John: First tour of America?
Joakim: Yes.
John: How many days have you been on it for.
Joakim: Seventeen now? We`re going to stay 20 days and then go back to Sweden. I think it`s been 17 days now.
John: You`re hitting the tail end of it now. Had enough?
Joakim: No [laughs].
John: Where`d the tour start?
Joakim: Brooklyn.
John: And you`ve been with Radio Moscow the entire tour?
Joakim: Yes.
John: Now let`s go back to Norrsken. You were the singer in the band?
Joakim: No. That was Kristoffer.
John: Ah, I was having trouble keeping track of everyone who was in that band.
Joakim: We can get him if you want.
John: Sure.
[Joakim heads out, we get asked to move to a smaller table.]
Kristoffer: Hey.
John: So you were in Norrsken (which I mispronounced)?
Kristoffer: I played drums in Norrsken (which he pronounced correctly).
John: Ah, that`s how you say it. I`m your average dumb American. Eventually, I`m just going to point and shout at you. Did the band ever release anything?
Kristoffer: Yeah, sure. We were on two compilations, two tribute albums – one for Trouble and one for Blue Cheer. And we released a 7” single which has risen to quite an amount on ebay. It goes for $100. People really seem to want to have it, which is always a nice feeling.
John: Who`s the better singer – you or Magnus.
Kristoffer: I`m not going to go there. What do you think?
John: I`m not going there either. What`s been the best show so far?
Kristoffer: We`ve had several. Then again, that depends on who you ask in the band as well.
Joakim: The last gig was good. Rochester.
John: How many years apart was your first album and Euphoria? Three years?
Joakim: Two years?
Kristoffer: The first album was released in the spring of 2006. It was recorded in 2005. Euphoria was recorded in 2007 and released in spring 2008.
John: Did you produce the first one yourselves?
Kristoffer: With the help of two guys.
John: Same guys as on the new one?
Kristoffer: Totally different studio and totally different guys. It was in Gothenburg, the first one, and the Euphoria album was recorded in our home town of Örebro.
John: Who does the writing?
Kristoffer: We all do.
John: So it`s a big collaborative effort?
Joakim: Yes.
John: Now going back to the Witchcraft connection and the Graveyard connection, you guys all are playing on vintage equipment and trying to get that vintage sound.
Joakim: There`s not that much vintage equipment.
Kristoffer: I guess we`re the only one of those three bands. We can`t afford it and we don`t have that much interest in it. On this tour, we`ve played with Radio Moscow`s gear and they have really good sound in that stuff. We`ve been really more keen on that.
John: Okay. I thought I had read on the Euphoria liner notes that it was all vintage and all that.
Kristoffer: Some stuff was.
Joakim: We used digital recording and we used analog effects. We did that also on the first album. I used a Gibson Grabber, which is a vintage bass nowadays.
John: I was going to say, the new album sounds really earthy.
Kristoffer: Thank you. We spent a lot of time to get it right. The guy who had the studio, he didn`t want to give up either. He wanted to get a job well done. We had so many difficulties with the technology and stuff. He was learning the whole recording process. We were the first band to record in the studio.
John: How long did it take you to record the album?
Kristoffer: I`m not going to tell you. That`s a secret, man. I`m going to say in 40 years.
Joakim: It took a few days.
Kristoffer: It took longer than one week and less than one year.
John: Fair enough. We`ll do an average from there. Now the first song on the album, “Today,” is actually kind of mellow.
Joakim: I wrote it with Marcus, our drummer.
John: Did you feel that wanted to start off mellow or did it just sort of happen?
Joakim: We never decide the order of the songs before we go into the studio. We have a hard time, because one song`s very long and one`s shorter, so it`s always hard to get A and B sides. That`s the biggest problem with the song order.
Kristoffer: I had the order in my head after awhile. Not because of how the song sounds.
John: The length?
Kristoffer: I actually thought somewhat of the lyrics, of the subjects. It`s kind of a chronology, but you can still pick the songs out and put them in a different order.
John: So the album`s sort of thematic?
Kristoffer: I wouldn`t go that far. It wasn`t written that way. They just follow each other nicely.
Joakim: I used to sing that song much higher, but we changed it lower in the studio, but I often sing it higher when we play live.
John: That was another thing I was going to ask you. There`s more of a range between the folksy material and songs like on the first album “Goin` Over the Hell.” Is it tough bringing the folksier songs into the set?
Joakim: No. The original idea of the band in the beginning was to play whatever we felt like.
Kristoffer: We`re hugely into dynamics.
John: Now what led you to MeteorCity. I ask because it`s my boss` label, of course.
Joakim: It was my idea to release something in America. But I didn`t have any suggestions from different labels. MeteorCity is a good label.
Kristoffer: We love MeteorCity.
John: Oh, he`s the greatest boss ever.
Kristoffer: Of course!
John: Now what about the vinyl. You have it with you?
Joakim: Nope. It`s sold out.
Kristoffer: We only have a few t-shirts left, so we`ll have to bring more merchandise next time around.
Joakim: The vinyl went out first. You Americans love vinyl.
John: Well, you have an mp3 and you throw it up on the internet and it`s out there for everybody to grab and take.
Kristoffer: I hate the whole digital sound.
John: It`s great for the convenience factor, but for me personally, when I put on a record, I`ll really listen to it.
Kristoffer: Computer files sound like crap. But like you said, the good thing is you can discover groups.
Joakim: Do you feel any competition from MySpace [in regards to this site]?
John: Not really. The only thing I`d say about that? You can go to MySpace and check out a band, but it seems like it caters to a shorter and shorter attention span. I could tell you to go check out a band and you`d listen to a song and then move on to the next thing. You sort of leapfrog from band to band. The thing I really don`t like about MySpace is that most bands set up the ugliest fucking pages.
Joakim: We used to have moving backgrounds all the time. Psychedelic moving backgrounds. I tried to do them as annoying as I could.
Kristoffer: People would go, “You have to change your page. I can`t fucking watch that.”
John: On the first album, why was the vinyl at two speeds?
Kristoffer: It was a mistake. Let`s just say that there were none of us in the band that made the mistake; it was someone else.
Joakim: I don`t know where it went wrong.
Kristoffer: I know where. Maybe we shouldn`t speak about it. Maybe it`s a little embarrassing.
John: If you flip the sides and you don`t change the speed, the band taps into doom metal.
Kristoffer: Many people have told us, “What the fuck happened on side two?”
Joakim: It`s not usual.
John: Did you get it repressed?
Kristoffer: Yes. I don`t know if it`s still 33 and 45.
Joakim: I think it`s still 33 and 45.
John: Now you both do the singing?
Joakim: Three of us sing. It used to be all four, but now it`s the three of us.
John: How do you split it up?
Joakim: Often if you write your own song or the lyrics, you sing it yourself.
Kristoffer: In the beginning, we wrote more songs together and we wound up doing more harmony vocals on those.
[Johan shows up.]
Kristoffer: You want to take my place? I have to get some rolling papers and get my act together.
Joakim: On the first single, there`s me doing the verses and Kristoffer sings the bridge. That song we wrote together. [To Johan] We`re talking about who sings what.
John: Let`s go back to some stock questions. What are your influences?
Joakim: I think we all have our different ideas as to what we like. For myself, I started listening to Kiss, that`s how I got into music. I like all kinds of music – we all do – from Delta Blues to new records from today. We mostly like 60`s music and 70`s music, though.
John: Who`s responsible for the more folk side of the band?
Johan: I play the acoustic guitar because I`m into the old Swedish folk. I`ve always been playing acoustic guitar in the band, with a kind of simpler chords.
Joakim: I don`t think we say, “Let`s do some folk, let`s do some hard rock.” It just comes out naturally. As I told you before, the songs have different vibes to them.
John: Right on. I`m looking forward the seeing you guys tonight.
