We chat to vocalist and guitar player Marius from Swedish melodic death metal Aspherium band about their third album The Embers of Eternity and more.
HI THERE THANKS FOR ANSWERING SOME QUESTIONS FOR US.
Hi! Marius (Guitars/Vocals) from Aspherium here. Very happy to answer some questions!
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR NEW ALBUM
Our new album is called The Embers of Eternity, and this is our third album. We play a style of melodic death metal with a lot of thrash and progressive elements. It is a very varied album, and we worked very hard on the songwriting to make every song truly great! The album was mixed and mastered in Fascination Street Studios in Sweden, they've done albums with bands like Opeth, Ihsahn, Soilwork, Sepultura, Devin Townsend etc. This album is a concept album, and the music takes on a journey through a dystopian future where humanity tries to figure out what went wrong.
HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT THE SONGWRITING PROCESS?
It was a mix of a few different approaches. One way was using riffs that Morten or I had written, using them as a starting point and writing songs based off those riffs. Then we had a while bunch of jams that we video tapes at rehearsal. We often go in to these long jams, and we took some ideas from there. And we also had other ideas lying around, our drummer Bjørn Tore wrote a synth melody that was the main part of the song Echoes of a Lost World. We wanted this album to have more details and "ear candy" than the last one. We also wanted to improve the songwriting, and make the songs flow better.
WHAT INSPIRED THE ALBUM?
The main point was just feeling creative and wanting to write a new album. It was a long time since the previous album, so we had a lot of riffs and ideas to go through. And once that process begins, it just starts pouring out. The inspirations for the concept about how humanity is destroying our world came from just seeing what is happening in the world today.
WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE TRACK?
My favorite track is the last song on the album Until the Embers Fade. It is big and epic, and goes through a lot of changes. And it includes a synth solo, which is a first for us! I think this song turned out really well.
WHO ARE YOUR BIGGEST INFLUENCES?
Some of our biggest influences are Opeth, Nile, Machine Head, Pink Floyd, Dream Theater, Metallica.
WHAT RECORD CHANGED YOUR LIFE?
Load by Metallica. That might sound like a weird choice, but my dad bought my that album in 1996, right after a friend of mine showed me Metallica for the first time. Listening to Load, and loving it got me to buy my first guitar and got this whole journey started. I saw Metallica live for the first time the same year, and I was a super fan.
WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING IF YOU DIDN'T MAKE MUSIC?
I think maybe I would make video games or something with photography or video. All of that is really interesting to me.
WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECORD ONE OF YOUR SONGS, AND WHICH ONE?
We have worked with Jens Bogren from Fascination Street Studios already, which was a dream come true. So apart from him, I would love to work with Nolly (Periphery, Animals as leaders, Devin Townsend) or Devin Townsend. If you mean another artist to record a cover version a song, I would want to see Nine Inch Nails do our song Shadows of Creation, to really hear something very different. That would be fascinating!
HOW DID YOU FORM THE BAND?
Torgeir (Bass) and I formed the band in 2007, when we felt our band at the time wasn't really going anywhere. We thought of drummer Bjørn Tore who we had played a couple cover songs with live. He nailed the audition, and we started working on a demo. We started trying out guitar players, but couldn't find the right one until Morten tried out in 2009. So that's when we started playing live, and things started happening.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO ANYONE STARTING OUT?
Go out there and do it. Don't wait around for opportunities to come to you. Be very active, both in real life and on social media. This is something we need to be better at as well. It's hard to stand out among the thousands of bands out there.
WHAT IS NEXT?
Now there is some time off with Christmas, and our drummer is having surgery done on his wrists. After that is done, we will be back playing live and promoting our new album! Would love to hear what everyone thinks about it, so check out The Embers of Eternity by Aspherium on your favourite music service and follow us on social media! Thanks for your time!