The ’20s are Eclipse’s decade and we’re just living in it! While other bands are still navigating their way through this post-pandemic landscape, Eclipse are playing to their largest audiences ever and dominating streaming services with one hit after the next. They simply are the hard and heavy band to watch in today’s digital age. Just a week shy of their new album, Megalomanium, we sat down with founder Erik Mårtensson to discuss the band’s ongoing rise, their ever-evolving sound, and which classic Scandi hard rockers us Americans should be more aware of.
Greetings Erik and welcome back to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Erik Mårtensson: It’s fantastic! I’m talking to you!
It’s always a pleasure talking with you! It’s been a couple years, so we have a lot to catch up on. I must start though by asking you about the title of this awesome new album, Megalomanium. It’s a bit of a tongue twister! Whose idea was it and how does it connect to this collection of songs?
EM: It’s a word that very well describes the last two years. We’ve been on a roll. The band has been growing a lot the last two years. We’ve been playing so many live shows. We’ve been touring a lot. We had a lot of confidence when we started writing and doing this record. We were really trying to be bold and do new cool stuff and add elements that we’ve never had before that maybe the fans would react…not so well on? I’m not so sure, but we had the balls to do it. I think it sums up the whole thing. We always want to have our own twist of the word. I googled “Megalomanium”. It’s occurred one time before in a cartoon. He’s a mad scientist and if you drink it (megalomanium), he gets mad with power *laughs*! It fits really well.
The songs released thus far truly are mad with power! I’m glad that you addressed you may be taking the fans for a bit of a surprise with this one. The singles released ahead of this album might be the most hook-driven Eclipse songs to date, and I don’t say that lightly. What did the band set out to achieve musically with this album?
EM: To try new stuff and do stuff a little different. There are still songs that sound exactly like Eclipse, but we added some punk rock attitude. We started that even with Wired, but to have that punk rock attitude, even if it’s melodic rock, that it has that power and rawness. We added some of that emo rock stuff which I love. We take influences from what we listen to at the moment and what we love. We try to take chances, but it still ends up sounding like Eclipse. Of course, there shouldn’t be a country song on there. The fans should recognize the band, but we can’t sound the same on a record. On every record, we always change. Even if some fans complain about it, I think at the end of the day, they will appreciate it because it’s not the same thing over and over again, which many bands do.
I remember you mentioning that punk attitude when we spoke about Wired. When the album came out, I recall some American fans reacting along the lines of, “This isn’t punk!” Well if your idea of “punk” is the usual studs and leather fare, sure. However, if you’re familiar with a band like The Hellacopters, you can totally hear that vibe on the last record and I understand where you’re coming from.
EM: It’s more the attitude of how we play it and how we perform in the studio. It takes a lot to have that raw energy in the studio. The first time we were in the studio, like 65 years ago when we did our first record *laughs*, I was only playing live and in rehearsal rooms. Here I was in the studio for the first time and I was screaming like a lion. Then I heard it in the mixing room and it sounded like a cat, “Meow!” *laughs* Then I understood you really gotta go for it. You don’t have the volume. The output is the only thing you got in the studio.
I want to ask you about the first single released off this album, “The Hardest Part is Losing You”, which I’ve been playing on repeat since it dropped. What was the inspiration behind this one?
EM: I had the melody and I had the chorus, but I couldn’t find a fitting verse for it. It has that emo rock, My Chemical Romance vibe, which I love. Some people say it’s very inspired and it probably is. For me, if someone says it sounds a bit like My Chemical Romance, to me that is a really nice thing to say. But then in the verse, we’ll add something strange like the rock n’ roll, “da-da-roka-roka-roka-da-da”. The combination, on paper, couldn’t work, but it works really well on the recording and it’s a cool song. I think it’s one of the better songs we’ve ever done. I really like it.
It’s a total earworm. The first time I heard it, I said to myself, “Well, here’s what I’m listening to now everyday until the album comes out.”
EM: *laughs* That’s fantastic!
Speaking of My Chemical Romance, in between Wired and this upcoming album, Eclipse had a chance to open for them on their ongoing reunion tour. What was that experience like and how did that gig end up materializing?
EM: The whole opening up thing is politics. Our booking agent contacts someone and someone contacts the management. First, the promoter has to accept it. Then, My Chemical Romance’s management or…I don’t know. Everybody’s gotta accept it. It takes a lot of time for these things to happen. We were not really sure how the audience were going to react to a hard rock band. My Chemical Romance is of course a hard rock band as well, but it’s a different thing. We didn’t expect anything and it was probably one of the most fun shows I’ve ever played. People really opened their hearts. We played a gig in Prague and after that gig, Prague became one of the biggest cities for Eclipse on streaming services. Those people went home and put Eclipse on their Spotify account, which is fantastic.
It sure is. Honestly, the whole My Chemical Romance reunion tour is a bit sobering for me. I remember being a little kid, when they were the band everybody’s older siblings listened to. Then they broke up when I was in junior high. Now they’re out doing this reunion thing and I remember thinking, “Great, a band of my era doing a “nostalgia tour”. Am I old now at 24?”
EM: *laughs* No way!
Regardless, I’m thrilled you got on that show and it sounds like it went on with a bang!
EM: Yeah, it was great! That led up to us opening for Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard. One things leads to another. It’s awesome.
When we last spoke, you said that Wired felt like more of a band release than past Eclipse albums. Does this remain the case for Megalomanium?
EM: Both yes and no. Some parts of it are made together as a band, and some parts are…I wrote a lot of songs. A lot of ideas came from myself, where I wrote the whole thing myself, and then I brought it to the guys and they had their go at it as well with the arrangements and stuff. Wired was a more collective thing. The cool thing with this new record is that (bassist) Victor (Crusner), not only did he co-write, he came with a song like, “What do you think of this song?”. We rewrote it so Victor is singing a song called “High Road”. He’s singing all the verses. It’s the first time someone else is singing in Eclipse. I do the choruses. It’s a thing that turned out really well. I think we’re gonna do a lot more of that because it was awesome.
Was there anything about the writing and recording of this album that surprised you? In other words, did Eclipse end up outdoing themselves in certain aspects?
EM: We do pretty good pre-production demos, so when we start to do the actual record, we pretty much know how they’re gonna sound when they’re finished because the pre-production sounds almost like the record. A lot of the stuff that you hear on the record are actually from the pre-production demos. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; that’s the attitude we have. We focus more on getting the proper sounds for a record, but the vibe should be already there in the pre-production stage.
One song called “Anthem”, I think it’s song number three on the record, we wrote that for Wired, but we couldn’t get the production right. In my head, it sounded like this anthem, because we always called it “Anthem”, but it didn’t have a lyric even. I heard it in my head and we couldn’t get it right for Wired. We gave it one more try and recorded it this time. Now it sounds like how I heard it in my head before. We couldn’t come up with a title and we’d been calling it “Anthem” for three years now, so it was like, “OK, let’s call it “Anthem”.” *laughs*
Has that been an occurrence in the past where there’s a song that might not be ready for an album, but it could arrive an album or two later?
EM: Usually not. I think that’s the first time we skipped a song for a record. Usually, I never look back for older ideas. By accident, I destroyed my phone which had two years worth of material. It had two years of all the small ideas and stuff, and that didn’t back up. I broke the phone in two, so it’s completely broken. Two years of collected ideas were gone, and I was like, “Good, then I can skip that and focus on new stuff instead!” *laughs* There was probably material enough for six records on that phone, now it’s gone. Always forward!
Eclipse has long been recorded as one of the finest Swedish hard and heavy acts of recent years, and rightfully so. Who are your top 3 essential Swedish hard rock and heavy metal bands?
EM: Wow, I gotta say Europe. I heard them as a kid. I remember their videos being aired on TV. I don’t know when, but it was amazing. I love Joey Tempest and his songwriting. I’m hugely influenced by him. Very catchy songs. I’d say The Hellacopters, as you mentioned. I love The Hellacopters. Very nostalgic ’70s rock, but very well done. I really like it. And…what else…there are so many good bands. I can’t even choose. Can I say a Danish band and make this Scandinavian?
Sure!
EM: OK, Danish band, I say D-A-D. Especially in the U.S., they don’t get the attention they deserve. D-A-D, Disneyland After Dark from Denmark, fantastic band.
You’re correct, that is a band who, here in the States, are virtually unknown. It didn’t help that, upon singing with Warner Bros., they got slapped with a lawsuit by Disney, essentially killing their chances here. It’s a shame, because they’re a great rock n’ roll band.
EM: They are really big in Sweden. There’s a lot of people coming to their shows, especially in Scandinavia. For me, they’re a huge band. I’ve seen them 8 or 10 times live? Even more, probably 12. We played the Monsters of Rock Cruise this year and D-A-D was on the bill. I was super excited about it. I was front row both shows. When we played, we had three times as much people at our concert on the Monsters of Rock Cruise. I was watching D-A-D like, “Where is everyone? This is the best band on the whole cruise? Why are they going to our show when they should be going to D-A-D?” *laughs*
They are one of those bands who, if you are American and you do want to see them, the cruise is the place to go.
EM: Especially as a European band, you don’t need visas to go there. The festival is on international waters. That’s the big hassle with US gigs. The visas cost a fortune. If you go there, apply to be a tourist, and fake it, if you get caught, you’re banned for 10 years, so we don’t take that chance. If we don’t get the visas in time, then we need to cancel.
That leads into a question I was going to ask later, but I’ll ask it now while we’re on the topic. Is there any chance we will see Eclipse in America in the next year or two?
EM: Absolutely. We are working on it and we are trying to make it happen. The visa situation has been very troublesome. We had to cancel two festivals because we couldn’t even get an appointment, even 5 months ahead of time. It’s been a troublesome situation with the visas, but we are trying to find better connections with that. We are working on it.
A couple years ago, we looked back on Eclipse’s early output and the band’s subsequent musical evolution. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the band’s third album, Are You Ready to Rock. How did this album impact the band’s direction?
EM: It’s probably the most important album of the band’s career because before that, back in those days…it feels like I’m talking about the 19th century here *laughs*, but melodic hard rock was so out of fashion. No one gave a shit about it. People were laughing at us, especially in the early ’00s when we started playing melodic rock. Everyone hated that. Grunge came and all those ’80s bands were nothing. We were almost giving up. Then we said, “Screw it. Let’s just do the record and the music we love and start writing songs.”
When that album came out, it was like, “Nobody’s listening to this? We don’t care.” Then everyone went, “Woah, this is really good!” We did it from the heart. People heard that. There were so many more than just us who liked it. Everyone was like, “Woah, that’s good! That’s great!” That was the big change. Follow your heart. Do the music you wanna do. Don’t try to please anyone else. That’s the attitude that we, since then, tried to embrace.
Aside from Eclipse, what other projects have you been busy with as of late? Any updates on W.E.T. or Nordic Union?
EM: We released a Nordic Union album in the beginning of last year, so we’re not doing a new record at the moment. We haven’t quit though. We are recording a brand new W.E.T. record. I started recording the rhythm guitars for that one today! I laid down the first two tracks, so it’s gonna be interesting to hear it. You never know how a record’s gonna be until it’s finished and you listen from start to finish. It’s like, “Hey, this is pretty good!”
The new Eclipse album, Megalomanium, comes out Friday, September 1 on Frontiers Records. For more information on Eclipse, visit www.eclipsemerch.com.