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FREE! Magazine had the chance to make an exclusive interview with Jocke and “Adde”, singer and drummer of the Swedish rock band Hardcore Superstar, a few hours before their gig at Klubi in Tampere.

There are many things going on around Hardcore Superstar during the last months.  Embarked nowadays in a World Tour, they released their new and fifth studio album at the end of 2007: Dreaming ´in a Casket and have suffered some drastic changes in the band formation but it seems that they do not lose the positive energy to show the world that they still believe in the greatness of their project.

We met Jocke Berg and Magnus “Adde” Andersson, singer and drummer of the band, just some minutes before their lunch. They certainly have an outstanding presence: tall, fit and with a distinctive Swedish touch of elegance. It is 14th of February, Valentine´s Day, and I wonder if they expect to find love in the air during their visit in Tampere. “Hehehe… it is a question I will have to make to the audience later! But we have already seen a lot of beautiful girls walking around…!” the guys affirm maliciously.

They look positive, friendly and full of energy, although also hungry (it is lunch time); a hunger that goes farther than just getting the taste of food, since these guys seem to be hungry for success. Nevertheless, as Jocke explains, the name of the band (far from any porno reference) is about getting as big as possible and breaking the limits.

And all in all, how is the present world tour going on?

Jocke: It is going very well. We are very happy so far! We were before coming to Finland in Japan, Australia, England…
Adde: It was the first time for us in Australia, and that was great. Although we did not have much time for tourism or watch kangaroos.

Hardcore Superstar has always had a special relation and tight bonds with the neighboring country Finland. Apart from coming to play quite often in Finnish land, their previous drummer at the beginning was Finnish, Mika Vaino, and they counted with the collaboration of Michael Monroe in a song some years ago.

Jocke: Yeah, Hanoi Rocks are good friends. I have not listened to the new album completely. Only to some songs, and I watched the new video clip. I am happy because they sound like the old Hanoi Rocks from the eighties, and they look full of illusion again.
Adde: Yeah, I am a great fan too. I have listened to a lot of their old stuff.

The tour has been baptized as Mentally Damaged World tour 07/08, so I wonder in what state they can keep their mental health after so much traveling and all the things involving band in the recent days:

Adde: Well, every tour has its up and downs. For example, we recently had to face the loss of our guitar player, Thomas Solver.

Yeah, that has been the hottest topic around the band in the recent days. Can you explain a bit more about what happened?

Jocke: Well, he basically got tired of touring, making albums and playing gigs.
Adde: It was after our concert in London, in the tour bus. He said that he could not continue anymore.
Jocke: It is sad because we have known each other for so many years. I noticed since a couple of years that something was wrong with him, something in his eyes. I was asking him “Is everything ok, Thomas” and he always answered that “yeah, no problem”, but finally the situation exploded. But well, he has always been a kind of special guy… (As an example, Thomas had a famous fight with a Swedish journalist from Aftonbladet in New York some years ago that was hugely covered in all the Swedish press)

The band was lucky to find a quick replacement on the guitar: Vic Zino from the band Crazy Lixx, who later in the concert seemed perfectly adapted, apart from showing great skills. Just while asking about him, Vic passed by and shyly greeted us.

Jocke: It was Thomas himself who recommended us the guy. Vic was playing with his band, and Thomas said “You have to check out this guy, he is even much better than me”. So we offered Vic to join the tour and he luckily accepted. But we don´t know what will happen in the future with the guitarist position. We will have to see about it.

Adde: “People in Bilbao almost destroyed the club when they discovered that our gig was cancelled”

 

And certainly, as Adde explained, they always have some curious situations on their tours. Actually they recently had to cancel the scheduled Spanish gigs due to the illness of the singer:

Jocke: Yeah, I fell very ill, with a big pain in my throat, and I could not sing. It was very bad.
Adde: We had a lot of bad luck. The tour bus was also broken in our way to Bilbao and the air conditioning did not work properly, so it was frozen there. Jocke got very ill and we had to cancel the 3 gigs. And the people in Bilbao got crazy! They could listen to us in the venue, on the other side of a thin wall, and they thought that the reasons to cancel were others, that we were high on drugs or something like that, so they almost destroyed the place! We got scared!

Hopefully, the band will have a quick chance to compensate the Spanish fans, since they will repeat the visit to Spain pretty soon in a couple of months, adding also a fourth gig in Madrid. The expectation about their visit in the Spanish music forums is high:

Jocke:  It is something we had to do. I mean, we owe those concerts to our Spanish fans!

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The band released on November 7th their new studio album: Dreamin´in a Casket, which has been greatly welcomed by the audience. All the spirit of previous Hardcore Superstar´s albums is present there, but the sound sounds this time a bit heavier and thrasher. Although the band enjoys good popularity around the world (especially in their native Sweden), they still need to go one step farther and break the border of playing in bigger arenas.

Adde: Well, there are many bands that release only a first good album and then they get fucked up. We are more constant.
Jocke: Look at bands like Metallica, for example:  They got success step by step, releasing a chain of great albums. At the beginning not many people knew them. We aimed at something like that. But of course we try to reach at the maximum level.

Jocke:  “We are brave in all what we do”

 

And actually, one great feature is that overall; they are honest in what they do. As an example, they released the single Bastards, that got a huge success in Sweden, but they decided not to include it in the final album. A brave decision:

Adde: Yeah, it sold a lot in Sweden. But then we had more songs that were fitting better in the record, and we preferred to have those in the album and left Bastards just as a single.
Jocke: Well, we are brave in all what we do!

While waiting for the bigger international recognition, 2007 was a great year for Hardcore Superstar, at least in Swedish territory: they were voted the best rock band of the year, and they opened the show for Aerosmith at Sweden Rock Festival.

Jocke: That was an amazing experience! We are big fans of Aerosmith. And we were sharing the backstage area: just Aerosmith and Hardcore Superstar there!
Adde: Yeah, they transformed the area into their lounge. They had a lot of stuff, but we had our own masseur there. While I was relaxed, having a massage, Tom Hamilton passed by and exclaimed “Why have we not thought about this!” I was talking to him for a while. They knew our work and there were even rumors that we could continue opening for them during the rest of the tour, but then unfortunately it did not happen in the end. A real pity because it would have been an excellent promotion for us. I think it was Got and Mule who did it.

And after this intensive winter tour, what are your plans for the future. Do you already have scheduled any summer festival?

Jocke: Yes, sure. We are going to do summer festivals. We will even go to China for a couple of festivals there. It will be obviously our first time there.

While waiting for future visits of the Swedish when the sun is shining in Finland (they probably will come back soon to a couple of summer festivals here), we enjoy their gig at Klubi later that night. Good vibes, with Jocke acting as a solid front man and Vic perfectly integrated on the guitar. A lot of young female audience in the first rows that knew the lyrics of every one of the songs, and as the final gift for the audience to end the show, their killing hit: We do not Celebrate Sundays. Fortunately, they celebrate St. Valentine´s, and they showed once more their love for Finland with huge doses of great sleazy rock.

 

Forget the metal and hard rock for a while, the indie and electronic scene in Finland is getting popular. I Was A Teenage Satan Worshipper is one of its representative best. Behind that twisted name hides the project of Pasi Viitanen, who drifted from a heavy metal adolescence to noisy electronic indie songs. This Friday the band presents live its new album in Tampere and Pasi tells about it in FREE!

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What is your approach to music? How did you start making music together?

In the beginning IWATSW was an imaginary band, a one man project. I made up two characters who were in the band and put some songs in the internet for the people to download, and they liked it! I guess at that point only few knew it was a fake band. It was supposed to be a some kind of an art project but  then there turned up to be some offers for gigs. I thought: damn it – why not,  and asked two of my pals with me. First there were three of us, later also a drummer came in.

You have a very original band name, so i cannot help this question. How did you come up with IWATSW?

It refers to the 50’s B-movie names like I Was a Teenage Werewolf etc. It is also a tribute to my own heavy metal past, the time when I was 15 and my parents were slightly concerned when I decorated my room with black bin bags. My band mates do have very similar memoirs of their own teenage time.

Could you tell our readers a little bit about the new album?

It is called The Lemonade Ocean. It is very noisy and melodic and it has various of different styles in it. There is guitar oriented indie pop songs as well as very electronic songs. While it's a mad mixture of different genres, it's still sounding the same band all the time. I’m quite excited of it.

How is it different from your previous albums?

The former record, called Whatevernights, was very focused on a one particular concept and the first EP, called Bees & Honey, were bit more like a single collection. The new record is somewhere between these two. This time I wanted the concept to be much more loose and I wanted to let my imagination explore freely.

The first single, OMG Techno Chicks, sounds very oriented to electronic? How will these sounds be reflected in your concerts?

We have a sampler and synths on stage and our drummer is playing with a click. Playing with the machine is fun, it feels like there is a movie going on and we are playing on it. It has a certain irreversibility in it.

What is / Where is The Lemonade Ocean?

It is a mental place which turns up when you’re drunk on afternoon and you’re head is full of great ideas you will regret the day after. It’s that when it’s 33•C and you’re drifting around with people you don’t know.

The stereotype says that Finland is a heavy metal country, how do you think your music fits in Finland?

We fit in fine. We have a song called ”Heavy Metal Nation”, by the way,  and it’s of the subject. Metal music reflects the Finnish mentality. Though I do not like it, It does not disturb me, it is just an eurodance of the decade.

I Was A Teenage Satan Worshipper

Friday 29.2
Album release party – Klubi, Tampere

Tour

7.03. Gloria, Helsinki15.03. Bar 68, Jyväskylä
22.03. Semifinal, Helsinki
28.03. Dynamo, Turku
03.04. Klubi, Tampere
04.04. Klubi, Turku
05.04. Virgin Oil, Helsinki
10.04. Bar Kino, Pori
11.04. Amarillo, Vaasa
12.04. Rytmikorjaamo, Seinäjoki
16.04. Henry´s Pub, Kuopio
17.04. 45 Special, Oulu
18.04. Seurahuone, Kokkola

www.iwatsw.com
www.myspace.com/teensatanists

FREE! Magazine has access to all areas! This time, we entered the backstage at Jäähalli in Tampere to meet Andreas “Whiplasher” Bernardotte, singer of Swedish metal sensation Deathstars.

I have an appointment with the singer of the new Swedish sensation in death metal scene: Deathstars. An interview scheduled early in the evening, since the band is the first of the three that will appear on stage at Jäähalli. The heading band is legendary American Nu Metal Korn. Actually, it is so early that I find difficulties even in getting inside the venue. Finally, I am able to contact the tour manager, and meet “Whiplasher” in a tiny room close to the showers of the Sport Hall. The singer looks tired, probably consequences of a hangover after a party night in Helsinki. Deathstars played in the mythical club Tavastia the previous day, heading the show there. Quite different from what we can enjoy in Tampere, since the tight schedule let them time to play hardly six or seven songs. In any case, Andreas is a very interesting character, who has traveled and worked all around the world, and conversation turns to interest him specially when focused on topics not directly related to music business

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You were playing yesterday at Tavastia in Helsinki. How was the gig there?
It was great! It was really fun!

In most of the tour dates you are playing with Korn. But there at Tavastia yesterday you were heading, so I suppose that it was a great feeling. Were you playing much longer there?

Yeah, with Korn we play 7 songs and with our gigs we play 15 or 16. It is a bit different, but you get the best from both of it. You get club gigs and also the arenas, so it is a good variation.

How has been the tour so far in general?
Very, very, good! Absolutely fantastic! It is very surprising the reaction of Korn´s fans, that we get the response that we do.  It has been good like hell!

How did it happen that you got involved in this tour with them? Did they choose you?
Yeah, Jonathan Davids really likes Deathstars, so he called and invited us to come and join them on tour.

Any special venue that you remember during the tour?
Together with Korn we had a gig somewhere in England, I think it was in Plymouth, with 4000 people and they pretty much knew every song, because we are quite big in the UK. There were a lot of people; we had never played there before, and it was really nice.

And in Finland, had you played before here?
Yes, we played before in Tuska and Ruisrock summer festivals last summer.

 “As long as in Deathstars we don´t know what the fuck is going on, it is perfect!”

You are pretty big in Sweden, but looks like your previous company, Universal, did not promote you well enough in the international scene. Do you feel that things are getting balanced now with international promotion in this tour?

Yes, of course!  This is perfect for us! It is a big promotion. We were in a mainstream label and they really did not know where we came from, so they did not know how to promote it. Nuclear Blast is maybe better in that way. But still, we have just started. Termination Bliss is just the second album, it feels like the first album for us, and the band is starting to “increase”.

You come from underground Swedish metal, being former members of bands like Swordmaster or Dissection. And your sound evolved to what you call “Death glam”. How did this change of style come up?

I don´t know really… We never really said that “this is how we should do it”. As long as we feel stimulated by it, and we feel entertained by it. As long as we don´t know what the fuck is going on, it is perfect! We are just idiots! It is all about ourselves, about “us” in the band. We don´t keep updated with new bands, it is very internal matter. It is more like a rollercoaster ride. It is just crash, bum, and bang!. Darkness, chaos, party… and then let´s see what happens. That´s it.

Your second album Termination Bliss was darker and with topics like pain and death much more present than in the first one Synthetic Generation. I know that your guitar player went through a lot of personal problems. Do you use music as a catharsis?

I think that sounds so pretentious to say that, but yes. It is of course what you reflect upon. You write music to understand yourself, and you write music to understand others. You reflect about things, but in the end you do not get any answers, but well, it helps.

During that album, so many people died around us and a lot of break ups. It was tough, that it reflects that time. It has been a couple of years since we did that album, and now I can really look back and see it better.

I heard that you have been working on the new album during last months.

Yeah, we have been recording in New York, but I think we will continue recording after the tour. I don´t know if it will be in Sweden or anywhere else. Nightmare (their guitar player) has been living in NY for quite a while and he is producing all the stuff, so it was practical for us to go there and work in the studio there.

Is the new album going to be “lighter” than the previous one?

No, no. It is going to be very dark. This band takes care of your dark side! So I guess that it is a bit more outgoing, straightforward, but also more “Deathstars”, feeling the progress we have done. It is difficult to talk about something that is not completely finished.

Why is Bone, the drummer, not coming with you on this tour?

Because he had to take care of his kid, his son. He said 1 year ago that he could not follow us during January-February, whatever we would be doing. It is nothing bigger than that, it is just for this tour. It is nice to have Adrian stepping in. He is a great drummer.

Your music, although being death metal, has a “sexy touch” that attracts to a lot of female fans. It comes to my mind, now here in Finland, the reference to H.I.M. that also uses a strong link between death, pain and love. What is your opinion about them?

I can´t really say that I have, because I never listened to HIM. It would be stupid to say something about it, but it seems to be very successful. Maybe a bit too soft music for me to listen to, but I respect them, of course. We played with them in a festival, but I did not get to see them. It was EXIT festival in Serbia, a huge commercial festival there with people like Pet Shop Boys and Billy Idol, not a metal festival.

I know you have worked as a journalist also. What did you exactly do?

I was working in the Middle East. Writing about every day situation, writing chronicles for TV4 in Sweden and filming for the news.  I am still a TV producer, but now it is getting harder and harder to fit that in, because of the band. But it is interesting, I love telling stories. I happened to work in Kosovo, in Albania, in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey…I have also worked in documentaries about the Maoris, been in Tonga, and also in the Atlas mountains. I was in Moscow doing a documentary about new rich people 3 months ago.

How do you feel about that? 

You have seen a lot of hard situations happening in the world, and you are also in this rock world that can become sometimes very superficial.

Do you have a different perspective?

Yeah, I think we are spoiled, to have it like this. It is not something in the band, it is nothing really, and you do not challenge yourself that much. I have a lot of respect for people who do not have it so easy. But walking on the stage… I think that maybe people have too much respect for musicians. Then again, music is an international phenomena, it helps. What I mean is that waking up on stage every night is not like working in a grocery´s shop in Jerusalem. You do not have to put so much effort in it. Music is very important, so as long as people gain something from it, it is important. Hopefully we do something right in the end… For me it would be nice to combine those jobs more, but for now it is tough.

-We get lost for some minutes talking about Russia, the censorship in Scandinavian countries, the double moral here, and our love for Estonia and Estonian women (Andreas´s girlfriend happens to be Swedish from Estonian family)- Russia and particularly its capital Moscow seems to hypnotize him:

There is a lot of about Moscow and Russia in the new album; a lot of about conflict. The place symbolizes very well the state of mind of the band, the scenarios there. Russia is portrayed as “the bad boy of the world”, but that makes it interesting. It is so complex…I was hanging out with this young girl. She was 16 years old and she had 2 limo cars, her own driver, her own hummer vehicle, you could not see the road from the back seat because there was a huge flat screen there all over, and her name in diamonds and pink leather seats. Just going from one saloon to the other and partying… It was very weird. It is another world!

Sounds totally crazy!

Moscow is fantastic. I would love to live there, but my girlfriend does not want too. Maybe I should break up with her and start a relation with a Russian…

But your home city Stockholm is quite nice too. I have been there several times and I love it!

Yeah, it is very nice. I just moved back there from London. I have been living in London. But I think I will move back to London in the future.  Stockholm is very beautiful. I have a lot of friends in London. When being on tour is not so important where I live, as far as my girlfriend is ok with it. I am away for 2 months and then coming back and then leaving again…

“My future project after the tour is to practice sex as much as I can”

I know that you are a great Kiss fan. Actually your nickname: “Whiplasher” comes from a Kiss ´song, doesn´t it?

Yes, it is true. Kiss is the best!  They are so big! They represent so much! I think I worked extra when I was 6 years old to buy Kiss albums. I had everything when I was 7. They are the reason also why we started to use make-up on stage.

What are your future projects when the tour is over?

I am going to practice sex as much as I can. I want to get as possibly can get. That is the main thing. And then we have to focus on the album and trying to get that just perfect as soon as possible.

Do you have any confirmed release date?

It was supposed to be released on May but we don´t know now. We will see. I don´t know how the summer festivals and the next tour will look like.

For more information visit:

www.deathstars.net