In Flames

Interview - Anders Friden

9/1/00 (last night of the U.S. tour!)

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Sam and Dan finally get the tape recorder to work in the presence of In Flames...

Dan: Been on the road long on the American tour?
Anders: "Almost 5 months...almost...4, 4 1/2"
Sam: New album kicks ass, who produced it?
Anders: "Same guy as we've always used, I mean the band itself of course and Fred...he produced all the albums, but together with the band we know pretty much what we want..it's always good to have someone else to tell you if you go over the line, or to have another influence."
Sam: You guys have had alot of different people in the band, do you think it keeps the sound fresh, or does it mess with the chemistry?
Anders: "No, it's perfect, I mean we've had this lineup now for a couple years, and it's..we have a really good time together you know..."
Dan: You guys are pretty well molded together?
Anders: "Yeah, we don't wanna change..I mean everybody out there is perfect at their position...and ..it's cool, we're very tight...we're not just a recording or a touring band, we hang out together back home as well, we're very tight."
Sam: You guys have a pretty unique sound compared to stuff that we usually hear over here, who are your influences?
Anders: "When we started out, pretty much... as your heros, whatever...in the begining anyway, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, the German church metal scene, death metal in general. but these days it's so much more, there are 5 guys in the band, and we all listen to such a big variety of music and I think that's why we sound the way we do these days. We don't limit ourselves, we don't have to be metal 24 hours a day, you know we can say that we really enjoy any type of music."
Dan: You said you've been on the road here for five weeks, overall how's the response been for this tour or your other American tours in comparision with other tours you've been doing in Europe?
Anders: "We've toured in the summertime...I think if we have this tour in the winter, there would be more people, but there have alot of people anyway, and we've had good response. And normally maybe not tour with bands like Earth Crisis and ...we haven't done it before...and but it's good because we reach out to alot of different audiences, which is cool and I kind of enjoy it so I think it's something like this...we're going to in the future as well. Try to tour with bands we normally wouldn't play with or be put together with..not only hardcore bands, it can be whatever, but reach out to a new audience and we do good, of course we are more well known in Europe, but it's getting better and better."
Sam: Alot of people refer to you guys as "death metal" or "power metal", when I think of death metal I think of Morbid Angel and Entombed...
Anders: "yeah, me too..."
Sam: Carcass etc...do you think the sound of death metal has changed?
Anders: "What people say is 'death metal' these days is kind of...is diffucult because you have so many sub-genres, and I don't want to limit ourselves...I mean it's up to you people to decide whether we are this or that but, we're a metal band...that's what we are...and of course we come from a death metal background and I'm really proud of the whole genre, and there's alot of good bands, but we don't want to limit ourselves."
Dan: So it's no real task for you guys to try to really catagorize yourselves...
Anders: "Why should we do that? we're doing music and that's up to other people...we don't have to struggle to become something, we do what we do and if people like it, fine they can call us whatever, if they don't, they can get the fuck out, listen to something else (laughter all around). That's basically it you know?"
Sam: Are there any leftover tracks or covers that might turn out as b-sides?
Anders: "There's one cover on the Japanese release, actually a funny thing, it's a band called No Fun At All from Sweden. It's more like a surf/punk, a skate/punk song that we did, it's just to piss people off really, (laughter) do something different. It's a cool track. It's mostly just to piss people off in general because people expect us to do you know, Maiden covers or do whatever covers, and we've done that."