The Phoenix Network:
 
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
Big Hurt  |  CD Reviews  |  Classical  |  Jazz  |  Live Reviews  |  Music Features

main_InSolitude_480
HIS OWN PRISON In Solitude frontman Pelle Åhman on 2011's The World, The Flesh, The Devil:
"We were bleeding and crying while making the album."

When I am finally able to get through to the cell phone of In Solitude's tour manager, they have emerged from a massive dust cloud, their metal-mobile finding civilization after a long spell traversing the deserts of Arizona with no idea where they are going. The blistering sun and warping heat of the American Southwest would seem like a jarring contrast to the winterscapes that adorn the hills these Swedes call home. But once I get singer Pelle Åhman on the horn, it becomes clear that, regardless of the outer landscape, it is the long dark winter of the soul that is truly home to these metal visigoths. "Touring is a meditative state," Åhman explains brusquely, "with 30 minutes, daily, where you are consumed by fire and then hours upon hours where you must take your medication to get yourself through it. Music is an inward process, but everything you do alters your emotional world, and it is through this that I find inspiration."

Which is of course metal-speak for "touring gives us ideas for radical metal anthems." Something the band has done already, twice: first with their 2008 homonymous debut, then last year with their ante-upping The World, The Flesh, The Devil (Metal Blade). Both albums have long-horned goats adorning their covers, and both are packed front-to-back with a dynamic heavy-metal assault. Their tunefulness and twin-guitar blaze-chug have found the band tagged as "traditional," a categorization that sticks in their craw. "We get this feeling of putting forth a huge effort," says Åhman. "A devastating process that has changed our lives. And at the end the only thing that we hear from some people is that it sounds like Mercyful Fate, or something like that. What they don't see is that we were bleeding and crying while making the album."

So, okay, first point taken: don't suggest that the band does, indeed, sound like King Diamond and Co., in the best possible sense, what with their meaty riffs, high pitched screams, demonic themes, and melodramatic structures. As to point two: if you listen deeply to the band's music, it becomes clear that they aren't joking, that there is a darkness and deep sadness that is a million miles from most of the clowns making mock-trad-metal with built-in winks and nods. If the band is using the sonic palette of primo '80s riff-NWOBHM-metal, it is in service of a tormented internal sacrifice that is anything but cheesy or ironic, especially in the way that Åhman's voice conveys wounded martyrdom and pained pride. "We are traditional in the sense that the song structure is traditional, but I don't think the rest of it can be called traditional," says Åhman. "I mean, metal, if you look at the history of music, is still at its beginning. And I think, even within that, we are on our own, a bit."

1  |  2  |   next >
  Topics: Music Features , tour, metal, music features
| More


ARTICLES BY DANIEL BROCKMAN
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   CHARLI XCX IS READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP  |  July 24, 2012
    If 2011 was a year of the general populace getting bombarded with new female solo artists coming out of nowhere to blow up our Interwebs and destroy our notions of the pay-your-dues career track, then 2012 is shaping up to be the year of reckoning.
  •   REFUSED REUNITE: SHOULD WE CARE?  |  July 17, 2012
    Songs may exist for our entertainment, but bands often thrive not just as music makers but as exemplars of behavior.
  •   SLICING UP METAL GENRES WITH BLACK BREATH  |  July 03, 2012
    Anyone with even a passing interest in heavy metal knows by now that the musical style has become subsumed in an obsession with subgenres, warring factions under metal's big black hate-filled umbrella.
  •   MAPPING IRON MAIDEN’S LEGACY IN METAL  |  June 22, 2012
    Music is a universal force — able to foment revolution, sell culture, and communicate ideas both specific and diffuse.
  •   PANIC! AT THE PALLADIUM  |  June 13, 2012
    This past week, rumors flew that the Palladium, the stately concert hall in downtown Worcester, was due for imminent demolition.

 See all articles by: DANIEL BROCKMAN



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2012 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group