| Brin the Noise Interview 2013 | |
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Pontus Hjelm |
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Bring the Noise |
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2013, May 18 |
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No information |
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Pontus Hjelm was interviewed on May 18, 2013 for the UK website Bright the Nose In. The interview took place the same day as the band played at Camden Underworld, London.
The main topic discussed were Jimmie's departure and the bands music. The article/interview was written by Mikey Serpico. [1]
Script[]
Q: How’s the tour been going for far?
Pontus Hjelm: It’s been great! We just came back from a show in Sweden actually – playing on a rock boat!
Q: On a boat?
Pontus Hjelm: Yeah it has been crazy.
Q: Where were you? Cruising the fjords?
Pontus Hjelm: Cruising from Stockholm to Helsinki, flying from Helsinki to Copenhagen to Heathrow and then rushing in a car to the show tonight! It was a really good show though!
Q: So it was actually on a boat… was it a ferry?
Pontus Hjelm: Yeah, yeah, it’s like a party boat!
Q: Ah the famous Swedish “party båt”!
Pontus Hjelm: Yah, party båt, exactly!
Q: So that sounds pretty crazy – has there been anything better than that?
Pontus Hjelm: Hmm, the day before last in Manchester – that was a good show.
Q: Is there a date you’re especially looking forward to when you book a tour?
Pontus Hjelm: Yeah, you have your favourite cities – London is always amazing. Our roadie just filmed the queue before doors and it’s so much fun to see the queue being so long – it gets your adrenaline pumping, it’s amazing!
London has always been good and we’re very thankful for that, of course. So London for me is always a place I’m looking forward to.
Q: You guys were already pretty big in Scandinavia and then mainland Europe – was the UK kinda last on the map as far as getting Dead By April?
Pontus Hjelm: It’s kinda hard to tell because, obviously we have our record company in Sweden as well as in the UK, which is like a sub-label to Universal Sweden. So it’s hard for us as a band to monitor what’s happening in the UK. I don’t really know about that… I guess our manager does! Haha
Q: How many times have you been over in the UK now?
Pontus Hjelm: I think this is our third, if not fourth? There was a year that I wasn’t a touring member of the band, so I’m not sure… definitely been a few times now!
Q: As you say, you left the band for a while, how hard is it to keep a band a band together with all of the potential issues of money, life on tour?
Pontus Hjelm: It’s definitely hard, but if you can be honest with one another and always communicate about everything – like, today I don’t feel good, I might say something impolite because I’m not in a good mood. That’s understandable, you have to be able to have that space to just be a human but also be accepted. Of course, you can’t behave destructively. It’s hard, definitely.
We had a lot of problems with Jimmie (Strimell ex-vocalist) who’s not in the band anymore. As he said himself in a Swedish article, he is a drug addict and we all know what that can do to people. We had to deal with his problem really. That almost destroyed the band, honestly.
Q: Was that a reason why you stepped back from touring?
Pontus Hjelm: Well, no, we had a problem with another member at the time! It came to the point with him where either Jimmie had to leave or we’d all just quit the band because we couldn’t do it anymore. He’s in complete denial but we’ve done everything we can but it’s not our problem. He has to deal with his problems.
Q: Do you think that fans sometimes find it hard to accept the professional realities of situations like that? They think “oh if he’s not in the band anymore it’s not the ‘real’ band”…
Pontus Hjelm: Yeah, those situations are impossible when you get a band mate like that… but Christoffer, our new singer, is amazing. It’s like we’ve known each other for ten years, he’s really great.
Q: How did you go about finding him?
Pontus Hjelm: It was Marcus, our bass player, who found him. I don’t know how he did it, but it was a good job!
Q: Did you audition him?
Pontus Hjelm: Yeah, we tested him out in the studio… made sure he could cut it!
Q: And you guys are from Gothenburg,or Göteborg – you pronounce it Yeuteborry in Swedish, yeah? How is it this time of year?
Pontus Hjelm: Yeah, really good! We have much better weather than you have over here! Of course, if you live in the real north of Sweden it’s going to be really cold all the time – like in the winter it’s dark all the time and in summer it’s light all the time. It can be really tricky to live up there but Gothenburg, Stockholm or Malmö are all right.
Q: People make a big deal out of the Gothenburg death metal scene – bands like In Flames and Dark Tranquility – do you feel influenced by growing up around you or do you think that the idea of being shaped by local bands is dying out?
Pontus Hjelm: Well, for me the greatest influence is and always has been Michael Jackson. I cannot say that my Swedish surroundings influenced me a lot. I cannot say that. For me it’s all about writing a good song, strong melodies, heavy riffs and it comes out as Dead By April. Most of it I have to thank Michael Jackson for!
Q: Is that why you call yourself a boyband? Is it just to cause a reaction because you know that people are going to react to a metal band using the term “boyband”?
Pontus Hjelm: Well, people can say whatever they want. It’s not important to us to put a label on what we’re doing. The first thing that comes to mind when I try to describe our music is pop-metal… but if someone wants to say boyband, or boyband metal or pop compared to other heavier bands… I dunno, it gets confusing. Everyone is always trying to label everything.
We had that problem really from day one when Universal wanted to sign us. They were like “what label should we put on this?” and we were like, “we don’t know!” We’re just playing the music we love to play – if you wanna put a label on it then feel free but we’re not going to do it.
We can call ourselves a rock band or a metal band or a pop-metal band or whatever. It doesn’t matter, it’s not important.
Q: You say that you just write and it comes out as Dead By April – could you ever see yourself writing anything different?
Pontus Hjelm: Oh yeah, sure! I’ve written songs for a couple of UK artists actually. Devlin – you know him? I wrote Brainwashed – his debut single – I wrote that with Emily Sandé and Devlin. Also Example, he’s got a song called Two Lives which I co-wrote with a couple of other people. I’ve written songs for artists in Japan… I write for different artists all the time. It’s not exclusively for Dead By April. But when I’m focused on them and I have to write a whole album then I don’t really have time for anything else.
Q: Do you find the process similar when you’re writing for other people as for your own band? Is it more objective when you’re writing for other people or is it all just song writing?
Pontus Hjelm: I’m not really sure… it’s just so creative. I just go into song writing mode!
Q: Do you approach it in the same way? Like if you’re writing a Dead By April song do you start in the same way as you would a song for another artist?
Pontus Hjelm: Ah, ok… I don’t really have a particular way of starting to write a song. It can be on the tram in Gothenburg on the way home from the gym and a melody will just pop up and I have to record it. Then I’ll write a song out of that in the studio the next day. Or I can just sit down and force myself to write a song.
Q: Do you find that you can actually just make yourself write a song?
Pontus Hjelm: Yeah, I can sit and do that. I find that if you do that too much it will, at least in my case, affect the creativity. But I can do it!