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Twinmusix got to speak to Eric from the Swedish rock band Eclipse about their upcoming shows and more. 

TM - This is Amelia and Elizabeth from Twinmusix, we are here with Eric from Eclipse. Thank you for having this interview with us today, we really appreciate it!

EC - Thank you, I'm happy for this interview.

TM - You are coming to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide so what are you most looking forward to doing while you are here?

EC - Meeting all the people and talking to all the fans. Just hanging out and going to the pubs, just being in Australia. I think that is going to be the best thing and the music of course. Meeting all the people is going to be the best thing, and looking at the ocean.

TM - Since you came, they moved Cherry Bar to a different location in Melbourne, so you have to check that out.

EC - Ah, cool I will!

TM - What can fans expect from your show in Australia?

EC - They can expect a high-energy Rock show, that's what we do best and a lot of great songs hopefully. I think that's what they can expect and that's why people come to our show, so hopefully, we deliver what they expect.

TM - That is Awesome, we can't wait. Can you give us any hints on your setlist?

EC - No, because we haven't even discussed it yet, but we have a lot of songs to choose between. We could change up the songs every night, maybe not all the songs, but a bunch of the songs are probably going to be changed. A lot of the songs are going to be a new song, because we brought out our new album Wired. We are still in that mode, so there are going to be a lot of new songs and old classics for the band.

TM - We were going to ask you about your new album Wired, so what was your writing and recording process on that?

EC - Well, the whole thing was done during covid, but we met up as we always do in person. We met in my studio in the north of Sweden and wrote it and recorded it together as we always do. A lot of bands in the pandemic wrote a lot of depressing music, everyone was depressed because of the whole situation, We did the opposite and made it a party album. We wanted to have a great party album that we would then would be allowed out and to play live and it's been working well, all of those songs sound great live. 

TM - You also have a new bass player called Victor, how is it working with him?

EC - It’s great! Victor is a pure boost of energy both on stage and off stage, he is always in a good mood and works fantastically. I think this is by far the best line-up we have ever had in this band, it is so much fun hanging out together.

TM - How did you come up with your new album cover for Wired?

EC - We were doing a single for one of the videos called Saturday Night, and the whole set looked amazing! We had a beer and stood there watching these stage sets, and we were like “this is the album cover this is what it should look like” and we just took a photo that night and that is more or less the album artwork. All the pictures are from the same night, so everything was perfect for the vibe of the record.

TM - That is cool, it sounds like a fun album cover to put together, I wish we could have been there. 

TM - You also brought out a larger beer, can you tell us more about that?

EC - Yeah it was kind of by accident, someone read our email wrong because we were talking about a beer commercial, and they thought we meant we wanted to do a beer and they were like yeah let's do a beer! Myself and the guitar player Magnus are big beer nerds, and we know a lot about brewing. My brother is also a beer brewer so we kind of knew what we wanted to do. 

We were in contact with a small local brewery near where I live, and we came up with this very hot bit lager in a very modern lager style. It was very fun, the beer tastes great, looks great, and we had a release tour for the beer as well. We had a lot of beer drinking and music which was fun as well.

TM - Tell us more about your beer release tour, it sounds like a great time!

EC - We played at different pubs in Sweden where we played acoustic live, sold the beer, talked to the fans, and hung out. The brewer was with us as well selling the beer in the bars it was a fun event.

TM - That sounds fun, if you'd like beer, there is a bar in the rocks in Sydney called Lord Nelson and they do boutique beers. You might want to check that out while you’re in here.

EC - We will definitely do that! We have an extra day after our last gig in Sydney, so we are definitely going to check out Lord Nelson.

TM - You also played in Japan, how was it?

EC - I love being in Japan! It was the third time that we have been there. This time was special because it had just opened up for bands to play live over there. We were one of the first bands, besides Japanese bands, to play there. The audience had to stand in marked spots in the concert hall, and they had to wear masks, and they couldn't sing along. They could only clap their hands and stay still. It was really fun because after the songs they were clapping their hands and then there was total silence, no one could sing along or anything. Instead of it being boring everyone saw the humour in it, and the Japanese crowd laughed quite a bit.

TM - That's so cool, what is your favourite thing to do in Japan?

EC - I think everything is so different to how it is over here. Wherever you go the food is great and all the more pubs. You walk into a living room somewhere on the 9th floor, and all the cultural things are like going to temples, just meeting people and talking to people as well.

TM - When I went to Japan, there was a cool train bar called Mistral Bleu Train Bar in Tokyo.

EC - I haven't seen that one, next time we need to find the train bar.

TM - If you could have any band play one of your songs, what band would it be, what song, and in your style or their style?

EC - That’s a hard question, my favourite band is AC/DC, that's what made me pick up the guitar when I was a kid and start playing. I don't know if they would do Eclipse very well. Maybe we should have My Chemical Romance, doing an eclipse song like Viva La Victoria.

TM - That would be a cool cover!

EC - Yeah! We opened up for a show for them in Europe, it was great! It was still pandemic rules so we couldn't meet the band, everything was super strict with masks and everything. They were on this big world tour and they had to cancel shows if one person got sick in the band. It would cost them a lot of money, so no one was allowed anywhere, but playing that crowd, we thought everyone was going to hate us because we are not that emo type of band. We are still very melodic, and there were a lot of young girls, we thought they were going to hate it but they loved it! They sang along with everything, it was an unbelievable experience! There were 17,000 people there, it was a packed arena. They opened their hearts up for us, it was a really special evening.

TM - That sounds like a really fun experience.

TM - What was the first ever band or artist you saw live, can you tell us a story?


EC - The first artist I saw alive was Chuck Berry in 1989 with my dad. I loved Chuck Berry when I was a kid my dad had this old tape machine and he had a lot of Chuck Berry's songs. We were on vacation in the south of Sweden and we saw he was playing live and he took me. We were standing in front of where the guards were, right in front of him, I still have photos from that concert.

TM - That is so cool, I wish I got to see Chuck Berry live. Did that get you into guitar playing?

EC - I got an album called Flick of the switch by AC/DC from a friend and when I put it on it felt like my first experience with AC/DC. I put it on the record player at home for the first time, I could hear the guitar, I knew that this is what I wanted to do, I wanted to play the guitar. 

I started up with an acoustic guitar which was no fun, then I took all my saved-up money and bought a super cheap electric guitar which I plugged straight into my stereo, it sounded nothing like AC/DC, it was extremely bad, it was a start anyway. AC/DC had a huge impact on me.

TM - What's your favourite memory of watching someone else perform live, can you tell us a story?

EC - There's this Danish band called Disneyland after dark D.A.D, I think all the shows are fantastic to see live. I think one special show is when Whitesnake had their reunion and started playing Hardrock again, it must have been 15 or 20 years ago or it must have been more than 25 years ago back when we had started playing with Eclipse. I saw them live and it was so unbelievably good. I thought why even play our own music when you have Whitesnake, which is something so good I'm not going to do music anymore why bother? 

TM - David Coverdale is a great live. I am glad you continued to do your own stuff, or we wouldn't have you today. 

TM - Is there anything else you want to say to your fans?

EC - Thank You for listening to our music, without the fans, bands are nothing. Thank You for caring and listening to this music and keeping the whole genre alive.

TM - thank you so much for this interview we really appreciate it.

EC - Thank you so much.