Guitarist Tommy Svensson is not only a fine player but he also is quite polite and possesses a good sense of humor, as I found out recently via a Trans-Atlantic connection…

Can you tell me a bit about the new material you've been working on?
We're always working on new material for future releases.  We just were in the studio to record a pre-production for seventeen new tracks. (laughs)

Wow, so you guys are pretty prolific then.  Is the new stuff heading in a similar direction as Chemical Garden or something new?
It's quite difficult to say right now because we are writing so much new material.  Some songs are like the ones on the album and some songs are not, so we haven't really defined which way we'll really go on the next record yet.  But I think you'll be able to find a vast variety of tracks on the next one.  Some are going to be harder and faster than the record out now and some are going to be like a Korn-type of metal or something like that.  You will always find the Gooseflesh sound in every song, I think.

Have you lined up a producer yet for the next album?
No, not yet.  We'll probably send out 25 to 30 tracks to some different people when they are recorded and see what happens with that.

Is there anyone in particular you'd like to work with?
Yeah, I have a dream to work with someone, but I don't think that will be possible. (laughs)  I would like to work with Michael Wagener, but I don't think that will be possible, not yet anyway.

That would be excellent.
Yeah, I think so.  He's done some terrific work on some of Testament's [albums].

Did you do anything before Gooseflesh?
For myself, I was playing in a band called Rat Salad and that was in the vein of the Seattle thing, like My Sister's Machine or Alice in Chains or something.  We did a full-length album called The Golden Playground.  Actually, I was playing in that band when we started Gooseflesh - Gooseflesh was kind of a project for me back then.  But it developed and we liked to play with each so well that we dropped the old band and went with Gooseflesh and we're really pleased with that.

You guys did a number of demos.  Were they intended more to get you signed or did you do a lot of sales to the public?
Both actually.  We did four demos before our first record, and I'd say we sent out about 50% of them, to different labels and magazines and anyone we thought would be interested in metal music, and the rest of them we just sold through the Internet, ads, friends and concerts.  So it was quite an underground thing.

I understand the German label you initially signed with went under.  What is the story there?
The label was High Gain, they had Pro-Pain in Europe and bands like that.  We went down to Germany to do a remix of the album, because they weren't satisfied with the drum sounds and everything.  So we remixed the whole album, did a whole promotional thing for the album, and two weeks prior to the release of the album, we got a fax that the label was bankrupt. (laughs)  We got in contact with Stan Vincent of Digital Dimension and we were pleased with that, because with Stan, we got to release the original mix of the album, which the band was the most pleased with.  So, in the end, it was the best thing that happened.

So…you guys had to remix the whole album for High Gain and then went with the original mix after signing to Digital Dimension?
Yeah, when Stan heard both versions of the album, he was definitely thinking that the original version, which the band liked best, was the best of the two.  I don't know why Mr. X from High Gain (laughs) didn't like it, but that's history now.

How did you hook up with the label in Japan, Dolphin?
We recorded the stuff on this album ourselves, you know.  We put in our own money for the recording, booked the studio, hired the producer and everything, so we were actually sitting on all the rights to the album.  So we sent out CD-Rs to different labels with demos and we got several labels that were interested in the band.  Dolphin recognized that we had used the producer Roberto Laghi and they had a lot of his work before, so we sent them a CD-R and they really liked it.  The album was out in Japan on the 17th of March, actually, and that's the same mix as is released now in the U.S. and Europe.

We were lucky that we had the rights to everything because when the label went bankrupt, we didn't have to get rid of the recordings or anything.  We just held onto it and looked for another label.

That's really good, as I've heard a lot of horror stories of bands trying to get back the rights to unreleased material from bankrupt labels…
Yeah, you can't really do that because of the law situation and everything, it is so expensive that you have to drop it anyway.

I noticed a slightly different track order on the Euro, American & Japanese releases - why is that?
(laughs)  That's quite funny, actually.  The version that's out in Europe starts off with "Burning Soul" and that was the original track listing that we as a band did for ourselves.  Stan at Digital Dimension liked the "Wraith" song so much that he wanted it to be first on the album for the U.S.  For us, it didn't really matter if it was the first song or the fourth song or whatever, because metal fans listen to the whole record anyway, so if he wants to put this song first, okay.  (laughs) 

I gotta ask about the name - what made you decide on Gooseflesh?
The name is taken from a Salvador Dali painting called Inaugural Gooseflesh.  It was actually just me and my friends when we started the band, we didn't have a name for it, as I said before it was just a project.  We were having a couple of beers and laughing and looking at this book by Salvador, because everyone was a fan of his artwork.  We just sat down and looked at the paintings and saw different things in them and saw this name, Gooseflesh, and we thought, yeah, that sounds like a cool name!  Why don't we call the band Gooseflesh? 

Looking at your web page, it seems the band's tastes in music cut across all types of metal, from classic Sabbath to Testament to Yes to Korn.  When you sit down to write music, are you aware of the scene at large or does it not even exist, do you just write what you feel?
Yeah, it's definitely that way.  As you mention, everyone in the band has their own favorites and their own background.  All four of us have played in different bands with different styles.  This was one of the first things we said when we started writing music and one thing that everyone is very keen to hang onto, and that is we don't want to say, "Let's play death metal" or "Let's play thrash metal."  If I write a riff or a lyric or anything and, if we like it, we'll play it.  Everybody brings their ideas to the rehearsal studio and we never say to anyone, "No, that's crappy because it sounds like that."  We just try it out and make it a Gooseflesh song.  It's very exciting to do that, because you never know what the next song will be like and I think in some way that will also be quite interesting for the listeners.

That's cool because it seems like so many bands these days get so focused on one particular sound or style that they lose focus on the melody and the song structure.
I think that has a lot to do with the labels, as well, because many labels say, "You have to do this. That's obviously crap, you have to do this song," or "Your fans will be disappointed if you don't write in this particular way."  So I think they have to do with it as well, and that's a pity.

Are you happy with Digital Dimensions so far?
Yeah.  For now anyway. (laughs)  As you know, you never know what will happen in the future, but for now it's great because they have given us the chance to release the album in North America, which we haven't been able to do before.  That's very interesting for us and we're very happy with that.  We know from our demos and the underground time that there are a lot of people in the U.S. and Canada that like this kind of music. 

Can you tell me a bit about how Welcome To The Suffer Age sounds compared to C.G.?
Welcome to the Suffer Age was a demo from the start.  We recorded it ourselves, Kristian and I produced it, in a small studio in my home town.  We had only 16 channels to record with.  So we just sent it out to labels and a Spanish label called Goldtrack picked up on it from a track that was to appear on a compilation album for Grinder magazine.  They liked it so much that they offered to do two full-length albums with them.  We were uncertain that they would have the distribution to get the record out to the public, so we said, let's start with this EP first and see what happens.  They put out the EP and they were great to us.  They were very honest and always supported us.  They still support us even after changing to a new label, writing us to see how things are going and keeping us up-to-date with what is happening with the EP.  It's a great label.

Do you currently have any tour plans?
We're doing a minor tour, just doing some gigs in Scandinavia.  We're talking to some booking agencies in North America and hopefully we'll be able to come over and do the U.S. and Canada.  We know there are a lot of fans and friends of metal music there.  We haven't set any plans yet, but we really, really, REALLY hope to come over and play there! (laughs)  But you know, it's expensive to come over from Europe to play the U.S.

What country do you get the most letters and general fan feedback from?
Actually, it's Canada and the U.S.  Italy is also a great country for us, and in South America, Chile.  But the U.S. and Canada have always been very good to us, all through the fanzines back in the demo days, we always got a great response.

What inspired you to first start playing guitar?
KISS.  KISS and Ace Frehley, that's the whole story I think. (laughs)  I had an older brother who was a KISS fan back in the 70s.  I'd go into his room and see all the posters, listen to all the records and tapes, and I was just like, "I want to play like that, I want to do that."  From when I was a really small kid, I wanted a guitar from my parents all the time.  "What do you want?"  "I want a guitar."  "It's too expensive."  "I still want a guitar!" (laughs)

It's amazing, I've been doing interviews for over ten years now and whenever I ask that question, the name KISS almost always comes up.  They've been influencing people like that for decades now!
They have and they're still doing it.  I watched a KISS concert about 2 years ago and you can see all the small kids, about 6 or 7 years old, with face paint and the clothes.  They still have a great impact on kids, so I'm sure we'll see a lot more metal bands in the future. (laughs)

Did you take any guitar lessons?
Yeah, I went to a musical high school, to play classical guitar.  So, I'm educated in classical guitar in the sense of playing it, but I've never used it on my playing in a metal band.  Sometimes it's cool to sit there and play this old Johan Sebastian Bach thing. (laughs)  If you want to play guitar for yourself, no one listening, just playing guitar in your room, it's great to play classical music.  But if you want to get up there and play in front of people, you want to have that energy as well. 

I've read a number of people who complain about the crowds in Sweden being too reserved and disinterested.  Has that been your experience?
I think a lot of times, Swedish bands are a little bit reserved themselves.  They have such great expectations of the crowd, "We're standing here on stage, why aren't you banging your head?"  And they are always complaining that not enough people go to the shows, but when you ask them, "Where were you last time a band played?"  If you enjoy yourself on stage, then the crowd will enjoy it.