AMARANTHE TRIVIA
Trivia
Amaranthe's first Japanese show was at Harajuku Astro Hall in July 2011, and it sold out at once — before the Japanese edition of the album had even been issued. They played Loud Park 11 the same year. One album in, that was already the level of interest here.
Amaranthe's own site puts the band's beginning in the autumn of 2008. What they set out to do, by their own description, was to join two worlds that had traditionally been held apart — extreme metal and electronic music — and that has been the shape of the band from the first record on.
The debut landed at the very start of the streaming era and left a number behind it. By the band's own account, Amaranthe was the eighty-fourth most-played album on Spotify worldwide, across every genre.
What sets Amaranthe apart is having three lead singers. At the start that meant clean vocals from Elize Ryd and Jake E, a woman and a man, with Andy's death vocals as the third part. Splitting the singing three ways makes the exchange of voices inside a single song the band's identity rather than an effect.
Jake E, an original member, announced his departure in February 2017. What he gave as the reason was that his place on the albums and on stage had been shrinking, that he had come to feel superfluous, and increasingly like a backing singer. Afterwards he formed Cyhra with the former In Flames pair Peter Iwers and Jesper Strömblad and the drummer Alex Landenburg.
On the title Helix, Mörck has said that the two previous album titles were direct — you saw them and knew what they meant — whereas this time he wanted a word with a story folded into it. One reading is the helical structure of the DNA molecule: the band were looking for their own real DNA, the core of the Amaranthe sound. The record brings back things they had not done since the first album, which is why, in his words, it can be called Amaranthe's DNA.
'PvP', the single released in November 2021, was the official anthem of the Swedish team at the international e-sports world championship; the title is the gamers' abbreviation for Player Versus Player. The video was directed by Grupa13 of Poland, who had also made Amaranthe's 'Archangel' and 'BOOM!1' clips.
The Catalyst is the first time Amaranthe have gone properly symphonic. Mörck says the band had never really used an orchestra before and that this time the reasoning was simply that they could. He has also said all of them wondered whether they had pushed the theatrics too far — though, as he points out, the first seconds of their very first music video were a large explosion, so the band was always this way.
The second visit to Japan came in May 2013, with shows at Club Quattro in Shibuya and Club Quattro in Umeda — immediately after the second album, The Nexus.
The label that first put Amaranthe out was Spinefarm Records, based in Finland. The self-titled debut appeared in April 2011 and charted high in Sweden and Finland.
Amaranthe's records are made at Hansen Studios in Ribe, Denmark. The band's site calls it their creative home and the place where the debut was bottled. After ninety-two shows behind that debut, they went back there to start the next one.
Amaranthe's first major single hit was 'Drop Dead Cynical', from the third album Massive Addictive in October 2014. It is the one thing the band's own site singles out about that record.
In 2020 Amaranthe joined Sabaton's 'The Great Tour', twenty-two shows across Europe. It was the run Nuclear Blast had flagged when they signed the band, with Apocalyptica also on the bill.
Jacob Hansen, whose studio that is, has produced every Amaranthe album from the first. Olof Mörck first worked with him in his other band Nightrage, and says that playing Hansen a demo is enough — the production and the engineering come to him on the spot. There is no need for a meeting to explain what sound is wanted, and Mörck describes him as family.
After The Nexus came out, Amaranthe toured Europe from March 2013 with Finland's Stratovarius, and played festivals that summer including Sweden Rock and Tuska Open Air.
Maximalism (October 2016, Spinefarm) was again produced by Jacob Hansen, with mastering by Svante Forsbäck — an engineer whose work includes records by Rammstein, Apocalyptica and DragonForce.
Elize Ryd has said she did not see Jake E's departure coming. The band is her own child, in her words, and she would never leave it — which is what made the news a shock. At the same time she said she understood him having other musical ideas, and that nobody forces anyone into anything.
The replacement, Nils Molin of Dynazty, was announced in July 2017. Before that, through 2016 and into early 2017, Chris Adam Hedman Sörbye of Smash Into Pieces had stood in on a number of shows. Molin himself played three Swedish concerts that March and had been part of the live band ever since.
Molin's place in the band had been settled a year before it was announced. Olof Mörck says they did not want to announce it straight away and waited for the right moment. With someone as close as Jake E gone, he felt the replacement had to be more than a stand-in: a singer with talent, with a style of his own rather than a copy of Jake's, and someone the band would get on with. Several people were approached, Chris Adam of Smash Into Pieces among them, and Molin was tried out by guesting on live shows.
Mörck and Molin go back to 2012. They met through touring together — the show Mörck names is one in the United Kingdom in May 2012 — and although they did not become close friends at once, they stayed in touch from then on.
The making of the fifth album, Helix, ran to firm dates. By Mörck's account the writing began on 5 January 2018 and the band went into the studio on 5 March. They could have toured first and recorded afterwards, but that would have pushed the release into 2019; finishing everything first meant that if something went wrong they could still move the date back. They chose the former.
Amaranthe's songs have long been written in pairs. By Mörck's account the three of them never wrote together: it was always Jake E and Mörck, or Elize Ryd and Mörck. 'Drop Dead Cynical', 'The Nexus' and '1.000.000 Lightyears' came from the Ryd pairing; 'Hunger' and 'Amaranthine' from the Jake one.
Nils Molin had no hand in writing Helix, and by Mörck's account that was deliberate. Bringing a new member into the writing so soon felt premature; he wanted this record to stay faithful to the Amaranthe sound, and thought the risk too great at that point. He also said he intends for them to write together in future.
In October 2019 Amaranthe announced a deal with Nuclear Blast. Mörck said this was the label whose shiny new CDs he and his bandmates had held in their teenage hands in the mid-nineties, and which had been putting the best of metal in front of people ever since — having them as partners, he said, was a dream come true.
The figures Nuclear Blast set out when they signed Amaranthe in 2019 were these: more than a hundred million streams on Spotify, a show once played to ten thousand people at Liseberg in Gothenburg, and 2018's Helix reaching some of the highest chart positions of the band's career.
Henrik 'GG6' Englund Wilhelmsson, who had held the harsh-vocal seat, announced on 8 June 2022 through his own social media that he was leaving. His reasons were that two years at home during the pandemic had shown him what being with his family was worth, that he did not want to spend more time away from his children, and that life on the road had slowly stopped being enjoyable and had come to feel like a job.
Mikael Sehlin took the harsh-vocal seat after Wilhelmsson. The line-up as of 2023 was Elize Ryd on vocals, Mikael Sehlin on growls, Olof Mörck on guitars and keyboards, Johan Andreassen on bass, Morten Løwe Sørensen on drums and Nils Molin on vocals — the same six the band's own site lists in 2026.
The seventh album, The Catalyst, was released by Nuclear Blast on 23 February 2024. Olof Mörck has said more work went into it than into any previous Amaranthe record, and calls it their most varied and eclectic. The label's own account describes it as the most conceptually coherent thing they have made, given over to transformation and revelation.