Music knows no boundaries, and great Rock n’ Roll can transcend both time and space. Summoned Tide, from Northern Sweden, proves that a young band can respect the past and still sound like the future. Calling on some of the 1970′s Heavy Metal Legends for inspiration, this group intends on World Domination even if they have to walk across the globe to achieve it!
The band is comprised of Richard Thelin on Lead Guitar/Vocals, Jennifer Sikstrom on Bass/Vocals, Nicklas Astrom on Drums, Mikael Thelin on Guitar, and Jimi Toivanen on Synth. With their “terrier-like” manager MIKK who ”beat them up,” adopted them, and convinced them that their skills and raw talent were marketable, anything is possible.
Six String Theories: Your debut album, If We Fall We Will Rise Again, was released in late 2010 but you’ve been together since 2004. What is the secret to your longevity?
Summoned Tide: We were all friends from the beginning and we all share the same humor! We are like a family now and will stay like a family until the end! We respect each other and we always talk about everything between Earth and heaven, which is very important.
Six String Theories: Do you ever get sick of each other?
Summoned Tide: No. Not really. We have had twists and small fights but that’s part of being a family. We always solve our minor problems before they grow into big explosions of rampaging destruction.
Six String Theories: Speaking of destruction, have you ever been close to breaking up?
Summoned Tide: Not at all. We’ve always had goals to work for; small steps that can be achieved, and big ones that we all aim and dream of.
Six String Theories: Your music has a great European metal feel to it, like early Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and even Foghat. I even detect some hints of Metallica and Guns n’ Roses. Tell me about your influences.
Summoned Tide: You’re quite spot on! We also have influences from Dream Theater, Rush, Helloween, Symphony X and many more!
Six String Theories: Have you ever toured outside of Sweden?
Summoned Tide: We’ve been in Russia, Norway, Poland and Finland. We’ve received many requests from around the world but it would take a very long time to walk that distance. Bloody cash problems.
Six String Theories: I can totally see you packaged on a US festival tour, such as Rockstar Mayhem or OzzFest, if it ever resurfaces. How can you promote yourself to the “big guns” without going broke?
Summoned Tide: Mikk is like a terrier when it comes to promotion on social media and e-mailing festivals, organizers and venues. When we “adopted” him as a manager in May last year he started to take care of things that we weren’t good at. We had a MySpace profile and that was it. Now we are on all of the social networks and our fanbase has raised from 180 to 20,000, quite a big step.
MIKK: I am not a “pro” in this and I do it totally voluntarily. The band says that they are my “Retirement Fund” and we will see if it will be so. Even if it doesn’t, being a part of this journey with this band it is worth the effort.
Six String Theories: In the meantime, are you working on any new music or videos?
Summoned Tide: We have lots of unreleased material that we are working on. We are constantly inspired by everyday life and happenings around the world. Nearly nothing in our music is fiction. As far as videos, we have a few fan videos out there, nothing really serious yet, but there are some live videos to come. We are waiting for some footage from the festival Rock Out Wild, where we played in August. We had a camerateam covering us on our gig and they are still mixing it. Hopefully will it be out in a few weeks. We also had a gig recently in our hometown. The same camerateam was there and both streamed the gig live on the web and recorded it with four cameras from different angles.
Six String Theories: I’ve seen some footage from the Sweden Rock Festival also. Tell me about that live experience.
Summoned Tide: We had some fantastic days around our gig at SRF. We did some heavy marketing on the festival area the day before we played and met a lot of new fans. We also met Ronny from the Swedish radio show: Nu blir det Hårdröck. It was a nice meeting that ended up with us being a profile band in their show. Actually, they were the first Swedish radio station that played our album. So first, there were 60 stations globally before we met Ronny. Let’s see what will happen now…
Six String Theories: It’s a great story so far, and I hope it has a happy ending. Have you officially outlined your plan to conquer the world?
Summoned Tide: Keep on doing what we love, spread the message and never say die! And of course give the fans what they deserve, a really good time!
Summoned Tide will be performing at the finals of the RELEASED “Live and Unsigned” metal competition in Sweden on December 17, 2011. You can connect with the band on their website, Facebook, MySpace, Google+, and ReverbNation.