Hypocrisy
It’s Not Easy To Write Music

02.09.2019

This autumn Russian metal fans are in for a real treat – they will finally experience again the power delivered live by Sweden’s Hypocrisy. Even though their enthusiastic leader and frontman Peter Tägtgren has visited Russia very recently with his other projects: Pain and Lindeman (the second half of which is Rammstein’s singer Till), the return of Hypocrisy is indeed special, since this legendary band has not reached these shores for as long as nine years. Prior to the outbreak of the Russian tour (Hypocrisy will visit 4 cities in September: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Novosibirsk and Ekaterinburg) we got to talk to Peter about his further creative plans, including the release of the band’s long-awaited new album (their first since 2013), as well as about the upcoming Lindemann album.

The last time that we were talking to you about the Hypocrisy you only had a few songs ready for the new album, and it sounded like there is a particular theme on the album – you mentioned aliens, ancient Maya and something like that. Has this concept developed further or you drifted away from it?

No, so far not. I mean, the lyrics are 50% done for the whole album, so there is still 50% that can change it. But for now it’s still a little bit about the ancient times and my thoughts of who created what and so on.

So there is a kind of concept there at the moment.

Right now yeah – at the moment, but who knows where it’s gonna go after that.

Is it not known yet what the album will be called?

No, I think it will be coming out later on, in a few weeks or a month or something like that. Right now it’s just a focus on getting the album done before the deadline and of course on keeping on going out and playing. We have about 6 more shows now until we have a little break from that and then we go on the Amon Amarth tour.

And do you know when the album will be out or it’s not yet set?

I think the first single will be out somewhere in November. And the album itself will be out in the beginning of the next year.

Does that mean that when you go to the Russian tour in September there will be no new material on the set list?

No, it will be “the best of” on this tour, because we have not been there for 9 years, so it’s time to remind people that we exist.

Well, judging by their reactions they definitely do remember this and expect you!

Oh that’s good!

This time you will only play 4 gigs, and you’ve done much more extensive tours in Russia with Pain and Lindemann. Does that mean that you might come back to Russia after the new Hypocrisy album will be released with a longer tour? What do you think?

Yeah, we have to see what the interest is in Russia for Hypocrisy. I know what it is for Pain and Lindemann but with Hypocrisy we’ve only been to 2 cities ever, so it’s good to see what’s going, on and hopefully when the new album is done we can come back and do what we did with Pain and Lindemann – 10 or 11 shows. But we have to check first what the interest is.

And I think that you’ve mentioned in some interview before that there will be 2 videos off the new Hypocrisy album. Is that true that you are going to shoot one of them in Russia?

Yeah, one is gonna be shot in St. Petersburg.

Oh cool. Can you tell us a bit about it?

I am getting connections in Russia now and we found a really good Russian director. So we’re gonna try something different.

Cool! And is the first one ready?

Almost ready, yeah. That one we did in LA in March.

Can you tell a bit about how the work on the new album was going? Was that a difficult one to make? I remember you did this answering questions session on Instagram stories and somebody asked you to describe your songwriting process and you said “hell”. Is that always like that for you and has this album been any different?

No, it’s always the same shit. It’s not easy to write music. It’s always a pain in the ass – it’s like shitting out a melon. So with this album I said: I will take my time, take off and do festivals or gigs or do something else and then come back again and do some more work on it, on – off. So that’s why this album is taking a lot of time. It’s because I don’t want to sit intensively and write 11 songs from the beginning to the end – cos then I go crazy.

But you used to do that before, no?

Yeah, in the past, when I did not have to go out and play. But times have changed, I play a lot more now than I ever did in the past.

From what I’ve heard from you before, you always seemed to be very fascinated with various conspiracy theories, which actually exist…

Yeah.

And I was wondering, have you ever been fascinated also by any movies or TV series that open up on the theme – like “The X-files”, “Star Trek”, “Space Odyssey” – things like that?

Yeah, maybe in the 90s, when I was writing. But nowadays it’s more really just about finding fascinating stories on the Internet about people and what they experienced, also about top secret projects and things like that.

So it’s more to do with a documentary or mockumentary stuff…

Well, I don’t think these things are on documentaries…  well, maybe some of them are. But most of the things are more in the secret anyhow.

No, I meant documentary stuff as in something that allegedly actually happened rather than a fictional thing.

Yeah-yeah! Of course. I build on that and then I do my own story. I make a story out of what I’ve heard from different sources. And it’s actually about how the world is controlled by a handful of people, who control us like we are fucking ants – the population, you know.

So it is a little bit political in a way.

It’s not about politics. No, it has nothing to do with politics. It’s about power. Who controls the banks and who controls the people.

Isn’t it politics in a broader sense?

No, politics is about when you’re preaching: oh do it my way, do it this way. But this is totally different. This is beyond politics.

Okay, this is just pure power.

Exactly, that’s what I said. It’s about power.

I also wanted to ask about Lindemann. Is that true that the new album will come out in the end of this year?

Yeah, definitely.

And will it include songs from the “Hänzel und Gretel” theatre production (a theatre play that was staged at Thalia Theater in Hamburg in 2018 – ed.)?

There will be some of them but there also will be a shitload of new ones as well.

There was a track called “Mathematik” that was done by Till Lindemann and also your son, Sebastian, was involved in it. Is that correct?

Yeah, Sebastian wrote the track and then someone remixed it for Till and then he did a video on it, so I am not really in that one.

Ah, so you did not participate in it in general.

No. It’s Sebastian and Till and this DJ.

So it’s a completely different thing – it is not anyhow connected with the new album?

Well, I really like Sebastian’s version. It fit more to Lindemann than the actual remix that they did the video on to be honest.

But is that a part of the album or a separate thing?

We don’t know yet, because we have 14 songs and we have to choose what is going where and how.

Did you have any other experiments similar to that? Because this is very different stuff – it’s like hip hop.

Yeah, we have one in a totally opposite way, to be honest.

What do you mean?

Well, you have to figure it out. I mean, it is definitely the opposite way. (laughs) So there will be a lot of different colors on the new album.

Does this album has as much humor and comedy in it as the previous one or you moved to something different – because these theatre production songs, they sound very different from what you guys did on the first album.

There will be a lot of different things on this album, there will be a few things that have something in common with the last album I think, but in general it’s just the next step on developing. And that’s as much as I am gonna say about Lindemann. But there will be an album before the end of this year.

Okay, and I have one last question to ask, which is: have you thought about Pain and do you know what’s gonna happen with it?

No, I have no clue yet. It’s been a lot of Hypocrisy and a lot of Lindemann now, and it will keep on being like that for a while, so when I will find some time later, I will start thinking about the next Pain album, what it should sound like, what kind of style. With Pain it’s always the thing that every album sounds different from each other. Cos I don’t really know what I want, I don’t know what the fans want. I really don’t know anything to be honest!

Hypocrisy on the Internet: http://www.hypocrisy.cc/

Special thanks to JC-Sound for arranging this interview

Interview by Olga Stebleva
Photos by Nigel Conniford (courtesy of JC-Sound)
August 25, 2019
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