Eclipse is a band who seem incapable of disappointing their loyal and ever-increasing number of fans. After 2012’s mighty ‘Bleed and Scream’ came the wonderful ‘Argageddonize’ in 2015 and ‘Monumentum’ two years later. This year’s ‘Paradigm’ is another incredible slice of Rock to add to that exulted company, but it’s it’s also something far more. We caught up with Eric Mårtensson to find out all about what the word ‘Paradigm’ means to him. We also talk Folk Music, the meaning of life and find out about the band’s upcoming second visit to Australia for Melodic Rock Fest 2020…
Eric: Hi Mark
Mark: Hi Eric how are you?
Eric: I’m very good thank you, how are things in Australia?
Mark: They’re very good thank you especially as we’ve been listening to the new Eclipse album ‘Paradigm’ for the last few weeks, you must be pleased with the way it turned out?
Eric: Yeah I am, I’m very proud of the record.
Mark: The title ‘Paradigm’ is an interesting one, it’s long been a buzz word in business and science but I presume that the meaning for you is all about your template or your formula for making great Hard Rock music?
Eric: Yeah, I read a lot of popular science so I come across the term quite often, and also for the band I think it’s a big step forward in trying to find our own sound. So I thought it was a fitting title for the record. It’s something new for us.
Mark: I think it is, for me Eclipse is one of the best ‘new’ bands around if we can call you that anymore, and this is the sound of a mature band, one that can deliver lots of different sounds and still sound distinctive. I think listening to the album to me that first struck me when I heard ‘Delirious’ and I thought to myself “these guys can now take from any era of Rock and still make the song sound like your own.”
Eric: Yeah, ‘Delirious’ the whole vibe is a mix, kind of Whitesnake meets Megadeth, meets Pop meets whatever and I think what makes it sound like eclipse is that we take bits and pieces of all the stuff we love and try to combine it together in our own way. Like trying to make our own meal, taking a little bit of this and a little bit of that and mixing it together to make something new.
Mark: And it works wonderfully well, I love the Folk influences as well, where do they come from because they keep resurfacing at different times during the album.
Eric: Well I’m from Sweden and I’m from the countryside and where I grew up there was a lot of Folk music played at school, and my neighbours growing up at parties there was always someone with a harmonica or a violin playing Folk music, so all those melodies I heard them a child so I think they resurface again as you get older. I love that kind of music too, and I listen to a lot of it myself privately, and we try to ‘spice’ our hard rock with those influences.
Mark: I think it works wonderfully well, I mean at the heart of any great song is a melody and the lyrics and you can then dress it up anyway you like. It does give it that wonderful point of difference and so many bands in the past like Led Zeppelin, for instance, you can’t really imagine them existing without that Folk influence.
Eric: Absolutely Led Zeppelin definitely. They mixed Blues Rock with Folk and it sounded fantastic, and Gary Moore did that Irish Folk with his Hard Rock and that worked wonderfully well.
Mark: And there is that Celtic vibe in songs like ‘Viva La Victoria’?
Eric: Sure, as people say it sounds a bit Celtic, but to me it sounds very Swedish (laughs). Most people do not know the difference between different types of Folk music from different areas and if you listen to Swedish Folk Music it is kind of similar to Celtic music. And back in the day when all these tunes were written there was really no connection at all between the different countries.
Mark: It’s interesting, very universal.
Eric: It is very interesting. I think it’s a very human thing.
Mark: And I guess all coloured from your own upbringing, environment and experience. You would hear it as distinctly Swedish but others would find something they could relate to that was more local.
Eric: You’re right.
Mark: The one thing I really love about ‘Paradigm’ is that just when you think you’ve found the best track another one comes along, I think my favourite at the moment is ‘The Masquerade’ it’s a song built to sing along with an almost Queen-like element to it, but my favourite changes almost daily. How do you choose what to play live when you have a record like this? I’d want to hear it all when you play the Melodic Rock Fest next year.
Eric: Well we are on our tour in Europe at the moment. We played yesterday and I’m in a town called Neu-Bamberg in Germany a beautiful medieval town, and we have a day off today and then we have to head off to Belgium tomorrow. We’re on tour for four weeks and we’ve played a lot of the new stuff. We play ‘Masquerade’ from time to time, and we do change them around a bit but every night there’s like six or seven new songs from the record, and we can play any song from the record. Every song so far has worked perfectly live.
Mark: It’s always great to hear a band get right behind their new material, I’d be quite happy when you come down to see us to see you play the whole album from start to finish!
Eric: From start to finish (laughs) yeah! We even started to play ‘Take Me Home’ the last song, acoustically, the way it was written, that song started with Magnus and I sat down in my kitchen playing acoustically, and live we sort of take the song back to how we wrote it and it works fantastically live. It’s a great song to play and that song I’ll give you actually has some Irish flavour to it especially when you play it live just on acoustic guitar.
Mark: It’s great to hear it’s getting that kind of reception. Are you writing for the next album already? I know you’re someone who is involved in a lot of different projects and when we’ve talked before you’ve told me you’re constantly writing, it is a process that never stops?
Eric: I think at the moment we’re taking it pretty easy with the writing we just want to enjoy the fruits of our labour for the record, but I think we will start pretty soon. There are some pretty hectic touring schedules ahead but as soon as things start to slow down a bit I think we will start to write some new stuff. We’re also thinking of maybe releasing some singles in-between records as well just to give the fans something new all of the time instead of just waiting for a new record every few years. We don’t want to keep the same pattern all of the time, maybe we should try something different?
Mark: More Eclipse can’t be a bad thing!
Eric: (laughs)
Mark: Over the years Eclipse has put out some great albums and I know you told me not to but I did manage to track down those first two release also.
Eric: Oh no! (laughs)
Mark: ‘Paradigm’ though has to be as you yourself said that huge leap for the band,and I never thought I’d find myself saying this but I think it might just be the best yet.
Eric: Thank you, that really means something because we’ve done quite a few now. Thank you so much.
Mark: It’s been great to talk to you today Eric, thank you so much for your time and I guess next time we speak will be At the Melodic Rock Fest next year, when I believe it is your round!
Eric: (laughs) and a Happy Birthday too to The Rockpit! Happy ten years! Cheers.
Eclipse play Melodic Rock Fest Australia in Melbourne March 6-8, 2020
