A new era for the band and for humanity... both at the same time. Scar Symmetry present the first part of their upcoming trilogy and we found the chance to chat with the band’s mastermind Per Nilsson (guitars, songwriter, producer) for the new album, the trilogy, neohumanity & music among others. We also learned who’s the band’s “bacon whore”(!)... so keep on reading to find out yourself!!
Hi Per. Let’s cut right to the chase. Which things inspired you so as to deal with AI, robots, cryonics, cloning and the new technology in general?
P: We’ve written about similar things in the past, but never on this scale, and Henrik actually had something similar in mind for our last album before we decided to make it a concept album about the Illuminati, which obviously turned out as 2011’s “The Unseen Empire”.
I was at the baggage claim at the airport in Frankfurt last year when I overheard two American businessmen talking about Ray Kurzweil’s prophecies of the future and how Bill Gates says that Kurzweil is ‘the guy’ who is likely making the best predictions of the future of mankind and technology. They constantly referred to something called the ‘singularity’ and this really caught my attention, so after having read up a bit on the subject I called Henrik up and told him, “dude the trilogy should be called “The Singularity” and then I went on telling him all about these brave new ideas – and Henrik fired on all cylinders.
Do you see a new intelligent human-robot race (neohumanity) take over the earth in the near future or this is just a sci-fi scenario for books and movies? Can reality overrun sci-fi?
P: Our lyrics are based on actual science stuff and pretty solid predictions of the future, but from there on we take the concept and drive down fiction lane with it. There are a lot of people though who are strongly voicing their concerns about the coming technological breakthroughs and the risk of unleashing a superior AI into our world – as the intentions and motivations for an AI’s actions might be very unpredictable or even unfathomable for us.
I believe it would be more interesting if you could take us on a track by track “trip”…
P: “The Shape of Things to Come”: The lyrics of this short intro to the album reflect the concerns of the ‘old’ unmodified mankind – will there be a place for them in the new world order, or will the evolution of the neohumans render them extinct? I decided to do the lead vocals for this song as I think it fitted the melody and presentation well, and I do a few more lead lines on some of the other songs too, making this album our most vocally diverse recording so far.
“Neohuman”: This progressive track tells the story of a modified “neohuman” waking up in his new altered state, and how the emergence of these enhanced humans will be very detrimental to all of the ‘old’ mankind. Musically, this song moves in all kinds of directions and in many ways it is among the most progressive efforts of our career.
“Limits to Infinity”: In this bleak future world, Earth is deterioating beyond control and the modified elite seeks out to explore the stars and inhabit new worlds. The unfortunate poor and umodified are left to a terrible fate on their dying planet. We’ve been flirting with pop and AOR and stuff like that since the band’s start, but I don’t think we’ve ever gone as extreme in that direction as in the chorus of this song – which is something I love! There’s just something about the dynamics in having very heavy and brutal parts mixed with the ultra-melodic that tickles my pickle in all the right ways.
“Cryonic Harvest”: There are actually companies who are preparing for this great paradigm shift today, by freezing and storing dead people in liquid nitrogen, hoping that soon enough, technology will have reached the point of being able to bring the dead back to life. In the song, some of these people suspended in frozen limbo are being ‘harvested’ and brought back to life by the help of tissue-reconstructing nano-bots and eventually they are leaving their protein-based existences, having their minds uploaded onto artificial carriers and basically granted eternal life.
“The Spiral Timeshift”: Every great paradigm shift will first be opposed, ridiculed and resisted, but when a new grand idea’s time has come, it can’t be rejected for long – eventually the resistance will break and the paradigm shift will be in place.
“Children of the Integrated Circuit”: Our first ever instrumental track serves as an interlude and as a breathing space in a very musically dense album. The title refers to the neohumans – they are the children of the integrated circuit.
“Neuromancers”: This song seems to quickly have become a fan-favourite, it is from what I’ve seen, read and heard the most talked-about and favored song of the album, which is funny because when I had finished mixing the album I thought that it was probably the weakest track, haha! The neuromancers are the insidious elite who are using the technological advance to further their own agenda – and acting as Gods, they have secretly programmed the modified neohumans to serve their cause.
“Technocalyptic Cybergeddon”: The neohumans have against their will and knowing been programmed to act as soldiers fighting a war that only the secret elite wants – they are setting out to eradicate all of the ‘old’ mankind, and the questions posed in “The Shape of Things to Come” are now answered – and the outcome for all of humanity is terrible. This song is the most aggressive and brutal of the album, and it is a hint of things to come with the next phase of the trilogy, which is looking to be a lot more brutal than this first installment. The final part of the song is revolving around the same melody and chord progression as the album’s intro song, which is serving to tie the album together, as the final ending and closure won’t come until the ending of phase three.
“The Singularity (Phase I – Neohumanity)” is the first part of a trilogy that’s about to be released in the next years. Are the lyrics of the other two parts already written? Do you till work on them? What will be the musical directions of the other 2 parts?
P: Before we started writing any music or lyrics, Henrik wrote a very elaborate and detailed synopsis – complete with ideas for songtitles – that we’re using as a framework for creating the albums. We have a very clear vision of what we wanna do music – and lyrics-wise with phases two and three but we haven’t really written any of the actual songs yet. As you can tell from the final song of “Neohumanity”, all-out war breaks loose and things aren’t looking that bright for the ‘old’ mankind, and that is where the second phase will start – and that is something that is gonna be reflected in the music, so for the most part, phase two will be both darker and more aggressive than phase one. Phase three will be something else, I don’t want to give too much away at this point and spoil the fun!
Does the album title “The Singularity (Phase I – Neohumanity)”, refer to the neo-human race which is “original”, “pure” and without the “flaws” of the old humanity?
P: Neohumanity is another term for transhumanism – and it’s not the next step in our evolution, it is a giant leap!
Can you tell us a few things about the cover artwork? It seems like “David’s Star” but not exactly… along with Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”… or something like that.
P: We were throwing around ideas for the artwork, and the idea was to having something really iconic. I thought of the “Vitruvian Man” and that we could have an updated modified version of it – an enhanced Vitruvian neohuman! Our artwork artist, Mircea Gabriel Eftemie did an amazing job with it – actually on all three albums since all the artwork for the entire trilogy is finished already!
Apart from the lyrical concept, what are the new elements that “The Singularity (Phase I – Neohumanity)” is offering to the band’s fans? What has changed in comparison to the past?
P: We’re not necessarily introducing any new elements – aside from my lead vocals – but I think this particular mix of ingredients isn’t really like any of our previous albums. We’ve done progressive stuff before but never really like this time around. I think that music – and production-wise, this album is closest to “Holographic Universe”. Also it is a little bit more keyboard-heavy than our previous efforts.
Since you are the only guitarist, songwriter and producer of the band… do you feel a little pressure that you have to deal with so many parts all by yourself or you do feel “free” now to do things your own way?
P: To be completely honest, and as much as I love to write and work with Jonas, it was incredibly liberating to be able to write all of the music myself and to be able to produce the album without having to put my ideas through someone else’s creative filter. And to me, the songwriting and recording processes are very much linked, as often things are being added and creative decisions are being made as you go along, and it was super sweet doing all of that myself, even though I occasionally missed having someone like Jonas to bounce ideas off of.
I didn’t intend on mixing the album myself when I started out recording it. When the songs were starting to get mix-ready, I sent out a few tracks to some of my favourite mixing engineers – Jonas among others – to have them do test mixes for me, and frankly, none of those mixes did it for me, not even Jonas’ mix. They all sounded decent in their own right, but I could tell that these guys weren’t envisioning the music in the same way that I did – and it simply just was necessary for me to finish the mixing and mastering myself to ensure that the songs turned out exactly as they were meant to.
By the way, which were the reasons that led Jonas Kjellgren to quit the band?
P: He joined another band as their bass player, and started sitting out our shows and tours. We thought that he was gonna do both bands, we were certainly open for having a flexible schedule to accommodate for him to make it work, but after some time it was apparent that neither he nor his new band mates were of the same opinion. After not having played with us for well over a year, I asked him if he was ever gonna return to the fold to tour and record with us again, he said that he wasn’t really allowed to do that by his new band... So we decided mutually that in all fairness it would be best for all parties to part ways. It felt very disappointing at the time, but the frustration that had been building in his absence gave us a much-needed energy boost and it was probably what led us to the decision to take on the most ambitious project of our career – the trilogy.
Is it possible to see any other member of the band to contribute to the musical or the lyrical part at any point?
P: Henrik and I have a very clear vision of what we want to do with the trilogy, so at this point we’re gonna stay on this path, being the band’s creative dictators haha. I won’t say never though, Lars did come up with a few of the vocal melodies on “The Unseen Empire” and he has a great ear for that kind of stuff, so who knows.
We hear the best performances of both singers, Lars Palmqvist and Roberth Karlsson on the new album. Do you believe that it was only a matter of time to find the “absolute chemistry” between them?
P: I think they have both been on a steady path of progression ever since they joined the band, and it was really cool to record the performances of their lifetimes. Lars’ evolution is nothing short of remarkable, and what most people don’t know is that we pretty much picked him up from nowhere – we saw great potential in him and now we are seeing him fully realizing that potential. Also, Roberth and Lars have been friends since they were kids, they’ve played in bands before (Roberth also plays bass and Lars plays drums) and they have great personal chemistry, there’s no competing with each other for the spotlight! They are just the coolest guys ever, and there’s nothing of that typical lead singer diva bullshit that can really tear a band apart.
The extreme metal elements are present throughout the album. When some bands reduce them to minimum over time or omit them entirely in order to get the “mainstream” audience, you do not seem to get affected by that. Is it due to the band’s “origins” or you do express yourself better by blending melodic parts and extreme ones together?
P: When we formed the band, we set out to do a sort of mix of everything we love about metal – and to not set limits for our art. I often find myself getting bored easily by bands that only have growl vocals, and bands that only have melodic vocals can be too soft-sounding for me... So blending the growls with the melodies, and spicing things up with some proggyness and some intricate guitar solos, I try to hit a sweet spot in between everything, which is at least catering to my own musical tastes! I think we would really have to re-think our music and our strategy in order to hit the mainstream audience, and I’m just not into doing that with Scar Symmetry – not that I don’t like any mainstream stuff, because I do, but I think the proper thing then would be to form a new band and not soil Scar Symmetry’s legacy. (i.n.: Wish other musicians had the same perspcetive too dude!)
P: We’ve written about similar things in the past, but never on this scale, and Henrik actually had something similar in mind for our last album before we decided to make it a concept album about the Illuminati, which obviously turned out as 2011’s “The Unseen Empire”.
I was at the baggage claim at the airport in Frankfurt last year when I overheard two American businessmen talking about Ray Kurzweil’s prophecies of the future and how Bill Gates says that Kurzweil is ‘the guy’ who is likely making the best predictions of the future of mankind and technology. They constantly referred to something called the ‘singularity’ and this really caught my attention, so after having read up a bit on the subject I called Henrik up and told him, “dude the trilogy should be called “The Singularity” and then I went on telling him all about these brave new ideas – and Henrik fired on all cylinders.
Do you see a new intelligent human-robot race (neohumanity) take over the earth in the near future or this is just a sci-fi scenario for books and movies? Can reality overrun sci-fi?
P: Our lyrics are based on actual science stuff and pretty solid predictions of the future, but from there on we take the concept and drive down fiction lane with it. There are a lot of people though who are strongly voicing their concerns about the coming technological breakthroughs and the risk of unleashing a superior AI into our world – as the intentions and motivations for an AI’s actions might be very unpredictable or even unfathomable for us.
I believe it would be more interesting if you could take us on a track by track “trip”…
P: “The Shape of Things to Come”: The lyrics of this short intro to the album reflect the concerns of the ‘old’ unmodified mankind – will there be a place for them in the new world order, or will the evolution of the neohumans render them extinct? I decided to do the lead vocals for this song as I think it fitted the melody and presentation well, and I do a few more lead lines on some of the other songs too, making this album our most vocally diverse recording so far.
“Neohuman”: This progressive track tells the story of a modified “neohuman” waking up in his new altered state, and how the emergence of these enhanced humans will be very detrimental to all of the ‘old’ mankind. Musically, this song moves in all kinds of directions and in many ways it is among the most progressive efforts of our career.
“Limits to Infinity”: In this bleak future world, Earth is deterioating beyond control and the modified elite seeks out to explore the stars and inhabit new worlds. The unfortunate poor and umodified are left to a terrible fate on their dying planet. We’ve been flirting with pop and AOR and stuff like that since the band’s start, but I don’t think we’ve ever gone as extreme in that direction as in the chorus of this song – which is something I love! There’s just something about the dynamics in having very heavy and brutal parts mixed with the ultra-melodic that tickles my pickle in all the right ways.
“Cryonic Harvest”: There are actually companies who are preparing for this great paradigm shift today, by freezing and storing dead people in liquid nitrogen, hoping that soon enough, technology will have reached the point of being able to bring the dead back to life. In the song, some of these people suspended in frozen limbo are being ‘harvested’ and brought back to life by the help of tissue-reconstructing nano-bots and eventually they are leaving their protein-based existences, having their minds uploaded onto artificial carriers and basically granted eternal life.
“The Spiral Timeshift”: Every great paradigm shift will first be opposed, ridiculed and resisted, but when a new grand idea’s time has come, it can’t be rejected for long – eventually the resistance will break and the paradigm shift will be in place.
“Children of the Integrated Circuit”: Our first ever instrumental track serves as an interlude and as a breathing space in a very musically dense album. The title refers to the neohumans – they are the children of the integrated circuit.
“Neuromancers”: This song seems to quickly have become a fan-favourite, it is from what I’ve seen, read and heard the most talked-about and favored song of the album, which is funny because when I had finished mixing the album I thought that it was probably the weakest track, haha! The neuromancers are the insidious elite who are using the technological advance to further their own agenda – and acting as Gods, they have secretly programmed the modified neohumans to serve their cause.
“Technocalyptic Cybergeddon”: The neohumans have against their will and knowing been programmed to act as soldiers fighting a war that only the secret elite wants – they are setting out to eradicate all of the ‘old’ mankind, and the questions posed in “The Shape of Things to Come” are now answered – and the outcome for all of humanity is terrible. This song is the most aggressive and brutal of the album, and it is a hint of things to come with the next phase of the trilogy, which is looking to be a lot more brutal than this first installment. The final part of the song is revolving around the same melody and chord progression as the album’s intro song, which is serving to tie the album together, as the final ending and closure won’t come until the ending of phase three.
“The Singularity (Phase I – Neohumanity)” is the first part of a trilogy that’s about to be released in the next years. Are the lyrics of the other two parts already written? Do you till work on them? What will be the musical directions of the other 2 parts?
P: Before we started writing any music or lyrics, Henrik wrote a very elaborate and detailed synopsis – complete with ideas for songtitles – that we’re using as a framework for creating the albums. We have a very clear vision of what we wanna do music – and lyrics-wise with phases two and three but we haven’t really written any of the actual songs yet. As you can tell from the final song of “Neohumanity”, all-out war breaks loose and things aren’t looking that bright for the ‘old’ mankind, and that is where the second phase will start – and that is something that is gonna be reflected in the music, so for the most part, phase two will be both darker and more aggressive than phase one. Phase three will be something else, I don’t want to give too much away at this point and spoil the fun!
Does the album title “The Singularity (Phase I – Neohumanity)”, refer to the neo-human race which is “original”, “pure” and without the “flaws” of the old humanity?
P: Neohumanity is another term for transhumanism – and it’s not the next step in our evolution, it is a giant leap!
Can you tell us a few things about the cover artwork? It seems like “David’s Star” but not exactly… along with Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”… or something like that.
P: We were throwing around ideas for the artwork, and the idea was to having something really iconic. I thought of the “Vitruvian Man” and that we could have an updated modified version of it – an enhanced Vitruvian neohuman! Our artwork artist, Mircea Gabriel Eftemie did an amazing job with it – actually on all three albums since all the artwork for the entire trilogy is finished already!
Apart from the lyrical concept, what are the new elements that “The Singularity (Phase I – Neohumanity)” is offering to the band’s fans? What has changed in comparison to the past?
P: We’re not necessarily introducing any new elements – aside from my lead vocals – but I think this particular mix of ingredients isn’t really like any of our previous albums. We’ve done progressive stuff before but never really like this time around. I think that music – and production-wise, this album is closest to “Holographic Universe”. Also it is a little bit more keyboard-heavy than our previous efforts.
Since you are the only guitarist, songwriter and producer of the band… do you feel a little pressure that you have to deal with so many parts all by yourself or you do feel “free” now to do things your own way?
P: To be completely honest, and as much as I love to write and work with Jonas, it was incredibly liberating to be able to write all of the music myself and to be able to produce the album without having to put my ideas through someone else’s creative filter. And to me, the songwriting and recording processes are very much linked, as often things are being added and creative decisions are being made as you go along, and it was super sweet doing all of that myself, even though I occasionally missed having someone like Jonas to bounce ideas off of.
I didn’t intend on mixing the album myself when I started out recording it. When the songs were starting to get mix-ready, I sent out a few tracks to some of my favourite mixing engineers – Jonas among others – to have them do test mixes for me, and frankly, none of those mixes did it for me, not even Jonas’ mix. They all sounded decent in their own right, but I could tell that these guys weren’t envisioning the music in the same way that I did – and it simply just was necessary for me to finish the mixing and mastering myself to ensure that the songs turned out exactly as they were meant to.
By the way, which were the reasons that led Jonas Kjellgren to quit the band?
P: He joined another band as their bass player, and started sitting out our shows and tours. We thought that he was gonna do both bands, we were certainly open for having a flexible schedule to accommodate for him to make it work, but after some time it was apparent that neither he nor his new band mates were of the same opinion. After not having played with us for well over a year, I asked him if he was ever gonna return to the fold to tour and record with us again, he said that he wasn’t really allowed to do that by his new band... So we decided mutually that in all fairness it would be best for all parties to part ways. It felt very disappointing at the time, but the frustration that had been building in his absence gave us a much-needed energy boost and it was probably what led us to the decision to take on the most ambitious project of our career – the trilogy.
Is it possible to see any other member of the band to contribute to the musical or the lyrical part at any point?
P: Henrik and I have a very clear vision of what we want to do with the trilogy, so at this point we’re gonna stay on this path, being the band’s creative dictators haha. I won’t say never though, Lars did come up with a few of the vocal melodies on “The Unseen Empire” and he has a great ear for that kind of stuff, so who knows.
We hear the best performances of both singers, Lars Palmqvist and Roberth Karlsson on the new album. Do you believe that it was only a matter of time to find the “absolute chemistry” between them?
P: I think they have both been on a steady path of progression ever since they joined the band, and it was really cool to record the performances of their lifetimes. Lars’ evolution is nothing short of remarkable, and what most people don’t know is that we pretty much picked him up from nowhere – we saw great potential in him and now we are seeing him fully realizing that potential. Also, Roberth and Lars have been friends since they were kids, they’ve played in bands before (Roberth also plays bass and Lars plays drums) and they have great personal chemistry, there’s no competing with each other for the spotlight! They are just the coolest guys ever, and there’s nothing of that typical lead singer diva bullshit that can really tear a band apart.
The extreme metal elements are present throughout the album. When some bands reduce them to minimum over time or omit them entirely in order to get the “mainstream” audience, you do not seem to get affected by that. Is it due to the band’s “origins” or you do express yourself better by blending melodic parts and extreme ones together?
P: When we formed the band, we set out to do a sort of mix of everything we love about metal – and to not set limits for our art. I often find myself getting bored easily by bands that only have growl vocals, and bands that only have melodic vocals can be too soft-sounding for me... So blending the growls with the melodies, and spicing things up with some proggyness and some intricate guitar solos, I try to hit a sweet spot in between everything, which is at least catering to my own musical tastes! I think we would really have to re-think our music and our strategy in order to hit the mainstream audience, and I’m just not into doing that with Scar Symmetry – not that I don’t like any mainstream stuff, because I do, but I think the proper thing then would be to form a new band and not soil Scar Symmetry’s legacy. (i.n.: Wish other musicians had the same perspcetive too dude!)
Can we expect more extreme parts or mellow ones on the two other albums or you haven’t got a clue yet? Will there also be electronic & futuristic elements as the whole work is climaxing?
P: A cool thing with doing this trilogy is that it allows me a bit of extra freedom with the direction of the albums. This first part came out as very melodic and progressive, and I intentionally took the music pretty far in that direction, which means that when the next part needs to be heavy (which it will be at times) I can go all-in in that direction, knowing that things will sort of even-out in the grand scheme of things. So yes, the next part will at times likely be the heaviest thing we’ve ever recorded!
What do you think is the most accurate way for one to describe Scar Symmetry’s music style?
P: I don’t really think much of things like that, though I understand the need for labelling music. I’ve seen people describe our music as progressive melodic death metal, which to me seems specific enough to give people a hint of what we’re doing while not being overly specific either.
Will there be any “futuristic” video and if yes for which track?
P: We’ve released a couple of lyric videos but we’re not planning on doing any typical music video. Doing something that would make the songs justice would be very expensive, and it simply wouldn’t make any sense to do it, unfortunately. If Peter Jackson or the Wachowski’s would be interested in doing another trilogy of movies, they should hit us up! We have both a solid storyline and a soundtrack in the works hehe! (i.n.: That would be very interesting!)
It’s time for our “weird questions”!!! How did you come up with the name Scar Symmetry in the first place?
P: It was Henrik’s idea to have a band name that both reflected the harsh and heavy parts of our music - the “Scar” part – and the melodic parts, the “Symmetry” side of our style.
Top 3 sci-fi movies of any era? Top 3 Horror movies of all time?
P: Man, that’s too hard narrowing it down like that. I’ve seen tons upon tons of sci-fi and horror flicks during the years... But some sci-fi movies that have made a lasting impression on me are “The Quiet Earth”, “E.T.”, “Predator”, “Ghostbusters”, “Dark City”, “The Abyss”, “Pi”, and some of my fave horror movies are “The Thing” (John Carpenter’s version, though the more recent one is cool too), “The Fly”, all four “Alien”-movies, George A Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead”, “Braindead”, “Jacob’s Ladder”, “Martyrs”, “Poltergeist” and many many more. A lot of these films are both horror and sci-fi obviously.
Machine vs Humans… is humanity doomed to fall by their own hand eventually?
P: Noone could really claim to be surprised if that happened, am I not right? As long as we are more interested in our own egos, our greed and vanity than in each other, we will continue to make the human experience a less-than-ideal one. Things seem to slowly be going in the right direction though, and I’m a very hopeful and optimistic person by nature, so I’m keeping my hopes up! It would be a total fucking bummer though if we were stupid enough to create machines that eventually started killing us, haha! (i.n.: Sure, but mankind is know for it stupidity and self-destruction...)
Which is the record you wish you had written and why?
P: I dunno, maybe “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, because of money haha.
What do you think about this “Views, tweets & Likes” mania of our time?
P: It’s really crazy and it’s weird how quickly we all got totally addicted to it! I sometimes have a hard time letting go of my smart phone, I’m a bit of a junkie in that regard. The technology is beautiful but we are largely misusing it, as there are a lot of other things that we’re missing out on when focusing so much on what is happening on the social medias.
Which of the Seven Deadly Sins do you reckon is the one, that’s more likely to send you straight to Hell, in the afterlife?
P: Gluttony. I’m a total bacon whore. Feel free to use that quote as this interview’s headline haha! (i.n.; Hehehe...)
Imagine that your girlfriend/wife is selling your whole album-collection just to buy an expensive ring for herself. How would you react?
P: I would ask her if there would be money left for bacon and beer for me, to which she would reply “why of course hun” and there wouldn’t be a problem, because of bacon and beer. Also I never listen to my album collection anymore, I pretty much only listen to streamed music.
It was great to have you on Grande Rock… say anything you like to your band’s fans and to our readers before we close. Thx for the music… take care!
P: Thanks dude, great interview! To our fans I’d like to say: many thanks for your continued support, you guys are total awesome-sauce! Remember to keep it heavy, bacon is the law, be safe everyone and I hope to see you on tour some day, cheers!
P: A cool thing with doing this trilogy is that it allows me a bit of extra freedom with the direction of the albums. This first part came out as very melodic and progressive, and I intentionally took the music pretty far in that direction, which means that when the next part needs to be heavy (which it will be at times) I can go all-in in that direction, knowing that things will sort of even-out in the grand scheme of things. So yes, the next part will at times likely be the heaviest thing we’ve ever recorded!
What do you think is the most accurate way for one to describe Scar Symmetry’s music style?
P: I don’t really think much of things like that, though I understand the need for labelling music. I’ve seen people describe our music as progressive melodic death metal, which to me seems specific enough to give people a hint of what we’re doing while not being overly specific either.
Will there be any “futuristic” video and if yes for which track?
P: We’ve released a couple of lyric videos but we’re not planning on doing any typical music video. Doing something that would make the songs justice would be very expensive, and it simply wouldn’t make any sense to do it, unfortunately. If Peter Jackson or the Wachowski’s would be interested in doing another trilogy of movies, they should hit us up! We have both a solid storyline and a soundtrack in the works hehe! (i.n.: That would be very interesting!)
It’s time for our “weird questions”!!! How did you come up with the name Scar Symmetry in the first place?
P: It was Henrik’s idea to have a band name that both reflected the harsh and heavy parts of our music - the “Scar” part – and the melodic parts, the “Symmetry” side of our style.
Top 3 sci-fi movies of any era? Top 3 Horror movies of all time?
P: Man, that’s too hard narrowing it down like that. I’ve seen tons upon tons of sci-fi and horror flicks during the years... But some sci-fi movies that have made a lasting impression on me are “The Quiet Earth”, “E.T.”, “Predator”, “Ghostbusters”, “Dark City”, “The Abyss”, “Pi”, and some of my fave horror movies are “The Thing” (John Carpenter’s version, though the more recent one is cool too), “The Fly”, all four “Alien”-movies, George A Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead”, “Braindead”, “Jacob’s Ladder”, “Martyrs”, “Poltergeist” and many many more. A lot of these films are both horror and sci-fi obviously.
Machine vs Humans… is humanity doomed to fall by their own hand eventually?
P: Noone could really claim to be surprised if that happened, am I not right? As long as we are more interested in our own egos, our greed and vanity than in each other, we will continue to make the human experience a less-than-ideal one. Things seem to slowly be going in the right direction though, and I’m a very hopeful and optimistic person by nature, so I’m keeping my hopes up! It would be a total fucking bummer though if we were stupid enough to create machines that eventually started killing us, haha! (i.n.: Sure, but mankind is know for it stupidity and self-destruction...)
Which is the record you wish you had written and why?
P: I dunno, maybe “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, because of money haha.
What do you think about this “Views, tweets & Likes” mania of our time?
P: It’s really crazy and it’s weird how quickly we all got totally addicted to it! I sometimes have a hard time letting go of my smart phone, I’m a bit of a junkie in that regard. The technology is beautiful but we are largely misusing it, as there are a lot of other things that we’re missing out on when focusing so much on what is happening on the social medias.
Which of the Seven Deadly Sins do you reckon is the one, that’s more likely to send you straight to Hell, in the afterlife?
P: Gluttony. I’m a total bacon whore. Feel free to use that quote as this interview’s headline haha! (i.n.; Hehehe...)
Imagine that your girlfriend/wife is selling your whole album-collection just to buy an expensive ring for herself. How would you react?
P: I would ask her if there would be money left for bacon and beer for me, to which she would reply “why of course hun” and there wouldn’t be a problem, because of bacon and beer. Also I never listen to my album collection anymore, I pretty much only listen to streamed music.
It was great to have you on Grande Rock… say anything you like to your band’s fans and to our readers before we close. Thx for the music… take care!
P: Thanks dude, great interview! To our fans I’d like to say: many thanks for your continued support, you guys are total awesome-sauce! Remember to keep it heavy, bacon is the law, be safe everyone and I hope to see you on tour some day, cheers!