Soilwork became one
of the most important acts within the “harder” metal scene for the last
couple of years.
At least their great “A Predator’s Portrait”
(2001) Soilwork marked their final breakthrough. The album hit with
ferocity but showed more diverse musicianship. Their rise to the top
began with the ensuing tour, where they had the chance to support
Annhilator and Nevermore. The reaction to Soilwork’s performance was
excellent, and the band gained loads of new fans.
The highlight for the band so far has been their performance on the
Wacken Open Air 2001. More than 20.000 fans were saw their fantastic
show, and their merchandise was sold out in three hours.
After that the very
talented songwriting duo of Peter Wichers and Björn „Speed“ Strid
knocked out a batch of new songs, and the band entered Studio Fredman (HammerFall,
In Flames, Dimmu Borgir) to record their excellent
“Natural Born Chaos” album.
Together with producer genius Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad, Steve
Vai), they created the next step to bring Soilwork to the top of the
scene. A video was made for the new hymn “As We
Speak”, which was actually shown on MTV 2 and some European
channels, also been featured on several dvd-compilations.
The reactions both from fans and the media on
“Natural Born Chaos” was incredible, and soon after the release
Soilwork toured with hypocrisy and Killswitch Engage in the US and
Canada, which was their first northamerican tour.
Later the summer Soilwork went to Japan for the third time to play three
fantastic headliner shows.
The german Summer Breeze festival followed, shortly after that the
European Tour with In Flames and Pain was played, and most of the shows
were completely sold out. One of the highlights was a packed show in
Stockholm in front of 3.000 crazy metal heads!
Somewhere inbetween
the touring Soilwork succeed to write the songs for
“Figure Number Five”.
“People seem to be surprised how we can be that productive, but this is
the way we like to work and for us there´s nothing called "lack of
inspiration".
We get so much inspiration from ourselves, from touring and from the
fantastic response we get from the fans that we simply cannot slow down.
Our last album contains everything that
identifies our sound: intensity, melodies, atmosphere and heaviness and
trust me: there are no fillers, only killers...”, vocalist Bjorn “Speed”
Strid comments.