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Interview by: Lynn Wyeth

Date: 26 November 2009

Venue: Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton, UK

Photos by: Sabaton / Mary Evans

I wouldn’t call it an obsession. It’s things we enjoy writing about. It’s a real issue. It’s not made up fantasy issues; we like to focus on what is real. This was our kind of stuff to do and write about. It’s terrible stuff but we’re a heavy metal band. The war theme is to make people care. We give a little bit more too if we care about something we write about.

So do you as a band or individuals have strong views on the current situations in say Iraq or Afghanistan?

The band should be a non-political band. It should focus on non-political views. It should be about the view of a single soldier with no political view. The band takes no political action about what we write about. We’re non-political.

The next album will be released by Nuclear Blast in the spring of 2010... Is it ready yet?

No we haven’t recorded it yet. We’re starting that first thing in the New Year. We’ve done demos and pre-recording and are very happy with it. It’s going to be a very good album for sure! No lyrics are finished yet; we’re still getting ideas in from the fans, we got thousands and thousands…

We were going to ask about that. You asked fans to come up with ideas for battles… did you get some great ideas in?

We’ve had so many! We’ve not gone through all of them yet; we’ve got over 10,000! Fans have been very busy. We’re very thankful! But we need to tell them, please, do not send any more! We promised we’d read them all…!

Well at least you’ll have enough material for the next ten albums!

Yes, unfortunately. It’s human nature to fight over things and kill each other. It’s very unfortunate. We wish none of it would happen, but we have plenty of material. I don’t know if we’ll do it forever but it feels like the right thing to do at the moment.

Ok, live shows. You were one of the bands of the weekend at Bloodstock this summer. Did you enjoy it?

I think it was a great success. It’s the first time we really got attention in the UK. It’s been hard for us there. In continental Europe we have had success, but in the UK it has been hard to organise shows. We’ve tried hard to push here. We’ve done headline shows before but it’s been hard. Bloodstock was great, people there were really happy. It always felt before like the UK was a long way behind but at Bloodstock we got an opening. It got us on this tour (support to DragonForce) and it’s growing every night so Bloodstock was great for our career. We were surprised by the reaction of the fans, so many knew our songs. It was a shame we couldn’t play longer.

Yes, lots of people on the forums were complaining it was only thirty minutes and so far down the bill…

You can’t complain, we were just happy to play. The promoter tried to change it at the last minute, they admitted the band was bigger than they expected. But we’re happy we went there.

So you’re back on a tour here with DragonForce, you’ve been with them a week, how’s it going?

Better every night! Every night it’s increasing. I think it’s to do with us being pretty abnormal with the DragonForce fans. But maybe on forums they are saying check out the support band. At the beginning of the tour we hadn’t been playing for two weeks and it took us two gigs to get back to where we belong. We’ve found the right connection with each other again on stage now. It’s difficult because we have a short set to fit it all in. We have the London headline show before the last night of this tour and a two-hour setlist, so we need to keep all the songs going, so every night is changed. With unrehearsed songs it’s interesting! Tonight we haven’t decided what we’ll play yet; I guess we’ll do that soon!

There’s a live DVD planned, any more news on that and any of the extra footage that might be on it?

Yes, the band has been existing for ten years and the first thing we bought was a camera. An old and shitty camera! But we have film we can use. I don’t think people will ask for ten-year old shows, but lots of it can be bonus material. We have over 700 hours. At least some is very boring! But there’s also a lot of funny things.

A few questions now about Sweden. There’s been a raft of good bands out of there recently whether its sleaze street metal or the harder rock. Why do you think the country is producing such success?

There are a lot of good bands. We come from a small city of 40,000 people and within that city there are maybe fifteen to twenty hard rock bands that could compete. There are so many bands that are good. There are a lot of crappy ones too though! A lot don’t understand what they have to do. They spend all the time in the rehearsal room hoping a label will pick them up and give them a lot of money. We could flood the market with Swedish bands if they promoted themselves.

And the two questions we always ask our Swedish bands… do you prefer Abba or Roxette?

I would rather listen to Roxette because of the rock songs, that would be my favourite. Abba have some good songs too though

And why do they have 6ft green rabbits at Liseberg?!

I was last at Liseberg when I was five years old so it was a long time ago! I don’t go to Gothenburg often, maybe one or two shows a year. And then just to a bar and the club and then we go home. Liseberg is a nice and fun place; Amusement Parks are fantastic but we never have time to go to them.

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