Birth & Rebirth: Soilwork

WHEN GUITARIST PETER WICHERS walked away from Soilwork in late 2005, he was burnt out on touring. The melodic death-metal band from Helsingborg, Sweden, he had co-led for a decade hit the road hard in support of 2005's "Stabbing the Drama" (Nuclear Blast), but the year before, Wichers had moved to the U.S. to be with his American wife, and an endless string of days on a tour bus was no longer appealing.

Soilwork soldiered on in Wichers' absence, and in 2007 the band made the solid and popular CD "Sworn to a Great Divide" (Nuclear Blast) in his absence and played with metal giants Lamb of God on "The Clash of the Titans Tour."

Wichers didn't retire from music, though; he started focusing on production work and ended up helming the Nuclear Blast All-Stars project, which made the album "Out of the Dark" to celebrate the extreme music label's 20th anniversary.

"I wrote, produced, recorded the entire thing — and trust me, I almost killed myself when I did that one," Wichers said. "Instead of being on the road, I spent 12 hours a day in my room recording it. But it was worth it. It's was just tedious — there's nothing worse than having to track yourself. It's a little easier when you have somebody to record you so you can just focus on the performance, but if you're both producing and recording yourself you have to focus on every little aspect of it, and it can get stressful. Then again, I'm not sure I could have done it any other way."

But in late 2008, there was a surprise announcement that Wichers had returned to Soilwork — at the urging of his wife and the invitation of his old friends.

"I know, it's like 'Dallas' — it's like a soap opera," Wichers said of Soilwork's fluid membership. "Neither me nor Sylvain [Coudret, the other newly added guitarist] had anything to do with the lineup changes. They made the decision, and we were asked to come back. "

Wichers rejoined despite the fact that Soilwork had contracted to do a three-month tour of North America, throwing Wichers back into the no-man's land he had left behind.

"This tour was scheduled before I rejoined Soilwork," Wichers said, "and we're probably not going to do stretches like this in the future. I doubt it."

That's because, in part, an even bigger surprise happened to Wicher.

"We found out that we were going to have [our first] baby right about the time I posted that I was going to come back to the band," Wichers said. "We still have two months [before the baby] is born after we come back from tour."

In the meantime, Wichers will be playing the hell out of several songs from "Sworn to a Great Divide" he had no hand in crafting.

"I have a huge respect for that record as well, even though I didn't participate on it," Wichers said. "It would be ignorant for me to come back and rearrange songs that they wrote. Having said that, at the same time, certain parts of this record I would not go for with the next record, but I do believe it's a good record overall."

That next album will be Soilwork's focus after the band completes this tour.

"We're planning on going into the studio at the end of this year or the beginning of next year," Wichers said. "There might be a couple of summer festival gigs, but I'm reluctant to do them, for obvious reasons. At the same time, we are going to try and focus as much as possible on trying to write the best record to date, right up till we hit the studio. It''s going to take a while; we really don't want to rush it."

While it's too early to say what Soilwork's next CD will sound like, producer Wichers has already been thinking about it a lot.

"Maybe [drummer] Dirk [Verbeuren] will have a little bit more room on the next record. And having me and Sylvain in the band as guitar players, we're going to try and take back a little bit from [2001's 'A Predator's Portrait'], and try to use the catchiness of 'Stabbing's' choruses and also a mix from [2002's] 'Natural Born Chaos.' I know that's promising a lot."

Nothing a new daddy won't be able to handle.

» Jaxx, 6355 Rolling Rd., Springfield, Va.; with Darkane, Warbringer, Swallow the Sun, Withersoul and Olympus Shall Burn, Tue., Feb. 10, 6 p.m., $25; 703-569-5940.

» Sonar, 407 E. Saratoga St., Baltimore; as part of the "Weekend of Metal" festival, Sun., March 22, 5 p.m., $15; 410-783-7888.

Photos by Markus Jakob