Smash Into Pieces hail from Sweden and they are just about to release their ninth studio album ‘Armaheaven’ on October 31. If you haven’t heard these guys and like your rock a touch pop sensibilities then you need to check them out. Slaids sat down with Guitarist Per Bergquist to talk about the record, being an independent artist, the bands history and explains the concept that continues through the bands last three albums. We also talked about their first ever visit down under earlier this year.
Smash Into Pieces are worth deep diving into as there is so much to discover on this album and has such a broad appeal. The back catalogue is also a great deep dive.
Huge thanks to Australian Music Promotions and Per for making the chat happen.
Andrew : Hey, how are you going Per?
Per : How you doing, Andrew?
Andrew : I’m great, thanks for chatting to me and welcome to The Rockpit and Australia. I’ve only had the last 24 hours to sit the new album ‘Armaheaven’ and it really is a great listen, a great little rock and roll concept story. It’s full of emotion. It’s full of drama, life, energy and tender moments. Tell me a little bit about the concept behind it, and it seems to obviously follow on from the last record ‘Ghost Code’.
Per : Yeah. To give you the backstory, we have done a couple of these concept albums. It started with ‘Arcadia’ and saw APOC stuck in his own world in this arcade game. He then finally found the glitches and broke free of his little world and entered the real world, which led to disconnect as he was trying to live in the real world.
‘Ghost Code’ the next album is where he notices that the same things that were happening in his Ghost world are starting to happen in the real world as he is getting to know the real world. He sees this society turning into something he fought to break free of, and with ‘Armaheaven’ we’re kind of taking this to the future.
What’s the next step like for humankind and our world and how AI will affect us. The future of AI is going to go to war against itself to be the one in power. ‘Armaheaven’ the name is a reference to how human nature works. If we kind of find something beautiful like a say a butterfly, we wanna hold it and then we end up squeezing it until, you know, the beautiful is gone. You know? So, that’s kind of the concept behind ‘Armaheaven’.
Andrew : The album really does have this lush, cinematic sort of feel to it. I mean it’s a soundscape and it. It’s a movie in music and words is probably the easiest way that I can put it. It moves and shifts in its moods. It has its frantic moments, and it has its tender moments. The latest single “Devil In My Head” is on the darker, heavier side of the band and has an instant grab to it. It’s big, bold and powerful. In writing a record like this. We just touched on the AI storyline and I’m curious to know is that the way that you wrote the album? Did the band come up with a concept and then you wrote songs to fit the pieces, or did you have the pieces and then went hang on, there’s a theme happening here.
Per : Usually, we like just to be free as we can be when we start to write. Creating a new song, you write and see what happens. We like for each song to be able to stand by itself. You don’t have to have heard like four songs in a row to understand what the album is about. A song should be able to be just a standalone song, but we also like to kind of fit the pieces, every song in this puzzle is a piece of the bigger concept.
So yeah, I think it’s. Usually both Benjamin and I, who are the main songwriters start out with melodies. That’s the main thing. The lyrics always comes last when you hear what the song is about or the feel of the song. I think we always approach songs visually as we’re creating music.
You can like see how it would work on the live stage and you would see how the music video for this would be in a completely different world. It’s a lot of back and forth and just putting everything together into a package. I think we’ve always been we don’t want to write ten songs in the same vein as “Devil In My Head” we need to have all these different kinds of emotions as well.
It’s about exploring different kind of sounds too. We’re not afraid to like use pop or trap or heavy. like Yeah. You know, tall metal or we just like to throw everything and see what comes out.
Andrew : There are some collaborations on this album too. You have the 2017 Swedish Idol winner Liamoo on a collaboration and what a beautiful track “Flame” is, it’s a luscious piece of pop rock. How did you come to working with, with someone like Liamoo?
Per : We competed together in the Swedish Eurovision qualifying contest, Melo, and we have been working with the same producer, Dino, and I remember the first time, ’cause Dino told us when Liamoo was in the studio, he didn’t know that we also worked with him and he gave the reference to our song “Let Me Be Your Superhero”, as something like he would like to do, but in a more popish way. So, we kind of like, wow, cool. We’re musically kind of the same, we like to deliver the same feelings in songs that he does. Putting his kind of pop twist and we do our rock twist together. We thought it would be like a good match. We met and he had this song; I think it was called “Dragon” or something. There was a lot of fire in that story. When we collaborated “Flame” was the result. It was inspired by his vision, and it came together that way. It was a small circumstance that just made our worlds collided with a purpose.
Andrew : Now there’s another collaboration on the album that is incredible.
Per : The one with Elize?,
Andrew : That’s the one. Elize Ryd from Amaranthe. This isn’t the first time you’ve collaborated with her. You guys have had a history of working with Elize that goes back to 2015’s ‘The Apocalypse DJ’? Tell me about how this relationship came to be.
Per : Yeah, we first collaborated on ‘My Cocaine’. That all stemmed from our first really big European tour where we were supporting Amaranthe back in 2014 and we’ve been toured with them a lot. Chris Adam Hedman Sörbye our singer, was also like a stand in for Jake E in Amaranthe. We did a lot of live shows with Amaranthe.
Andrew : It’s funny how worlds collide.
Per : We met up with Elize to try to write something for her not for Smash Into Pieces. It was meant for Elize and only for Elize at first, as the song was put together, we felt like WOW, this sounds like a smash rock song, so why not add guitar and let’s get Chris Adam in and have him add vocals. The song took another direction from what it was in the beginning, and we got a really cool result, I think it’s incredible as is ‘My Cocaine’.
Andrew : When you go back and you listen to the evolution of the two of you together it really is quite an incredible story. The band has been around for 16 years now and since the release of your debut self-titled EP how for you, has the band evolved? When I listen to the back catalogue, there are hints that you are heading in slightly different directions all the way through and evolved into what is “Armaheaven”. Has that been a growth in a development that’s been natural within the band or is it something that’s consciously thought of or have you gone okay, let’s just have fun running with concepts as that’s what works for us?
Per : I think it’s been a natural development, when we started out it was more like looking at our idols and like I remember Chris Adam was really into Miles Kennedy from Alter Bridge. I remember he had a singing style where he was trying to sound more like Miles Kennedy to sing a bit more like him. We were looking at what these great bands do and we wanted to do something with the same kind of feel like. After the second album, we were kind of like, hmm. Do we actually wanna go in this direction. For me the “Rise and Shine”, album is where I feel like we actually found our identity. We brought in APOC, we started with a more digital or hybrid drum sound and started to experiment a bit more. We didn’t want to be tied to being just a rock band, we wanted to just throw everything in there.
So, “Rise and Shine” was like a cornerstone moment. The “Arcadia” album was our first concept album, which was so weird ’cause we started writing that album a half a year before the pandemic struck, and it felt like this album was like a perfect soundtrack to the pandemic. Out in the world people were feeling like they were in this gaming world and just feeling isolated. The timing with that album was surreal, and that was also the album where we really started working on our visual, creating this kind of parallel world where APOC lived. and everything. It’s been just continued evolving from that. The only thing we do know is that we won’t make the same album twice.For the next one we’ll see what happens, whatever influence comes by. We are trying to keep it fresh all the time.
Andrew : How long did it take to write “Armaheaven”? Were there songs that were left over from “Ghost Code” that needed work or had potential that maybe just didn’t fit that album that came across?
Per : We don’t really have a back log of songs because we are always looking ahead. Now that we’re releasing this album, we have 20 songs that we’re working on for the next album. We feel like, wow, these are 20 really good songs. We continuously write new music and and never really plan out what the album will sound like. We are constantly releasing singles and then all of a sudden like, oh, there’s a new album.
‘Devil In My Head’ was actually created like three years ago, so it was originally written during the “Disconnect” era. I think it was the chorus that we had four different versions of and everyone was loving the riff, but we couldn’t get the chorus right. We put it in a folder on the side to revisit and wow, now I have an idea for the chorus.
Sometimes the writing process just goes on and on, and then we call it an album after a while, once we have that many songs.
Andrew : For me my favourite track on the album is “A Sky Full Of Stars”, that one just hit me and connected instantly. It’s such a beautiful song. Do you personally have a favourite song from the record? Is there one that sits deep inside?
Per : It’s so hard to choose from your babies. Mm-hmm. And it also depends on what kind of mood you’re in. And I think usually for me, ’cause I take my time in getting feelings or knowing what I want. I’m like a thinker, you know, and usually it’s after we have been playing these songs live for a while, getting the answer from the audience and everything, you kind of get this spark, memories and feelings connect to the songs and that’s where you know it’s a favourite or works for whatever reason. It is really hard to choose.
I’m really excited to show off ‘Villan’. It’s a really cool heavy song with a country western touch and also like modern elements. Right now, I would go for ‘Villan’.
Andrew : ‘Villan’ is another killer song. It’s funny that you picked that one. It has that pop country feel pushed to the limits and that’s what gives the song, it’s edge. It’s like, yeah, this is, this is really cool. It, it’s, you know, it’s such a, such a big mixture and it’s such a clever blending of styles without detouring from the band sound itself.
Per : That’s the hardest part too, I think just being able to experiment, but still make it feel like a rock band doing it, putting all this different stuff together, you can go nuts over that for sure.
Andrew : The band was here in Australia in August; you did a whirlwind run of three shows up the east coast. How were those shows and how was the reaction to the band live? Because it’s not the usual show that we got to see you guys in a very stripped down, intimate settings.
Per : I think it was quite refreshing just going back to almost like going back to the roots, playing smaller venues and just seeing a place that we had never been to before. It’s always fun meeting people that maybe have been fans for a long time finally and coming to play for them. I really enjoyed the energy of the audiences. We had a great time and also had time to go and see koalas and kangaroos and the Sydney Opera House, I would really like to go just on vacation and spent some more time there. I had a really good time.
Andrew : As I mentioned earlier the album is out October 31 and it’s appears to be a completely independently released this time. Is there a label behind this one?
Per : We have been independent since, since “Arcadia” from 2020, at least. We’re our own little machine.
Andrew : How do you find that works for you with the way the industry is? Obviously, it gives you far greater control over what you do is that freeing and refreshing? Or is it challenging at times?
Per : Yeah, sometimes your kind of drowning in, ’cause right now, like today I’m going back to do some new lighting stuff, LED cables and how to, you know do things. We’re pretty much involved in everything. Sometimes that’s a good thing ’cause you can really like focus on the details, and you really have a heart in everything you do. But sometimes you have to realize that there’s actually experts that are gonna do this so much better than me. It’s nice to have the advantage and the financial control to be like your own, but sometimes you need to maybe hire someone to reach like bigger levels. It works for us ’cause we have the right people and as a band, we want to have it this way, but I think if you’re just a musician that you just want to create music and have someone to fix everything and you know, book the shows and do the accounting, then that’s Ok too. How we do things is not the perfect way, but it’s the best way for us to go.
Andrew : I have noticed that there are a bunch of vinyl variants and packages available not only on the website, but through the link at the bottom of your Spotify home page. I’m really looking forward to, to physically holding this album. The artwork looks sensational, and the songs are phenomenal, and I urge everybody to go out give it a listen and buy it. If you haven’t heard of Smash Into Pieces before to go and dive into this record and the back catalogue because it’s a fantastic journey.
Per : Thank you so much Andrew.
Andrew : We’d love to see you back in our country again and hopefully you are able to bring the big production as well. What are the plans for the rest of 2025 and into 2026?
Per : Were doing a big German tour in November and December and doing some release shows in Sweden. Next year looks like a super busy year with like so many shows. We’re doing a headline line tour of Europe in April. We’re doing lots of tours and we we’re hoping to come back to Australia, we’re gonna have more stuff shipped and hopefully do bigger venues, one step at a time you know?
Andrew : Fantastic. Per, thank you so much for your time today. Congratulations on the release of ‘Armaheaven’ and I wish you all a success in the world with it. Hopefully we’ll get to see you out here again sooner rather than later.
Per : Absolutely. We’ll be back. Fantastic. Thank you, Andrew, have a great night. Take care. Bye for now.
Check out all things Smash Into Pieces and buy Armaheaven here : https://www.smashintopieces.com
