By Aaron Small

The Dark Epic… is the fourth album from Sweden’s ONE MAN ARMY AND THE UNDEAD QUARTET, and in more ways than one it marks a new beginning for the band spear-headed by Johan Lindstrand, former vocalist of THE CROWN. First and foremost, the cover art is radically different as the band’s mascot, General Grim, who adorned the sleeves of 21st Century Killing Machine, Error In Evolution, and Grim Tales, is nowhere to be found. “Now there’s an even more mean guy - the grim reaper,” says Johan. “From my point of view, General Grim was a pretty cool mascot to have, but it’s not that death metal, even though I made him up. It fits more with bands like IRON MAIDEN and MANOWAR. We really wanted to get away from that and be more aggressive this time with a really straight forward death metal concept.”

A change in sound also occurs on The Dark Epic… “It’s not that melodic compared to the other ones. That was intentionally done by us because Mikael (Lagerblad) the previous guitarist wrote 50% of the songs, left the band two years ago. We really wanted a new and fresh start. We changed some stuff musically; it’s going in the right direction I think.”

Mikael quit in 2009 and was replaced by Mattias Bolander and Jonas Blom, infusing new energy into The Army. “They’re definitely different types of guys,” admits Johan. “Mikael was never that much into death metal from the beginning. I met him when I did the first demo, When Hatred Comes To Life (in 2005), it was Valle (Adzic) from IMPIOUS who recommended him because he was playing in a METALLICA cover band and he was pretty good at doing solos. I checked him out and that was the kind of solos I wanted on the demo. So he tried out and I knew what kind of guy he was, but anyway I asked him to join the band. We had a lot of fun for four years, but then the reality came along and he said it wasn’t for him any more. He needed to step away and do something else with his life. It’s actually for the better of the band because now we have dedicated death metal musicians instead of a guy who really doesn’t want to be here. He wrote a lot of good songs in the past, but it’s definitely a new chapter and these new guys, they have the proper gear to bring this along all the way.”

Of the four One Man Army And The Undead Quartet albums, The Dark Epic… features the fewest songs with nine. Yet early studio reports said there were 13 songs in the works. “The funny thing is that the new guy Jonas, who’s been in the band for a year and a half now, he has written 90% of the songs; I wrote one song. This is a pretty unique thing for a new guy to dominate the songwriting, but he’s writing constantly. We had to put the brakes on before we went into the studio. We had 13 or 14 songs, we rehearsed 10 or 11 songs, but we chose the nine best that fit together. I don’t know what we’re going to do with the rest of the songs? But since he won’t stop writing, we’ll probably have 20 songs for the next album. It’s a good thing.”

Recording The Dark Epic… went off without a hitch. “We were in the studio for quite a short while. It was like three weeks with another week for mixing and mastering, so a total of four weeks. Everything went really fast. We worked with (producer) Jonas Kjellgren (SCAR SYMMETRY) this time as well. He’s really smooth in the studio, he really knows his stuff. He pushes you to do your best without pressuring you. He wants to make the best album; it’s a real positive attitude. He got killer sound, much better than Grim Tales; that sounded too good in my ears. This time it has more feeling, it’s more live. If you turn the volume up, you can really hear the difference.”

The title track, ‘Dark Epic’ is almost entirely instrumental, save for a few lines toward the very end. It’s also the longest song on the album by far, just shy of nine minutes. “This was a song which Jonas intentionally wanted to have totally instrumental. But what will I do when we play it live? Sit in the corner? I sat down with the demo and tried some vocals, but in the end it didn’t fit at all. It felt misplaced. So we decided to do an instrumental with a few lines; it was also Jonas who wrote those lines. Everybody in the band is a huge Metallica fan, especially the old classics ‘To Live Is To Die’ and ‘Orion’, they’re really good songs and you don’t really miss the vocals in those songs. It’s a cool thing definitely.”

Conversely, ‘Dark Epic’ is followed by a brief two-minute blast titled ‘How I Love To Kill You’. Talk about going from one extreme to the other. “Yeah,” laughs Johan, “That’s pretty night and day. My personal thoughts about that song were; should we really include it on the album? First it was like let’s do eight songs, just like Master Of Puppets. But in the end, it’s a good song so let’s blast away the last minutes of the album. It’s a fun finish.”

‘Inside The Head Of God’ would definitely be an interesting place to be. The world is so fucked up; what the hell is God thinking? “Yeah, that was my intention. There’s a lot of wars going on still in the world, and all the wars are based on religion. He’s playing with people like we’re marionette dolls or something. The people involved in the wars really don’t know what they’re doing there, why they’re there or what to believe in? They’re fighting about something stupid. The listener of course will have to read the lyrics themselves and put their own view on it, but this is basically what it’s all about – he’s definitely playing with us up there.”

A video for ‘Skeletons Of Rose Hall’ is now available. “That was the director’s choice. A few of us wanted to have a shorter four minute song, cause it’s easier to make a four minute video instead of a six minute video; especially when you don’t have a budget for a video. We didn’t know what the hell we were going to do? Rune (Foss) the director said ‘Skeletons’ was his favourite and that he had a good vision for it. He’s a good friend of ours so we went to his house and did performance shots in the rehearsal room. It became a really good video. The story’s pretty cool; I had the chance to play a psychopath with a chainsaw.”

The Dark Epic… was released February 25th via Massacre Records, yet tour plans have still not been announced. “Jonas, the new guy, is having a baby in March, so we’re going to postpone the touring plans a while. We’ll focus on getting back on the road in May or June and probably do a couple of festival appearances, then tour in the fall hopefully. But we don’t have anything confirmed yet.”

Will One Man Army finally play North America? “Since I started this band in 2006, my main goal has been to go over to The States, but nothing has happened so far. It’s a tough business. We need to rely on the buyers. If people buy the album, there’s a much better chance to get over there; hopefully we’ll get some good reviews as well. But who knows?”

Johan’s previous band, THE CROWN, got back together last year with a new vocalist, Jonas Stalhammar, and released the Doomsday King album. “I’ve listened to it twice; it’s a pretty good album. I actually got in contact with Marco (Tervonen, guitarist) two years ago when we did promotion for Grim Tales. He was asking me to rejoin, I was pretty tempted. I got a CD of the instrumental versions of the songs and took it home, but the next day I said to myself, I’ve done this before – 13 years with The Crown. All my frustration from the breakup was to build up this new baby of mine, One Man Army. I’m too old to have two bands so I’m going to stick with One Man Army. That was my reason for not rejoining. I’m actually really proud of them. I’m very happy because we’re still friends and they’re doing really good with the new vocalist; he’s a great guy. Hopefully people can see this as they have two good bands instead of one. Without The Crown, there never would have been One Man Army. I’m proud of The Crown definitely. I really hope they will do very good with the new album.” If the two bands happened to play on the same festival? “I would really love to go up there and jam ‘Deathexplosion’ (from Deathrace King) with them!”