In a recent conversation with Mexico's Summa Inferno, Avatar's lead vocalist, Johannes Eckerström, spoke about the band's ongoing musical endeavors.
Eckerström revealed that despite releasing their latest album, Dance Devil Dance, just over a year ago, the band has been diligently working on new material since last year: "We've been writing since last year. We are always writing. The ambition is to — in less than a year, we hope to be in a studio recording new great songs. So it's always ongoing, because remember, when we put out an album, it's already old to us in a way, so at some point, it's time to move on and start looking forward. And that lives together with the touring and everything else."
"So all of that is kind of happening all at once. But no, it's not too soon, but the exact details of it, how it's gonna be released and stuff… Well, I can tell you that second half of 2025, we sure can imagine that an Avatar album could and should come out. Then we'll see if we live up to that. But we intend to," Eckerström added.
Addressing the varied reactions to Dance Devil Dance, which saw Avatar experimenting with their sound, Eckerström remained unfazed.
"Well, I think we are experimenting as much as we always do, because we always want to change. Every album is based on wherever we were at that given time, so we will never — whatever we did in the past…. I mean, okay, Avatar will always be a metal band, but beyond that, we kind of never really worry about what we have already done. We do go for the next great thing. And I think our fans are used to this — they're used to that Avatar Country can happen and then Hunter Gatherer can happen immediately after that, and so on."
Eckerström believes Dance Devil Dance has been their best-received album to date. He acknowledged that pleasing everyone is an impossible task but expressed satisfaction with the album's overall reception.
"And as far as reception, I do believe that this is our best-received album so far, in terms of that more people liked it than disliked it. But you can't anyway please everyone. So I can't worry about that. As a matter of fact, I always prepare myself for even worse results every time an album is done.
"I listen to it one last time for myself and ask myself, 'Okay, if everyone hates it, is that okay?' Well, yes, because I like it and everyone else can just forget about this and go and listen to something else. But we have to live with this. So I answer that question every time. So I'm always ready for way worse reception, but instead, this is the biggest thing we have ever done. So, I think it went pretty well."
