Eddy Berg – IMMINENCE ‘We Are a Different Kind of Metalcore Band’
It is not long now ’till Swedish metalcore outfit Imminence makes their way down under for the first time as part of this year’s Good Things Festival. With the buzz like no other and side shows quickly selling out, we set our sights on a catch up with vocalist and violinist Eddie Berg to see what fans can expect from the upcoming debut shows down under.
The last time we spoke with Eddie was back in 2017 when he stated [on the subject of touring here] “Nothing is planned for Australia at the moment, but we’re definitely on the watch for a good opportunity.” Well, fast-forward 7 years and that time has come. Are you ready to experience violincore up close and personal?
Hey Eddie, first of all, welcome back to Wall of Sound!
Thank you. Thanks for having me back.
When the lineup dropped, there was quite a lot of buzz about your appearance- did you see that and did you expect it?
It’s always surprising to see the excitement and buzz. We know that people are listening to our music over there, but you never know until you play a show, and people actually show up.
Earlier this year you released The Black, which is such an incredibly written album, did you approach the writing process for this one a little differently to your previous releases?
We decided to take a more free approach. I feel though that it is our most cohesive album so far. Normally we set out to write an album but this time we just decided to write songs and release singles as they come. When we wrote the first song, which was ‘Come Hell or High Water’, we had this feeling about it that was darker and heavier, so we decided to pursue that feeling.
Do you feel that since you have written a few albums now that you were able to take this kind of approach?
It definitely helps. Obviously, as you mature as a songwriter, you know what works and what doesn’t.
One of the things I do love about you guys is especially the tracks ‘The Black’ and ‘Come What May’, we don’t often see the length of those sorts of tracks in metalcore, hardcore, or anything like that. Was that a conscious decision to kind of push the track lengths or was it just such a natural progression?
That was absolutely natural. We threw everything out the window of, in terms of thinking about song lengths or thinking about how people are going to react about this type of song, just for every track we approached it with finding something that excited us and to write a song that could fulfil that need. And once we got going, if a song was six minutes, it didn’t really bother us.
The most important thing was that you didn’t lose focus and you didn’t get bored in the process of listening to the song. So if it’s six minutes, then it’s six minutes, then it’s fine if that feels like what you need to do to complete the song. It’s more about completion than thinking about any external factors.
The album has been out a while now, and obviously you’ve been releasing the singles as they’ve come- so you’ve been touring those tracks for a while now. How do you find the songs sit live? Do they translate well from that feeling on the album to being able to perform them live?
And that’s always an interesting thing because we started releasing the singles already last summer and you started to play the new songs live and you can always feel that shift over time. Maybe the first few times when you play new songs, you don’t always get a big reaction. People want to take everything in and just listen and watch and then see over time how people get more excited as the song has grown.
And you can definitely feel that now when we just did the tour in Europe, like the albums, but now for half a year and you can really feel like some songs have become really great since we started playing ’em. And you definitely have a few tracks where I do feel like it’s maybe more of a time for the audience to take things in. It’s not maybe a super energetic song or something that they’re going to go crazy to. So yeah, it’s different. It definitely is.
So obviously when you come to Australia you’ve got the festival sets, which are always going to be a little bit different. I’ve looked at your setlist from the last few shows in the Europe tour and they’re massive. How have you guys approaching doing your set for the festival? Have you thought about that yet or are you still kind of weighing out what works?
I haven’t looked at the set length, to be honest, so we’ll see a little while still a little while. Yeah, we still have the sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne, so obviously we got a big pool of songs to pick from. When we’re doing or putting together the festival sets, typically we want to do a mix of playing a lot of the songs that maybe people heard about because often you play in front of a lot of new people, maybe they heard a few of your songs but don’t really know the band.
It’s always good to play some of your biggest songs, but it’s important for us to also showcase our diversity as a band to make people see that we are a different kind of metalcore band.
Yeah, the violin itself is such a huge thing that people may even just walk past and say, oh, there’s a circle pit and a violin. It’s different. Often bands don’t often get to do much sightseeing when they’re in Australia, but is there anything in particular you do want to try and experience when you’re here?
I’m not really putting up any expectations because I fear that we won’t have any time. So, if we are given a window of time and an opportunity presents itself, I’m all for it, but I’m not going to get my hopes up. I know how it is to be a touring band.
You just have to come back and do a headline tour because obviously your headline shows are actually selling super well. The Melbourne show sold out super fast.
Yeah.
Did you expect that to happen or was that something that completely took you by surprise?
No, I mean, like I said before, you never know, but obviously that was really great for us. Makes us even more excited to come to Australia.
For festival goers who may not have had much experience with you guys before, what’s the three songs you would recommend to get them started?
I’d probably go with ‘Temptation’, ‘Infectious’ and ‘The Black’. I think those are some good songs to get acquainted with Imminence or scratching the surface.
Is there anything you want to add or anything that you want to say before we wrap this up?
Not much to say. I mean we’re very close now. We’re so excited to finally get down there. I’m ready to experience whatever we’re going to experience.
Interview by Kayla Hamilton @kaylazomboid
Imminence will be appearing at this year’s Good Things Festival, as well as two SOLD OUT sideshows. Final tickets available here.
Good Things Fest
December 6th at Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne (15+)
December 7th at Centennial Park, Sydney (16+)
December 8th at Showgrounds, Brisbane (15+)
Sideshows
with Future Static
December 3rd at Crowbar, Sydney – SOLD OUT
December 5th at Stay Gold – SOLD OUT
