Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Equilibrium

During the last decade, there has been a rising force in extreme metal, unknown to many. Tapping influences from ancient heritage, mythology and folklore, and combining them with symphonic elements, galloping rhythms and a wide spectrum of musical instruments, a newer crop of bands such as Primordial (Ireland, 1993), Ensiferum (Finland, 1995), Finntroll (Finland, 1997), Turisas (Finland, 1997), Eluveitie (Switzerland, 2002) and Korpiklaani (Finland, 2003) have blazed a fiery trail for the future of extreme metal. The sub-genre has been dubbed pagan or Viking metal by it's loyal followers, and has even led to the successful Paganfest tour and Pagan Fire, a CD compilation from Nuclear Blast showcasing the strongest of these pagan-warriors.

Enter Equilibrium. Hailing from Bavaria, Germany, the band was put together to play only one show at a church in 2001 (How ironic is that?), but after a great response and a grassroots campaign led by their fans, the band marched on and has released their second album and first for Nuclear Blast, Sagas (read review here). Though there are many parts of the disc that will have the listener imagining a Viking longship crashing through icy waters on its way to pillage and conquer a foreign land, the epic metal of Equilibrium goes deeper than that. As he explains in this interview with Live-Metal.net's Jeff Maki, lead vocalist Helge Stang prefers the term “world metal” over Viking, folk, pagan or anything else. Stang gives us in-depth background on the new album, the formation of the band, and above all else, why Equilibrium is about to party down Bavarian style. So raise your drinking horns along with 'em! What else would you expect from a band that hails from the land of Oktoberfest?

First off, let me say, the new CD Sagas blew me away upon listening to it. Give us a little background on making the new album, and just the whole thought process and putting the thing together.

The process of the Sagas album took three and a half years, I think, and two and a half years of that time we were actually working on the album. It was hard to get because we had a lot of personal problems, illness, lots of concerts which took much time, no contract, then we had a contract, then it didn't work. In the end, we made a decision for this album to do it the way we want to. We want to produce an album that we can like and that we are satisfied with. We don't want to make it quick and dirty and produce an album that doesn't satisfy us. It's a very long story with ups and downs and a hard, hard process.

Well the album title is more an index of the album. The lyrics, as well as the music of the songs, are very standalone, so there is no red line through the album, no concept which keeps it all together. It's more of a title which keeps all the parts together and Sagas means stories. And the songs are very different from another one, as well, through the lyrics. It's completely different. It's about unconquered and crazy people ["Unbesiegt"], and about tobacco ["Snüffel"], and revenge and all these things. And to put that all together and find a name for this, we said “OK, Sagas. The name fits.”

Well the name definitely fits and the album sounds like it took a tremendous amount of time and thought to make and from what you say it definitely was the case. Getting into the lyrics, was it an idea from the beginning of the band to sing the lyrics completely in German?

In the old beginnings, I had to decide how to sing the vocals. Do I grunt or try a clean style or harsh vocals? And what do I do? As well as which language shall I use? Which content? At first, I tried Middle Earth stuff, but fortunately I came back from this because after a while the movies appeared and then everybody was about Lord of the Rings [laughs]. And then German vocals, I thought “Hmm, OK, let's try it in English,” and as you might have noticed my English is not superb. I'm still learning. [laughs] But German is the language I know best and can express myself best in my own language ,of course. So why not use German? It was not that common at the time to sing in German, especially in hard and metal, so why not do this. I have to tell you it was lucky and efficient because many people here in Germany and Austria can understand the lyrics immediately, so we don't have to translate. It's embedded right through the ear. And it raises the level of the content of my lyrics. I think more about of what shall I sing about and how I put my verses and lines together. And it has to make sense because people would say, “This is completely stupid. What are you singing?”

Your bio talks about how the band was formed in 2001 and put together to play one show. How did that all come about. Were you guys all from different bands in your region? What happened exactly?

Well, Renee [Berthiaume] ... He was a born musician and he had bands his whole life. He was asked for one concert and they had to have it in a church. He was asked can you play and he said of course, and then he came out, “What, oops I don't have band” And then he gathered some people and asked them, “What do you think about playing in a church?” “That sounds like metal, in a church.” And I said, “Yeah of course!” Let's do this and the others said as well. Yeah, it was only meant to be one project. I had another band at that time too, but it was fucked up and nothing special. And the others had bands but nothing [worth] mentioning. And then we started the project and played one concert. We had a very good afterparty. And we decided this makes sense. Let's do it again. We played another show and after the second show I think it was [decided] that we will go on. The first [of our] songs had originated in this time and were written in this time. Luckily we had a good time and this is when we were made or created.

We played some Dimmu Borgir stuff and Hypocrisy. There were two songs which were finally released on our first album. And one of those songs has become very, very, very popular. And I think it's neat. This song we have played every time, countless of times and because people love this song they want to hear it every time. Sometimes we had to play it two times a concert because the people love the song so much. I think this early, early church song had a great part of the way the band developed.

You have to imagine, in those days we were an unknown band and we had the chance to do a small record of two songs and we put them onto our web site, and then over time and over network—we did a lot of networks, guestbooks, programs and all of these things. And what people here heard, they liked, and started to promote us in a special way. There were these online radios and they got these mp3s and played them a lot. It was like an avalanche and it spread more and more and this was only possible because people like the early material. Then after a few years we were able to record a whole album. And it was a demo CD, a promo CD. And this is now our second album and people were expecting lots of songs like in the early days, but of course we have developed on our own way and made the stuff we want to, not people wanted us to do.

How do you feel about the label of pagan, folk or Viking metal? Is this something you embrace?

This is something we have always tried to refute from. We don't want to put us in a special corner. We don't want to come out as pagan metal or folk metal or Viking metal or all these things because none of those descriptions really fits the Equilibrium sound. If you listen to the new album, there are so many influences from Bolivia, Japan and Russia and, of course, Scandinavia. So if you take one song out, you might find a description like Viking metal or something, and if you take another one it becomes harder. And if you take all these certain songs, there is almost no description which fits on all those songs and all those ideas behind the songs. It's a little hard. Because Nuclear Blast wanted to have a description, we said lets just call it symphonic pagan metal. “... But this is wrong. We should call it world metal, but this sounds gay. So we said OK, let's call it symphonic pagan metal.” World metal is what would describe the music because it comes from all over the world. This would fit, but imagine you read, “Equilibrium world metal” and [you say,] “Oh, what's this?” We can't do this. It had to be something the people know or read. [It's like] if we try to create a new description like death metal or black metal ... [or] you hear [for] the first time, Euro-metal. What's Euro-metal? And that's why we didn't choose world metal.

Obviously, you can hear a lot of influences, but also I feel like there's an element of entertainment and fun. It really sound like you're having a great time even on the album.

[laughs] Well yeah, the whole band, the music, we do all this for fun. It is a fact that we have students and employees in the band and everybody [has their] own lives, so nobody needs money output from the music. So we do anything we want to because we don't need to be successful and sell records. We always do what we want to and have fun. And therefore we are doing the music the way we have the most fun. In the lyrics, there were a lot of moments ... I was sitting there writing my lyrics and I was smiling for myself. “Can I really do this?” It might not be acceptable for you. I get that you don't understand the lyrics perfect, but there were some words ... “Can we really do this?” The word “ass” in the lyrics? And lots more situations like this happened. So I said, "OK, let's do this, do it the way I want to." [laughs] Even the recordings were a lot of fun because the lyrics sometimes sounded a little strange. It's completely freestyle and all for fun.

Something I saw in our email with Nuclear Blast is that you had a potential career in competitive rowing?

Yeah, that was a few years ago and, yeah, I did this rowing sport. It's not fairly popular and I'm about two meters tall and fairly thin. [laughs] Back in these days I had much success doing this. I did international races against other countries. And when it came up to the Olympic games, or not really the [actual games], but the day that future athletes for the games were selected in 2004. In those days it was decided who was going to be a professional and who is not. And at this time the metal scene became more and more successful and at this time I stopped my career in competitive rowing. And now I'm weak again. [laughs] Yeah, I don't want to miss the experience I made because it changed my mind. I learned the ability to work and to give everything and not to go back or surrender or something. It was always fight till you puke, until you have a blackout or something. And this is something which helped me in daily life. And, of course, doing my band as well. Now when I do something, I do it extremely. This is something that I didn't have as child, but I learned it in my sport and now I take advantage of it.

Since its release, the album has charted pretty well in Germany. I haven't seen any U.S. numbers or sales, but are you pleased with the overall success of the album thus far?

The fact that the album was so successful, yeah it's surprising because we didn't expect this. And now we look into the German album chart and OK, we are somewhere in between Shakira and something, and I think to myself, “What the fuck are we doing there?' [laughs] “Our name listed in this chart ?”And I don't know how to think about it. One thing is that our drummer promised to do a party if we make it to the chart.

Yeah. So we will have a party. We will drink like hell, especially me.

Equilibrium is:
Helge Stang – Lead Vocals
René Berthiaume - Guitars
Andreas Völkl - Guitars
Sandra Völkl – Bass
Manuel Di Camillo – Drums