Sonic Syndicate represents these days one of the most important and interesting bands of the European Metal scene, thanks to its combination between modern Metal and Swedish Death Metal way of playing! Although this band knows a lot of opposing voices around the world, it seems that their musical style gains each day hearts in almost every corner of the world, becoming in only a few years one of the main attraction points of the extreme Metal scene; something that makes me to compare its success and ascension to Germans Tokyo Hotel if you want! With a new album and a label that needs no introduction, Nuclear Blast, behind them, Sonic Syndicate is ready to rule the whole planet through its uncompromising attitude and gorgeous musical content! I decided that a short discussion regarding band's last material called "We Rule The Night" will be welcomed, and thanks to Nuclear Blast this interview was done with lot of interest from Sonic Syndicate's side!
Arcana Noctis: Hello everyone! Litocranius here, wishing you all the best and a Happy New Year! Right now, Nuclear Blast announced a new material, "We Rule The Night", which will officially be release on 28.05.2010! Do you have some interesting news to reveal us in the beginning of this interview?
Sonic Syndicate: Interesting news... I would say that people should get ready, because this time we're really ready to kick ass and we're having full speed forward! Nothing can stop us now. We're so happy how the album turned out, and we're having such a great time now together that nothing really can pull us down.
Arcana Noctis: This new opus, band's 5th official material, follows to "Love And Other Disasters" released through Nuclear Blast almost 2 years ago; an opus that saw a limited edition with bonus materials, but I'll let you tell us a few more things about this subject!
Sonic Syndicate: We always want to give the fans something extra than just the album. When it comes to "limited edition" version and stuff like, we always put on a couple of video clips and music videos and stuff like that for a DVD. Fans just love this kind of stuff and we're happy making it for them. There will be a limited edition version of "We Rule The Night" coming out too which I recommend for everybody to buy, since it's added a couple of really cool and funny shit.
Arcana Noctis: Called "The Rebellion Pack" this 3rd full length I suppose that it received quite interesting feedback if you decided to release something so special! Could you tell us a few words about the response you had on "Love And Other Disasters"? And tell us too what was the main reason to "launch" on the Metal market this limited edition?
Sonic Syndicate: We released "The Rebellion Pack", which was a new EP with two brand new songs starring our new vocalist Nathan J. Biggs. We wanted to release something really fast, so we could show the world how fucking amazing our new singer is. We also did release this together with our previous album "Love And Other Disasters" because the album was still selling great and we wanted the fans who hadn't bought "Love And Other Disasters" yet, to have another opportunity, together with our new shit. This turned out to a really good thing and it was a smart move from us and the label to do it this way. The EP with new songs got great feedback, everybody really loved our new stuff and they all thought that we did the right choice with choosing Nathan as our new singer.
Arcana Noctis: We all know that you had a few interesting gigs; awesome tours with Nightwish for the U.S. territories, and In Flames/Deathstars regarding the whole Europe! And a few important festivals, such as Wacken, With Full Force, Metaltown and Sweden Rock Festival, to give just a few examples! What can you tell us about your fans reactions on your live rituals and how do you feel on stage behind a huge crowd?
Sonic Syndicate: It's fucking amazing, man. We just love to tour and we're having such a great time. The fans really loves live to, we're so energetic on stage and everybody in Sonic is trying to be everywhere at the same time on stage. I really like open air festivals too. Why I like festivals so much is just because there are always so many people on festivals, and there are always people who come to our show who haven't seen us before. After they've seen us on a festival, they start to come out to our shows when we're on tour too. So festivals are really a place for us where we gain a lot of new fans. The biggest crowd we ever played to was at Wacken Open Air, and that was one of our first shows in Germany. We thought that it would be a couple of drunk kids in front of the stage, but when we walked out on that stage, there was like 25-30 thousand people and that sure was fucking amazing. We loved every second of it.
Arcana Noctis: Right now, let's get back to our main subject, "We Rule The Night"; and I'd like you to tell us when did you start to work on this new material and how do you shared all the duties this time inside your band?
Sonic Syndicate: We started to work on this album as soon as Nathan moved from England to Sweden. We all had such a great time writing this album. I would say that this album was probably the one which we had the most fun writing. I mean, everything just turned out great. Nathan really showed us that he was the perfect guy in the band, because he had some awesome ideas when we wrote the album and came up with incredible ideas. It used to be only one member in the band writing all the music, but we sat down and talked about this before we wrote the "Love And Other Disasters" album, so from then on we're all writing the music. I mean, we're a band who have tons of ideas for everything, and we all have different influences, so why not trying capturing all this in to each and every song. This is a great way for us to write music, since everybody gets to say their ideas and everybody is turning out happy with the results.
Arcana Noctis: This new opus was recorded with Jonas Kjellgren at the desk, the mastering process owned to Roberto Laghi and the mixing one to Achim Koehler! How you worked with these persons this time and what will be the main difference between the recording process you had on "We Rule The Night" and your previous CD "Love And Other Disasters"?
Sonic Syndicate: It was great to work with those guys, I mean. Everybody had a good time working on "Love And Other Disasters" and turned out great! We'd been working with Jonas Kjellgren before and we all worked really well together, so we wanted to try it again, and it turned out even better that time. "We Rule The Night" was produced by the amazing legendary producer Toby Wright. He's been working with a lot of my favourite bands such as Mötley Crüe, Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne to bands like Metallica and Korn. We wanted to have a great producer who really could handle our music, and why not take the dude who's been producing all our favourite bands? It turned out that he was really THE producer for us. We worked so hard and had so much fun together recording this record. The biggest different of recording "We Rule The Night" and "Love And Other Disasters" is that we spent a week or two before the studio session together with Toby, and we did some pre-productions in our rehearsal studio where Toby was really important and involved. Together, we arranged the songs and brought up more clarity. We had fun making this album, and I guess that it was just because the chemistry between Toby and band was great.
Arcana Noctis: After interesting names such as "Love And Other Disasters", "Only Inhuman" or "Eden Fire" here you are with a new attractive title "We Rule The Night"! What does it represent for you and what does it "hide" behind this pompous name? And what will be the main link between the last one and all the other titles I mentioned above?
Sonic Syndicate: The title of this album refers to a lot of different things. You can rule the night in different ways, mentioning everything from vampires and sins, to stuff like party and girls. "We Rule The Night" is not just a title, it's a shout out to everybody that Sonic Syndicate is not afraid for anything and nothing can stop us this time. Also if you look at the albums lyrics, we have a lot of lyrics that refers to the night. We have songs about party, vampires, sex and addiction, and all of those subjects can be put under the genre of "night". We also wanted people who read the title, to make up their own minds and fantasy about. I mean, this might mean something else for you, and something else for the next person to read it.
Arcana Noctis: If I'm not wrong "We Rule The Night" is the first full length with your new singer, Nathan, but not the first release with Sonic Syndicate! What will be your point of view regarding his work on "We Rule The Night" compared to "Rebellion", an EP with 2 tracks that you mentioned above, and how does it feel being a part of this amazing combo?
Sonic Syndicate: Nathan is just amazing, dude. He's definitely been proving everybody, who had second thoughts about a new singer for Sonic Syndicate, wrong. He fits in perfectly and it feels like we've been friends forever. The chemistry feels so great now, and he has the same humour and style as we do, so I don't think that we could ever find a better one than him. When it comes to his working, writing etc., he's just perfect, man. He comes up with all these hooky lines and melodies that definitely get stuck in your head. It doesn't take a long time for him to feel inspired and creative. As soon as I or Roger shows him a guitar riff we have, he's just on to it directly and within minutes, he has a couple of lines and a great melody. We were really happy with the results on the "Rebellion" EP, and we thought that he did a really good job, also for just being the first release with us, even though it was just an EP. But when we wrote "We Rule The Night", he was on fire. Melodies and ideas just came storming through the studio and it turned out fucking great.
Arcana Noctis: Musically speaking this new opus was characterized by tremendous hard rocking melodies, and it seems to be the continuation of your previous material "Love And Other Disasters"; but what will be the main difference between these 2 materials, what older elements you used and what interesting new lines did you find?
Sonic Syndicate: We have always been writing and playing the music that we all love. We don't listen to anyone who tells us what to write or anything like that. I would say that it is a big difference between "We Rule The Night" and "Love And Other Disasters", but I mean, there's not one of our old albums that sounds the same. I would say that "We Rule The Night" is more Rock'n'Roll than the previous albums. We wanted a more energized, dirty and rockier album, than we've been doing before and it really turned out great. We're all very happy with the album, and it definitely got songs for everybody. We have songs for the dirty Rock kids, songs for the party animals and songs for the metalheads. This album is much diverted, and I think that people and our fans will love this album.
Arcana Noctis: We talked about the meaning of the new title in your point of view, but I'd like you to tell us a few words about the lyrical theme that you used on "We Rule The Night"! Also, what will be the main link between this lyrical universe and the album title and what do you think about the outcome?
Sonic Syndicate: The lyrics are very personal to both Nathan and Rich. They always write about things that go around in their life. But they also write a couple of fiction lyrics. The title track "We Rule The Night" is all about vampires and stuff like that. Rich been reading a couple of Anne Rice novels lately and got very inspired by that. You can say that "We Rule The Night" is a "sest of" of all the Anne Rice stories. We have another song called "Turn It Up", which musically is very party, and you really wanna drink when you hear the songs. The lyrics though are not so happy, since they are about addiction. It's about a girl we know who was drinking way too much and almost killed herself just because of her alcoholism. One of my favourite songs called "Revolution, Baby!" is first of a kickass song with really cool lyrics. There are a lot of people in the world who just wakes up, go to work, gets home and then go to sleep. Almost like robots in a way, and they always complaining that they never do anything such as that. This song is like a wake up call for everybody to realize that you gotta do something to get somewhere in your life. The first line of the songs is "Get the fuck up and do something!" and that says it all.
Arcana Noctis: The visual effect of your new CD seems to be a little bit on the same coordinates as you had on "Eden Fire" or "Love And Other Disasters - The Rebellion Pack"! Why you decided to return to such artwork if we take into consideration that on "Love And Other Disasters" and "Only Inhuman" you had quite a different image? And how does it fits, this cover artwork, with the whole lyrical and musical content of this new "baby"?
Sonic Syndicate: If you ask me, I think that this album cover is way different from everything we've done before. "Only Inhuman" and "Love And Other Disasters" were pretty much having the same theme and everything. I think the new one is something totally new and fresh! We told our artwork guy that we're naming the album "We Rule The Night" and that we wanted a pretty white album. He came back to us with a pretty light album, and we all saw that it didn't really work out. So we told him "Make a really light album, but do it as dark as you can" and he came up with the one we're using. I think it's really cool, something new and it really reflects to the title "We Rule The Night".
Arcana Noctis: In the end, do you think that the final result of this album fits 100% with your ideas and thoughts of the beginning? Is this material the best work you've done until now under the banner of Sonic Syndicate?
Sonic Syndicate: As I have been saying so many times before now, we're really happy over "We Rule The Night". I shouldn't say that it turned out exactly as we wanted it to turn out, it turned out way better! Musically, we wanted more energy and more Rock'n'Roll and I think we manage to make that really good. This is by far the best we've ever done. Bands always say that about their new albums as soon as they come out from the studio, but I really mean it this time. We're here again, back on our feet and we're ready to fucking kick ass!
Arcana Noctis: After 5 years as a Nuclear Blast artist, you released 3 official full lengths and some other materials too! How do you feel about that and what will be the main difference between Sonic Syndicate in 2005 and the one in 2010?
Sonic Syndicate: Oh man, now we're professionals. We were just kids back in 2005, who didn't know anything about the music business or anything. This is our day- and night-time job and we're doing this 100% because we love it. We want to tour as much as we can and just get our name and our music out there and we're well prepared this time. As I said, nothing can stop us now. I think it's amazing that we've come this far and that our fans love everything we do, but the journey has just begun. We reloaded the gun with some new music and a new singer to the band, and 2010 will be the year where Sonic Syndicate rules the night.
Arcana Noctis: Officially, this album is going to be release in 28.05.2010; but do you prepare a single or an EP to announce the new material? Do you plan something special regarding the release date; a release party something in this way?
Sonic Syndicate: I won't say anything when any video or single will be released yet, because it's still not official, but get your ass ready because our first single will blow you off your chair. We just had a press-release party so we invited a lot of journalists from all around Europe to a pub in Stockholm, Sweden and everybody seemed to love it. We're definitely going to have release party as soon as we release the album. As always, it will be insane! All our earlier release party's has been great and a lot of people and everybody have so much fun and so much to remember. If you're in the same city as we are and you're looking for all the girls, you know where to find them.
Arcana Noctis: What other plans do you have for the near future regarding Sonic Syndicate and what will be the next step in your live activity after the release of "We Rule The Night"?
Sonic Syndicate: We're now going to have a couple of weeks and so with interviews, but after that we're heading straight out on tour, and the first country to be happy is Russia. We haven't been to Russia in like two years so it's amazing to go back there on a full tour. After that we're going to Japan, and that is like a dream coming true man. As soon as we release the album, we're going to start doing some festival touring and try to play all the festivals that we love. One of them is Metaltown, where we've been playing before and I'm really looking forward to it since it's a lot of friends playing.
Arcana Noctis: Man, that will be all for now unfortunately; I wish you all the best and see you around this summer in Romania or Paris, where I'm living right now! Greetings and stay Metal as always!!!
Sonic Syndicate: Thanks a lot fort this interview and see you around some day!