KNAC.com recently caught up with SOILWORK frontman Bjorn "Speed" Strid. The following is an excerpt from the interview:

KNAC.com: With Peter Wichers (guitars) leaving the band, did the songwritng process change much, or was it just a matter of more people contributing?

Strid: "We didn't really sit down and say, 'All right, who's going to pick things up for Peter and be the main songwriter.' We were just like, "Hey, go ahead and write songs.' All the members had contributed to songs in the past and I'd always done the melodies for the vocals. And Daniel [Antonsson, Wichers replacement on guitar] was eager to contribute and he fit right in once we got started. He ended up contributing to, I think, four songs.

Once the songs started to flow, any anxiety went away. Soilwork is the only recipe we know, whatever that recipe is, it's just there, as far as the structures of the songs and the melodies. It's what we love to do. And because of that, the whole band was more involved than ever on this album and I think that is why the album is so diverse."

KNAC.com: You could argue that the diversity of the album was a result of Peter not contributing this time.

Strid: "I guess you could, it's hard to say because who knows what he might have come up with this time. But we all did get to express ourselves more and it worked. Even a song like 'Sick Heart River', which Sven [Karlsson, keyboard/samples] wrote the music for, for example, have some very distinct character that something like, say, 'Exile' does not, it still all sounds like Soilwork, even though maybe that song a bit more progressive, whereas 'Exile# is a lot more straightforward."

KNAC.com: Songwriting aside, it must have been tough when Peter left just from a personal standpoint?

Strid: "Of course. It was like a brother left the band. We started what became this band together in 1995 and saw it grow bigger than we could have imagined in 10 years. But he didn't like all of the touring, and he knew we were going to have to do even more touring if wanted keep reaching the next level. And we respected his decision, we still do. It's been two years now and we've done an album and gone out on tour without him so now I miss him more as a friend than a musician."

Go to this location for the complete interview.