Peter: Doing just fine!

R: Could you introduce yourself a little?

P: Sure, I'm Peter from Soilwork, I'm the lead guitarist, and the main composer, with the help of the other members.

R: To start off, lets talk about the new album.  How would you say its different from Chainheart Machine?

P: Well I think that this album is a little slower, but not necessarily uninteresting, because I think this album has more aspects of what we like to reflect these days, and it has definately something for all kinds of metalheads.  It's a lot groovier than the other albums I think.

R: I noticed some obvious changes, like the use of clean vocals.  Is that a way you're experimenting and making it more interesting?

P: Yeah, well, you know, basically we do music for ourselves first, so this was an evolution for us as well, because we could do music in a totally different way.  All the background riffs for those parts had to be written to fit with the melodic vocals as well.

R: You guys are on Nuclear Blast now, how is that working out?

P: I can't say one day has been bad, everything has been working out perfectly.  We've gotten some fantastic reviews all over Europe as well, so I think they have the ability to follow up everything financially.  Putting out more ads, and getting us on good tours as well, we're actually going out with Nevermore and Annihilator next week.

R: Are you guys getting ready for that right now?

P: Yeah, you know we're finally getting stuff... there are a lot of things to get fixed if you want to take five weeks off from your full time job!

R: Do you guys think you'll make it to the US?

P: Well, we're hoping to.  I've talked to the promotions guy over there, and he says depending on the reviews we get, we're probably going to go to the states this year, because they believe very much in the album.  Probably this fall we're going to go there.

R: That would be excellent, I for one enjoyed the album a lot.  Another thing I wanted to talk about, you guys are part of the whole Swedish melodic death sound, what are some of your influences?

P: Well, my influences are pretty wide, I listen to a lot of different styles of music.  I listen to a lot of old stuff, like Deep Purple, Dio, I listen to a lot of Ozzy stuff as well.  You can find a lot of stuff there that you can't find in todays music.  You can take inspiration and put it into your own extreme music of today, and you can get like a blend between the old and the new kinds of metal.

R: I think that kind of blend is what sort of created melodic death metal in the first place, taking the melodic music and putting it in contrast with some more grating vocals, and it's an awesome result, so I'm glad you guys are out there doing your own unique thing with it.  I was noticing that your keyboard player did the cover art?

P: Yeah.

R: That's pretty cool, does he do that kind of stuff all the time?

P: Well actually he's focusing a lot more now, it's still a hobby for him, he's not making any money off it right now, but he's going to start making covers for whoever's interested.  We were talking about using the same artist from the last album, but he said "I have a pretty good idea of what we want to do" so he came up with the idea of doing more like a movie front cover for this one.  You know, it's a pretty strange cover, but I think its very eye catching, which I think is important, if you go into a store, you need to have an album people will notice.

R: Did he do your logo as well?

P: Actually it was his cousin, who's an art director of like an advertising firm, and we told him we wanted to do something representative of the band name, so he came up with that and it turned out fantastic.  Carlos has done everything when it comes to like the burning logo, he added all that stuff on this album.

R: Where did the band name come from anyway?

P: Well, we like to play with words, you know, and this name was something that came to me when I was trying to name the band, and thinking it shouldn't be typical.  So we were doing like a wordgame, and thinking maybe, this is representative of what we stand for, starting from scratch and working your way up, from the dirt.  Then you become a soilworker, working hard from the beginning and getting something in return, if you get successful, and I think we managed to get a little bit successful, because people are starting to take interest in the music.

R: The tour coming up, this is your first big tour.  Do you have a setlist worked out yet?

P: Actually we have a few songs, we're going to do mostly new stuff.  When you play on a bill like this, you can't play only fast songs.  We're not saying that we're adjusting to the crowd, but we're going to play songs like "The Average Stalker" "Needlefeast" "Structure Divine" "Neurotica Rampage" "The Analyst" then we're going to play some of our favourite songs from Chainheart Machine as well, like the title track, "Millionflame" and "Room No. 99" and from the first one we're going to play one song "The Aardvark Trail."

R: I also saw you guys are going to be playing Wacken, that should be a lot of fun.

P: Yeah that's going to be amazing, it seems like some Americans are going to come over as well.

R: It's like a metal pilgrimage for Americans.

P: Are you going?

R: I don't think I can do it this year, I can't afford it, I'm just a college student

P: [Laughs] Well I'm a very poor man myself!

R: Well maybe we can get the album sales up for you a little.  How are your interviews going, are you doing a lot of them?

P: Yeah, we're doing a lot of them, it's cool.  The Americans are meeting the album very well, and this style of music is growing in America at this time with In Flames and Children of Bodom and stuff like that, so hopefully they will play some Soilwork as well!

R: Well, good luck with your other interviews, and thanks very much for talking to me.

P: No problem, take care and keep spinning those records, and hopefully I'll see you in America!