So, hello everybody. We’re here with Johannes from the heavy metal band Avatar. How are you?
I’m good, thank you. I talk a lot about myself today, which is probably good for you, but it’s fun.

Haha, yeah ! And we’re here to talk about your upcoming album Don’t Go in the Forest, which will be out on October 31st. A special day to release it. Was it intended?
I mean, when we were working on it, it wasn’t like “let’s release this on Halloween,” but once everything started finishing up and you begin to see the window where we could release it - with everything else that was happening, touring and stuff - we realized, “Oh, we can release this on Halloween. That’s pretty awesome. Let’s do that.”

Once again, you’re not just giving people songs to listen to, but a story to dive into. For you, is there a specific meaning to the story of this album? Or is it up to the personal interpretation of every listener?
I mean, in a way, I guess it’s always both. Over the years I’ve learned to validate whatever people get out of what we do. Whatever I got out of it from the inside is also correct. But if we manage to, number one, deeply move people and make them feel something, then they are entitled to their own subjective view of what it is.

That being said, even though this isn’t a concept album in that sense, it was more discovering the album as you write it - which seems to be how every other album goes. It goes back and forth: the last one had a plan early on, Hunter Gatherer was more “look at the result, what it became,” Avatar Country was a total plan. This time we were back to exploring along the way and looking for the vibes.

A lot of the songs are tied together by being driven more by the subconscious in their writing. I wasn’t in a hurry to understand what the song was about when starting to write it - that would come through the process, toward the end. Like, “Okay, now I get it.” Some songs diverge from that, but overall this album relies more on dreams, more on the subconscious, more on the idea of trusting the beauty. If it feels beautiful, then that probably means it meant something. And it did.

Silencing the ego and following some kind of inner voice was yet another way to remove a layer of bullshit from yourself in the creative process.

Do you feel like you draw your inspiration more from other musicians or from Hollywood and movies?
It’s different every time. Not so much movies, I don’t think - although I’m sure that has happened too. It’s very much a mix. The ability to experience something - hearing something, watching something - and letting yourself be inspired by that, that part is very open-ended. Inspiration can come from sitting alone with your thoughts, from being around people, talking to people, experiencing the world… and definitely from music.

At the very base of it, you just keep on trying to be Black Sabbath or The Beatles or one of the greats you grew up listening to. Those are the core influences. Along the way, I really enjoy discovering new things in music, especially a bit outside of what we’re doing, to borrow things. We will never make a jazz album - I’m sorry, it’s a metal band - but I like watching long YouTube essays about music theory or harmony from jazz. I’m like, “That’s cool — I’ll take that one, thank you,” and put it in there. We all do that: take little bits and pieces from elsewhere and work with them.

Is there something you experimented with in the studio that you had never done before?
Well, I finally joined the band, for instance! I played piano before, recording stuff, but now I played on a song that is piano, drums, bass and guitar - so I’m like, “I’m Elton John now.” That was new for me. Not a big deal in the world of recorded music, but for me, a cool change to have that role in the band.

When you sing, that’s a lead instrument. The other guys build an engine and I ride on top of it - I react, push and pull, interpret. But playing piano on that song required me to be inside of it and lay a foundation that the lead then goes on top of. That was refreshing.

We also used outside musicians - brass instruments, strings, choir - and wrote arrangements for them. To the degree we did this time, I had never done before.

It seems you used a lot of instruments on this album - violins, cellos, etc. Instruments that, stereotype-wise, belong to another genre. Was it an artistic choice, or did you just feel they would fit the song?
It’s different for different songs. Some things I did, some things Tim did - he has had ideas like that in the past too. I think for Tim it’s very “in the moment”: that’s just where the idea goes when the song is written.

I don’t think we think too much in terms of what fits or doesn't fit in metal. Over the years, so many different bands have integrated folk music, percussion, classical influences… all of this has existed in one way or another.

For example, on Tonight We Must Be Warriors with the brass - the original guitar parts, the main melody, existed in older songs. The melody was written for guitar, but early on I discovered it sounded like something a flute could play - a tin flute, with that marching, Revolutionary War vibe. When you start feeling that, it’s a short step to using those instruments.

Everything starts with someone sitting with a guitar. It’s not like I wake up one morning saying, “I want to do orchestral stuff.” You start with the theme, the core of the music, and then you find what you can do with it.

And the choir - that was us looking for new sounds. In the past our “choir” was: record me 64 times, Tim and Henrik 16 more times - that kind of stacked-vocal Queen sound. Super cool, but it’s completely different when you have a real choir with many voices singing together.

While listening to the album, I noticed something. Each song seems to have a very different intro - a different instrument for each. Was this variety an intentional artistic choice?
That’s true! I didn’t think about that - there’s a flute, a choir, guitar, clean guitar, piano… That’s funny. No, I didn’t think of it. It probably happened naturally with our mantra of “never do the same thing twice.” It wasn’t a conscious decision - a happy accident. But it’s cool that you pointed it out.

I feel this album is really open - like you show all the things Avatar can do, and can be in the future. Do you feel that too?
Yes, certainly. It’s too early to say exactly what spills over into the next phase, but we try to bring new things every time, and we take different things out every time.

As a musician, part of what I wanted was to evolve. As a singer, I’m way more comfortable now using my full lower range - being more melodic with it. Now that I’ve opened that door, that’s always a possible choice going forward. You can do a heavy metal song without me screaming my lungs out all the time. We did it in the past, but it’s another thing now. I expanded that part of the toolbox.

Hopefully, each time we find the reasons why it’s important for us to make that album - something that excites us, something we could only have done now. Every album has to feel like that. Every album has been our “last album” since Black Waltz.

It seems you’re evolving musically, but also personally, as a band.
Yeah. It’s the five of us, and it has been the five of us for a long time - for four of us, an extremely long time. Being on this trip together is what it’s all about. We started as teenagers, went through puberty, then our 20s and all the decadence and coming-of-age stuff… and now whatever this phase is.

We keep growing and changing, and we try to make sure that Avatar reflects where we are each time. Hopefully we keep evolving with each other and… what will it be like when we’re in our 70s? I’m curious.

You’re releasing this album through Black Waltz Records, your own independent label. How did this independence influence the creative process?
Probably not so much, because we made sure to stay in artistic control on previous albums too. We’ve been happier with some labels than others, but overall we were doing a lot ourselves anyway. And in terms of the people outside the band - distributors, marketers, etc. - we kept finding our favorites. So at some point it was like, “What the fuck do we even have labels for?” You give them 80%, and then they shuffle around the 20% in a way where you never seem to make anything from your music.

We’re not millionaires, but we had a little capital before Dance Devil Dance, when all the record deals ended. So we thought: either negotiate a mega amazing deal with the coolest people on the planet… or say “fuck the world” and do it ourselves.

We shopped around, we listened… and everyone was like, “nah.” Nobody brought something to the table we couldn’t bring ourselves - except we’d get to keep 80–90% instead of 20 we never see.

If we ever sign again, they’d have to make us 5-10 times bigger overnight for it to make sense. I don’t know who could do that. Basically, if Universal Records lands a helicopter on my roof and says, “Johannes, you are as pretty as Taylor Swift, here’s 10 million euros in marketing budget,” then I might listen. Otherwise… why? We have all this freedom.

And this independence is the band that toured with Iron Maiden, that’s doing Metallica shows next year, that headlined our biggest show ever in Mexico City. We just took over the label part - we still work with booking agents, promoters, distributors. There are still great partnerships.

At the beginning we talked about interpretation. Let’s talk about the title: Don’t Go in the Forest. After listening to the album, I felt like the forest wasn’t a physical place, but more of a mental state. What is “the forest” to you?
Well, it’s a bunch of things - that’s why it works as an album title. They’re connected.

There’s the aesthetic: imagining someone lost in the woods. It’s night, it’s cold, you’re alone and afraid. And then you see some light between the trees. You walk toward it. You hear music. You come to a meadow - and there’s a circus tent. There shouldn’t be one, but there is. You step inside - that’s the world of Avatar. That’s one level.

Then, when we say “don’t go in the forest” - if you’re that weird kid drawn to metal growing up, you’re also the kid who says, “Oh, I’m totally going in that forest.” Forbidden fruit, taboos - that attraction is part of heavy metal.

Metal is fun, powerful, exciting, aggressive - but it also deals with darkness. You go see Metallica and have a good time, but they play a song about a guy with no arms and no legs who wants to die. That’s weird. That’s metal: the edge between the uplifting and the dark.

Opening that forbidden door in your mind, exploring dark places - that’s the forest. Facing pain, trauma, fear. It’s therapy. Exposing yourself to it, processing it, healing… growing. Dark art at its best gives the opportunity for that growth.

You just opened for Iron Maiden. You were in Paris a few months ago - a fantastic show, I must say. And you’re coming back to Paris next year. Are you excited?
Yes - but I feel excitement 15 minutes before. Or 15 seconds before. When you’re young, you get pumped for a whole week before your first show and you’re exhausted by the time you get there.

I’m not excited yet. I’m not supposed to be. But I’m very much looking forward to it. Paris - all of France - has been particularly good to Avatar for a long time. It’s easy to look forward to it. And I’m a fan of the city itself.

But we have Mexico, the US… then Christmas… then Europe. I’m looking forward to the whole package of traveling the world with this thing.

And my final question: do you have a message for your fans?
I guess, just that I like you.

Beautiful ! Well, thank you for giving us some time today !
Thank you !