SUMIT SUVARNA
Sweden is home to some of the greatest metal bands in the world. From the same land, comes
another extraordinary Melodic Metal band, Mindshift. With the perfect combination of powerful
melodies and aggressive groove, Mindshift is one band that is sure to make your head bang!
While managing their latest tour of India, I sat down with the guitarist of the band, Johan Lund
and talked about their music, touring India, metal culture in Sweden and more.
Tell us about Mindshift And was that intentional or a coincidence?
We are a melodic metal band from Stockholm, Sweden.
Formed in 2006 by me (Johan Lund), the band consists of
singer Marcus "Mao" Uggla and drummer Fabien "Fabz"
Perreau. The current lineup is also enhanced by live
guitarist and bassist Michael and Andy Siegrist who also
play in the band Source Of Ignition. No, that was totally a coincidence, we just write what we
wanna play basically. Although, since the album was written
throughout a longer time period, and the inspiration when
you write differs from time to time, that could have been a
factor here.
Your last release was a full-length album titled 'Horizon'. How
was the overall reception for the album? We listen to a lot of music but to name a few, our biggest
inspirations are bands like Killswitch Engage, Soilwork,
Gojira, Machine Head, Meshuggah, Architects etc.
Johan: Yeah, the reactions to the album have been great!
From both song and production perspective, which feels
really good since we produced the album ourselves. And
one thing that has struck me when reading the reviews and
hearing what the fans have had to say about it is that what
people consider their favourite song varies from person to
person, which is great because that means the album appeals
to a wider audience.
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Interesting! Which artists/bands have influenced your music the
most?
You've mentioned before that you sounded very different when
Mindshift started off. How did it sound back in the day compared
to the Melodic Metal sound you have going right now?
Yeah, the sound back then was more towards "regular"
metal, like a 'heavier' Metallica if you had to compare it.
Mainly because the vocalists we've had before Mao sang with
clean vocals and we wrote the music to fit that style of vocals.