Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
The official music video for the brand-new track “Chaos Theory” by Amaranthe, the masters of booming, melodic futurism from Sweden, has been published, as per Blabbermouth. Jens De Vos of Panda Productions in Belgium directed the video. Danish producer Jacob Hansen, who has worked with Amaranthe for a long time, mixed and mastered the song.
As part of their current European “Arcane Dimensions Tour” with Epica, Amaranthe has been performing “Chaos Theory” live. Below is also a fan-shot performance video of the song.
Olof Mörck, guitarist for Amaranthe, was questioned in a recent interview with MikeP of TotalRock’s “The Autopsy” radio show if the band’s recent performance of “Chaos Theory” on the “Arcane Dimensions Tour” indicates that a follow-up to the band’s 2024 album “The Catalyst” is imminent.
I would not say very, very soon, but it’s definitely a hint that new music is on the way in general. And so this song, called ‘Chaos Theory’, I wouldn’t consider it the first single from the next album because when it comes to first singles of albums, they’re traditionally released once you have recorded the entire thing. And actually we have written a lot of the album, I would say even the major part of the album. So what we wanted to do for this tour was to give the fans something brand new, just to give them a little taste of what’s coming up in the future. And then we felt like this is a really uptempo song and it’s a song that is really looking forward a lot as, at the same time, it’s looking back to maybe our first couple of albums. It has a little bit of ‘Amaranthe’ [2011] and ‘The Nexus’ [2013] kind of vibe to it also while being very up to date and very 2026. But I would say in terms of the next album, we will definitely record it this year in full for a late ’26 or early ’27 release.
What’s the musical direction of this new material?
Well, it’s early to talk [about it]. But I can give you just a general idea, naturally. What I mentioned, it’s definitely true for this album because it goes a little bit back to basics. There was stuff that we did on the first couple of albums that we didn’t wanna repeat, but that we realize now afterwards that there was some really nice stuff that really worked. … I guess the hypothetical question was, what would it be to combine this the modern Amaranthe, the modern lineup and everything. But besides that, yeah, we are definitely trying out, as always, as with ‘The Catalyst’ as well, we’re trying out completely new things. But it’s difficult to point that out exactly, depending on what’s actually gonna go on the album, because I’ve already written some very different things that might not end up on the album. So we’re still wrapping our heads around that. But I think it’s gonna be a highly energetic album with a very strong pulse, because I think the differences with ‘The Catalyst’ was that it was a little bit all over the place in a very nice way. This was very intentional. It was supposed to be very creative and go in a lot of different directions, incorporate a lot of different elements. And while we’re still gonna do that, we’re just gonna do that with a much more relentless and furious tempo. This is where our brains are at now — something really exciting and uptempo.
Olof discussed how Mikael Sehlin, the band’s newest member and a growling vocalist who joined in 2023, has enhanced Amaranthe’s sound.
Obviously, he’s one sixth of Amaranthe, and as soon as you change a member, it’s gonna change the flavor of things. And I’m not saying that it changes stuff dramatically, because at the end of the day, me and [female clean vocalist] Elize [Ryd], we write all music and I do most of the growl writing, basically. So I’m gonna do it in a similar way, as before, but I’m still gonna base it upon what Mikael is good at. And Mikael adds a lot of his own flavor to it also. He gets my ideas… For ‘Chaos Theory’, this new song, for example, he listens to my ideas and then he just spits out, ‘This is what I think about this.’ And I didn’t change a thing from his ideas. But it was the same thing when [male clean vocalist] Nils [Molin] joined the band [in 2017]. It radically changed how the band sounded like because he has a very different kind of male voice and really took it to the next level. So, these changes can really affect things. And it’s been really exciting with Mikael so far.
