One of the last 15 years‘ best kept secret concerns Sweden. How such a small country (8 millions of inhabitants) can produce regularly such an amazing amount of influential & great metal bands ? Common metalhead seems to be blasé about this fact which is simply incredible. Has it something to do with rollmops radioactivity, some possessed krisprolls or a thermo-nuclear local beer ? Everything began with Entombed, Dismember & Grave in the early 90‘s and this huge creative process doesn’t seem to end. In all kinds of metal (thrash, doom, death, black, heavy, progressive), Sweden continues to spread its supreme legions over the whole planet. One of the new swedish phenomenons is called Scar Symmetry & this band is simply awesome. Their strong line-up consists of Jonas Kjellgren (Carnal Forge, Centinex World Below), Henrik Ohlsson (Theory In Practice, Mutant, Altered Aeon), Per Nilsson (Altered Aeon), Christian Älvestam (Unmoored, Incapacity, Torchbearer) and Kenneth Seil. Scar Symmetry decided to play modern & melodic death-metal without boundaries at all. The result sounds powerful, extremely catchy & shredding ! Here’s an interview i’ve done with drummer Kenrik in january 2005.

 

>Scar Symmetry is a very young band. Can you tell us about its creation? What is your main motivation with Scar Symmetry ?
Yeah, Scar Symmetry formed around march 2004. We had all been playing with bands for a long time and we wanted to do something new and different from what we`d done before. The idea was to create heavy and pretty extreme music with lots of shredding guitar solos and ethereal keyboards. We also wanted vocals that had lots of variation and we wanted it all backed up by interesting complex rhythm work mixed with straight forward stuff, and everything had to be sort of catchy you know?

 

>After only one demo, you signed with Cold records & now your first album is released by Metal Blade. This is a very fast process. Don’t you afraid to excite some jealousies ?
Hmm, no not really. We`ve been in the business for a long time as individuals and we`ve worked hard for more than ten years in the field of extreme music. I don`t think there should be any jealousy out there. But it`s true that we were signed after we had recorded a demo which contained only one track, “Seeds of Rebellion”, that song can be found on the album aswell.

 

>Where did you record "Symmetric In Design" ? The sound is perfect. Which kind of sound were you looking for when entering the studio ?
We recorded “Symmetric in Design” in Jonas Kjellgren`s studio called the Black Lounge studio. Jonas plays guitar in Scar Symmetry for those of you who didn`t know that. And yeah, Jonas did an excellent job with the producing part ! It sounds magnificent, I agree. We wanted a big sound on this album, huge I should say. That kind of sound was perfect for this album since the songs are mostly sort of mid-tempo and heavy. So basically we wanted a big sound with a mystical, ethereal feel to it.

 

>What is the meaning of this album title "Symmetric In Design" ?
The title has two meanings : One is a reflection of the bandname, Scar Symmetry, which is spoken of in the song “Dominion”: ”The scars form a pattern, symmetric in design. For each and every conflict, a mark you will find”. What I mean is that we`re all wounded by life in one way or another and that we receive emotional scars by existing as human beings. The second meaning is that natu

re designs things in a very interesting way, in spirals, circles etc... That`s what the artwork for the album reflects.

 

>What do your texts deal with ? Who does write them ?
I write the lyrics and they mostly deal with mysticism in different ways as in “2012, the Demise of the Fifth Sun”, “Hybrid Cult”, “Reborn”, “Obscure Alliance”, “Orchestrate the Infinite”, “The Eleventh Sphere”, “Detach from the Outcome” and “Veil of Illusions”. The second category of lyrics on the album is sort of an inspiration of how to deal with people who wants to harm you, use their attacks to your own benefit and that kind of backwards thinking. Songs that deal with that stuff are for example “Underneath the Surface” and “Chaosweaver”.

 

>Vocals are one of the highlights of this first album. Almost each song has a wonderful, melodic & very catchy chorus inside. Do these choruses something hard to produce or just a natural thing ?
I agree that the vocals are awesome, I immediately worshipped Chrille`s vocals when I heard him sing some ballad type of stuff so naturally we wanted to use his clean voice on choruses for some songs, but we also have clean vocals on verses and other parts of songs aswell. I think it varies from song to song. Those parts were absolutely natural since Chrille came up with the vocal lines himself on Jonas´ songs, Per created the vocal lines for his songs and he had a good time doing that and the results overall were amazing. So there wasn`t anything forced over having clean vocal parts in our songs.

 

>I’d like to know if these choruses & melody lines were in your minds for a long time, but you couldn’t use them in you main bands (too melodic for Centinex & Carnal Forge, too simple for Theory In Practice) ?
The only active band of those you mentioned is Centinex (Carnal Forge is also an active band but Jonas left them earlier this year, so…) and well, they`ve used a little bit of clean vocals on their latest album [for Theory In Practice, the band is taking an extensive break]. But anyway, I understand what you mean. It wasn`t the case though, Scar Symmetry started creating material from scratch and there are basically no old ideas at all on the album. Yes, we wanted to do something different from what we`ve done before but it wasn`t like we had a bunch of ideas that we had never been able to use. It was more like creating something from scratch as I said.

 

>Now maybe this question will displease you but let’s do it : Commercial success is taboo in metal. Did you also form Scar Symmetry to get success like In Flames or Arch Enemy ? I mean you got your main bands where you can play the style you deeply love, but maybe you’d appreciate to be known as some great songwriters ?
It sounds like a cliché but no, we didn`t do it to gain commercial success… Death-metal isn`t commercial and Scar Symmetry is a bastard son of death-metal. There`s more than 50% death-metal vocals on the album, man, if we wanted to gain commercial success we would have done considerably more pop-oriented music or something. We have the potential to appeal to a large part of the metal community but to call the music commercial is an exaggeration in my opinion. And of course we love the music we play with our other bands (Altered Aeon, Centinex, World Below, Incapacity, Torchbearer, Unmoored etc) but make no mistake – we love the music of Scar Symmetry too, otherwise we would never

ever do it. It`s just another face of extreme metal and we`re totally into it! Don`t think anything else!

 

>To continue on this sensitive subject, I must admit that one of my fave songs on your album is "Obscure Alliance". It made me immediately think about an incredible crossing between Illdisposed & Bon Jovi. Do you think metalheads are open-minded enough to accept it ?
Ha ha ha! That`s a cool comparison! Personally I was a bit sceptic towards that song but when the vocals were recorded on it I think it turned out to be a cool tune! I don`t know if the metalheads out there will be able to accept it. Some will and some won`t, I guess. We`re not really bothering with that, cause at the end of the day it`s out of our hands. It turned out to be a cool, although different, Scar Symmetry-song and we wanted it to be there. It was great to hear your opinion on it! Bon Jovi and Ill-Disposed, wow man!

 

>Personnaly I think metalheads are generally intolerant musically speaking. Didn’t you think about keeping your line-up secret by using pseudonyms ? People will inevitably make comparisons with your main bands, telling Scar Symmetry is far more commercial.
No no no, we have nothing to hide. I think that people can deal with seeing the names in the line-up of Scar Symmetry. I think the metalheads out there respect what we do and I think they will still check out Altered Aeon, Centinex, World Below, Incapacity, Torchbearer, Unmoored etc even if they end up not liking Scar Symmetry.

 

>Each one of you is a very busy musician. Will you find enough time to tour in order to promote your first album ? Which bands would you like to tour with ?
Yeah, we all have busy schedules. But we love this and we`re doing it because it`s fun, we`ll find the time to promote the album in a decent way. I would like to tour with King Diamond or maybe even Kiss, that`d be something! To be a bit more realistic I think it would be fucking cool to tour with Morbid Angel too, I`d like to discuss philosophy with Trey.

 

>A large part of this interview has been based on your melodic & catchy personality. But Scar Symmetry is also a very metal band with a massive rhythmic section & some killer riffs to headbang on. It should be a delicate equilibrium between power & subtlety to obtain. In the future, don’t you afraid to progressively loose this aggressiveness while focussing on melody ?
Yeah, we are undoubtedly a metal band, I think some bands sort of hangs in no man`s land between pop/rock and metal but we`re not one of those. So far we haven´t written any new songs so therefore it`s impossible to tell in what direction the next album is going. But we`re not afraid to lose any aggression or to lose anything regarding our music, simply because we`re the ones who choose if the next album will be harder or softer than “Symmetric in Design”. I think we will always mix the aggression with the more melancholy type of stuff, cause we`re into both of those expressions. When you buy a Scar Symmetry album you`ll know that it has its fair share of brutality, melody and 100% quality. We won`t have it any other way!

 

>This interview is now finished. I would like to simply thank you for releasing such a great disk without limitation of styles, I really love it ! Last words are yours, I wish you all the best for 2005.
Oh, thank you! It was a pleasure talking to you and I wish all the best for you aswell. Best of luck to your `zine and radio station- keep the fires of metal burning!