The Northern Warriors of Neptune

Neptune, originating from Stockholm, is a melodic metal band with roots that trace back to the 1980s. Their musical journey began with the recording of an EP in 1986, which was not released until 2018, along with a collection of earlier demo recordings. Building on their legacy, 2020 marked the release of their debut full-length album, Northern Steel. Without resting on their laurels, they followed up in 2022 with the EP The Rebirth, which features new recordings of four of their songs from the ’80s.  Their third full-length album, End of Time, is set to be released on September 20th via Pride & Joy Music!  Highwire Daze recently interviewed guitarist Anders Olsson to find out more about the amazing northern warriors of Neptune!  Read on…

We’re here with Anders from Neptune. First of all, introduce yourself. Tell me what you do in Neptune and how long the band has been together. It’s been like 1984 or something like that.
Anders Olsson: Yeah, actually, the band kind of started early ’80s. I joined ’84, ’85 something, so it’s been a long time. I’m the guitarist in the band. At that time we were actually two guitarists. Nowadays we’re only one guitarist and one keyboard player instead. We already played with extra keyboard back in the 80s as well, but with two guitarists. But nowadays we only have one guitar and one keyboard instead.

Where’s the band based? What is your local music scene like there?
Anders: Yeah, that’s a tricky one because we are mainly based in Stockholm, Sweden, but we’re actually spread around.  We’re actually living like four or five hours away from each other. So, we don’t meet each other so often as we want to, but we’re trying to meet and do rehearsals together as often as possible.

After the pandemic, it’s been more struggling to find places to play at because every band wants to play after that. And also, a lot of clubs was closing during that time as well. But luckily, it’s going better and better now.

How did you wind up signing with Pride and Joy Music?
Anders: We had a previous label called Melodic Passion Records. And he decided that he didn’t want to work with as many different bands anymore. He just wanted to do his own business because he’s the singer from the band Narnia and he didn’t have time to take care of his label anymore. And he knew Birgitt at Pride & Joy. And I started actually to send out demo tapes to different labels. And we know that she has a good label. We sent her a couple of songs and she said, “Sounds great. I want to sign you up. Are you happy with that?” And she sent us a contract, and everything looked great. So, it took just a few days before we signed it.

End of time. Is there any overall story or concept behind that album title?
Anders: It’s probably up to the viewer or listener to decide. In the actual album, we are kind of focusing on the end of the Viking era back in 1066, when the last Viking lost the battle over in England. So that’s kind of one way to see it.

But also end of time, it’s so many different things that happened during the time, like different world wars, the pandemic, what’s happening in the world right now, what’s happening with the music industry. It’s so many different things that are end of time. Just look at the industry, what’s happening with music, for example. Do we see the end of time for the music, so to say?

Give me the story behind Metal Hearts and the inspiration behind it.
Anders: That’s the only song on the album that actually is different in that sense. If I remember it right, the bass player in the band, Tosh, he wrote the music for it. And for some reason, he decided to send it to a friend, a girl called Linda Sonnvik. And he asked her if she could make a lyric and the top line for it. And she did it directly. So this is the only song and the first time we’re actually trying to have a separate lyric writer and top-line writer for it. So that’s why it’s a different touch. And she is also having backing vocals on the chorus on that song as well, together with another girl.

Northern Warriors, that final song. Tell me about that.
Anders: It’s a song originally written by the keyboard player and the bass player, Tosh Andersson – he finished it. And he’s also the guy that’s singing the first verse on it. So, you can hear that there are two different people singing on it as well. And we want to have like a softer, not a ballad because it’s not really a ballad, but a softer song compared with other ones on the album as well to finish it up. And as you can see, I don’t know if you have seen the back of the album yet or the pictures of us as what we say Northern Warriors, but it’s kind of a picture of us looking like Viking avatars or Viking warriors.

So, we are the Viking warriors that are on the back on the album and also the same guys are going down to England early 1066 and doing the final battle. So that’s the Northern Warriors that are coming from the Nordics down to England and trying to take over England. But they didn’t succeed.

Would you like to tour in support of End of Time?
Anders: Absolutely. It’s trickier nowadays to do a tour because it costs a lot of money to do it, especially if you are not at the right level. So but of course, if the right type of tour or whatever, we should probably prefer to do more festivals and more one-to-one gigs. But if the right type of tour coming up, of course, we would try to do it.

Has Neptune ever played over here in the States or is that something you would like to do?
Anders: We have never been to the States. To be honest, we have never been outside Sweden.  As you know, we played for a couple of years in the 80s and only played in Sweden at that time as well. Then we restarted everything back in 2017-18. And at that time was planned we were to play in Greece and some other places. But sadly enough, our singer died. He had a stroke, so we needed to restart the band once again. So, we needed to cancel these gigs in Greece. And then we took the bass player in the band, which also was the singer’s little brother, and he took over the microphone from his brother as well.

Your previous album, Northern Steel, was released in November of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic?  What was that experience like to have an album, basically your debut album or probably arguably your second album, released during that historic time?
Anders: At that time when we released it, that was kind of a decision we made mid-summer, and the pandemic had just been around for a few months, and we thought that this will be over soon. When we look at it now, we should really held it until the pandemic was over. So, it didn’t really help us because I’ve seen some bands that already has a following, was really successful with streaming during the pandemic, but we haven’t been out yet. We didn’t have the following we needed to be successful on for streaming.

And also, to be honest, our kind of music is more album oriented. We’re selling albums or even cassette tapes nowadays as well. So, we are more of selling the product. And when our distributor started trying to send out the vinyl and CDs, many of these shops were closed because of the pandemic. So, the pandemic didn’t help. I mean, that was a disaster for many bands. But at the same time, we also got time to write new songs for the next album as well. We actually had a few concerts during the pandemic, but not when it was lockdown. In Sweden, it wasn’t so bad as it was in many other countries. We had kind of a lockdown, but it wasn’t really that hard over here.

Anders Olsson of Neptune via Zoom!

You played a festival in 2019 called Muskelrock with cool bands such as Exciter and Witch Cross. What was that experience like playing a big festival like that?
Anders: I mean, to be honest, that was the second gig we had since we restarted the band again. And the first gig was just a week before that. So it was really, really good. It was a really good experience for us. It was really fun in every way. We had a good slot as well, like eight o’clock in the evening. The sun was going down and it started to be dark and it was really, really good. Our vocalist, he had made his own trident, a big one, really sharp one. And when we started the concert, he came in on stage and put it down in the floor.  Then after like the second song or something, a girl came up on stage and took that big trident. It was like two meters long and really sharp. And we didn’t know what happened because she started swinging around on the stage and we just waiting for security guards to come up and throw her out.

But nothing happened. So, she was standing there on the stage for the whole song, running around with this large trident that was really sharp. And we were kind of scared that she was too drunk. She would fall off the stage or that she would stick into us or something. But nothing happened. And when the song was over, she went off and everything. I think that the audience thought that this was a part of the show. It was like a surprise for us.

You’ll never forget that show then.
Anders: We actually have some pictures on that as well, probably on our Facebook somewhere.

Are you currently involved with any other bands or projects outside of Neptune?
Anders: I’m helping other bands with some stuff. For example, I help the band Veni Domine with the lyric videos and this kind of stuff. But I’m not playing like a musician in any other band. I don’t have time for that.

You have a new album about to come out. What’s up next for Neptune?
Anders: We have a release party or a concert here in September. We would like to have more reviews out for the album. And when that’s done, we are right now in this discussion with the booking company, because I try to do it all by myself. But we need a booking company that’s helping us with booking small tours or festivals or whatever it is will be. That’s the plan. So, we really want to be out more and play. Also outside Sweden as well, of course.

(Interview by Ken Morton)

NEPTUNE:
Row Alex – Vocals
Anders Olsson – Guitars
Jan Tosh Ason – Bass & Vocals
Johan Rosth – Keyboards
Jonas Wikström – Drums

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