Video Interview: Christian Carlsson of The Quill on Earthrise & 30 Years as a Band
Posted in Bootleg Theater, Features on April 15th, 2021 by JJ Koczan
On March 26, Sweden’s The Quill released Earthrise, their ninth studio album, through Metalville Records. If one counts their history as starting between 1991 and ’92, their history goes back at least 30 years, and it’s been 26 since their self-titled debut showed up in 1995. All four current members of the band — vocalist Magnus Ekwall, guitarist Christian Carlsson, bassist Roger Nilsson and drummer Jolle Atlagic (as well as organist Anders Haglund) — were in the group for that album, and while Ekwall and Nilsson both left for a time, the former returning on 2017’s Born From Fire (discussed here) and the latter on the prior record, 2013’s Tiger Blood, the band pressed on and awaited their respective homecomings.
And talking to Carlsson, that’s the impression one gets The Quill means to him. Of course I wanted to talk about Earthrise — its powerhouse heavy rock sensibilities from the outset of “Hallucinate,” the classic metal grandeur it weaves in and out of songs like “Evil Omen,” the sheer boogie of “21st Century Sky,” and so on through the 47-minute LP’s varied but engaging course — and how The Quill have always sought to foster a classic dynamic with a modern outward sound, but let’s be honest. 30 years is a lot of
history, and it’s bound to come up. Most bands are lucky if they put out three records, many just one, but The Quill have persisted through shifts in trend, the advent of the internet as a tool for media consumption, and — as Carlsson himself notes — Ekwall going from not having children to becoming a grandfather.
Yeah, family comes up, as it should, because one of the things I most wanted to know was how The Quill has been integrated into Carlsson‘s life. The band has toured, sure, and they’ve put out killer records and played festivals and done the whole thing, but he says it straight up when he talks about dayjobs and things of that sort. The answer, of course, is that the band becomes a family in itself, as The Quill seem to have done. And hearing Carlsson describe not only the instrumental dynamic between himself and Nilsson or Atlagic (who also did a stint in Hanoi Rocks, it’s worth noting), but the idea of writing songs with each other in mind, knowing what won’t piss someone else off, it becomes clear just how important these relationships are to The Quill as a group and as individuals.
I’ve interviewed Carlsson before — a decade ago, for the release of 2011’s Full Circle (review here) — but this was the first time face-to-face, such as videoconferencing allows. He was thoughtful and kind enough to indulge the fact that a little bit into the interview, my oven timer in the kitchen went off and I had to go take a pie out. I paused the recording, but you’ll see it in the video when I come back. Chicken pot pie, man. My wife’s dinner. Can’t burn that. So yeah, we talk about family a bit.
Please enjoy:
The Quill Interview with Christian Carlsson
Earthrise is available now on Metalville. More info at the links below.
