On our continuing search for brutal and heavy tone we turn to Emil Alstermark of October Tide to find out how he achieves his expansively dark tone.

Tell us about your band October Tide.
“Well, the band history is a story to be told by Fred since he’s the only original member of October Tide, but I’ll give you the short version. It’s been 13 years since the debut album Rain Without End came out and back then there was only Fred and Jonas Renkse in the band. I guess there were no plans in touring at all since they both were busy with Katatonia. After the second album Grey Dawn was released in 1999, it seemed like the band was dead and buried. But ten years later Fred was making some new stuff that didn’t fit to the sound of Katatonia and had this idea of releasing it as a new October Tide album. I was partly involved in the demo writing process but the album is pure Norrman’s. On the album Fred is doing all the guitars, along with Robin Bergh on drums, Tobias Netzell on vocals and Jonas Kjellgren as session bass player. Jonas also did the engineering, mixing and mastering on the third album released on Candlelight Records as A Thin Shell in 2010. We are currently writing new stuff and are hoping to do some recording in 2012.”
Which bands influenced you growing up?
“I’ve always been listening to a lot of music, and not metal exclusively. When starting to play the guitar at age 10, I was banging my head to Metallica albums. Loved to play along with them early thrash metal albums. “Searching – Seek and Destroy”. Metallica was with me until the release of Load, but I can actually listen to the album nowadays. Other bands I could mention as a big influence would be Opeth, Kent, Nitin Sawhney, A Perfect Circle and The Cure. So, not metal exclusively as you can see.”
What kind of gear do you use?
“When playing live I exclusively play my Framus Diablo Progressive. It is equipped with original Seymour Duncan pickups: AHB-1 Active Blackouts (neck), AHB-2 Active Blackouts Metal (bridge) which both have a great tone.  On the floor I use Boss GT-10 as an effects pedal and use Blackstar HT-dual valve distortion pedal. I also have some other guitars which I use at home recording. One of my dearest guitars has been Seymourized with the classic Invader SH-8 just a year ago, and I’m yet to find a suitable guitar for the Parallel Axis Trembucker PATB-2 sound.

Any tone secrets you can share?
“Not really, the two SD pickups let me go from heavy, lead distortion with great gain and sustain to smooth, bright clean sound with just a switch. I don’t use that much effects on my signal chain, except some delay and reverb.”
Do you enjoy touring and performing live?
“Yes, that’s the best part being in this band, haha! Well actually we haven’t been touring that much since most of us have family with kids and stuff. But the shows we’d accomplished have been really awesome. Last weekend we got our poor asses to Ireland for a one show only and it turned out great. And the beer. Oh my! Love that country.”

October Tide is currently focusing on recording their next album. For more information on October Tide, please visit: http://octobertide.net/