"The idea for Avatarium was actually born out of a beer mood," laughs Marcus Jidell (ex-Evergrey, ex-Royal Hunt), guitarist of the Stockholm band. "At a party Leif [Edling; Candlemass] and Mikael Åkerfeldt [Opeth] wanted to start a Doom project. But since Mikael had a lot to do with his band, it didn't work out at first. Leif then wrote some songs relatively quickly and I helped him to record the numbers - I think they were 'Moonhorse', 'Lady In The Lamp' and 'Boneflower'. Suddenly we noticed that the whole thing sounded quite promising and decided to continue in this direction. The big advantage of Avatarium is that we can really experiment here, which was only possible to a limited extent with our other bands."
Especially Jidell himself didn't feel well taken care of by Evergrey at that time. "Tom [Englund; singer/guitarist] leads the band like a solo project, so in the end I could bring in less and less of my own ideas. That was one of the reasons why tensions grew more and more, which ultimately led to my leaving the company." A step the 42-year-old should not have regretted. After the surprising EP debut "Moonhorse" (2013), the sovereign debut "Avatarium" (2013) and the EP "All I Want" (2014) the band now presents their opus magnum in the form of "The Girl With The Raven Mask". Doom riffs weighing tons meet atmospheric seventies Hammond carpets, heavenly guitar solos collide with demonic killer melodies, which are celebrated with incredible drama and intensity by the fascinating Jennie-Ann Smith.
"Leif originally had a singer like Robert Plant in mind, but after I introduced him to Jennie-Ann, who has a lot of jazz and blues feeling in her voice, it was clear. The hard, dark riffs are certainly an important part of our sound, but we didn't want to limit ourselves to that. We mix them with psychedelic elements and classic hard rock, because we all like bands like Mountain, the early Uriah Heep, Rainbow, Crosby Stills & Nash, Black Sabbath and the Doors. We're real doom hippies!"
