Interview mit Niklas Karlsson von Orbit Culture

Hi Niklas, thanks for taking the time for this! How are you doing?
Thanks a lot, dude! I’m doing great.

Your new EP „Shaman“ is on its way out and I really have to say: I can’t get enough of it. There is so much to explore, so much we never heard before from ORBIT CULTURE. Do you just shake it out of your sleeve or does it take a long time to have a song finally written?
Thanks a lot for your kind words. With this one, most of the songs just wrote themselves. I had a slightly different approach this time when it comes to writing compared to our previous album ‘Nija’; we wanted the songs to translate better with a live audience, so that led us to not overthink so much and just finish up the songs rather than bitching about certain fills, guitar patterns, etc.

How is the writing process in ORBIT CULTURE at all? Some bands write whole albums in the tour bus (which is obviously quite difficult at the moment), some bands pull themselves back completely to write on new material.
Since we haven’t been able to tour that much, I’ve been very used to just write and record all of our stuff at home. I’m kind of scared that I won’t be able to do that on a tour bus etc, but at the same time, I’ll treat touring as keeping 100 percent focused on the live shows and talking to fans rather than escaping to the tour bus to write stuff. When it comes to writing, I’ll have to be completely alone at night back at home if that makes sense.

Before we take a deeper dive into the new material: I guess „Nija“ and the contract with Seek and Strike immediately before was a real booster for the band’s career. Wherever you read, you find exceptionally good feedback. What would you say has changed in your lives since the release of the last album?
Absolutely. We’ve been very protective of our stuff and we’ve had a real hard time letting anyone else in ever since we started. As much as we wanted a recording contract, we’ve always dealt with the issues of being somewhat paranoid in some way instead of taking a step back and not be afraid to ask for help. Scroll forward a couple of years, letting the guys in Seek & Strike do what they’ve always done, I’m very satisfied with our label. Through them, we gained much more insight into how to promote ourselves and the music while having them protecting us from not-so-nice people in this industry.

The promotional sheet for „Shaman“ offers a statement in which you say that some of „Nija“’s songs couldn’t be translated that fine on stage and that you focused more on writing songs which can also be presented appropriately well live. Can you be more specific what the point of that is? Hopefully it’s not „Rebirth“ or „Behold“…
Haha, I think I worded it a bit wrong when I first said that. To be honest, we’ve only played them in our rehearsal space more or less, and in the end, we played them so much that we got tired of them, so we don’t know for sure how well they would work in a live setting. However, you have this feeling when you play certain stuff, some stuff just does not feel right, that’s the downside of writing and recording stuff without rehearsing them that much before recording, but hey, don’t worry about „Rebirth“ or „Behold“. Those feel all good!

„Shaman“ comes with a lot of that typical groovy and heavy stuff. But I think there is striking more usage of additional sounds, like the hurdy gurdy in „A Sailor’s Tale“ and other orchestral stuff. Is Fredrik the man behind it as he likes to create this film score material?
I wanted that song to be like a long journey, very inspired by the Pirates Of The Caribbean films and the song „Master Of Puppets“ by Metallica. As much as I dig Fredrik’s solo stuff when it comes to cinematic themes and such, this one I did by myself, scared of showing it to the guys. I think the idea for this one started back in 2018. I had just met my girlfriend and she had two acoustic guitars hanging on the wall. I had a day off from my daily job and when she went away for work, I just played on her guitars all day and that’s how that song was born.

Speaking of „A Sailor’s Tale“, some months ago you asked like „Is 7 minutes too long for a song“ and the facebook community exploded. The final result is amazing. How did you come up with this initially so violently unusual number?
Haha, truth to be told, this song was clocking in at 8 or 9 minutes at first. However, some of the riffs and changes that I finally stripped away didn’t add so much to the song as I hoped for. I’ve always wanted to write songs like „Master Of Puppets“. I’m certain that I’ll never come up to that level of riff ideas and song structure, but at least I will try, Haha.

Will you perform it live? Might be a tough challenge I guess.
Playing-wise, it’s actually one of the easier songs to play on both guitars, bass, and drums. It’s „Mast Of The World“ from the same EP that I’m a bit more worried about, Haha. The ingredients themselves in that song are not so difficult playing-wise, it’s more the stamina and glue that needs to be perfect for that track to really deliver its message.

„Carvings“ hit the 100.000 mark on Youtube within a week. Would you say this is the best song for people to discover ORBIT CULTURE?
That is really cool! I think we have better-suited songs to drive people into our music. ‘Carvings’ was more meant to show our older fans from back in the day that the growling and pummeling tractor-riffs aren’t going away anytime soon.

When we close our eyes and imagine being at a cool festival with ORBIT CULTURE on stage… Then the first riff for „Strangler“ sounds. Do you agree that this track might be one the absolute fan-favorites as they can sing along loud and when that Hetfield-vibe kicks?
Yes. This song was also just purely written to make people sing along and have a great time in the audience. It’s one of the shortest songs that we’ve ever written, but if it’s catchy, and hopefully it is for people, it will surely be one of the more energy-fused songs for the audience.

Coming to song writing. Do you already mind the growling parts and the clean sung parts when you write the lyrics or do you just figure out which lines could be sung in which way when the text is finished?
I usually write the whole song first and then add my “fake” English words on it, just to get the syllables and stuff where they need to be. I write more towards caring about how it sounds, to begin with, writing lyrics is just a necessary evil for me, Haha. Dividing both vocal styles up tends to work out pretty naturally. Oftentimes, the more gnarly and darker riffs are leaning me towards using growls and open chords with leads and stuff often leads me to use more clean vocals.

What is going on in ORBIT CULTURE when the band releases a new song or a new record on that day? I could imagine bands checking social media to get quick responses all day long. Watching out Youtube for first reaction videos and so on. Are you together or is everyone on his own on those days?
We are usually at home at our own places when we are releasing singles and stuff, but when it comes to releasing the full thing, like an album or EP we usually end up getting together and going out and eat with our friends and family. Regarding YouTube reactions, we all love them and we try to watch most of them. Most of them are very nice and give constructive criticism and that’s always interesting.

Coming back to „Nija“, there’s a nice interview with you on a British youtube channel where you were asked for your favorite songs on “Nija” and you said with a smile “I hate them all”. Probably as a result from producing all your music on your very own and seeing songs turning into just files and data at a certain point of time. Will you continue managing that all by yourself, or can you imagine assigning someone else to do that? Would it be hard to give producing and mixing in other hands?
That is very true. I have a very hard time listening to our previous stuff including ‘Nija’ and now almost ‘Shaman’, Haha. Hearing the songs a thousand times when writing, recording, mixing, recording music videos and stuff, you naturally get tired of it and of course, you start to hear everything that’s wrong with it, Haha. There are so many great mixing engineers out there but when it comes to the mixing, I think I will always do it myself due to the control freak I am, but collaborating with another producer, that’s another ballpark, with me irritating them behind the desk and get in theirs faces all the time, would be something I might do in the future for sure, Haha. I’m looking at you Buster Odeholm…

Do you see a straight ballad coming out some day? „Behold“ or „See Through Me“ clearly show that you could easily handle that.
We actually have been working on a cinematic ballad for a year now about Richard’s dad’s passing. We are very careful with it and we don’t want to rush it a single bit, but we’ll see when that one sees the day of light.

It is delightful to see how all of the band members take care of their fan base on the ORBIT CULTURE facebook group (and also Discord). You show presence almost every day and even share personal pictures from an evening together at the pub and what not. What do your fans but especially the facebook group mean to you?
They mean more than we could ever tell them. Right after „Nija“ or maybe it was just slightly a bit before, this group on Facebook was created and we couldn’t believe how many people actually were into the band. People are doing tattoos, car stickers, and just generally are so nice to each other. It’s so rare on the internet. I think the people in that group know more of the band than we do, Haha. They are super into it and their investigation skills are unmatched. The fan groups and the interactions are something we value highly. They are doing the hard work for us, putting our music in other people’s faces and they don’t sleep.

Niklas, once again, thanks a lot for doing this. All the best for you and the guys. The last words are yours.
Thanks a lot, my man. I had a great time answering your questions. Make sure to catch the new upcoming EP ‘Shaman’ dropping on September 24, 2021, through Seek & Strike. The EP will be available on all platforms, so make sure to add it to your playlists.

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