Hammerfall

14.07.2008 | KYS-Cam | 0 Comments

Those Swedish purveyors of power metal Hammerfall have been churning out epic anthems for well over a decade, and June 27th saw the release of their latest and great compilation Masterpieces".

Guitarist Oscar Dronjak took a time out from slaying dragons to give us this interview…

By Cameron Chambers

Hey mate, how’s it going? 

Fine thanks man, sorry about being late though. I think the times have been too short for the interviews. How are you? 

I’m really good man. Where are you calling from today? 

I’m in Stockholm, Sweden at my brother’s. I’m down here visiting him and his family, which is nice.  

Makes for a bit of a change then, normally you guys are on the road. 

Ha ha. No, we are not going to be doing more than one show this summer so we can focus on the next record! There will be no gigs, ha ha.  

You guys are off the road at the moment, what does a power metal band do in their down time to keep busy?  

Too little man, ha ha. I haven’t really been busy in the last couple of months… definitely not as busy as I should be. I should be writing songs!  

It’s starting to get closer to our deadline but I’m the kind of guy that lets things get too close to our deadline and then I realise I have tons of work to do, so I have to really start on the writing! 

For those that aren’t familiar with Hammerfall, can you please tell us a bit about the band’s history, how you got together etc… 

Certainly. We started in the early nineties playing music that no one else was doing at the time. It was uncool to play heavy metal but we didn’t really care because that’s what we wanted to do. No one really liked the grunge movement anyway, ha ha so we started as a reaction to that.  

We started and got a record deal and then we released the album in 1997 and then um, it sort of took off immediately from that point, ha ha. The label believed in us and promoted us really well in Germany so when the album came out the hype was believed! 

People understood that it was something new… whether you liked it or not didn’t matter because it was different from all the hard and dark music at the time. That really started things off for us and we continued building from there, just making sure that we were taking small steps all the time and refining our sound and just trying to find a good way to work and never compromise any of our ideals.  

Your long-term guitarist Stefan recently quit to focus on being a pilot. Do you think his departure will have an affect on the Hammerfall sound? 

I’m one hundred percent sure it will. He was a very important part of Hammerfall, both playing wise and all the solos that he did. The new guy Pontus is completely different so it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment to get in tune with him and for he and I to play on the same wavelength.  

When it comes to the solos and the way Pontus does things will definitely be an adjustment for both Hammerfall and myself. It’s for the best though… we’ve been in the game long enough to know what we’re doing so whatever happens won’t be negative… only positive!  

How did you guys come to select your new guitarist Pontus? Is his role in the band going to be more as a player or will he be a part of the song writing process? 

I’m sure he’ll be writing some stuff but we haven’t really gotten to that point yet. I’m sure he’ll be involved though… hang on, what was the first part of your question, ha ha? 

Ha ha, how did you guys actually find Pontus? 

Andreas, our drummer, has known him for fifteen years and he already knew him really well… we all knew him to some extent too because we toured with The Poodles (Pontus former band) for six weeks last year. He’s a really nice guy with lots of connections and everybody likes him so that’s why we started thinking that maybe he would know some good guitar players in  Stockholm… coz I’m from Gothenburg and have no idea about Stockholm, ha ha.  

We called him and asked if he knew anyone who’d fit Hammerfall and he said “yeah, I do… me”! We tried three guitar players and two of them were people we thought would work but Pontus was easily the best choice. He has a lot more to add to the sound of Hammerfall… he’s not trying to change our sound but he will add to it!   

Speaking of song writing, your last studio record was “Threshold” in 2006, do you have a rough idea of when can we expect your next original album? 

Not a rough idea… I have a precise date for you! February 20^th, 2009, ha ha. This is how we always do it. We choose a date then we count backwards and work out how long we’ll need to do everything and what we need to do to record. So we’ll start in August and aim for our February release.  

“Masterpieces” is scheduled for a June 27^th release, an album that features eighteen different cover songs. Did you have a hard time choosing which songs you’d be playing? 

The thing with the covers record is it features all the covers that we’ve already recording during our career. There are three new songs on there as well but the covers have all been –pre-recorded throughout our career. We had one on our first album in 1996, then 1997 and in 1998 as well.  

They’ve been spread through our whole career and they were all good choices at that point… definitely good ideas at the time, ha ha! Some of the songs were chosen because we loved the bands and we thought the band didn’t have enough of a spotlight on them, so we thought we’d bring them back to pay tribute to them.  

Other songs like “Head Over Heels” were recorded specifically for the Dio tribute album but we chose songs that we loved and knew that we could do well… but just wanted a bit of a twist on them. 

Are your cover versions going to remain true to the originals or are they going to get the traditional Hammerfall once over? 

We haven’t changed anything coz we want to pay tribute to the songs…. Not just the bands! There’s no arrangement changes or anything like that. 

There are two different schools of thought on this. I believe in order to do the songs justice then you need to play them similar to the original. I mean, we’re not Warlord so it’s going to sound like Hammerfall, but we don’t want to change them too much.  

We used to cover songs that were so obscure that people thought they were Hammerfall songs, ha ha.  

“Masterpieces” also has a DVD option available, which will showcase the band between 2002 and 2007. What kind of stuff is on there? Any tour hijinks?  

They will be two different releases that will be packaged together in some countries, but I’m not sure about Australia.  

From my point of view I think the DVD is the main release because the songs on the CD have already been released in one way or another. The DVD is totally new and was recorded on our own cameras and shows the stuff that we’ve done over the last six years. It will also have a ninety-minute documentary and we’ll talk about the stuff on the DVD and some stuff that isn’t on the DVD, ha ha. It’s basically interviews mixed in with personal footage.  

There’s also another ninety minutes of bonus material with TV performances, all the promotional clips we’ve ever done, as well as four live songs and a collage and some short movies that we did ourselves. We basically collected everything we’ve done between 2002 and 2007 and put it on one release. The CD is fun but it’s more of a collector’s thing but the DVD is the main release because it shows the band how we really are. We didn’t work on the covers album but we worked really hard on the DVD! 

Will you guys be playing many of the cover songs on your one off summer show? 

I’ve done a couple of interviews today and that question actually came up in another one. We’ve never thought about doing one of the covers live but it’s a good idea. I’m going to bring it up and talk to the others about it.  

That one off show I mentioned is a week before the release of the album so it makes sense to play a cover song. We’ll see! That’s a really good idea though, thanks for that man! 

No worries mate. After that one off show, what touring plans do Hammerfall have for the near future? 

We still want to grow as a band and keep going forward and upwards. We have to tour a lot more once the album is released but I don’t know what the plans are yet because if we tour in March or April then we’ll miss all the summer festivals. 

So what we might do is play some bigger shows in spring and then do all the festivals across the summer and then do our own tour in winter. It’s about a year away though so we haven’t decided yet, ha ha.  

I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million times but can we expect an Australian tour? You’ve got a lot of fans down here! 

If all goes well it will be in 2009. We were actually on our way to Australia in 2007 and we had a couple of offers that we more or less wanted to do, but then the promoter changed it to another month and we weren’t able to do it. We even had a schedule for Australia laid out!  

I can’t promise anything coz I’m not the one that decides all these things but I’m sure Hammerfall will be in Australia in 2009! 

We’ve got time for a quick final five questions too mate…

Sure! 

Favourite place you’ve travelled to?  

So far I would probably say Japan. It’s so different from anything in Europe… its just world’s apart. In a good way of course. I liked it very much in Japan! 

This might sound like a suck up but if Australia is anything like I’ve heard then that’ll be my favourite… and I’m not just saying that coz you’re from Australia, I really mean it!  

Favourite album at the moment? 

At the moment? I’ve been doing some research for the album we’re recording so I’ve started listening to the entire Judas Priest catalogue again… from first right through to the last record! I recently did the same thing with the KISS catalogue.  

It’s really cool, I’ve listened to their albums a billion times but it’s been quite interesting to go from the start to the finish and get a feel for how the band changed.  

Most ridiculous thing you’ve done for a buck? 

Weird question! I don’t know. I’ve done a lot but I never get paid, ha ha. 

I always do ridiculous stuff when I’m in the mood for it but money isn’t really involved. I think that’s a cultural thing. Money’s not a big deal here in Sweden but Americans think about that kind of thing a lot… and there’s nothing wrong with that, but they have a financially focused mind. We don’t think like that in Sweden!  

Best hangover remedy? 

Sex, no better cure man. 

Good answer. Thanks for your time Oscar, is there anything else you’d like to say? 

No, not really. We really hope we can get to Australia though because it’s one of the countries that I’ve wanted to visit since I was a teenager and I never got around to it… I’d never even travelled before Hammerfall! I’ve been fortunate to go places that I otherwise wouldn’t have.  

The metal scene in Australia seems to be picking up a lot of speed at the moment too, so we can’t wait.  

Thanks again mate.