Come One, Come All to Avatar's Heavy Metal Circus

According to Johannes Eckerström, metal music should make you move in some way. Of course, that typically means headbanging or moshing, but as he sees it, that’s a form of dancing.

“Heavy metal is a subgenre of rock-and-roll. Rock-and-roll is dance music. We dance, too, but it just hurts," he says. "It’s still movement to music."

And he would know. Eckerström is the fearless leader of Avatar, a Swedish heavy metal band that prides itself on creating a carnival-like atmosphere whenever the five-piece traveling freak show rolls into town.

He references songs like Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” as examples that everyone can relate and dance to, and explains that Avatar is taking that essence of movement and “bleeding" it into more extreme musical expressions. “Of course, it’s metal. It’s us taking slightly more twists and turns, but in our universe, we stick to that,” Eckerström adds. “Then you can use it at the barbecue, in the moshpit, in the bedroom, at the gym, maybe you’re driving a bit too fast with it. It truly becomes part of your life like that.”

After twenty-plus years, Avatar continues to perfect its craft of making audiences move in weird and ruthless ways. With songs like “The Dirt I’m Buried In” and “Valley of Disease,” the band’s new album, Dance Devil Dance, is just the latest recorded example of what Avatar can conjure up.

“We really wanted to make sure that all the songs had a sense of movement in them,” Eckerström says.

But it’s best to experience the band live. The five-piece is back in the States and ready to spread more madcap visions. Avatar stops in Denver on Saturday, April 29, with a concert at the Ogden Theatre. Veil of Maya and Orbit Culture are providing support.

“I always put it like this, we’re not circus metal, because I don’t even know what that is, but it sounds like a silly gimmick, but we’re a metal circus. It’s a one-act variety show,” Eckerström says from his current Finland home.

Coming out of the silence of the pandemic, which only aided Avatar in putting together the “best album that we’ve ever done,” he adds, Eckerström began focusing more intensely on his role at the center of the stage. Before returning to life on the road, he’d regularly run a 10K in an effort to be in peak performing condition once live shows resumed.

“With metal, how the genre is performed, the physical aspect of it is so important to me,” Eckerström says. “The heaviness shouldn’t just be created by the machines that amplify it, but that the heaviness is in the body that is performing it. I want to be out of breath. I want to sweat. I want to create a sense of fighting for my life. I don’t want to feel that I’m fully in control or on top of it.”

That type of manic dedication has made Eckerström, and in turn Avatar, more of an experience live than anything and why two-hour headlining sets seem to fly by for the band, which also includes drummer John Alfredsson, guitarists Jonas Jarlsby and Tim Öhrström, and bassist Henrik Sandelin.

"It paid off to be that insanely motivated, to think so Olympic about it. That’s the mindset I’m still living in,” he adds.

So when he says, “I truly think we are doing the best shows we have ever done at this point,” you should believe him. He goes on to talk about how he falls into “almost like a trance” whenever everything’s clicking as it should, during which there’s always “a foundation of craftsmanship” to pull from. There’s also a lot of world-building when it comes to Avatar, including intricate stage sets and putting out an in-depth concept album like 2018's Avatar County, which was accompanied by a 45-minute film.

“We treat our metal differently, but in a very, very metal way. Our circle headbang is the best in the business now currently, I would say,” says Eckerström, whose trademark harlequin face paint has become synonymous with the band’s unhinged sideshow image. “You got that theatrical aspect to it. This show is truly an extension of the art project of Avatar.”

He clarifies that he’s not referring to ballet or opera when he mentions theater.

“I relate it more to stand-up comedy, pro wrestling, a magic show, a rock-and-roll show. We have the songs, the setlist, the plan, but you also have an audience in front of you that every day becomes different,” he adds. “You just have to really read where are you now, and where am I taking you? That give and take with audiences is really important.”

Musically, Avatar traces its roots back to Sweden’s Gothenburg, the well-known epicenter of melodic death metal during the mid-1990s and where the band initially formed in 2001. But Avatar is more Slipknot than At the Gates. There’s an underlying groove and commanding cadence to the music that makes it more accessible and festival friendly than other niche subgenres.

Of course, it all comes back to getting together and having a good time, and Avatar has “a certain sense of focus” for that, Eckerström says.

“It’s music that’s meant to make you move. Go back to [Judas Priest’s] British Steel or something,” he explains. “ … I think many times modern metal is just a bunch of stuff happening. You have to go back to some kind of Beatles treatment of songwriting of trying to convey an emotion here and connect, and not just do stuff. That’s the difference between content creation and actually making something.”

Avatar, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 29, Ogden Theatre, 935 East Colfax Avenue. Tickets are $35.