Special report by Carl Begai

To hear Soilwork frontman Björn “Speed” Strid describe the band’s new album The Panic Broadcast as “playful” is enough to set off the sell-out alarm. Put the first few tracks up against any of the songs on the band’s previous album, Sworn To A Great Divide, and you understand his thinking. The Panic Broadcast is a few steps back and a leap forward, tapping the energy that made the Natural Born Chaos record a fan favourite so many years ago without going the blueprint route. It takes off at a run, tracks ‘Late For The Kill, Early For The Slaughter’, ‘Deliverance Is Mine’ and ‘Two Lives Worth Of Reckoning’ setting a refreshigly brutal tone; completely unexpected considering how, in retrospect, painfully uninspired the …Divide album is in comparison. Soilwork hasn’t re-invented the melodic death metal wheel but have most certainly re-invented themselves.

According to Strid the changes in focus and sound can be attributed in large part to the 2008 departure of guitarist Ola Frenning and the return of guitarist Peter Wichers, who left Soilwork in 2005 to focus on his personal life. With Wichers’ re-entry the Soilwork collective is finally on the same page.

“On the previous album I felt there was a lot of negativity, especially from Ola’s direction,” Strid admits. “When we were recording the album he wanted everything to be so basic, he wanted to chase a hit song, so he went in and cut out double kick drums and stuff like that with the attitude that it was too much information. His mindset was ‘Let’s record stuff people understand,’ and the rest of the band didn’t agree with that. That’s one of the reasons we had to let Ola go; we pretty much ran into a brick wall with Ola. None of us could work with him anymore. Obviously since he and Peter are related it’s been kind of tough, but it is what it is. That was a decision we had to make.”
“I feel that the playfulness wasn’t there anymore,” Strid says of Sworn To A Great Divide. “I played around a lot with the vocals on the last album, but I could tell that everyone else was pretty much choked by the fact that Ola was in his ‘Oh, let’s do everything in a basic way…’ frame of mind. The new album is a re-invention of Soilwork. It presents and proves what Soilwork is all about. It’s supposed to be playful, it’s supposed to be progressive but still catchy. We’re making a statement with this record.”

Whether Wichers’ return was inevitable is for the guitarist to say, but Strid admits he gave his former bandmate the occasional elbow in Soilwork’s direction.

“Peter definitely was missed when we toured for Sworn To A Great Divide,” he continues. “It was definitely a challenge for us because he wasn’t in the band anymore; I looked at it as a challenge to prove to people that we could still do it. We never lost contact, though. Peter and I talked pretty much every other day, and we actually talked about starting a studio band on the side. But, we also talked about Soilwork and I’d ask what he thought about the band after being away from it, and if it was something he’d be able to deal with in the future (laughs). Peter admitted to me that he did miss it, and one day he finally said that maybe he should try to do something with Soilwork again.”

“He actually sent me a song – I think it was ‘The Thrill’ – that he’d written long before he decided to come back to the band, and I told him it sounded like a Soilwork song. He rearranged it a bit, I put some vocals on it, so he had some ideas pretty early on. Once it was confirmed that he was back in the band – and he became a father around the same time – Peter was really inspired to write songs again. Just to see him excited about the music again was a great feeling.”
“I think Peter just needed time off, and the band took some time off after the tour for Sworn To A Great Divide to recharge the batteries. I really became high on the fact that Peter was back in the band. Also, having Sylvain (Coudret) confirmed for the band and having him and Peter together… that’s the perfect guitar duo. I was thinking that this line-up in Soilwork’s best line-up ever. We were all high on what we could do with the music. That was really inspiring for me.”

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 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.”

It’s fair to say Soilwork have successfully straddled the line between giving the fans what they want and doing something innovative on The Panic Broadcast. Not an easy trick to pull off.

“That’s the way I feel, too,” agrees Strid. “People can make references to Natural Born Chaos as you said, but we also took the music a step forward. I think that really shows the band’s strength because you see a lot of bands that have the one big album and they just want to recreate it. The album ends up sounding like the same thing, just not as good. I think we’ve done it in a very tasteful way.”

Some people would argue that Soilwork have in fact tried in the past to recreate the magic Natural Born Chaos or Figure Number Five and failed.

“I don’t think we ever did,” Strid counters. “Maybe the previous album was a little bit too safe, so in that sense maybe you could refer or compare it to the album before that (Stabbing The Drama). Overall though, I don’t think we’ve been doing things safely along the way at all. I think we’ve been pretty brave, actually.”

Strid considers The Panic Broadcast a personal triumph as well as a group victory. The record features some of his best vocal work to date, giving the songs a much needed shot in the arm. His trademark growl-to-clean singing is as powerful as ever but the approach is very different.

“I really wanted to show people who I am, and I wanted the vocals to be very personal so I could show every side of me as a singer. I put my personality in there because my voice on the album sounds like I do in real life, actually (laughs). I’m kind of a chameleon and I think you can hear and feel that on the album. There’s everything from sounding brutal and evil to sounding like a little girl’s voice (laughs), and I think that’s very cool rather than being embarrassed by that fact. I think it’s cool because I love to express myself in so many different ways.

“I think I’ve added a little bit more tone in the vocals at certain points because I really like that way of singing. Sometimes it’s easier to articulate that way. I love Tom Araya’s vocals style; screaming but with that tone in the voice, which sounds so intense to me. He has so much presence because of that.”
“Personally, I approached the material as if… I’ve felt in the past that maybe I’ve been a bit predictable: screaming verse, melodic chorus, and that was pretty much it. I wanted to feel things out this time and not think ‘Okay, the chorus MUST be melodic.’ Fuck that. If I felt like screaming through the whole song I did it. Some songs have just melodic vocals through the whole thing. It was a case of giving the songs what they deserved.”

Listen for The Panic Broadcast on July 2nd in Europe and July 13th in North America.