Interview with vocalist Elize Ryd August 2024

The band’s original name was Avalanche which was changed around 2009 due to legal reasons. Who came up with Amaranthe and how deep was the meaning of it for the band?

Olof Mörck (guitarist/keyboards) came up with the name, it was actually after Nightwish released a song called Amaranthe and I wasn’t aware of the connection at the time I just loved the name and the sound of it. The meaning can be different, it’s something you can eat like a seed or flower seed, it’s amazing, beautiful, purple which was also inspiring and very fitting for this band because we are also colourful in our music and in our sound. Also, if you go very deep like as Olof likes to tell it, “It’s based on old Greek and it means Never Fading, something that never grows old”.

You released your Debut self-titled in 2011 which went very well on the charts but it was your 2nd album The Nexus where you really started to feel the creativity of the music coming together with a mixture of genres. Would you agree as to how it progressed?

I would agree because the first album we wrote it over many years, we started it in 2008 and put our different ideas together. We started to record demos and all that and it was like wow this is so great but it was still at a time where we were searching the sound, the meaning and the concept. That was when we put our dreams and goals together like making baddass music videos and that was also something that we all had been dreaming about especially me as I was asking people about the sound. When we got a big reach after the first album that’s when the record deal came and a lot of dreams true. They were of course expecting us to write more songs and that’s when me and Olof first time felt really pressured. Writing the second album was so crucial because that really showed if it was a lucky coincidence or if you are actually good songwriters and that you have some more to bring. Then we wrote The Nexus, the title itself was unique and went so well and I think it’s thanks to us being able to write a good second album that we could call ourselves a band and go on tour

Between 2013-2017 you had a couple of vocal line-up changes as well as releasing Massive Addictive in 2014 and Maximalism in 2016. Were these difficult times for the band trying to find that right sound?

I think we were a little bit lucky so to speak, it’s always been myself and Olof working together as the main composers so we could promise each other that whatever happens we will always keep the creative process in one form or another. A lot of bands change names also and maybe members leave one band and start another and when it comes to our situation with line-up changes, I think it wasn’t so hard even though it’s hard from the outside but it’s more that you always stay true to what you do and I see what’s happening in real time. For example, when we became successful it wasn’t something we knew but some people have a different life ambition. From the inside being a member it was more like musicians getting together creating sounds and we didn’t really start the band based on let’s get successful. It wasn’t like let’s be a band play together and then we try to make it, we wrote songs, the band played and it became appreciated and it meant that we had to continue.

But the line-up changes didn’t stop there and it wasn’t until 2023 with introduction of Mikael Sehlin on the harsh vocals that the band was able to stabilize itself. Did you always want to keep that 3-dimension vocals, 2 clean and 1 harsh?

Things happen for a reason and I know it became a trademark for Amaranthe to have three vocalists and that’s something that we felt that we didn’t want to change within this concept especially since we have so many songs and albums, we’ve been writing for 15 years that it wouldn’t be possible for us to ever change the concept of having three vocalists. But the vocalists in the band also have their other bands where they are vocalists besides me, I only have Amaranthe.

Let’s side track for a bit, tell us how the band became part of the 12oz Mouse and American adult animated TV series?

Isn’t that very strange? It was actually the creator of 12oz Mouse Adult Swim was the name of the band and he was a big fan and he just wanted to have us in the show. He first emailed us and then we had a chat on Skype and we said sure, it was his personal request and that’s how it usually goes these days. Artists sometimes don’t need a publicist they need someone somewhere that likes what you do. That’s usually what happens when people get their songs in movies.

Let’s then take it a little bit further, adding to that in 2021 you released the song PVP which was the official anthem for the Swedish E-Sport world Cup team at the E-Sports world championship.

That’s the same thing as before as the owner, his brother is a guitarist and he asked his brother if he knew a band that he thought would be fitting for E-Sport. Our name came up immediately and that’s how we got that.

In October 2022 the band released its 1st single Find Life from the then forthcoming album The Catalyst, a song that is both serene and flawless. But it was the 2nd single Damnation Flame released in June 2023 that blew everyone away. This song also introduced new vocalist Mikael to the masses. The sound, the vocals and lyrics are so compelling and mesmerizing, adding to that is the vampire video. The storyline seems to be open to interpretation. Was that the intention or was there a deeper meaning behind it

Damnation Flame was actually inspired by a previous track Archangel. The inspiration was to kind of make a follow up leading from the last single Archangel from our previous album into The Catalyst. And of course, Olaf has been accused of being a vampire for many years and so coming into the video we thought it would be fun to make that a reality and also how we would find Mikael waking up from some ancient time. So, we had a lot of thought behind it and the deeper meaning it’s only that inspirations in it and also coming into this gothic side which is definitely there even though it’s not what we are known for.

3rd Single Insatiable, 4th Outer Dimensions and 5th single Re-Vision I’m told were received very well by the band’s fans. Was there a marketing reason why so many singles with video released before the album came out?

Actually, to be completely straight forward and honest it was something the record label started doing before we released our album. From their perspective they said this is how we do this nowadays even though we as a band are much older schooled and wanted to do it the same way we had always done it which has been one or two singles then release the album which is my personal favourite. I don’t like it to be dragging so long like six or seven months then comes the album. We are also open of course for things changing so we said that’s fine as we can then make more videos and release even more singles. We had fun planning all this because obviously it required a lot more planning from our side to be creative. Instead of coming up with two concepts we had to write the script and come up with at least six.

In February this year the album The Catalyst was finally released, how was it received in Sweden and around Europe?

It was received very well. We have a great team to work with that we are happy about and we are happy with Nuclear Blast. Besides the team we work with which is very important the most important thing is the listeners like the music. I’ve noticed people have stopped watching music videos as much as they did in the past, I’m not sure why but maybe because there is so many music videos getting released. The music itself is the most important thing so we put a lot of time trying to make the best mix and compared it to our albums. We kept Jacob Hansen the same producer we had since the first single and it seems that our listeners were very satisfied and for us its very important to bring in a tiny bit of a slightly different element which can describe The Catalyst album. We are happy with the concept and I think the fans got the concept, they understand the vision behind it and the energy behind it.

To coincide with the release of the album you also released your next single and video, The Catalyst. This song is so haunting, captivating and hypnotic at the same stage. Watching the video, I had a completely different vision of the song, can you please explain?

We decided the album title first and then we wrote a song about it which we felt would explain the feelings and the energy behind that. The video is always a bit tricky because then you have your own vision and I was saying to Patrick Ullaeus That I would like to have it similar to Digital World because for me it felt a little bit of a follow up from all our previous albums. Digital World was when we first started thinking about the future and what would happen with everything becoming digitalized so we wanted to create that kind of world and that’s the concept behind the video to make it as captivating as possible.