fbpx

Johnossi – Blood Jungle (new Album + Interview)

When it comes to straight-to-the-point-rock with killer-melodies, the name “Johnossi” has to drop. The band – consisting of John Engelbert and Oskar „Ossi“ Bonde – from Stockholm had several hit-singles in the last years – including the smash-hit “What’s the point”.

Johnossi - What's The Point

Now they are back with their new album “Blood Jungle” which is out today. It includes 10 tracks – and they could relase almost every song of it as a single: From mid-tempo bangers like “War/Rain” to guitar-riff filled rock-songs like “Weak spots” they deliver pure energy. Just fabulous are the melodies and pianos on “Freeman” – everything in this song calls out “I am a hit song!”.

Klicken Sie auf den unteren Button, um den Inhalt von embed.spotify.com zu laden.

Inhalt laden

welovenordic’s rating: 6/6.

We had the chance to talk to John before the release of the album:

Why the title “Blood jungle”?
We always try to not struggle with the names – we wait and it pops up. We feel if it is right or not.
If we wouldn’t come up with “Blood Jungle”, we would have called it johnossi 5. It is around rain and storming – but it can have many meanings.

Is “Blood jungle” also inside the sound?
Is it a jungle? It is a little bit more polished, even it is polished it is earthy. Many songs connect to nature we want to embrace that. We are inspired by planet earth and it’s organism. It is a precious cell in the universe, in can be infected. We wanted to experience that – we lived with Shamans a couple of weeks.

We think, the style of the album is a little softer that on previous albums, was that a decision or happened it just that way?
I don’t think it is much softer – it is well produced. Every aspect is planned. We really wanted to make a record where every song should really gone through in every aspect.

Speaking of the sound: How easy or complex was the process of making the new album?
(laughs) The second album was recorded in one week form start to finish.
This time we had the approach to make it really hard for ourselfes: We decided that we were not allowed to not be in the rehearsal space to write songs in the ususal way like me singing – and we did that for a year in font of the computer. Then we recorded it. It felt like a slow painful story, when it was finished.

In the first single “Air is free” you are using massive brass instruments, that’s unusual…
Every song on the album is a chapter in its own. We looked what is best for this song. Some themes in it are recurring are female voices. And a horn – a wide horn that says: “We are coming!”

Johnossi - Air Is Free

How does it come to the working with Jocke Berg from sweden’s Kent on “Alone in the summer”? Is he involved in more tracks?
He is actually a friend of ours. Between the last record and this I have been running around in dozen studios and meeting other songwriters – just to try to write songs with other songwriters as an musical experience. Some of those songs we thought “This could be a Johnossi song”. The old songs were all written by ourselves, now we tried something more open. We worked with Jocke Berg, Patrick Berger, Carl Falk and Salem Al Fakir.

The local music scene in sweden or Stockholm – is there someone you would recommend?
We all know each other. There is a guy called Magnus Lidehäll, he is a big producer – one of the most successful producers in sweden. He just released two great songs.

What can we expect on the tour?
It’s all or nothing. You can expect all. We will bring in friends.The wole crew are friends of us.

Johnossi - Weak Spots (Live At Gröna Lund, Stockholm)

Do you already know who will be support act for the tour?
Someone we know, friends of us – that makes touring more fun.

Thanks John, for answering our questions :)

Johnossi on the web, facebook, twitter.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.