I became interested in music when I was 10 years old. Listening to Peter Frampton a lot made me want to pick up the guitar.

So Peter Frampton was one of your influences.

Yeah, when I was about 10 years old but later on I got into Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath from friends of mine. They were giving me tapes.

You’ve been in a number of bands like Arch Enemy and Dream Evil. Do you like moving from one band to another?

The plan was that I started all these plans with Firewind and I didn’t know it would end in a record deal. At the end it got to the point where I didn’t have anymore time for the rest of the bands.

You ran out of time for all that.

Yeah, I decided to stop putting my own band on the side for the others. Instead of going with Firewind.

I don’t blame you. That’s definitely a good idea especially if your band has a good chance of making it. Tell me about the new record that you guys put out.

It has 11 brand new songs and we’ve got two new members in the band. We have a new singer named Apollo and we have a drummer called Mark Cross. Everybody was involved in the songwriting this time around. We all wrote bits and pieces here and there. I wrote some songs on my own and mainly the other stuff is Bob our keyboard player. Apollo contributed a lot to the lyrics and some music as well. It’s been a band effort. This album has been more of a band effort than before.

I come to find that when everyone is involved in the creation of the record they seem to feel a really strong bond with each other and it seems to be more like a family effort than one or two guys doing everything.

Yeah, in the past I just couldn’t find people to write with but nowadays it’s much better because our chemistry is really good.

I was reading where you said that you guys used to use four or five different studios and this time around you only used one. Why do people use so many different studios to make one record?

That happened because before the other guys lived in different countries and different cities so it was more convenient to record in other studios. Now we all decided to relocate to Sweden for a month and do the whole thing together from scratch. I think that was a wise decision.

So you guys recorded it in Sweden. That definitely works out a lot better.

Yeah, in Sweden they have a lot of professional studios and very good engineers. It’s a very relaxed and quiet environment to work in. So we usually record our albums in Sweden.

Not to mention that Sweden seems to be the rock and metal mecca of the world right now.

It is. There are so many great bands out of there.

I just reviewed a whole slew of Swedish rock bands and they’re awesome. You released your own signature line of ESP guitars.

Yeah, the whole idea came back in 2004 when the Japanese president of ESP approached me and he asked me if I wanted to work with them. I asked them if they wanted to make my signature model and they said yes. I didn’t expect them to accept it but they did. Originally we released a signature model for the market of Japan and Europe and later on the guitar started selling very well and now this year we made the LTD model which is available all over the USA.

You unleashed that at the NAMM convention.

Yeah, I did the NAMM show. That was fun.

When it comes to making your own line of guitars, what goes into making them? Where do you get your ideas from?

How do I make the choice for the specifications? The shape was a shape that ESP had already had before, it’s called a random star. Because my previous guitar was a Washburn so it was already a trademark in Japan for the fans and they suggested that I continue with this type of shape. But the rest, I just made the guitar towards my liking. I chose the wood and exactly the way I like it. With the pick ups, they suggested to me a few different combinations and I went for it. I tried the sound so it’s basically my dream guitar coming true. It’s one of those things. Selling it to the market worldwide is something that I didn’t expect would happen.

That sounds pretty damn exciting. You guys released a video off your new record on Headbangers Ball.

Yeah, I think it aired on MTV this weekend.

Yeah, it would have been this Saturday. Tell me a little bit about the video.

Parts of it we shot in Sweden and parts of it in New York. It was done with acclaimed director Patrick Ullaeus who has done a lot of videos for Lacuna Coil and bands like that. We shot the band partly in Sweden and the rest of the stuff was shot in America in different locations. I think it’s a very cool video and it looks pretty expensive especially with all these helicopter shots. We’re very pleased with it. I think it’s a very high quality video. It’s definitely an MTV type of video.

Yeah, I was glad when they brought Headbangers Ball back. I definitely missed it when they took it off the air. I think that was probably the dumbest thing they could have ever done. I always thought that was a cool show. You guys are in the midst of touring Europe right now.

Yeah, we’re actually on tour with Angra. We’re doing about a 15 date European tour in France, Italy, Spain, and today we’re in Switzerland.

Yeah, my mom is from Geneva, Switzerland.

That’s cool.

When are you guys coming to the U.S.?

We are already booked for that Prog Power Festival in Atlanta and hopefully we can schedule our whole tour around that. Hopefully in September or October we’re going to be there.

Awesome. That would be great.

Yeah, that will be fantastic. I’ve toured in America with Arch Enemy before but never with Firewind so I’m really looking forward to something like that.

That will be so awesome. I’m looking forward to that. Any other thoughts or comments?