I had a chance to talk with Johannes from Avatar recently to talk about the newest music the band has released, specifically ‘Captain Goat’. I asked where the idea of the song came from and how the nautical vibes fell into place.
‘There is a certain type of song that Tim comes with some riffs and it’s already sort of…set up to make an atmosphere, and there’s a lot of Tim stuff that has made me almost hallucinate, you know a very psychedelic trip like wow I see it! This took me to a strange place that I didn’t exactly know where I was going or where I was until I realized it was water. I know it sounds out there but it’s kind of like close your eyes and see what’s out there. The first thing I remember writing for this song was…that “Ayyy OOO, Ayy OOO” so the shanty was there, from there to go to “He who rows!” and he who what? Those aren’t just words those are lines and everything grew from that phonetic trip of the words came from the shape of the sound and felt good.’
To see and hear how he came up with the words was a very interesting experience; songwriting seems always to be a guarded secret. He said this about how ‘Captain Goat’ was written which seemed to be a satisfying songwriter moment.
‘It was very inspiring, in a way it was the way we wanted it to be when we hear about other people writing songs.’
We talked about the myths that went into creating the imagery and themes of the song. He says meditation had a huge part of creating the song. It was very interesting to talk to someone from outside the US about myths like Loki and other Norse and Greek mythological figures. He discusses how Norse mythology is much more different than what we see in the Marvel Universe movies and how using all of the different mythologies makes his songwriting freer.
After moving spots within the room Johannes starts talking to me about how he used meditation and dreams to come up with lyrical ideas for his songs.
‘There’s all this stuff that your subconscious is telling you if you just shut up and listen. And to treat the songs like that, just write it and the truth of the song might be revealed to you. That’s where some truly amazing things will happen to you. I certainly did borrow and pick lyrical ideas from dreams I’ve had and also from childhood memories in a way I hadn’t done before, so it’s a bit more of a trip and the music reflects that, in a way the album is more progressive because in some parts we count to 5 or 7 instead of 4, we definitely don’t always do that and we don’t seek out to do it just because, but then it happened it’s a really cool thing we did there. It’s more emotionally complex also as a reaction to what “Dance Devil Dance” was all about jump to the chorus get to the chorus, let’s treat heavy metal music like rock n roll that was the whole ethos of that album…the songs on this one are allowed to flow in a way a bit more, take more sharper turns, be a bit more layered thematically and musically, have a couple more crazy parts before going back to the chorus.’
The next 14 minutes of this interview dive deeper and deeper into the idea of the soul and how he went out to find what is within himself. Truly one of the deepest conversations I’ve had with an artist that really had nothing to do with music but more about what it means to be a conscious life form in this infinite cosmos. Did it break my brain? Yes a little bit. Am I going to try some deep meditation to find myself again? Yea probably.
