BW&BK; scribe Carl Begai recently spoke with SONIC SYNDICATE guitarist Robin Sjunnesson about the band's latest album, Love And Other Disasters, their rise to fame, and the band's collective love for the almighty rock ballad (read: guaranteed exposure). The complete interview appears below, with Sjunesson discussing Love And Other Disasers' unexpected appeal after several listens rather than making an immediate impact.

"A lot of people say that," Sjunnesson says. " The first impression is that ‘…okay…’ but it does start to grow on you after a while. It was the same thing for me, actually. When we wrote the songs I wasn’t 100% sure about the album but now I totally love it. It’s definitely the best one we’ve done so far."

Sonic Syndicate's rise to fame has been nothing short of meteoric since the 2007 release of their second album, Only Inhuman, particularly in Europe. The band has toured the world several times since then with high profile acts like Nightwish and In Flames, beefing up the band's popularity to the point of being able to pull off a co-headlining tour with the Deathstars crew. Sjunnesson credits their label, Nuclear Blast for the push.

“The thing is, the first album was on an American label (Pivotal Rockordings) so when we released it nothing really happened. Then we signed to Nuclear Blast and everything started to happen. The day after we signed with them we were on MTV, we started playing live television, everything changed. Back then we never thought we’d be here today, especially not in such a short time. We’ve very surprised by all this because we’re living our dream, basically."

The band is still fielding the In Flames comparisons that plagued them when they first entered the scene with their debut, Eden Fire, but they remain unphased by the bitching and bashing that comes their way.

“We don’t want to be in a special genre, we don’t want to be in that ‘They sound like that band…’ category," Sjunnesson insists. "We have more diversity than In Flames, for example, even though people like to compare us to them. Sonic Syndicate has death metal songs, we have MTV songs, and that’s how we want to keep it. That’s why when you go onto YouTube and you check out the viewer comments you’ll see people arguing: ‘This is black metal!’ and ‘No, this is Disney Channel metal!’ (laughs). But that’s how we want it to be."

"I think we’re gaining fans because people love the diversity Sonic Syndicate has," he adds. "We have fans that like Legion Of The Damned and we have fans that like My Chemical Romance standing side by side at a show. We’re inspired by so many different genres and you can hear that in our music. We listen to Pink to Cannibal Corpse to Katy Perry to Cradle Of Filth. We’d be a boring, straight line if we didn’t have those influences. I definitely think that ‘My Escape’ and songs like that make people react. I’ve seen the press write that we’re a melodic death metal band, so that’s what people are expecting. Then they hear ‘My Escape’ and they’re like, ‘What the fuck?!’ because that song could be on the radio. It is on the radio, actually. But we love writing ballads and we know some people love listening to them."
"It’s too early to talk about a new record, but I think that because the gap between Only Inhuman and and Love And Other Disasters is so big that the gap between Love And Other Disasters and the next one will be even bigger. We’re going to spread our wings even more and make things even more diverse."

Sadly, it was anounced on March 30th that vocalist Roland Johansson had decided to leave the band for personal reasons once Sonic Syndicate's 2009 tour schedule is complete. A potentially disastrous development in that Johansson is one of two singers in the band and responsible for all the clean vocals. The band made it clear they are indeed searching for a replacement, as the twin vocal attack has become a Sonic Syndicate trademark.

"We can do much more with the vocals than we could when we had one singer," Sjunnesson explains. "We have one person to really focus on the clean parts and one to focus on the screaming parts, and they do such a great job. If we didn’t have Roland we probably wouldn’t be where we are now."