SOILWORK guitarist Peter Wichers is featured in a new interview with MusicRadar.com discussing the band's new album, The Panic Broadcast..An excerpt is available below.

Q: One of the signatures of your own playing in Soilwork has been the blues element. It seems to be rare in metal these days and it again comes through in the groove of some of the riffs on this record but you'll also throw in blues licks too…

Wichers: "You mean the blatant PANTERA / Dimebag rip-off? [laughs] He's the guy that really made me want to do this. When it comes to songwriting, I listen to a lot of DEEP PURPLE and a lot of the older stuff such as THIN LIZZY and I think that rubbed off, because we wanted to create that blues element [in the band]. A lot of death metal fans maybe don't appreciate it and I can't say it's completely original, but it's something that I think is kind of cool to blend into the kind of extreme metal style that we do because, as you said, it's not really that common."

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As previously reported, BW&BK; recently attened a listening session for The Panic Broadcast. Following is an excerpt from the story:

For a band that did themselves absolutely no favours by committing songs like ‘Sworn To A Great Divide’ and ‘Exiles’ to tape – let alone kick off an album with them – Soilwork have rekindled hope with The Panic Broadcast. Whether they’re going all out blastbeat insane on ‘King Of The Treshold’ or pulling off the greatest song Devin Townsend never wrote for Synchestra with ‘Let This River Flow’, the band delivers the new songs with a vibe and attitude that hasn’t been felt in years.

“The album leaves you breathless when you’re done listening to it,” says frontman Bjorn "Speed" Strid. “It’s only 10 songs, 48 minutes, but it’s definitely enough to get our point across. I think we expressed everything we had to say both musically and lyrically in those 48 minutes. It turned out to be really brutal, and even when there are softer parts are still so intense and in your face. There’s so much presence in the music that it becomes brutal. Even though ‘The Akuma Afterglow’ is a catchy song, for example, there are still progressive elements in there. It’s not just verse / chorus / verse / chorus; we tried to experiment past that.”
“It’s interesting with riffing and soloing because it’s not just basic chords behind a solo,” he adds. “The music is really progressive and it actually means something. I mean, the drums on this album are just insane, and I’m glad because Dirk (Verbeuren) was choked on the last one and not able to play the stuff he wanted to.”

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