Amon Amarth: Even Vikings Have A Hard Time Travelling

12/19/07 12:30pm

by Pete Richards (CHARTattack)

I have to admit I was a bit nervous interviewing Sweden's Amon Amarth. A band that call themselves vikings and drink beer out of dead animal horns on stage would make any frail pencil-pusher like myself a tad edgy. But to my surprise and relief, Amarth vocalist Johan Hegg was an incredibly down-to-earth chap and didn't threaten me with any sort of butchery or bludgeoning, nor did he cast any spells from the Norse winds upon me. I thank him.

ChartAttack: So you just got off tour with Dimmu Borgir in Europe, now you're getting ready to come to North America and headline your own tour. You must really appreciate your down time.
Johan Hegg: Yeah, but it's going to be cool. I kind of wish I could have been home for a little longer than 10 days before heading out on the next tour, but you know (laughs).

That's the metal lifestyle you live, my friend.
Exactly (laughs).

Is it hard being away from home?
Maybe. Not so much for me, but the other guys they have families and stuff like that. But I live alone. I'm a loner (laughs). I don't really have a wife or kids and things to take care of. But on the other hand, it's always nice to be home when you've been away for a long time.

Last time you were in Canada was for Sounds Of The Underground. How did that go?
It went well, really well. It's always hard to know what to expect from a festival tour like that. I mean, it was like 14, 15 good bands on that tour and you never know what response to expect from the crowd, but it was overwhelming all through the tour. It went really well. We really felt a strong support from the fans and it was also cool hanging out with the other bands as well, so we had a great time.

Do you find that it helped spread your name?
I'd like to think so, yeah. We had a lot of good support every day on the tour and I think we got a lot of new fans.

Do you find that travelling in a festival like that kind of alienates some of your fans?
That's one of the problems. I mean, for us, if our fans want to see us, we need to get a bigger fan base to be able to come tour ourselves, otherwise it won't be possible. So we have to do supporting tours in order to build up our fanbase and I think this tour we did with Sounds Of The Underground was a perfect way for us to get our band name out there to promote this upcoming newest tour. I mean, it's like we said, when we tour for our fans we want to do a full-blown 90-minute set. But just to get new fans in, it's perfect to do support tours and play shorter sets and hopefully people will appreciate what they see and hear and come to the headline tour.

I hear a lot of European metal bands saying how difficult it can be to break into the North American market just because we have so many of our own bands over here touring.
It is tough to break into the North American market because first of all you have to fly over there, of course, and then you have get all the visas and all the paperwork and all that crap worked out, and it's a lot more of a hassle for European bands and a lot more costs for European bands to come over there, which also means that they have to cover a lot more costs. So those tours are more expensive than a local band from the U.S. A lot of American bands that I meet, they travel in vans and play clubs and make a living that way and of course it's a lot easier because they don't really have to worry about visas and all that stuff that costs a shitload of money to get a hold of.

Part of the problem with Canada too is it's such a large country and travelling back and forth is just hard to do, especially in the winter.
Yeah. The thing is the cities are so far apart, which of course makes it difficult. But the way we've done it in the past is that you do maybe a couple shows in the States and then you go back into Canada. The problem, though, is you could go from Edmonton and Calgary to Vancouver maybe, but then you'd have to go across the Rockies and that can be tricky in the winter time. And then you'd have to go into the States and then back into Canada again, so that's kind of difficult sometimes.

It's sad to say that you can't just play wherever you want, but sometimes it's not realistic.
Unfortunately, sometimes it's difficult to put it on the map and I know a lot of people who say, "Well, that's sort of on the way..." Yes, but we're travelling in a bus with a trailer and that can't drive as fast as a normal car and also we do need to have some days off once in a while. You can't do shows every day. That's kind of tough on you physically, even if you would like to.