When seasoned musician Martin “E-Type” Erikson found his thoughts wandering to other projects he decided to fully explore the creative sectors of his mind, deciding to combine the power of dark metal with pop melodies to form a new genre of metal.
Little did he know the idea would taken him a substantial amount of time to develop, but the wait was worth it.
With the newly created DAMPF, A-Tron (who he has assumed the name of for this project) has opened up a world of musical possibilities, enlisting the help of some of his well known friends including his old friend and the eminent bassist in Bathory from the first wave of Black Metal, and his new friend, the incomparable lead guitarist Tommy Johansson from great Sabaton.
Together they have a metal supergroup of sorts, and, with DAMPF’s debut album The Arrival landing on June 3, ushered in a new era of metal that has to be listened to at high volume to be fully appreciated.
HEAVY caught up with A-Tron to discuss the new project.
"I've been thinking about making this album for so many years,” he measured, “and I already made a couple of attempts to do it, because I didn't know what direction until I... two years ago I first got the phone number to an excellent producer - we produced the album together, but he's the main producer - and I played a couple of songs for him that I really wanted to do and it's been... I don't know where to begin (laughs). Since we don't have an audience - we are a new group - it was extremely wonderful to write music, because I could write and do exactly what I wanted. There is no-one going to say that's bad or good or we don't understand. It's not supposed to. I could just write straight from my heart. I sent 30 songs to my producer, and we put them in order, and he said, 'I want to do that' or 'I want to make that one', because I asked him to produce the songs he liked, not just because I sent it. So, he's been a very good filter, you could say, to take everything... so the album becomes one. He took one song out quite early, even the record company said this is the first single on the next album. This is too far ahead. I'm happy."
In the full interview, Martin runs us through The Arrival in greater detail, talks about the sonic disparities in the music, using guitars to tell the narrative, future music, touring plans and more.