Avatar vocalist Johannes Eckerström is dressing up for Halloween.
This might seem like a given, considering each time the Swedish metal singer hits the stage with his band, he’s greasepainted and grinning through each song while sporting a diamond-eyed, leathered-up, and balloon-holding clown get-up.
This will be no doubt be the case when Avatar launch their North American tour October 31st at Mexico City, Mexico’s Pepsi Center WC — the performance in the 8,000-seater marking the biggest headlining show of their decades-long career. But the band will also be using the night to introduce new stage-show elements based on their latest album, Don’t Go in the Forest.
Eckerström is mostly quiet on what to expect onstage this fall, but he does allude to the production perhaps invoking the splish-splashing scenes of the group’s eccentrically seafaring video for “Captain Goat” — which found certain members donning mermaid flippers and Eckerström taking a voyage with the titular cloven boatman while singing and growling his jovial death-metal shanty.
Then again, his bandmates might go off-script for the occasion, like the one time they played a Halloween-season show in the guise of a bunch of metal legends.
“Henrik [Sandelin, bass] was adamant that everyone needed to wear corpse paint,” Eckerström recalls, while confessing he was technically done-up per the norm. “I don’t remember what everyone was, but Henrik really wanted to be Abbath. I think it was John [Alfredsson, drums] who was King Diamond.”
No matter the stage wear, Avatar are set to introduce crowds to the darkly anthemic drive of Don’t Go in the Forest. It’s a wildly diverse collection that pits subversively pied-piping, power-metal-influenced protest anthems (“Tonight We Must Be Warriors”) with true-crime-critiquing disco-metal (“Death & Glitz”), grotesquely double-kicking bangers (“Abduction Song”) and one particularly poppy piano rocker (“Howling at the Waves”).
Similar to the outdoorsy spirit of 2016’s Feathers & Flesh, an album partially inspired by an encounter Eckerström had with an owl, Avatar are ready to sweep listeners into the elemental and eerie whimsy of their Forest. The vocalist describes the collection as somewhat harnessing a Twin Peaks vibe, but instead of stumbling towards the ominously zig-zagged floors of the Black Lodge, fans will be faced with the band’s Big Top appeal. As Eckerström puts it, it’s “the strange marriage between vaudeville and variety-show energy,” paired with the compelling darkness of heavy metal.
“In our version, you’re out there cold and alone and afraid,” he explains. “You have no idea where you are, [but then] you see light between the trees, and you follow the light.
“Soon enough, you start to hear music. You reach a meadow, and in that is a circus tent — one that shouldn’t be there. But it’s there with old light bulbs hanging on the strings. You step inside, and that’s where we are — that’s where the world of Avatar is.”
Speaking on the “psychological nature” of Avatar’s latest woods-dwelling LP, Eckerström further reveals the thrills of their circus-metal Forest, why he’s more into supernatural scares than true crime “murder porn,” and more.
Don’t Go in the Forest plays into a storytelling convention around the deep, dark woods — an elemental terror [based on people] fearing the dark. What interests you about that sort of imagery?
Johannes Eckerström It’s a couple of different things that makes the title work for us. One of the main things is that if you were one of those weird little kids who was drawn to metal music, you might [also] be one of the kids who says, “Oh, I’m totally going into the forest.”
It triggers a lot of things: fear [of] something forbidden, but also curiosity and the lust for danger — the idea of wanting to break societal taboos. Like, ‘Don’t go there?’ As soon as somebody says that, often it seems like a great idea to actually go in there.
But [with] the weirdness of metal, overall, the music is aggressive and dark, but it’s also powerful, uplifting, exciting. And it’s a damn good time! It’s crowd surfing. If it’s one of those stadium shows, you get beer in that cardboard [drink holder] that lets you carry five cups all at once, you know? That’s also heavy metal!
Let’s say it’s a stadium show. You go and watch Metallica, and you go, “Metallica, woo!” And then they play a song about a man with no arms and no legs stuck in a bed, and he just wants to die [ed. “One”]. That’s a strange thing that metal does.
Did you grow up near the woods? And, if so, did you find them imposing at night?
Yes, when I was very little. Because it’s Sweden, [there’s] trees everywhere. Certain school friends lived on the other side of the woods — it’s just a nice forest area between different residential areas, where you can go ice skating in the winter. There’s an [outdoor] fireplace for everyone to use, and short hiking trails. But as a kid going home through there at night…there’s certainly a vibe.
Nighttime in the woods… I don’t remember when the shift happened, but at some point growing up, [it became] one of my favorite places to be.
Can you get into Avatar’s usage of the red balloon? Depending on the presentation, it can be an inviting or concerning image…
Well, onstage, it started with the song “Black Waltz,” and leaning into making that the circus song, you know? We are a metal circus rather than that we are circus-metal, but “Black Waltz” is certainly the most circus-y of metal songs. So, in the live show, we’ve done different things with it, including coming out with a whole lot of balloons. Where that came from to begin with is lost to time, but [you have] your Pennywises of the world having that same effect.
The duality that you described, that’s why I feel so at home [with it]. You know, putting on face paint and expressing our music through the clown as an archetype… we [can be] many things all at once. Some people are terrified of it; some kids love it. People with a more twisted sense [of humor] love it. It can be fun and silly when it needs to be, and it can be sinister when it needs to be.
…And the balloon became the staple of the live show. I would have a bunch of balloons at the beginning of the song, and I pop them on-stage in certain moments. I breathe in the helium and say something, and it’s funny. And then at the end of the song, I see if somebody in the audience wants the balloon. If you’re a teenager and upwards, I will pop it in your face. If there’s an actual kid there, they get to keep the balloon.
Looping this back to what you were mentioning about the revelry of a metal show — of being five beers deep and wooing along to Metallica, despite the grim nature of “One” — can we touch on that with regards to the new album’s “Death and Glitz”? It’s a merrymaking kind of sound, but the lyrics are about your disdain for gruesome true crime stories. Why did you decide to hit that theme?
Well, the decision is up to the music. It’s not like I have synesthesia, where people [hear] colors and shapes and notes and all that, but the way my imagination works, it plays a little movie [in my head].
Something that I guess was going on with me at the time [was] the whole true crime thing — opening a streaming service, and [seeing shows] in the top ten. There’s something unsettling about it, especially when it’s so clearly big business. People say, “I love true crime,” but it’s like, “Wait…someone died.”
It’s not a movie, you know. It’s not The Shining. It’s not horror as a piece of art. This really happened. They interview crying parents, and we dig into it. South Park called it “murder porn,” and that seems to be what it is. And sex helps sell these tragedies because it’s rarely [about] an ugly old man. No, you have to be hot and popular. We love death and tits. So, what is that?
From my own perspective — of ‘why does the straight white guy watch this?’ — I think there’s something about this: if you die young, you’re a beautiful corpse. There’s a future that you can make up about someone. You can have fantasies about saving her, or of what she would have been, or could have been. Like, a dead person can be anything you want her to be. That’s disturbing enough — the misogyny of it, or whatever.
I didn’t read any studies on the topic, but at least in my world it [seems] even more popular among women and girls. So why do they watch it? They can say [it’s] about confronting a fear that is rational enough, in terms of violence against women. You know, the fear of men in their lives — that the most likely perpetrator in your life [will be] someone close to you. That’s usually what happens in these stories that we follow.
So, self-insertion or projection… but it’s still at the expense of [actual victims of crime]. It’s a very weird detachment. It’s still entertainment. You can still serve popcorn to it.
This is an obtuse way to connect it to something else on the album, but there’s something believable, too, about “The Abduction Song,” the idea of danger always lurking in the fringes…
I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, because “The Abduction Song” is one of the songs where I’m having a little more fun with it… because it’s all built around alien abduction!
I love X-Files, and I want to believe, but I stay pretty rational. I don’t drink the Kool-Aid on the topic, but I still can’t shake it completely that something’s out there — [the thought] tickles me.
What had happened was we were recording [2022’s] Dance Devil Dance in the middle of the woods at my family’s cabin — I’m so grateful that I wasn’t alone. John and I saw a light that was a bit too big. We’d been out there all the time in a hot tub — we looked at the stars every night, and you see satellites, planes and shooting stars from time to time. I swear, this wasn’t that. [laughs] It was very bright, very brief, and very random in its movement. It disappeared so quickly, almost in the blink of an eye.
I don’t let myself jump to conclusions with those kinds of things. I don’t think, “Okay, that’s it: they’re here, they’re coming.” But damn it, it was something!
We’ve talked about some scares, but there seems to be great courage behind “Tonight We Must Be Warriors.” What’s the story behind that one?
At the end of the day, I wanted to give the political left a Manowar song.
I started my [musical] trip getting into Black Sabbath — a natural evolution of my dad’s Kinks and Beatles collection. But what I really went hook, line and sinker with, for metal, was power metal. Being twelve, it was also a really good age to read fantasy books. And [power metal has] the medieval fantasy thing with brave, glorious kings and mighty warriors. I’m still fond of that aesthetic, and I can still gladly go back and listen to bands I enjoyed doing that, but I cannot write about how great a king is. Politically, I’m something other than authoritarian, despotic rule and feudal society.
The magic words in the title are “we must.” And that it’s time to do what’s necessary. It’s coded with the color red, and [it’s] a thing of being lost [in life] but finding people like you coming together. And as you start to grow in numbers, you start to become a problem [to the ruling class]. Having the courage to come together, and to become that problem [by taking] to the streets… it basically becomes a song about unionizing.
[The song is about] trying to be human beings to one another. This is our time, this is the coming together, and we must be warriors. Because its normal people taking to the streets. It’s not terrorists, it’s Blokes and Blokettes. The song, in many ways, [is trying to] cheer people on.
You’re about to start this tour, as well as this album campaign, by beckoning us to go in the forest with you, if you will. What can we expect if we go into the woods with Avatar?
First and foremost, hopefully a damn good time!
There’s the art of making an album, of expressing yourselves and all these different ideas between UFO abductions, unionizing, and dead tits on a dance floor. But then there’s also the art of the stage and show business.
Before I left what used to be called Twitter, someone reached out to me, like, “I’m going to see you, and this will be my first metal show. What am I supposed to do there?” I was like, “You’re not supposed to do any one thing.” People enjoy shows in so many different ways: people leave with bloody noses and have the time of their lives, or people chill in the back and have the time of their lives.
You have performing arts where the audience are passive recipients — ballets, opera and plays. That’s great, [but] a rock and roll show is more like a magic show, stand-up comedy, or professional wrestling. It’s about the reactions and interactions. You build something together. [It’s] not just a platitude: without you, we are nothing. The show takes place out there as much as it does on stage.
We’re not theater, but we are theatrical. We borrow from that world. So, of course, that means we’re going to have certain set pieces where the theatrical thing takes over a bit more.
At the beginning of the show, we will put you underwater, for instance.
Have you invested in more merman costumes, like in the “Captain Goat” video?
It was very heavy, that costume. [laughs] [Henrik] was very uncomfortable, I don’t know how he would play bass [wearing that]. They digitally removed this after the fact, but there were a bunch of people flapping the tail for him — that wouldn’t look very good on stage. [Laughs]
This interview has been edited and condensed for flow and clarity.