In Mourning is a progressive death metal band from Sweden. They are currently signed with the Norwegian label Aftermath Music.
Their first album, Shrouded Divine, released in January of 2008, has received mostly favorable reviews, especially by European music websites and magazines. Since a friend recommended them to me, i have been hooked up since, and I wanted to ask them some questions…
As one of the best newcomer bands from Sweden these last years, In Mourning proves it is still possible to write progressive and melodic death metal with originality and essence. Having the experience of five prior demos, the band has been going on since 2000, constantly writing new material and these last years also gaining experience as a live band.
A lot of people associate their sound as close to Opeth, but so far, whenever anyone listens to their music, they ask me one question: “Wow, since when did Opeth sound so good?!” Opeth is a great band and one of my favorites, and In Mourning sure have their distinct style, which I prefer sometimes.
I had a chance to have a word with Björn Pettersson, guitairst of In Mourning, and I asked him:
Salah: What’s new with In Mourning? And How’s was the tour coming along?
Björn: Well, at the moment we are working really hard on material for a new album, and it’s going very well. The new stuff feels great, it’s broader and at the same time more focused, it’s going to be killer.
As for touring, we haven’t very much planned at all right now, as we’re writing new stuff and focusing mainly on that. We’re always interested in gigs, and we’re always working, and trying our best, to find new chances to hit the stages. At this moment we have only a show in Norway coming up in december, but as said, we’re always trying to get out gigging more so keep your eyes open.
Salah: As newcomers in Sweden, with your album released just earlier this year, how do you feel its all turning out?
Björn: It really feels like we have been taking a quite big leap forward with this album, we’ve been getting a big deal of good response in reviews, which feels great. Signing with Aftermath Music has helped us getting out with our music a lot, especially in taking our music outside of Sweden. Hopefully we can manage to get out doing a small tour or a couple of shows before we enter the studio to record the follow-up to ‘Shrouded Divine’, we are hoping to be able to enter studio sometime around spring/summer ’09.
Salah: How do you describe the sound of In Mourning, apart from the band’s genre?
Björn: It’s always a hard task to describe sounds with words. We are relying much on melancholy and atmospheres in songs. Of course also the heaviness is one quite big element in the music too, spanning from calm atmospheric parts to more brutal and progressive metal-parts. I think we may have a slightly more melodious approach than many of the other bands in today’s death-metal-scene, with a few exceptions of course.
Salah: Does In Mourning have plans for an international tour anytime soon? If so, would the band consider playing in the Middle East like in Dubai and Egypt, where the metal scene is constantly growing?
Björn: We have no really concrete plans for touring yet, although we have been talking a bit about ideas for touring with Aftermath. And we are quite eager to get out touring, although so far we haven’t really had any good opportunities to do that. Hopefully we will be able to plan something in early ’09 before beginning to record our next album. About the Middle East, we have no plans for going there so far, but if the opportunity would show up, we will of course go there.
Salah: What bands are you currently listening to? What are you all-time favorites?
Björn: We listen to a ton of different music in the band, and all of the band-members have quite diverse musical tastes. It all spans from melancholic pop, to brutal death metal, to post-rock, to prog-rock, to power-metal and so on… There are however certain bands that all of us in the band like, and I think much of the music that we all listen to contain quite a big deal of melancholy, which I also think is reflected in our own music.
To answer for myself I’m quite a big fan to the whole post-rock/post-metal scene.
Salah: Which band do you think are direct competition with In Mourning within Sweden?
Björn: Well, I don’t really see any competition in our music-making. There are a lot of great metal-bands everywhere and Sweden is often considered a great metal-country, with the Gothenburg-bands and so on.
But I’d rather see all the good bands out there as inspiration than competition. Of course, with the opportunities that the internet brings to broadcast your own music, and the fact that it’s as easy to record descent recordings as it is today makes it quite hard to stick out with your band amongst all others. In that way it gets a bit competitive of course, but I’ve never felt that we have been looking at it that way, we shape our music to something we ourselves love, and we try to reach out with it as much as we can.
Salah: Any plans for In Mourning to shoot a video soon? If so, which song would it be?
Björn: Nope, no plans for a video yet, we actually haven’t even been thinking about shooting a video. So there are no plans for what song a video would possibly be for or anything like that.
I think there will probably not be any video from our Shrouded Divine-album either, we’ll see what our next album brings.
Salah: Some people are describing you as a new-coming younger Opeth. What do you think about that?
Björn: I know a lot of people draw parallels from us to Opeth, lots of reviews tend to mention Opeth a lot as a reference, and in some ways I can understand that. In matter of describing sound, I suppose Opeth is one of the closest parallels you can get to describe our sound.
However I don’t really see too big similarities between us, I hear more differences than I hear similarities actually. But of course it’s a big honor to be called a “new-coming younger Opeth”, we love Opeth, but sounding like them is nothing we have any intentions to do, we want to do our own thing.
Thanks to Björn and In Mourning for taking the time to answer my questions. Hopefully, their upcoming album will be accompanied with a World tour, where they might drop by the next Dubai Desert Rock Festival!
Be sure to drop by the band’s Myspace and Website and check their music and news out.
Here’s a video of my favorite track for the band, “By Others Considered”…
Thanks to The Metal Reporter for the help!
