Erik Martensson is the long-time vocalist/rhythm guitarist for the Swedish hard rock band Eclipse. He’s also widely known for his side projects W.E.T with singer Jeff Scott Soto, and the project Nordic Union with Pretty Maids vocalist Ronnie Atkins. Erik is one of the more prolific songwriters in the European rock scene and truly is one of the most extraordinary rock vocalists in the world today. His main band Eclipse is set to release a brand-new studio album titled Monumentum, the 6th album in the bands catalogue. Fresh off the successful tour of their last album Armageddonize, Eclipse didn’t waste any time as they carried over the momentum from the last record and produced from this fans perspective the most complete and polished record of their career. Metal Exiles had the opportunity to talk to Erik about the formation of this truly monumental hard rock release.
An Interview With Erik Martensson
By Michael Knowles
Metal Exiles: I Really feel that the new Eclipse album Monumentum, is the best album you guys have delivered and I feel that you guys progress with each album. Thought Armageddonize was a great album, but I think Monumentum is an even more polished record and the band has never sounded better. As a band, how do you make sure that each album is better than the next?
Erik Martensson : Well you do each album as good as you can at the time when you’re writing and recording and I think it’s like any other craft the more you do it the better you get at doing it, and I think we still have that inspiration that fire inside to be better each time, and I think as long as we have it’s…so far we’ve still got it and I think it’s…I think that is the only way to do it, let’s keep our fingers crossed that we can keep on doing it and get better and better.
Metal Exiles: Was there anything you guys did differently this time around when it comes to writing and recording. I know you have a brand-new studio with an amazing view, did that provide more inspiration to the creative process?
Erik: Not really, I moved from Stockholm to the countryside and I built a brand-new studio so I think maybe the atmosphere was a little more relaxed and you know instead of recording in a basement we could see the sun, maybe that made a big change. We’ve been playing a lot live since Armageddonize, touring a lot, we’ve been playing so many gigs and I think everything you learned during a tour, playing your instrument, reactions from fans, you know it stays inside of you and when you do another album you aren’t the same when you did the previous album
Metal Exiles: This album is just one super catchy tune after another, it is really hard to pick a favorite, but one of the songs that really stands out is the song Jaded. The song has a killer riff and such a huge chorus, can you talk about how that song came together?
Erik: It’s written by me and a guy named Johan Becker and we did it here in the studio. We came up with this melody of the verse and we kind of thought that we can do it real simple with just the guitar and vocals, because it was so strong. It was just guitar and vocals at the same time. We haven’t done anything like that before so that was one of the songs that sounds different than anything else we’ve done. And it’s more like a punk pop song but still it has that huge chorus and has that real uplifting feeling.
Metal Exiles: Another highlight for me is the song Never Look Back which you shot a video for. I feel like this song could be a future fan favorite and have a similar impact to the song Runaways from the last record?
Erik: That’s one of the songs I did by myself, I came up with the main riff, it had this kind of energy, it’s one of those songs that may not have the greatest melodies in the world but it has a lot of energy and the energy keeps going from the first note to the last one, it’s just a full package of energy and I really like that
Metal Exiles: Can you describe the song writing process for this album? Do you and Magnus exchange ideas you’ve already put together, or is it somewhat an improvisational thing where you jam out riffs and see what works?
Erik: Yes, that is usually how it happens but this album is a little different because I’ve been writing some stuff with others as well and our guitarist is writing a lot. He wasn’t too involved with the writing on this one but that was a coincidence we didn’t come up with enough songs to become this album although we did about 4 or 5 songs together and the rest I did with others. Usually the guitarist (magnus) and myself are the ones writing for Eclipse. We never have outside writers we don’t take songs from other writers, I’m always involved in all the writing.
Metal Exiles: What is the meaning behind the album title, and is there any kind of theme to the album?
Erik: There’s not a theme to the album, but every album title you’ve heard a thousand times before and it’s just boring so I wanted to have something that stood out. It was a make-up between monument and momentum, it was more for fun that we just came up with it, we were talking on the phone with the drummer and we laughed about it, but it kind of stuck in our heads and after we thought this is the best one we got so far and we didn’t come up with anything better. If you search for Eclipse you will not find the band you will find everything but the band, but if you google Armageddonize you will only find the band, and hopefully when you google Monumentum it will hopefully be the same thing. Having said that when I looked it up later Monumentum is actually a real word and it means monument, we thought we made it up, but someone made it up thousands of years ago.
Metal Exiles: To me you guys are able to combine that very accessible classic rock sound and at times an almost contemporary American rock sound with a very melodic European power metal sound, is that a fair characterization of your sound?
Erik: Yea I think it’s pretty accurate, I usually say that we are one foot in the past and one foot in the here and now and we don’t and we cannot break free from the history, because you don’t reinvent anything in rock n roll it’s something…it’s a legacy that someone passes over, I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from David Coverdale or AC/DC. I have it inside and I make my version of that. I think that’s how music develops. Of course it’s going to have the classic rock things but at the same time we hear now the contemporary stuff and that also influences you and makes you do different things, because there’s no point in doing Whitesnake exactly like they do there’s no point, you might as well just listen to Whitesnake, so we always try and make our own thing out of the history.
Metal Exiles: I assume as the singer that you are the primary or only lyricist. What usually provides inspiration for your lyrics?
Erik: Anything in life, it’s like the luxury of not having a native language in English is that you can just make…when I sing in the melodies I don’t have the lyrics, the lyrics are usually the last thing I write for a song, we make so many edits, so many changes during the recordings and the writings, so there’s no point making up a perfect lyric and it makes no sense to redo it over and over again. So, while I’m singing the melodies I just sing made up words it’s complete nonsense words just random almost random English words so it kind of sounds like a lyric. But the funny thing a lot of those words reflect the feel I got for the song so a lot of those words especially those words in the chorus are usually nailed the first time I sing through it so those are I’d say 40% of the lyrics are from those nonsense lyrics. And those words come for a reason because it kind of reflects the vibe of the song, you know that’s how I do it. Then I start writing songs around it, and usually I pick a lot of those words. They make no sense in the beginning but I make… later when I sit down with the lyrics I make them into some sort of theme.
Metal Exiles: The album for the most part is up-tempo, but the record slows down a little in the middle with the ballad Hurt, very emotional song, can you comment on the meaning of the song and how it came together?
Erik: My thought is it’s about calling someone or telling someone that a person close to them has died. It’s about bringing the message that someone close to them has passed away very suddenly and that is kind of the theme behind the song and everyone can have their own way or feeling about it. It’s kind of dark and really depressing but it’s happening every day and someone makes those calls. I’ve done them myself and it’s not fun and you know the person you are talking to it’s going to change their life.
Metal Exiles: As the singer, what are your favorite songs on the album, and which songs to most look forward to playing live?
Erik: I kind of look forward to playing every song live but I know that we can’t do it, we’ll probably play 6 or 7 so we’ll probably play a lot of these songs live, Vertigo is going to be killer live, Never Look Back as you said, I’m really looking forward to playing Hurt as well because I’ve been looking for a ballad like this for a long time for us to do live and finally we wrote it. Probably Black Rain the last song is going to be really heavy live.
Metal Exiles: Who were some of your biggest influences as a singer?
Erik: Well when you are a young singer you try and sound like your favorites and it is always a failure, but that’s the way you find your own voice. You eventually give up and go I’m going to sing like myself and that’s what I did but I really love David Coverdale I think he is the best rock singer ever. I also like Eric Martin, Joey Tempest of Europe, there’s so many great singers, Ian Gillian, I can go on and on
Metal Exiles: I love the Nordic Union project you did with Ronnie Atkins, think your styles really worked well together. What was it like making that record, and do you anticipate recording a follow up?
Erik: When I was asked to do an album with Ronnie I said yes instantly because I think Pretty Maids, his main band, is a great band. He’s a great singer, you can immediately hear that it’s Ronnie singing, he has a big character in his voice and I really love that and I also think he gets better and better with every year. I mean he was great when he was a kid, but I think he is much better as a singer now. And also he really likes music, he gives it 110% it’s really professional and he’s never like it’s good enough, he’s really serious about what he’s doing. That is also what separates him from the artists that have been around for a long time is they think it’s good enough, but with Pretty Maids and Ronnie it’s not that way, he’s dead serious about it and every song he wants to give it 110%, he’s really professional and he’s a really nice guy too.
Metal Exiles: I was wondering if you have a theory as to why so many great melodic rock and metal singers come specifically from the Nordic states? Just to name a few you have yourself, Tommy Karevik, Jorn Lande, Michael Eriksen, Lars from Work of Art
Erik: I have no idea I think we have a tradition of music a lot of folk music, people are raised up hearing music, since the early 70’s in the Nordic parts and of course in the U.S. and UK as well, but there’s been a lot of bands here in Sweden, I can only speak for Sweden there’s been a lot of great Swedish rock bands and great rock bands inspire kids to form their own rock bands. So at the moment it’s exploding with bands playing hard rock and the young kids grow up and maybe they hear Eclipse and they want to sound like Eclipse and they try and copy us, they get inspired and think if they can do it we can do it as well. I think it’s like a healthy competition, that’s why so many great bands come from here and many singers as well.
Metal Exiles: Do you anticipate ever doing a tour in the United States?
Erik: We would love to come to the United States as we played there 2 times in Chicago, just one offs at a festival there. You know it’s a huge country and even if you do a tour you are just scratching the surface, it’s like touring Europe. It’s easier to tour Europe because it’s a lot of people living in a smaller area, but we would love to go there and tour. We have been discussing it, and when you look on spotify and the streaming services, America is the biggest market growing for us.
Official Eclipse Site
Buy Monumentum
An Interview With Erik Martensson
By Michael Knowles
Metal Exiles: I Really feel that the new Eclipse album Monumentum, is the best album you guys have delivered and I feel that you guys progress with each album. Thought Armageddonize was a great album, but I think Monumentum is an even more polished record and the band has never sounded better. As a band, how do you make sure that each album is better than the next?
Erik Martensson : Well you do each album as good as you can at the time when you’re writing and recording and I think it’s like any other craft the more you do it the better you get at doing it, and I think we still have that inspiration that fire inside to be better each time, and I think as long as we have it’s…so far we’ve still got it and I think it’s…I think that is the only way to do it, let’s keep our fingers crossed that we can keep on doing it and get better and better.
Metal Exiles: Was there anything you guys did differently this time around when it comes to writing and recording. I know you have a brand-new studio with an amazing view, did that provide more inspiration to the creative process?
Erik: Not really, I moved from Stockholm to the countryside and I built a brand-new studio so I think maybe the atmosphere was a little more relaxed and you know instead of recording in a basement we could see the sun, maybe that made a big change. We’ve been playing a lot live since Armageddonize, touring a lot, we’ve been playing so many gigs and I think everything you learned during a tour, playing your instrument, reactions from fans, you know it stays inside of you and when you do another album you aren’t the same when you did the previous album
Metal Exiles: This album is just one super catchy tune after another, it is really hard to pick a favorite, but one of the songs that really stands out is the song Jaded. The song has a killer riff and such a huge chorus, can you talk about how that song came together?
Erik: It’s written by me and a guy named Johan Becker and we did it here in the studio. We came up with this melody of the verse and we kind of thought that we can do it real simple with just the guitar and vocals, because it was so strong. It was just guitar and vocals at the same time. We haven’t done anything like that before so that was one of the songs that sounds different than anything else we’ve done. And it’s more like a punk pop song but still it has that huge chorus and has that real uplifting feeling.
Metal Exiles: Another highlight for me is the song Never Look Back which you shot a video for. I feel like this song could be a future fan favorite and have a similar impact to the song Runaways from the last record?
Erik: That’s one of the songs I did by myself, I came up with the main riff, it had this kind of energy, it’s one of those songs that may not have the greatest melodies in the world but it has a lot of energy and the energy keeps going from the first note to the last one, it’s just a full package of energy and I really like that
Metal Exiles: Can you describe the song writing process for this album? Do you and Magnus exchange ideas you’ve already put together, or is it somewhat an improvisational thing where you jam out riffs and see what works?
Erik: Yes, that is usually how it happens but this album is a little different because I’ve been writing some stuff with others as well and our guitarist is writing a lot. He wasn’t too involved with the writing on this one but that was a coincidence we didn’t come up with enough songs to become this album although we did about 4 or 5 songs together and the rest I did with others. Usually the guitarist (magnus) and myself are the ones writing for Eclipse. We never have outside writers we don’t take songs from other writers, I’m always involved in all the writing.
Metal Exiles: What is the meaning behind the album title, and is there any kind of theme to the album?
Erik: There’s not a theme to the album, but every album title you’ve heard a thousand times before and it’s just boring so I wanted to have something that stood out. It was a make-up between monument and momentum, it was more for fun that we just came up with it, we were talking on the phone with the drummer and we laughed about it, but it kind of stuck in our heads and after we thought this is the best one we got so far and we didn’t come up with anything better. If you search for Eclipse you will not find the band you will find everything but the band, but if you google Armageddonize you will only find the band, and hopefully when you google Monumentum it will hopefully be the same thing. Having said that when I looked it up later Monumentum is actually a real word and it means monument, we thought we made it up, but someone made it up thousands of years ago.
Metal Exiles: To me you guys are able to combine that very accessible classic rock sound and at times an almost contemporary American rock sound with a very melodic European power metal sound, is that a fair characterization of your sound?
Erik: Yea I think it’s pretty accurate, I usually say that we are one foot in the past and one foot in the here and now and we don’t and we cannot break free from the history, because you don’t reinvent anything in rock n roll it’s something…it’s a legacy that someone passes over, I’ve taken everything I’ve learned from David Coverdale or AC/DC. I have it inside and I make my version of that. I think that’s how music develops. Of course it’s going to have the classic rock things but at the same time we hear now the contemporary stuff and that also influences you and makes you do different things, because there’s no point in doing Whitesnake exactly like they do there’s no point, you might as well just listen to Whitesnake, so we always try and make our own thing out of the history.
Metal Exiles: I assume as the singer that you are the primary or only lyricist. What usually provides inspiration for your lyrics?
Erik: Anything in life, it’s like the luxury of not having a native language in English is that you can just make…when I sing in the melodies I don’t have the lyrics, the lyrics are usually the last thing I write for a song, we make so many edits, so many changes during the recordings and the writings, so there’s no point making up a perfect lyric and it makes no sense to redo it over and over again. So, while I’m singing the melodies I just sing made up words it’s complete nonsense words just random almost random English words so it kind of sounds like a lyric. But the funny thing a lot of those words reflect the feel I got for the song so a lot of those words especially those words in the chorus are usually nailed the first time I sing through it so those are I’d say 40% of the lyrics are from those nonsense lyrics. And those words come for a reason because it kind of reflects the vibe of the song, you know that’s how I do it. Then I start writing songs around it, and usually I pick a lot of those words. They make no sense in the beginning but I make… later when I sit down with the lyrics I make them into some sort of theme.
Metal Exiles: The album for the most part is up-tempo, but the record slows down a little in the middle with the ballad Hurt, very emotional song, can you comment on the meaning of the song and how it came together?
Erik: My thought is it’s about calling someone or telling someone that a person close to them has died. It’s about bringing the message that someone close to them has passed away very suddenly and that is kind of the theme behind the song and everyone can have their own way or feeling about it. It’s kind of dark and really depressing but it’s happening every day and someone makes those calls. I’ve done them myself and it’s not fun and you know the person you are talking to it’s going to change their life.
Metal Exiles: As the singer, what are your favorite songs on the album, and which songs to most look forward to playing live?
Erik: I kind of look forward to playing every song live but I know that we can’t do it, we’ll probably play 6 or 7 so we’ll probably play a lot of these songs live, Vertigo is going to be killer live, Never Look Back as you said, I’m really looking forward to playing Hurt as well because I’ve been looking for a ballad like this for a long time for us to do live and finally we wrote it. Probably Black Rain the last song is going to be really heavy live.
Metal Exiles: Who were some of your biggest influences as a singer?
Erik: Well when you are a young singer you try and sound like your favorites and it is always a failure, but that’s the way you find your own voice. You eventually give up and go I’m going to sing like myself and that’s what I did but I really love David Coverdale I think he is the best rock singer ever. I also like Eric Martin, Joey Tempest of Europe, there’s so many great singers, Ian Gillian, I can go on and on
Metal Exiles: I love the Nordic Union project you did with Ronnie Atkins, think your styles really worked well together. What was it like making that record, and do you anticipate recording a follow up?
Erik: When I was asked to do an album with Ronnie I said yes instantly because I think Pretty Maids, his main band, is a great band. He’s a great singer, you can immediately hear that it’s Ronnie singing, he has a big character in his voice and I really love that and I also think he gets better and better with every year. I mean he was great when he was a kid, but I think he is much better as a singer now. And also he really likes music, he gives it 110% it’s really professional and he’s never like it’s good enough, he’s really serious about what he’s doing. That is also what separates him from the artists that have been around for a long time is they think it’s good enough, but with Pretty Maids and Ronnie it’s not that way, he’s dead serious about it and every song he wants to give it 110%, he’s really professional and he’s a really nice guy too.
Metal Exiles: I was wondering if you have a theory as to why so many great melodic rock and metal singers come specifically from the Nordic states? Just to name a few you have yourself, Tommy Karevik, Jorn Lande, Michael Eriksen, Lars from Work of Art
Erik: I have no idea I think we have a tradition of music a lot of folk music, people are raised up hearing music, since the early 70’s in the Nordic parts and of course in the U.S. and UK as well, but there’s been a lot of bands here in Sweden, I can only speak for Sweden there’s been a lot of great Swedish rock bands and great rock bands inspire kids to form their own rock bands. So at the moment it’s exploding with bands playing hard rock and the young kids grow up and maybe they hear Eclipse and they want to sound like Eclipse and they try and copy us, they get inspired and think if they can do it we can do it as well. I think it’s like a healthy competition, that’s why so many great bands come from here and many singers as well.
Metal Exiles: Do you anticipate ever doing a tour in the United States?
Erik: We would love to come to the United States as we played there 2 times in Chicago, just one offs at a festival there. You know it’s a huge country and even if you do a tour you are just scratching the surface, it’s like touring Europe. It’s easier to tour Europe because it’s a lot of people living in a smaller area, but we would love to go there and tour. We have been discussing it, and when you look on spotify and the streaming services, America is the biggest market growing for us.
Official Eclipse Site
Buy Monumentum