decision for personal reasons. Now unleashing it to the world, I feel confident that those interested in being taken by a story will tag along for the ride, but at the same time I also feel like a kick-ass heavy metal album that anyone can enjoy. Which is also a part of our mission statement, that we didn’t want to lose any aspects of what Avatar has been up until this point, even though it all goes a bit deeper than before.
Awesome. I was looking through your website and I saw that you have an illustrated book along with the album, to go side by side. Are these going to be able to purchase while y’all are on tour? Is it so that you can read the book along with the album while you listen?
Yeah that is exactly it. What happened is that the body of work since the fable was written in the form of an epic poem, 109 verses. I think I counted it. It’s quite extensive. Together with the lyrics, that makes a story. That is the album, you know? Of course the poems are not being read or performed in the music, but still an important part to understand the concept. It was just a question of, it wouldn’t have been enough space in a booklet. We wouldn’t have done the work justice to try and cram it all on there in small print and turn it into liner notes.
Therefor we made the decision to leave it all, poem and lyrics, and put them in a separate piece of work. Which is, I think pretty cool because usually the lyrics were exclusive to the physical album, now this is something that can be purchased by the people who buy the mp3 or stream the music … Physical albums, now there’s something kind of different, that goes alongside the music that people can get. I like bringing back the physical, holding a piece of work in your hand, that part of the culture. We’re bringing it back in this way. I like that.
I like that too. So many people now-a-days are so into digital media and stuff like that, that it kind of loses the meaning of what it’s all about. It’s really great to see the graphics and the imagery, and everything that y’all put into this. I think that’s really awesome, and also for all of those memorabilia fans and stuff like that, that love to collect things, it’s something really sentimental and meaningful. I don’t think I’ve heard of many other bands really doing something along this line. It’s kind of opening the door for other bands to follow suit, which is kind of cool, but you’re still creating your own kind of world.
Yeah, exactly. That’s always the idea, trying to find your own little way of doing things in music, and as a band. We just always feel like, every band wants to write a classic, and so do we, but I feel like every classic has been totally new at some point. At some point Screaming for Vengeance was the newest album out there with a sound that no one had heard, now it’s such a classic. I wasn’t born when it came out, so it’s hard to comprehend, but it’s like Judas Priest didn’t write that album by copying what happened before them. They set out to forge something of their own, inspired by many things of course, influenced by many things, but then creating your own weapon.
Your tour is kicking off April 30th, will you be theming the show around the concept album, using graphics from the books to depict the story? Or will you be doing kind of like a mixture of old and new stuff all together?
More of the later option there. The idea is that, there’s the concept of the album, and then there’s the concept of the band which we will now Integrate the concept album into. There’s still been an Avatar that’s been around for years before this album that also has stuff that needs to be performed.
And then we do the full fledged theatrical thing of just this album at some point. There’s always ten years anniversary to look forward too in 2026. Maybe that happens before then. It all depends. The main focus now is to do full fledged past, present, and future kind of concerts.
I can get that, because you want to branch out and grab every level of fan that y’all have.
Yeah. I still like Let it Burn. I like doing that live.
This is taking a different look from your other albums. What made you want to actually dive into the world of story telling through a mystical creature’s perspective?
We always wanted to do something that is hard. We want to have a knife on our throats when we create, otherwise I think we would go very stale artistically, meaning that the album after this one, will not be a concept album about birds. We will move on to a new challenge, something that we have not done before, and something that we are not sure that we can pull off, but we realize we have to. It’s all about putting all of the chips on the table and saying all in, and run with it. It’s our method of creating. That’s where the decision came from, to do this at all.
On the journey while looking for the concept, it just grew out of that idea. First it was something that would be in a more simplistic way relating to the band where the whole scary clown angle, and the circus freak angle, and maybe it could be a haunted theme park and I was immediately incredibly bored with thinking of that idea, because it would have been such a cliché, and not really offering anything new. It would be basically Black Walls with more liner notes. That became very boring very fast.
Instead we moved on, and I was thinking to maybe use an existing work like basing the music off a novel, many have done that. When trying to see something that hadn’t been used in metal, there was a Swedish novel series that I loved by Vilhem Moberg, The Emigrants. The problem was that was already a musical by Björn Ulvaeus, okay moving on. Then came the fable angle, this whole twisting perspective kind of thing. Then the ambition grew to write a full original story, came out of that.
Do you think that this dark fairy tale is acceptable for a younger crowd? Do you think it could potentially bridge the gap between the young metal lovers of today and your older metalhead fans?
I didn’t write with a young audience in mind. It’s more like a fairy tail for us who refuse to grow up, but we’re still dead. But it’s also violent and more than anything it’s dark. I think there are always younger people who can handle and take in those things. Kids usually know themselves. Some kids are getting to horror movies way earlier than us adults would like them to, but they know and learn their limits by themselves. I think because this is dark on a psychological, maybe philosophical level, and not so much a gory brutal splatter thing we did. In that sense there is nothing I feel I need to hide. If a child is able to read it and understand it, again with this kind of archaic way … If they’re able to take it in, I think they’re able to process it. It wasn’t intended for a certain age demographic, either older or younger. It’s for metalheads and people who like to dwell and explore darkness. I think that has no age limits. No upper or lower.
Have you though about doing a silent film or anything that can play illustrations from the books, to go along with the music as a possible DVD option?
One dream I had, there’s no plans for it, but you know Daft Punk did that Discovery album, I think it was, where it was all an anime, the whole album was a one hour anime, or something like that.
To do some form of animated version of it, I think would fit very well, and the whole story. That dream or vision exists, but it’s a question about the time and being able to finance it and all of those things. Right now, it’s one step at a time right now. What we’re doing has already been extremely intense. It’s been exactly two years between the album releases and between did we also did music videos and touring for Hail the Apocalypse as well as we were able to write and record a concept album, in when I look back on it seems to be record time.
It’s very intense, but if I ever get to sit and lean back and feel like there’s too much money in my account, I’d love to do an animated movie.
Yeah, totally, I get it. It would be really entertaining, I’d watch it.
I would like to watch it myself. You try to write sounds you want to hear and do a show.
That’s a pretty simple way of trying to keep the quality high, that you are a person who is trying to entertain and impress, and make yourself feel something.
My final question for you is, how do you feel about playing some of the world’s Loudest Month’s festivals?
Looking forward to it. We have gone to the states for the same period now for a couple of years, it seems. It’s always good. Now after we were, what was it called, in Oklahoma I guess, or was it Ohio?
Is it Rock on the Range?
Yes, thank you exactly.
You’re welcome.
I think again, rings in the water, that we get to come back and do even more festivals in this period and we’re honored and think it’s well deserved. The short is that we’ve been excited to figure out how to perform these songs live. They’re a bitch to sing, again we always make it harder for ourselves.
