Between 1994 and 2009 Lion’s Share released six albums, but I remember that you announced – at that time already – having the intention to release, for a while, only singles and EP’s. Was this a good decision and what happened next?
Well, it started around the time we released our previous album in 2009. I thought the record industry was in return, because Spotify had just started, record shops and record labels were shutting down and we had that bank crisis in the States that affected the whole world economics. So I said to our singer: ‘let us chill out a bit with the next album and see where things are going with especially the record industry’. Will it be all streaming? Will all record shops disappear? Then we toured for a couple of years on that album and we started writing for the new album, but I also started getting offers and work for other bands to mix and produce. So that took a lot of my time and we also live like three hours apart. So we only got together two times a year for a couple of years to write new material. So Lion’s Share was never put on ice or anything, it was just that there was so much going on and we wanted to see what the business would be like. Around 2017, Patrik said ‘come on, let’s make that next album’. So we started working more intense for a release in 2020 and we also started to play live shows and book more shows. We were in Germany actually and we flew back to Stockholm on a Sunday, and three days later, on Wednesday, the whole Europe and the whole world shut down, because of the pandemic. So we lost another couple of years (chuckles), but to keep the fans happy, and also for ourselves, to show that the band was still alive, we started releasing early versions, like demos, our work in progress, some of the songs. And that was appreciated for a couple of years, but the fans said: ‘we love the singles, but we want to have them on CD’ or vinyl, because around that time vinyl became very popular again. So we listened to our fans. They demanded to have CD’s and vinyl’s, so here we are!

That is heart-warming that they still want the physical product, because you were a visionary having doubts about Spotify and streaming…
It is different from country to country as well. Here in Sweden, the streaming is very big – obviously Spotify is a Swedish company from the beginning – but take Germany for example, they always love their physical formats. So it is a bit different depending on which country.

Kay Backlund on keyboards was there from the beginning, just like you, but now there are two keyboardists.  How is that divided?
Kay formed the band with me indeed and he was a fulltime member on our first three albums. Back then we were a bit more like semi progressive or whatever you want to call it, so we had a lot more keyboards, but from ‘Emotional Coma’ in 2007 on and further, we were pretty much a 100% heavy metal band, so we did not have a lot of keyboards. It is mostly for spice or for an intro or something, but he worked with us on a couple of songs and also Anuviel – it is actually my girlfriend playing the keyboards – it is very convenient for me to come in here and record (chuckles). It is a split between them.

Of course singer and lyricist Nils Patrik Johansson is very important for you. How did you actually get to know each other as a matter of fact?
Yes, he has been in the band now for many years. I think it was with the first thing he released, with Richard Andersson’s Space Odyssey and I heard the song ‘Despair And Pain’ on the internet. I said ‘wow, who’s the singer?’ and I tracked him up and offered him to be the new singer of Lion’s Share and this was in 2003. So he has been in the band for a long time now. He is the one who lives a bit north, three hours by car, we don’t get together that often to write. That is unfortunately, but we do our best.

Do we have a main topic in the lyrics or is it all crisscross per song?
We started writing in 2010 and we wrote all up until the album was finalized in 2024 or 2025. So we had so much material to pick from. The way we picked it was more to make a great album from start to finish. Keys and tempos, that was the important thing. So that’s how we picked the songs for the album. So the lyrics are random. We made a selection of the songs we had. It is mostly the typical heavy metal lyrics we have.

‘We Are What We Are’ is really a tribute to the fans, isn’t it?
Oh yeah 100%! That is a very popular song, it has almost one million hits on Spotify, so people like that song. It is a straight-forward song. We also made a video for it. Now we only have one band video, but a couple of lyric videos. For ‘Pentagram’ we have one that’s doing well on the internet. We want to spread them out, because many bands and labels they just promote up to the release and then they stop promoting. I think it is important to keep on promoting, even afterwards. Three or four weeks after the release of the album you can expect a new video from us. We can release it as a reminder to everybody.

You are also the producer, but Mick Lind is helping you, isn’t it?
Yes, I produced and mixed it and he is my colleague doing the mastering, the final thing when you put the codes on there and it can be printed as CD or vinyl. This is the first album I mixed myself for Lion’s Share. I mixed a lot of albums for other bands. This was a great thing, because we had full control and we could work on every detail until we were 100% happy with it.

You have experienced the evolution from analogue to digital recordings. What is your opinion about it?
That is very interesting! Well, with recording I prefer how it is today, but when it comes to distribution, I prefer to have it on CD or vinyl, not streaming. So it is two worlds there, but of course back in the tape days, you made a demo and then you went into the studio and did it all over again in expensive studios, expensive tape and you had like three weeks to record ten songs or whatever, but these days you can start out with the basic idea and then you keep what you want to keep and you just replace all the stuff as long as you keep the tempo and key. Also back in the day, when you rewind a tape to do an overdub, the sound got a little bit worse. Every time you rewind a tape, but these days it sounds exactly the same, so I really prefer how it is these days and you can also easily jump between songs, back in the day you have to take photos of the mixing desk and take notes and all that kind of stuff if you wanted to change a detail on one of the songs. It is also a lot cheaper of course. The reason why we could release all these singles is because we don’t hire someone from outside. We do it in the house and it is not expensive.