SOILWORK Guitarist Talks About The Making Of 'Sworn To A Great Divide'

December 3, 2007

MetalSucks recently sat down with guitarist Ola Frenning of Swedish metal kings SOILWORK mere hours before their sold-out show at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, LAMB OF GOD, and DEVILDRIVER. Frenning talked about the tour, the band's new album "Sworn to a Great Divide", self-producing for the first time, the sudden exit of guitarist and songwriter Peter Wichers, future touring plans and more. An excerpt from the chat follows:

MetalSucks: How does it feel to be back on the road again after taking a break for so long to record the new album?

Frenning: It's fun, definitely. We were waiting for this. We had a long, long break while we were writing the songs and recording the album and so on. We just made one European tour, and this is actually the first tour promoting the new album.

MetalSucks: Speaking of the new album "Sworn to a Great Divide", how do you feel about that album as it stacks up against past SOILWORK?

Frenning: I'm very satisfied and happy with the album, definitely. We chose to record it back home, in our hometown so to say. All the previous albums we always went away to a studio some place else, and we had X amount of weeks that we were working. This time we just took it a little bit easy, and we produced a little bit more by ourselves. We also tried to have a little bit more dirty sound on this album, compared to the other ones. "Stabbing" ["Stabbing the Drama", 2005] was a little bit polished, that deep heavy sound and so on, and we just tried to get a little bit closer, down to earth sound. That's a little bit different compared to the others.

MetalSucks: How was it producing yourselves? You also produced with Peter from DARKANE, right?

Frenning: Yeah. It was a tough job. I don't know if I am gonna do it again! I guess a little… at least I will try to do it. But, um… we learned that we need a lot of time, a lot of breaks. You can't record the album, and the day after start to do the mix. So we need to have weeks, or months… a couple of weeks off before we start to mix it, because you're so into it and you hear the wrong things.

MetalSucks: Did you mix it yourselves too?

Frenning: Yeah, we mixed it and produced it.

MetalSucks: Except, of course, for Björn ["Speed" Strid] who did his vocals with Devin Townsend. He prefers to work with Devin, who, of course, did the "Natural Born Chaos" album?

Frenning: Devin is doing a great job with Björn. He really gets the best out of him. We were talking about Devin before we started this album. Everyone could chose what they wanted to do, and how they wanted to do it and so on… at that time we were actually out on tour with FEAR FACTORY, STRAPPING YOUNG LAD, and DARKANE, on the US tour. So, they started to discuss and all of a sudden they decided that OK, they'll do the vocals together.

MetalSucks: What was the writing process like for this album? Obviously you guys replaced a guitarist [Peter Wichers] who was also a big writer for the band, so what was it like writing without him in the band? Was it a challenge?

Frenning: Eh, a little bit maybe… but we knew that everybody in the band can write music, and everybody wrote music. If you look at our early albums, the whole band was more involved. I guess it came a little bit naturally that Peter started to write more and more, because Peter, you know, he's a fast songwriter and a good songwriter of course. So it was a little bit of a struggle in the beginning, but after we made the first song and we felt that "Wow, this is kind of cool," and "Exile" was one of the first we made. And then we felt that there was a little more confidence… continuity… and also, this time the whole band was more involved.

Read the entire interview at www.metalsucks.net.

Find more on
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).