Hardcore Superstar
A Girl and a Drumkit is a Sexy Combination

06.02.2013

Sweden’s Hardcore Superstar are among the obvious leaders of the new wave of glam metal, or as it is called today, sleaze metal. The band has released eight albums, and even though it’s not so big in Russia, their fame keeps growing in Europe, where the Swedes play major venues, sharing the stare with such heavyweights as Metallica or AC/DC. In early December, Hardcore Superstar were burning the stage in Moscow’s Milk Club, and already on March 1 they will unleash a new studio record with the intriguing title “C’mon Take On Me”. The band’s drummer, Magnus “Adde” Andreasson”, spoke with us via phone to share his impressions about the upcoming album, summer plans and the way to cook a true Hardcore turkey.

The first question should obviously be about your new album…

We’ve been working on the new album since April, perhaps. Basically, we found an old studio which we took over and made it our own. We were there for like six month and we recorded the album. We had Randy Staub, who mixed it. Randy is our idol because he mixed the “Black Album” with Metallica, “Dr. Feelgood” with Motley Crue... He’s our hero. It’s been a great six months.

You did a lot of touring last year. How did you manage to combine it with the recording?

We didn’t do any demos for this album or anything. We just wanted to go into the studio and see what we'd come up with. We always knew what we wanted to do before entering the studio, but this time we came with this “let’s-do-anything” attitude and decided not to over-analyze the songs too much.

You’ve recorded your previous album almost live. I mean, playing all of it in the same room in one go. What about this one?

Yeah, we’d done that kind of live recording; but this time we decided to do what was necessary for the songs, to make them as good as possible. I think it is very important to be creative, if you’ve done something once it can get boring to do the same thing over and over again.

What about producing? Did you do it yourselves?

Yeah. We didn’t really discuss any producer this time, we thought that we might do it ourselves. We pretty much knew what we wanted; if not we can always just go out and look for one. Maybe next time we’ll have a producer but it looked kinda wrong to do on this album.

Are you happy with the result?

Yes, I’m very happy with it.

I’ve heard the only song you released as a single, “One More Minute”. It’s very catchy, it has kind of stuck in my head and I couldn’t get rid of it for several days. Is this why you’ve chosen it as the single?

Actually, we feel like this song is a new chapter for Hardcore Superstar. It feels like something we’ve never done before and we wanted to release this single just to show a new side of Hardcore Superstar.

Will there be any ballads on the album?

Yeah, we actually have two of them. The first one is “Stranger Of Mine”. When we wrote this song we were kinda influenced by Black Sabbath and Mother Love Bone, those two bands. The second ballad is “Long Time No See”. This song is about being between life and death, like in purgatory. Going from life to death – that’s what this song is about.

There is s girl with drumsticks on the new album cover. Was it your idea?

We were in the studio one day thinking what the cover of our new album would look like. Somehow we started to talk about how cool it would be if a girl would stage dive to a drum kit or something like that. A girl and a drum kit is a sexy combination, you know. (laughs) And the cool thing here is that when we saw the picture we called it “C’mon Take On Me” and then we wrote a song with the same name, after we saw the picture.

Which songs from the new album are you going to add to the live setlist?

I think we're gonna rehearse and play “One More Minute”, “Above The Law”, “Because Of You”, and “Won't Take The Blame”.

I know you combine several styles in your music.

We call it “street metal”. It’s a mix of sleaze rock and thrash metal or even something like punk combined with hard rock. That’s what street metal is and that’s what Hardcore Superstar is. Most of our energy comes from thrash metal. The lyrics can be sort of thrashy but I think what thrash is about is mostly the energy that comes from it. From sleaze we take the good melodies and a lot of other things like the image, I think.

Talking about the image - how many tattoos do you have?

Tatoos? I guess, just one, but a big one. (laughs) It covers my whole arm and lots of parts of my body. I have nothing on my legs, but Jocke (Joakim Berg, vocals) has tattoos on his legs as well.

I saw a kind of lettering around your neck. What does it say?

It says “Only God can judge me”.

Where does it come from?

I don’t know really, because it’s been a long time since I did this tattoo, like 10 years ago. I made it in Munich, Germany, after the show. Some local guy told me, “There is a woman at the other side of the town, she will tattoo you if you want to”. I kinda went right off the stage and over to her place, and she did the tattoo. But I can’t remember why or where I’d seen it first.

Why is there so much violence, mental issues, and all this stuff in your songs?

That’s because I like to write songs about it. I’m not so much into writing about dragons or fantasy or something, I’m more into writing about what’s going on in real life. I find mentally damaged people fascinating, and I'm interested in women, I'm interested in life, basically, and I get inspired to write lyrics about what we see on a tour and what we go through.

Ok, I get the women thing but why are you interested in mental issues?

That’s because you can kind of get crazy being always on a tour when there can be a lot of alcohol… and it’s a weird lifestyle. If you are not careful it can destroy you, and I like to write about that.

One of my favorite Hardcore Superstar songs is “Sadistic Girls”. Whom is it about? Did you meet any of them?

It’s about a girl that we in the band know about. She likes it rough in bed (laughs), and I just wanted to make fun lyrics about it.

Do you write songs alone or do you gather with the band to do it?

Usually we write by ourselves, and when we have a lot of ideas we get together and play them to each other. Pretty soon we all get fired up and totally creative together and that’s when we put our songs together. It’s always great to have something to start with when we get together. It’s very, very hard to write a song if you just show up, all four, and no one has anything. So usually someone has one or more ideas, and then we start to work on it together.

Do you use guitar when writing songs?

Yeah, I always write on guitar. I’ve tried to play piano but that’s not rock’n’roll, baby! (laughs)

Choosing between drums and guitar, why did you choose the drums?

Because I like the instrument. If you are doing a show the most fun you can have on stage is to play drums.

I know you studied in an L.A. institute. Did you learn anything there?

Yes, I learned some cool things. But the most important thing is that I get to meet people from all over the world and what they brought is a lot of cool bands which they listened to that I had never heard of before. It was very cool to listen to music from all over the world.

Do you think this classical musical education can be useful for a drummer?

Yes, it’s good but to be honest I don’t think it’s really-really necessary that much because if you have this fire, if you have this will to do something you don’t have to have an education. If you do what you love you will soon enough get somewhere. You just need to hang in there, you know.

Is it true that you like to cook?

Yes, I do.

What is your favorite dish?

I’m really into doing my stuffed turkey. What I do is I make little balls of butter with garlic, parsley and salt. I put them between the skin and the body and press it in there so it becomes very juicy and tasty… Because it’s very easy to make the turkey go dry. And I have it filled with bacon, bread and mushrooms and lots of herbs.

I know you went to Russia in December. How did you like it here?

It was awesome. It was our first time here and I have only good memories, honestly. We played a good venue at a cool place and the audience was totally into it, they were really wild. It was great.

Did you have a chance to see the city?

Yes, we went to Red Square, we saw St.Basil’s Cathedral and I bought a “matryoshka” doll. (laughs) I wanted a “babushka” but bought a “matryuoshka”. It’s in my living-room now. Seven pieces!

You also played at Sonisphere festival last year. How was it?

That was great. We did it in one week. We went to Finland and played with Metallica, and then we had two days off after which we played with Motley Crue. These were two of the most fun shows I’ve ever done, because there were so many people at the Metallica concert. There were 47,000 people and it was such a great venue, great festival. The atmosphere, the whole vibe was fantastic. We were so welcomed and spent a really good time in Finland.

Did you see that crazy drum solo by Tommy Lee?

(laughs) Yeah!

Don’t you want to do something as crazy as that?

Yeah, I wanna be even worse and blow my drum set to pieces like Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater did. (laughs)

Do I need to come to your next gig to see this?

Yes, maybe. (laughs)

So, what are your plans for this year?

We have lots of festivals this summer, we're going to the Wacken festival in Germany, and Download Festival in England and a festival in France named Hellfest. And all these are really, really big festivals that I'm really looking forward to do.

I’ll make sure I’ll be somewhere there. Thanks for your time, it was fun to talk to you.

You too, thanks.

Hardcore Superstar on the Internet: http://www.hardcoresuperstar.com/

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Ekaterina Akopova
January 27, 2013
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