You come from Southern Sweden and at the moment people abroad have the impression that there's mainly metal that's popular in Sweden but once you get there people also go to the Way Out West Festival in Gothenburg and you begin to wonder… How would you descibe the musical landscape in Sweden?

The punkscene in Sweden isn't very high rated right now, but we think its on the way up. We have this great punkfestival in sweden called West Coast Riot that started up a few years ago, with killer line-ups every year. Otherwise the metalscen is the main alternativ genre.

Your sound reminds me a lot of the Burning Heart bands, though you might be too young to have witnessed the global success of the Örebro bands. Do these bands still have a big effect on you or where do you draw your influences from?

Of course they are a big influence, we are all grown up in the middle of the 90s punkwave but sweden had also a their own punkscene called "trallpunk" wich is the mainly influences we have together from our childhood with band like Räserbajs, Radioaktiva Räker and De Lyckliga Kompisarna etc. Otherwise we have a guitarist that listen to Bruce Springsteen, a singer that loves Tool, a hard rock drummer and a punk guitarist. But as i said before wer'e all into punkmusic in different ways.

When and where did you record the album and which were the main challenges you had to face when recording it?

We recorded the album at Lion Music Studio in Karlstad, Sweden. And started to record in spring 2010. The biggest challenges was the time limit. When we first booked the studio we dident have all the songs quite clear. So first of we made pre-production of all the songs in our rehearsal room with Rickard Engborg.

Our vision of the album was very high and we diden't just want to make a CD with 11 songs, we wanted a complete album with the feel of wholeness. When we started the real recording and had recorded all songs instrumental we realised the treats of the bass was teared down so we had to start over once again. Lost 1 weak in time that was planed to record the vocals. Thanks to our producer and the pre-production we managed to record the vocals in the time that was left.

What folky song can be heard as the outro of "Don't blame the Penguins" and how come you chose this as the outro?

The outro in the song is the same as the intro but its played by Cirkus Frax. Crazy band that plays crazy circus music. We thought we needed to intensify the feeling of stupidity by doing this arrangement of the intro.

What is the meaning of study your bible belt? I don't get it! Are you Christian or how did the title come into existence ??

The song is about powerful people taking advanteges of weak and maybe sick and vulnerable. The bible reference is that its been a tool for doing this exercise of power. Its more against christianity than pro.

Is it true that people in Sweden sometimes drink the alcoholic soap at festivals to get drunk or is that just an urban myth?

It's not just an urban myth. We have friends that done this old trick when their out of alcohol but nowadays the festivals have changed their soap into foam:(

There are many English/American magazines at the pressbyren in Sweden are there any Swedish mags besided CLOSE UP one should know? Any fanzines you personally read?

No, we're all into CLOSE UP magazine.

What do you guys do when you're not involved with the band?

We're all working full time jobs and when were not we like board sports, Mattias and Simon often go out fishing, Erik exercise and Westman has start playing golf. Otherwise we hang out with our friends and drinking beer!

Do you plan to tour England and the continent soon? Having Engineer Records should be pretty helpful in that respect?

We have been to England in april touring with Misconduct and we're hoping to tour there again. Hopefully with help from the guys on Engineer Records but nothing is set yet. We're planing a tour in middle europe this autumn with Misconduct.

I noticed that the record stores in Sweden are as extinct as they are in Germany, at least in Gothenburg some adresses I had collected were no longer valid and some shops had gone out of business? What is your perception concerning that matter?

It's sad that no one buys records anymore but we're hoping for a turn in the music industri. In our town we havent a singel record store left. The value of entertainment that arent already big rockstars is very low. Everybody just want to buy material stufs for their homes to climb higher on the society stair.

Tack sa myket.
Thomas Eberhardt