HeadCrush: Hi Fredrik, first of all, can you tell us a little more about yourself?
Fredrik Pihl: I took my first breath around 30 years ago. Born and raised in the south of Sweden, where we don’t have penguins and polar-bears on the streets. It’s a myth people!



Started playing in my early teens, after people told me that guitar players would get a lot of girls… they lied. The first couple of years just goofing around and then I got more and more serious with things.



Started taking guitar lessons from a bunch of people, played in bands, got a few endorsements… bla bla bla. It all led up to where I am today, still making the same horrible noises and sounds like I did in my early teens.

HeadCrush: Fredrik, this is a very complex album, I guess you put all your main influences, the result is these tunes really different one from another. What is your purpose?
Fredrik Pihl: I wanted to do something completely different from the music that I had done in the past, which was very guitar oriented. On this album I leave a lot more room for other instruments as well, even though it's still very guitar based.



I worked a lot on arranging the songs, trying different tonalities, learning how various instruments can be good compliments to each other etc. LOT’S of influences has colored the sound of the album. Everything from death metal to jazz.

I would say that the album is somewhat schizophrenic. So I guess one of the purposes I had was to mix all music that I enjoy listening to into my own thing. But the o

verall main purpose was to annoy the shit out of everyone that get’s to hear the album.

HeadCrush: From my point of view, there is a masterpiece: Silhouettes, every other tune seems to gravitate around this one. Am I right?
Fredrik Pihl: Thank you! Glad you dig the song. The title track Silhouettes was one of the last tracks that I wrote for the album.

All songs are more or less connected to one another. There are some mystical twelve tone rows that occur in a discrete way in a few of the songs that builds up to the last song called “The twelfth night”.

That song is based around the same twelve tone row that is heard in the other songs. The song was written mostly during night time, and earned the title that way. I suck at come up with titles for my songs.

HeadCrush: Fredrik, how will you define your music?
Fredrik Pihl: That’s a tricky question. I would love to make it easy for myself and just call it music.

But all fans of heavily distorted sound waves like to subdivide metal music into different categories like thrash, death, black, prog, heavy, fruit (?)-metal etc. And since I’m doing this interview for Spirit of metal.com, I will try to please the readers by defining my music: Progressive-romantic-noisy-melancholic-heavy-weird-classical-jazz-fusion metal, with a touch of guitar.



It’s kind of putting all different music styles that I like in a kitchen blender and press the button. What’s comes out is a mix that fits in everywhere or nowhere. I’ll leave it up to the listeners to decide what they

wanna call it. :)

HeadCrush: How long time did it take you to achieve this album and, are you working now on a new project?
Fredrik Pihl: The album took me about a year to do all in all. It was nice to not be working against the clock, since I was doing it all by myself.

Also I got to work with some great people that did guest appearances on the album. Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (Guns N’ Roses), Mattias IA Eklundh (Freak Kitchen) and Lalle Larsson (Agents of Mercy, Karmakanic etc).

All of them are amazing people/musicians and friends of mine, so I’m glad to have them playing on my songs. There’s always new things happening. Right now I’m collaborating with a great guitar player named Simon Hermasson on a latin/fusion kind of song. Also been doing some guest solos for other peoples’ records, teaching guitar students etc.

Besides that I’m working on new songs on my own (a lot of fretless guitar stuff), and I’m also discussing to do some music with my great friend and gifted player Christian Johansson. If time allows I’ll perhaps do a band thing. Just trying to keep as busy as possible.

HeadCrush: Is there a question I didn't raise or a subject I did not ask that you may want say something about ?
Fredrik Pihl: Yes, you forgot to raise one question and the answer is eight. Thank you Mr. HeadCrush for having me on the site.

Please check out my album, that is available through CdBaby.com, iTunes, Amazon or directly through me. Just drop me a mail at: [email protected] and we’ll set something up. :)

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interview réalisée par HeadCrush

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