Why the hell does Sweden have so many metal bands? It's a joke we've all made before, but seriously – why. What's going on over there. We don't know, but actual Swede and Avatar vocalist Johannes Eckerström does!
In an interview with The Rizzuto Show, Eckerström explained why the country has produced so many killer bands. Long story short, their education system and funding of the arts has a lot to do with it.
"I have a long, serious answer for that. In Sweden, post World War II, there's this kind of — I think it's hard to find an equivalent for what it would be in an American system, but kind of an afterschool program thing that all municipalities opened music schools," said Eckerström. "It's not part of the school and the school curriculum; it's just a place you can go and get to learn to play an instrument. And that is super subsidized and available to basically everyone.
"The first year, you get to borrow an instrument for free, and then second year, if you're sticking with it, you will get to buy things very subsidized. And initially, it's just 20 minutes per week with a music teacher, playing 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' on a violin or something, but it keeps growing from there. If you're drawn into it, it goes pretty far with musical education, just as a fun afterschool thing for kids to do, kind of like playing little league or something, but for music. And that is readily and widely available, which means that a lot of Swedish kids get to get a taste for it."
"Almost everyone in [Avatar], before knowing each other, because we grew up relatively close to each other — well, in the same town, different parts of it, but went to the same school — so one of us played the clarinet, one the flute, one the trombone in this same little kids orchestras playing horrible renditions of 'Meet The Flintstones', actually.
"And then you start to get into whatever you get into musically as a teenager, the subcultures, all that, but you kind of already had a head start on doing music together and also automatically befriend people who are equally into music. So through those 'Meet The Flintstones' gang, when you were 10 years old, kind of leads to then in your teens, suddenly people have grown their hair all the way to here and wear Metallica and Iron Maiden shirts and you can form bands. So that's a big part of it."
Eckerström continued educating the masses of on the mighty power of Swedish metal, saying: "Another big part of it, I think, is once a country has had one version of a success story, that country get branded like that. It's a pure case of prejudice. If you can say this is a new metal band from Sweden, you feel some kind of confidence and curiosity about it… So we're kind of used to that. So that's a self-feeding system."
"Do you know what Fagersta is? Do you know who The Hives are? They're from Fagersta. And every little Fagersta has their own The Hives in Sweden at this point. So you grow up… Representation matters, right? We talk a lot about that, that all kinds of people should be in front of a screen and be seen, and that inspires kids to look like that person to [feel like] 'I can make it too.'
"And Sweden has been very beneficial for lanky, pasty teenage boys to see, like, 'Hey, they made it,' and, 'That guy's mom works in the post office with my friend's mom, so then we can do this too.' So that's availability. And it's a welfare state, which means there's a safety net for — to have terrible ideas of what you wanna do for a living, fail miserably and find then a different path in life later. So you can afford to fail. So I think all those things combined."
