Local and upcoming heavy metallers Brothers Of Metal were playing at Sabaton Open Air in August and Metal Covenant had the pleasure to get some words with one of the three vocalists Mats Nilsson.

Tobbe: How would you personally describe what or who Brothers Of Metal are?

Mats: Well, that's a very difficult and existential question actually, but also a really small question at the same time. But we are basically 8 really close buddies. Most of us have known one another since elementary school or junior high school, you know. We have always loved metal, and played metal in several bands and constellations, like divided between a few different bands. Those bands never really hit hard or worked well, even though there's been a lot of talent and some of the projects have been really good.

But then we did this kind of by chance and just for fun. You know, when we party we usually go home to someone's home studio and record a song and usually we set up limits and stick to a theme and on this particular night we said that we were going to make a song that could have been made by Manowar. So we made Son Of Odin in just one night. Well, of course it wasn't perfectly recorded and not completely finished. But we showed it to a couple of friends and they really dug it.

And then by sheer luck, or maybe it was bad luck: 4 of our members had a band called Tempory, who played melodic death metal, and their drummer had left the band and they had an upcoming gig and then Jocke [Lindbäck Eriksson], the other male vocalist, said to the guys at the venue, "I have another project." and he played the song to them and they were like "This sounds great! Let's do so.".

We were going to play for 30 minutes, but we only had one song. It was two weeks until the gig and we knew that we had to make more songs. So we quickly came up with 4 or 5 songs and from that point we have just been going forward.

Tobbe: The more members there are in a band, and you're 8 guys, the greater the risk is that there's going to be some friction between one another. So even though you started out as a group of friends, what were your thoughts as you decided that you were going to have so many people involved?

Mats: Well, we have never done this in order to make a living off it. Not even remotely. It's not until now that it's… I wouldn't say starting to become possible, but it's not until now that money has come into the picture, really. Well, I don't know. The more the merrier, maybe. We've had a great time so far. But we have to organize quite a lot. In the beginning it could take weeks to decide something, because we were so keen on having everyone involved in everything. Today we have different tasks which we're responsible for and you have a veto on your thing, so to speak. It works surprisingly good, I must say.

Tobbe: Is it true, really, that you've had the same lineup since 2013? It's kind of unique to be such a numerous unit and not have any lineup changes in the first couple of years before the first record is out.

Mats: Well, actually since 2012. Knock on wood, nothing really big in that sense has happened yet. But we have always been honest and straight to one another and it must always be fun. You know, if it's not fun to do it, then it's not worth it. And if there's too much focus, stress and must-dos… Naturally a lot more of that has come since we signed with AFM, but it's important to keep the core of it. Like remember where you come from and why you do this.

Tobbe: It took, like, 4-5 years to get the first record out and was it kind of hard to find the right musical direction early? [Prophecy Of Ragnarök. Independent release in 2017. Re-released by AFM Records in 2018.]

Mats: No, not really. The reason why it took such a long time was that we weren't thinking about putting out a record at all, but in the end we had so many songs and, like, "Maybe we should make a record? We might as well do it. We have quite a few songs.". So we talked to a friend, who's a producer, and he gave as a fair price. I think we recorded the first record in 15 days. We were 3 songs short, so we wrote Defenders [Of Valhalla], Prophecy [Of Ragnarök] and Freya in two weeks, right before we were going into the studio.

But the recordings were very easy, because we had played most of the songs so many times before. We were really well-rehearsed, so it all went super quick in the studio. Then we had that record for almost two years. I talked to many labels, but no one knew about us. We hadn't even released a lyric video. I got an advice from Markus Wosgien on Nuclear Blast, like, "You know, you've got to put something out. There's nothing out there now.". So we released a lyric video and it went great. We got hundreds of thousands of views. Everything went so fast.

And we have never really understood that. It has grown all the time and keeps doing so and we can't really understand how, because we did no PR at all. We had no money to do so, but we just put it out. Just shared it on our Facebook page, which maybe had 7000 followers at the time.

Tobbe: You've been playing on a few festivals recently and I guess that this has been a pretty exciting summer for the band.

Mats: Well, we have almost exclusively done shows in Dalarna [County in central Sweden.] before. And then some one-off gigs in Stockholm in a really small club where we had to more or less stand in a row to be able to play. And then we've played the Sabaton Cruise. But this year is the first time we get to play abroad. We've played two festivals in Germany and those by far exceeded our expectations.

We played on the Wednesday at Rockharz and "If 1000 people come down to the show we're happy", but then we walked upon stage and there were 10000-15000 people there. So it has been really exciting of course. And so was Sweden Rock, even if Sweden Rock of course feels more like home than going to Germany.

Tobbe: You have another record in the works and I sense that this new record will follow the path that you started on the first one. Am I right? [Emblas Saga. Out December 6th

Mats: Yes, you're right. Definitely. We have two themes, really. Old Norse tales and metal. That's what it's about, more or less. But of course there's a musical development. The last record was written over maybe 3-4 years and even in that span you can hear the growth. If I tell you which the first songs are, you'll see what I mean. The first ones are Son Of Odin, Tyr and Gods Of War. Those 3, especially, are more old school heavy metal, you know.

And then I think Yggdrasil came. A rather simple song as well. And then we started to play around more and made Defenders [Of Valhalla] and Prophecy [Of Ragnarök] and those songs who are a little heavier and rawer. I would say that the second record is going to kind of take off where we did the last songs. You know, Prophecy [Of Ragnarök], Freya and Defenders [Of Valhalla]. A little more melodic and, well, a little bit more advanced. It's not like Meshuggah, you know, but still more advanced than bam-bam-bam.

I think it's very important to develop, but it's also important to make it organic and we didn't want to change our style or do as GloryHammer and change concept between records. We wanted to keep what we had and, strictly musically, explore a little bit, I would say.

Tobbe: By writing lyrics within certain frames, will the well of ideas dry out eventually?

Mats: I think that it's a mood thing. There is so much we haven't written about. I think it's just like for anyone else who's trying to do something creative, that it just sometimes feels empty, like you get fed up with yourself and "What am I doing? This is blah, blah, blah!". But it's just trying to work yourself through those phases. A benefit with being 8 people is that it's very rare that 8 people, from different households, are in the same stage.

There's always someone who is pumped and psyched and comes up with ideas. It's often I and Ylva [Eriksson, vocals] who write the lyrics, and then Micke [Fehrm], one of the guitarists, sometimes joins us. And then Johan [Johansson, drums], Micke and Dawid [Grahn, guitar] write most of the music. Each of those guys have their own sound and their own ideas. It's great, because we inspire each other, and it's a lot of give and take.

Tobbe: As a band who's about to release its second album in a few months, in what way do you look at the future in the world of music? Which sometimes has its adversities and there's a lot of talk about how hard it is to be a band nowadays.

Mats: This is something I could talk about for so long. This is my cup of tea. I run much of the business side of the band and I think that to be able to survive as a musician today you have to stop thinking inside the box, with records and everything. You've got to think more like "Okay. Is there money somewhere?". Now companies have the money and "What can we do together with a company? How can we market our name to get to work with the companies?". This is if you want to make money. We don't really care so much, so we don't do this a lot. But I think that this is the way you'll have to work. And then of course playing live a lot, 'cause that's where the money is. You don't sell records, you know. That's the way it is.

Tobbe: I presume that most of you guys have regular jobs still and the combination of a job and the band might be difficult sometimes. You know, who wants to go for it, who wants to continue and who doesn't want to continue?

Mats: Yes, you're right. And I think we will come to a problem like that. Well, we're already there now. You know, because the music don't pay off that well. Definitely not. And again, we're 8 people and there has to come in quite a lot of money if we're going to earn anything. Let's just say €2000 each a month, then a great amount of money must go into the company every month for that, and we're definitely not there yet.

So naturally we will have to go to our regular jobs still. But I guess that you have to take a little leap of faith in some way. And in terms of that we're too old almost, I think. So we will take it organic and pretty slowly forward and most of us will probably keep their day job for quite some time, I reckon. We will see how it goes, but we will start touring more and be out playing more. We know that we have limitations, like job, family and whatever. We're not 20, but we're 30+ almost every one of us, you know. So we'll take it from there and we must be honest to ourselves.

With that being said, our ambition, on the level we're on, we're on a pretty good level anyway, is to do the best that we can. We will do the most we can and do the best we can under current circumstances and then we'll see where it takes us. You know, we just can't say "I'll quit my job and go out on tour for 9 weeks. Goodbye honey. See you. Take care of the kids, okay?". It just doesn't work and it takes a whole lot of planning, but it's getting better and better the further we go, because we get better organized and more serious.

Tobbe: My last question for today. After the second album is out, will we see the band maybe going out on tour as supporting act?

Mats: I'm going to be honest to you. It's pretty hard to get a slot as supporting act on a tour, because we've noticed that bands that we probably could be supporting are pretty afraid of us. If we look at Spotify, we have, as we speak, around 245,000 listeners a month, which is a little more than Orden Ogan and a bit fewer than GloryHammer and Beast In Black. Beast In Black, for example, tours a lot, but we can't go out as supporting act to them, because they are worried about us being too big.

And then we're facing a problem, because we then have to go one step up and tour with, for example, Powerwolf. But they haven't heard of us and they don't know who we are and we don't have those connections yet. But we're working with a booking agency now and we will go out on tour next year. Exactly when will be announced later. There are ongoing discussions, so we don't know yet if it's going to be a slot as supporting act, a headline tour, or a co-headline tour.

So, to be able to secure a slot as supporting act on a tour, it must be to a bigger band, who aren't afraid of us. Quite a few have been that, you know. We're been close to secure a spot for, I think, 4 tours, but been turned down after a while. And when we have asked why, they've been like "Well, it will be difficult with changeovers.", you know.

But we run everything digitally. We have everything in one box. Besides the drums of course, you unplug one cable and then you close the box and then we're done. We really have the world's simplest changeover. But we've heard that from a couple now, and I find that quite interesting.

Related links:

www.facebook.com/brothersofmetalofficial
www.sabaton.net/sabaton-open-air-festival