‘Armageddon‘ is approaching. With epic metallers Equilibrium having a back-catalogue that brings new meaning to masterclass, it’s arguable to say that their fifth album is highly anticipated amongst fans. We chat with the man behind the music René Berthiaume about the upcoming album, and all things Equilibrium..

If there was a categorically defined dictionary of metal, Equilibrium would sit right at the top of that definition of epic. While the band’s brand of cinematic metal has continuously won legions of fans on the continent, the band has not yet found stable footing here in our home turf of the UK. There really isn’t much of a reason for it, as every album this band has produced has been nothing short of brilliant.

We aim to put forth some recognition for the band that are one of my personal favourites, and a band I have followed with cultish praise since the release of their demo in 2003. We speak not only of their upcoming opus ‘Armageddon‘, but of a little band history, and what exactly makes this band tick in terms of that epic music composition that has stunned so many.

Listen to the full unedited interview here, or read the full transcript below!

Equilibrium’s brand new album ‘Armageddon’ will be released on 12th August via Nuclear Blast, available here. They will be playing at The Underworld, London on Oct 3rd.

Hello Rene, how are you?

I’m fine thank you!

 

Thank you so much for speaking us today!

Cool!

 

So I’ve been a big fan of the band since the release of your debut ‘Turis Fratyr’, and the album ‘Sagas’ is one of my favourite of all time. I’ve been a big fan for many years! Now you have a brand new album coming out…

The first thing I wanted to ask is that Equilibrium is not so well known in the UK, but we obviously want to change that! Could you describe the band’s music for fans that don’t really know you?

Yea, well I would say that Equilibrium tries to make a huge and epic sound. We use a lot of heavy guitar riffs and try to combine it with symphonic and orchestral instruments, as well we have a lot of folk influence. It doesn’t just all have to come from Scandinavia or Irish influence, we take folk influences from all around the world – South America, some Asian stuff…even some Bavarian stuff! I think it’s a mixture of a lot of influences…

 

You’ve been labelled as a ‘pagan metal’ band. Would you agree with that?

I mean when we first started with the band, it was like this. Our first album contains a lot of Germanic and Norse mythology, but with ‘Sagas’ we started with more personal lyrics, and lyrics influenced by German tales and things. I think the name ‘pagan’, or ‘pagan metal’, I think it’s just for the first album. Nowadays it doesn’t fit anymore.

 

I mean it definitely sounds like you guys have diversified since the first album. With ‘Sagas’ it seemed to drift more towards a cinematic sound. The sound became more different with ‘Rekreatur’ and even ‘Erdentempel’. How do you think your influences have changed over the time you have been making your music?

Hmmm…I think in general the influences are the same because they come from everywhere. We could be walking on the street and there is a music group from Peru or whatever, and will play some pieces and start inspiring us. It’s hard to say.  We like to say that our influences come from everywhere.

I get a lot of questions asking me about our metal influences, if there are any specific bands…I would say nowadays metal itself is not that much of an inspiration to us…not new stuff you know? We have our kind of ways to write the metal stuff – that stuff is all inspired by the bands we listened to years ago – band like Dimmu Borgir, Iron Maiden, Motorhead…all sorts of different bands…The metal influences are much more old school.

 

That’s really interesting. So nowadays you are more inspired to write music from non-metal music, like some folk music or something?

Yea…I think you could say it like this. Folk stuff or maybe also music from movies or even computer games…I mean the soundtrack quality in computer games has become much better sound-wise…

 

Every Equilibrium album seems to have such a cinematic experience and you said movie music has had a big impact…or you said a big influence on the music. Do you write your music like you are visualising something?

Mostly it is like this exactly. In general what I do is when I have an idea for a new song, or I have a mood for a song, I usually search on the internet for mood pictures. Some nice big pictures from landscapes or from atmospheres, and then I put them on my wallpaper on the computer so that I can see them all the time when I am composing.

 

So you are writing around what you see and soaking in all that visual inspiration.

Exactly!

 

I guess now we move on to Equilibrium’s new album ‘Armegeddon’ which comes out in a couple weeks! I believe, except for one song on the last album, that this is the first time you use English lyrics on some tracks of the album.

Yes.

 

So how come it’s taken 5 albums to write lyrics in English?

Well I think there are two reasons why we decided to use more English lyrics on the album.

One is simply the sound, because we thought that some songs on this album would fit better together with English lyrics, because the sound of the language is completely different to that of German, and in the end it’s a decision of the sound.

But on the other side we figured out that we had one English song on the last album and a lot of people liked it because they could understand what the song was about without going to Google Translate or trying to translate the German lyrics or whatever.

This time we wanted to make that experience possible again. We have some stuff that is more serious, and has some kind of message behind it. We would like more people to understand it while listening to the song.

 

That’s interesting! Since you’ve written in German before, what kind of stuff were you writing about? Since you’ve said you wanted to share experiences…were you writing about myths or something back in the other albums?

It’s been completely different from album to album. As I said when we started we had mythology things, then we had tales from Germany, then it moved to more personal stuff such as personal experiences.

On ‘Erdentempel’ we had a lot of stuff about human feelings, about being brave, about not losing faith…we had one song called ‘Apokalypse’ which is all about humanity destroying the planet and this is one topic we have taken further on this upcoming album, and that is one reason why it is called ‘Armageddon’! It’s about humanity destroying themselves.

These are the topics, but of course we don’t always have serious lyrics. Equilibrium is also known for some funny songs, we still have them on this album also. For example we have this one song called ‘Born To Be Epic’, it’s not meant to be taken too seriously – it’s kind of an ironic song, and we still like to have these things. We have one song called ‘Helden’ on the last part of the album which has some 8-bit computer sounds, so we still have all the funny things!

 

I remember you guys have songs about beer and mead as well!

Exactly yea! They were on the other albums, but this time we didn’t feel like writing another song about drinking…I think we have enough of those! We have like 3 or 4 of them…so we didn’t think we needed another one!

 

[laughs] Maybe time to be a bit more serious this time…but not too serious!

Not too serious…exactly!

 

Going back to the ‘Born To Be Epic’ song, I just heard it today for the first time. As the song says…it was quite epic! It seemed to me it was a little bit different from the regular Equilibrium song…it seemed to have a different kind of structure to it…how come you made a song like this?

Well…I think it just happened! When I started to write this song…you know I really like to try out new sounds…but when I was writing it I really didn’t like it! I showed to my girlfriend at night and she said ‘Wow this is really cool! You should finish it and make a whole song with it!’. Well I just thought about it and tried it out…and in the end we really liked it as it had something new. It’s not that typical of Equilibrium but it has some kind of band vibe, and this is what we do from time to time. Have the typical Equilibrium feeling but add things that are strange or weird and something that you are not used to.

For example on ‘Sagas’ we had the song ‘Unbesiegt’ you know, where we combined it with some Caribbean elements. I think it’s always nice to try out new things!

 

Yea, it definitely keeps things interesting for the fans. And because the song is in English too you could definitely get some people singing it with you too!

Yea maybe! [laughs]

 

So going on to some of the other tracks on the album – you have ‘Prey’ which sounds very dark…do you think ‘Armageddon’ has more of a darker feel to it?

Yes. In general I would say…and it’s another reason why we chose this as the album title, and also to make the artwork a little bit darker. In comparison to the other albums it definitely has a more darker feeling.

 

How come you chose to be a bit darker this time? Is it because of the times…since this year has been very dark?

Well actually when we wrote the album we didn’t expect that there would be so much shit happening this year. [laughs] In Germany and Europe in general…we couldn’t predict it, but somehow it seems to fit.

 

Maybe when you were writing the album you predicted all the shit that would be happening this year?

Yea…maybe we should write a funny album! No actually when I actually wrote ‘Sagas’ or the other albums, I had a feeling that the album was getting a little bit more darker, but it didn’t happen. I really didn’t think about it and I just started writing, but this time it actually happened that the first song I wrote became darker. It was a natural thing.

Of course you hear about these things going on around the world, there’s a lot of shit going on…but I think of course you are influenced but what you see and the feelings you get on the things that happen around you. Since we are not writing about old stories from ancient times…yea it just kind of happened!

 

So there might be some more personal feeling on ‘Armageddon’ than in last albums?

Yes, absolutely.

 

When you wrote the music, I know you have had some new members join the band…did they contribute to the writing process at all?

No not really. I think this is maybe an advantage since I wrote most of the stuff on my own, because we had a lot of changes in musicians, but it didn’t really effect the writing…only the change of singer from Helge to Robse a few years ago. Of course it effected the music because you can hear the different voice! Musically nothing really changed.

 

Robse’s voice as I’ve heard on the albums is quite dark, it seems now it has a great feel to the album. Have you been writing around his voice at all?

Yes. Actually when ‘Rekreatur’ [was written], he came to the band quite quickly and the songs were already written, and I felt at this time the songs and the vocals didn’t really fit that well together…the songs were meant to have some higher vocals you know…on this album there are screams also but his range is in the lower vocals.

This somehow affected the way I wrote songs. On ‘Armageddon’ though we have screaming again because Dom, our new guitarist, brought back that element.

 

So this time you have a very diverse vocal range on the album?

Exactly, we took both singers…Dom’s strength is in screaming and Robse’s strength is in growling with the deeper stuff. We took the best out of both!

 

That’s fantastic. We are really looking forward to the album release! The last question is if you are going to be doing any touring with this album?

Yes, well there are some festivals at the moment…but in the autumn we will go on a European tour. I don’t have all the dates in my mind at the moment…we’ve not been so much in the UK. A few years ago we played at the Bloodstock festival and it was really good, we had a lot of great feedback from the audience and we would like to play more over there.

 

I noticed that you guys in the past have played Mexico and the American metal cruise, I guess things are getting a bit bigger for the band!

Yea, I think so. I mean years ago we also got a lot of offers from countries from outside, but there were also things around us…maybe there was no time, or because around the time I was getting over a fear of flying! [laughs] These were the reasons that we said ‘Ahhh let’s do it later!’ But since 2-3 years we’ve been visiting a few other countries, and we were made offers in the USA…like the 70’000 Tons of Metal.

We also really want to do touring in the US, and Mexico was also a great experience…I think we were quite late about discovering all these countries as we are a band of 15 years now! But on the other side it’s fun, even though we are a band of 15 years…[laughs] that sounds crazy to me to be honest…it’s still really fun to discover new things for the band and keep things fresh!

 

I guess for the fan as well it keeps the Equilibrium shows quite special as well because you don’t tour so often?

Yea exactly. It’s actually something I always say is important, that is to not to tour too much…like I wouldn’t say to get used to it, but a lot of other bands who are touring their asses off and you can see that they are not really happy anymore. They are just doing it because they have to, and I really want to avoid this. I really want to keep it so that when we go on stage we always have fun and have joy and happiness with the people, and a great time. This should always be in the foreground.

 

Keep the live experience for both the fans and the band special.

Exactly.

 

Rene thank you very, very much for speaking to us today, really look forward to the album’s release and we’ll see you on the live stage soon!

Thank you very much!