[Interview conducted October 2006]

In an age of blandness and banal brutality, Sweden's HammerFall continues their crusade of classic heavy metal played with power, feeling and pure class.  Inspired by the likes of Accept, Judas Priest and Helloween (not to mention the legions of lesser-known acts that rocked the 80s), the mission has remained true for a decade now and the brand new Threshold marks one of the band's most triumphant recordings to date.  Vocalist Joacim Cans and guitarist Oscar Dronjak are the songwriting foundation of HammerFall, as well as two of the nicest guys you could hope to talk to.

How do you feel about Threshold now that it is done and out?
Oscar: Obviously, we're happy with it, but that's kind of a given.  I think it turned out more powerful than I would have hoped for.  When we recorded it, we were behind a lot in time, so we kept catching up and never had to time to really sit down and listen to what we had recorded.  The first time we actually listened to the whole album, all the songs, was the very last day of the recording.  But everybody felt good and was relieved that it sounded good.  From that experience and now a few months later, the initial reaction is still the same: I think it's a very strong album, I'm very proud of it.

What led to you guys being behind, time-wise - just a lot of little things?
Oscar: Yeah, there were a lot of things - a lot of small things make up a big thing in the end.  It started out we had to cut a couple of days to record a video and we decided to just lose them and not put them on at the end.  We also had some technical difficulties with air conditioning, stuff breaking down because it was too hot for the computers and they started to go crazy as well.  Eventually, we had a day and a half when everything was just completely down because of the heat.  So we constantly kept running but I think that worked to our favor in the end.

Did you do anything differently in the studio?
Oscar: Since we worked with the same producer in the same studio, we tried to keep the same templates basically of how to do things.  I know what we did a little bit differently this time is we had Joacim sing every day and a lot of hours every day, he sang for like 6 or 7 hours every day, and he never did that before.  I think that is one of the reasons that his voice sounds the way it does because he really pushed it on this album and the result is better for it.

Joacim:  When we were done with the Chapter V recordings, I left with a really good feeling that I wanted to return as soon as possible because I had so much fun recording that album.  So I think the basic setup was like a carbon copy of Chapter V: same studio, same producer, same catering lady, same room.  I wanted to have the bedroom I had on the Chapter V album because I wanted to capture the spirit.  I'm really weird when it comes to things like that.  We did a signing session in Sweden for a week and I had my place in the bus, my seat, and I sat there every day.  I don't know why it ends up like that, but everyone went to their seats and I mean, it's a small bus, who cares?  But, hey, that's my seat!  (laughs)  The recording process on this album was really different from the previous one because we were behind schedule from day one.  Usually when we are done with a production, we are sitting there with five days left, not knowing what to do.  So I thought it would be the same now, that every Saturday we could go out and have dinner, go out and hang in the bars and have a few beers and part and so on, but we did not have time.  We had so much pressure and so much work ahead of us all the time and I don't really know what we did wrong.  We had problems with the air conditioning system, creating like a heat wave in the studio and eventually the computer crashed because of the heat, so that cost us like two days.  The very last night, I remember sitting in the studio and he said, 'Now we have to listen to the songs,' because no one knew if we were done or not.  And, thank god, we were done and I could leave the next day because I had my daughter visiting the last couple of days in the studio.  There was a lot of frustration going on but I think that we managed to convert the frustration into something good and maybe that is kind of the energy and the heavier parts on the album.  Because also, when we were done with all the vocals, we went back to the first two songs just to compare and it was such a difference.  The character of my voice was really different and we said, well, we cannot have it like this, so we had to re-do the first two songs.

Which songs were those?
Joacim:  "Carved in Stone" and "Titan."

Cool, "Titan" is one of my favorites on the album.
Joacim:  Well thank you; it's one of my favorites, too.  We managed to actually improve the vocals a lot, compared to the first recording that we did.  So, all in all, it was a lot of hard work, a lot of frustration, but we managed to handle it in a good way.

Will you work with Charlie again in the future?
Oscar:  I absolutely hope so.  He is the perfect producer for us at this point, really accentuates our strengths and helps us hide our weaknesses.

Threshold is your first #1 album in Sweden since Renegade - what do you attribute that to?
Oscar:  A little bit has to be timing, but also because of the…  Normally when we do an album, we're not in the press, we don't do anything else except for writing the songs and recording the album, so nobody really hears the name HammerFall.  But this time, as things happened, we've done two videos together with sports teams in Sweden - we did a curling video and an athletics video.  Those two things are of course cross-promotion into a territory where we might not have that many fans to begin with, in sports, but also because sports is such a big thing it becomes more of a household thing for people.  So I think that helped a lot to raise the awareness of the band.

How did the video for "Hearts on Fire" with the Women's Olympic Curling team come about?
Oscar:  It started with the girls wanting to roughen up the image of curling a little bit, to make it more rock 'n' roll I guess.  They thought it was too weak of an image that they had and they just approached our booking agency to see if there was any way that we could help them change that image for the Olympics that were coming up.  It just happened that they wanted to work with us and that's what we did.  We had a song that we already did a few years ago as a video and single, so we just had fun, goofed around a little bit.  It was their video anyway.  It came at a really good time for us because we were bored at home, nothing else was really happening, so that was fun.

Moving on to the new songs, why did you choose "Natural High" as the first single?
Oscar:  Apart from "The Fire Burns Forever," that was the natural choice for a single in the way the song is structured and the way everything comes together, so to speak. But it is also very representative of the album and of HammerFall in 2006: it's catchy, a lot of melodies, but also kind of hard under the surface.

What is the story behind "Shadow Empire?"
Joacim:  It's a dark, futuristic vision about this person, it is me in the sense that I'm singing, but, 'I open up my eyes--'  I forgot the rest of the line but one of the lines I do like. (laughs)  It is kind of more like a humoristic line, when he's looking in the mirror and if the mirror tells the truth, then who the hell am I?  He's kind of half-man, half-robot, like a Robocop kind of thing.  He needs to avenge the people who put him in the position where he's at; he's not comfortable being half-robot, so he's kind of an avenging machine, lurking the streets.

Was "Reign of the Hammer" always meant to be instrumental?
Oscar:  Yes.  There is an interesting story behind that song that differs from the rest of the album, in that it is ten years old.  It was written by Stefan, the other guitar player, in '96.  What happened was he just found a cassette demo of the song, he had forgotten all about it.  He found it about two weeks before we went into the studio, played it for me because he was really happy with it.  I thought we needed another song and this was a really good one so why not do it.  So we just recorded it and it turned out really well, I must say.

Finally, "Titan" has a really classic Accept feel to it.
Oscar:  This song came together really easily and then I hit a stumbling block midway through and couldn't get past that.  Once I did get past it, everything just went [really fast] and it was finished.  It took a couple of months from when I started it to when I finished it, but most of that time was just waiting for the right inspiration.

You guys haven't done any covers lately.
Joacim:  I think we need to be careful of what songs we cover nowadays because journalists focus too much on them.  I think we have enough songs on every album now that we don't really need to add a cover.  I'm not saying we aren't going to do [any more], but we've always tried to find the more obscure bands that meant a lot to us that people have no clue they even existed.  Like Stormwitch for instance.  Right after we did the Stormwitch cover, "Ravenlord," in '97, a label put out a best of Stormwitch album and they sold pretty well on that one.  I mean, the first cover we did was Warlord and there are still people out there believing this is a HammerFall song.  And I said, 'No no no no, it's Warlord.'  'Who??'  "WAR-LORD!'  At least we're not pretending that we wrote the songs, we try to explain to the fans, 'Hey, if you like this song, go check out the original.'  Sometimes it is really hard for the new generation of metal fans to go back to the early 80s and find something that they like because the productions are different.

I'd love to hear you guys take on a classic Riot song...
Joacim:  Uhh... you never know.  From the Guy Speranza era or…?

Yeah, that was my favorite, but any of their stuff, I like the later stuff, too.
Joacim:  Every era of Riot is really good, I would say.  It's different.  When they put out Thundersteel, that was like, 'Wow!  What happened here?'  But then they've had their ups and downs from Nightbreaker on, I would say.  I haven't heard the last one though; it just came out a couple weeks ago in Europe I think.

What are your feelings about some of the past albums, starting with Glory to the Brave?
Oscar:  It's very naïve, in a good way, enthusiastic debut album from five band members who were just so happy and so thrilled to record a heavy metal album.  We did not have a budget of anything basically, so the production suffers a little bit from it, but the intensity and energy of the playing makes up for it.  I'm very happy with how everything turned out, but everything we've done since then I think has been a step up.

How about Legacy of Kings?
Joacim:  That was the most rushed album that we have done so far.  Releasing the first album, we thought this was kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity: record an album and that's it.  But since everything happened so fast in Europe after that release - we got to tour with Gamma Ray first of all.  Well, second of all actually because we did Tank and Raven first.  But everything just happened and it was like, wow, what have we done?  We charted top 40 in Germany, we did the touring, we did our first headlining tour, and then the label said, 'You need a new album out as soon as possible.'  Legacy of Kings has some really, really good songs, like "Heeding the Call" for instance is one of my favorite songs to play live, but it seems like Legacy of Kings is the big brother to Glory to the Brave.  It's Glory to the Brave with a big production.  With money actually; we didn't have any money on the first album.  Personally, I was not so satisfied with my vocal effort on that one.  I was in bed for four or five weeks before it was time for the vocals because I got like… what do you call that... not bronchitis, but something else… It was not in my testicles either; it was in the testicle look-a-likes you have in your throat, what do you call them?

Tonsils...?
Joacim:  Yes!  Tonsillitis or something they call it.  I was living alone back then, I didn't have anyone to talk to and your vocal cords get kind of lazy.  Then you go into the studio and try to perform, you are under a lot of pressure and you've got three days to do all the songs.  All in all, it's a good album, but I felt when we were done with that album that I knew I could do it better.  And people say, 'Well, why didn't you do it better then?'  Well, I'm sorry, I just couldn't.

Renegade…
Oscar:  The first three albums, Renegade included, for me…  I didn't really know how to write an album back then.  It was more like writing ten or eleven songs and we had an album.  From Crimson Thunder on, we wrote a full album from start to finish.  I'm more aware of what needs to go on the album and the diversity I'm looking for.  On Renegade, and this goes for Legacy of Kings and Glory to the Brave as well, the fast songs are kind of similar to each other, which makes these albums not as complete as the ones that come afterward.  Having said that though, it's really a minor complaint and I really like them and don't think we could have done anything better at that point in time.  I would never do anything differently.

Moving on, how about Crimson Thunder?
Joacim:  Crimson Thunder was like the new era of HammerFall because that was the first one where Jesper Stromblad of In Flames wasn't part of the writing team.  Up until Renegade, it was me, Oscar and Jesper writing more or less all of the material.  But we felt that he had too much to do with In Flames and we really wanted to prove that we could write songs without him.  Maybe not all of them, but the majority of journalists thought that he was writing songs for HammerFall - no, he was writing songs with us, not for us.  Since he was in a successful band, they thought that without him, HammerFall would be nothing.  I think with Crimson Thunder, we showed a more mid-tempo side of HammerFall and I think the mid-tempo songs are more what HammerFall is all about.  Still, HammerFall to me is the variation we show on Threshold now, that you have a lot of different types of songs - you have the faster songs, the mid-tempo and the slower - and they all represent the band.  Crimson Thunder is probably the slowest album that we have done.  Of course, "Hero's Return" is pretty fast, but…  I don't know what to say now. (laughs)  It's a good album.

It's an album that didn't really strike me right away but has really grown on me over time.
Joacim:  Yeah.  It has "Hearts on Fire" and that is probably the biggest hit we will ever [have].  Every show, everywhere we play, people start screaming "Hearts On Fire" already after the first song and as soon as you start playing it, people go crazy.  That was a big hit at least.  Not like a big Billboard hit, but a big HammerFall hit.

One Crimson Night - are you happy with how that came together?
Oscar:  Yeah.  It was from a legacy perspective, this was what it was, one night in the history of HammerFall, one night on the tour, capturing everything, hopefully the essence of a show.  The DVD should be better, but I think it was a little bit too dark.  We had people filming who did not know exactly what we were going to do on-stage, so they missed a couple of things.  Not necessarily any big things, but if you know every detail of what was going on on-stage, you still miss it, as we do from a band point of view.  I think a double-live album is every band's dream.  I grew up in the 80s with Priest…Live! And Live After Death, all those albums, so I'm really happy with how everything turned out and that we got to do it.

Finally, how about Chapter V?
Joacim:  On Chapter V, I was really proud of the production on that album and out of that development came Threshold.  It was almost three years between Crimson Thunder and Chapter V and I think that was like a small comeback album, because Oscar had a motorcycle accident.  We didn't really know if he'd be able to play again because he broke his arm in a very bad place.  It took him a long time to work up his technique again.  I think with Chapter V we were able to add some new elements, like "Knights of the 21^st Century" was twelve minutes long, something that no one thought we would do probably.  Vocally, when I was working in the songwriting process with the vocal melodies, a song like "Fury of the Wild" sounded different in the first version.  I listened to it and thought, well, it's good, but it's nothing special.  It felt like I was playing it too safe.  Then I decided to just throw all the files into the trash bin and start all over again.  Then I came up with what ended up on the album and I think that song represents the new, fresh HammerFall you have on the Chapter V album.

Do you have any long-term goals or plans for HammerFall?
Oscar:  Musically, we don't have any plans or goals at all.  Of course, we have to plan ahead, with band members having families and stuff, to make sure we have a 6-month advance on most things.  We try to keep ahead a little bit, but we don't' have any long-term goals as to where we want to be.  We're always trying to improve our status or improve the awareness of people as far as HammerFall goes, but you can't really force anyone to do that either, so you just try to have fun and that's the most important thing.  If you're not having fun, there is something wrong.

Was it the plan to have Hector as a running theme on all the album covers from the beginning or just a happy accident?
Oscar:  Yes.  We wanted to have our Eddie, basically.  We wanted to have a guy who was well thought out and who could follow us from album to album for as long as we wanted it to go on, like a mascot kind of thing.

How was the US tour with Edguy last year?
Oscar:  It was a lot of fun.  I think we were on the road for three or three and a half weeks and we went to Canada for the first time, too, that was really cool.  With Edguy, it's always fun to tour with those guys, they're really cool guys and we've known each other for years and years.  So it was a fun tour and a good success, in terms of audiences as well.  It was our first headlining tour and we definitely relished the opportunity to play for longer than 30 or 45 minutes, which is the longest times we played on the tours before that.  It was a chance to go over to the US and show people, look, this is what HammerFall is more or less.

What do you guys do to pass time on tour?  Do you work on music at all?
Oscar:  Not at all actually.  I can't really write on the road, I need to be in a certain mood when I write songs.  I like to be at home, be relaxed and comfortable.  I write songs because I'm happy not because I'm stressed out or have to worry about the next thing we have to do or the next show or whatever.  The pressure on the road is on stage because that's when you have to perform.  The rest of the time, I see as a vacation kind of.  We work really hard for 6 or 8 months on the songwriting before we record the album and then we have another two or two and a half months of studio time, so it's a lot of work for us to do an album and going on tour is like a pressure-free zone.  At least a creatively pressure-free zone.

Joacim:  On the last tour, I tried to study actually, Business Economy.  It took me two and a half weeks to get into this tour mode, the tour low that you hit and when you hit it, you can't get out of it.  As soon as you get into it, you do nothing.  You sleep, you watch movies, you try to find electronic stores somewhere to buy some neat, cool things, and then you do your show.  And then you are alert again, after the show, that is also a natural high, getting offstage.  Then you party a little bit and go to bed and sleep way too long, then you eat too much.  Touring is the most boring thing you can do; at the same time, it's the best thing you can do, as soon as you hit the stage.  But you need to work your brain, do something.

Any chance of returning to the US for this tour?
Oscar:  I sure hope so, I really hope so.  We will have to wait and see, but that is something that we are working on and trying to accomplish.  I can't give you any details yet, we don't even have a schedule, a tentative plan, but it will happen I'm pretty sure.  The European tour is all set for January and February, so if we come back here, it will be in April or March at the earliest.

Can you talk about the symbolism of the sun and moon that appear on the images of Hector and elsewhere?
Joacim:  It's always been there.  I don't know why it came there in the first place.  The artist who did the artwork for Glory to the Brave, we just told him we wanted to have a character symbolizing HammerFall.  We wanted to have our own Eddie, like Maiden.  Someone who could follow us on every release, in different locations doing different things.  He did this and put the sun and the moon there.  I don't know why he did that but we adapted that and made it into something really, really cool.  He gets a lot of power from the sun and the moon.  There is one song on the Renegade album about how he became the man that he is.  He was left alone on the battlefield and then he got power from the sun and the moon.  On the Crimson Thunder album, his opponent, you can see in his hands something is glowing and there is something missing on the breastplate of Hector.  He took some power from him; he took away the sun I think.  The sun and the moon also represent to me heaven and hell, good and evil, black and white - total opposites.  Hector is good to the good people and really bad to the bad people. (laughs)  I mean, nothing is black, nothing is white, everything is in between.  There's also a line in "Natural High" - 'I'm south of heaven, north of hell,' and that just represents where we are on Earth.  Even though I'm not a Christian guy or a religious guy, I just believe in myself and everything that I see.  Everything I can touch, I believe in.  If I can't really touch anything…  I don't believe in playmates. (laughs)

Yeah I've noticed you don't really write about religion or even politics.
Joacim:  I think you get enough of that by watching television, the newspapers.  As soon as you take a stand for something, you will offend some people and they don't understand sometimes.  You try and write simple lyrics for everyone to understand because you have to keep in mind that the majority of the HammerFall fans are non-English speaking persons.  Even though it is really simple and you cannot interpret it wrong, they do so.  We have a song on the first album, "Steel Meets Steel," a song about a Templar at a Crusade in Jerusalem.  And this is written from a Templar's point of view, how he sees things, but they thought that we were against Jews.  And I thought, 'Wow, the Templars didn't fight the Jews, did they?  I thought they fought the Arabs or the infidels.'  And then the same person claimed that "The Dragon Lies Bleeding" there is one line, 'The battlefield is shining red,' and he said, 'Is that the blood of the Jews you are referring to?'  What?  What are you on??  Are you stupid or what? (laughs)  I don't want to be political or religious, I don't think there is room for that in heavy metal music.

What are your feelings about the reunions that have taken place in recent years (Priest, Maiden, Sabbath)?
Joacim:  Some of them make sense.  Both Priest and Maiden obviously make a lot of sense: they are pulling in a lot of people, they are putting out a lot of albums that the fans appreciate.  Too many bands get back together first recording a new album and then they want to tour this album and they want to play the majority of the songs from the new album.  And to be honest with you, nobody cares about the new songs; they want to hear the old stuff, period.  I think what Accept did a couple years ago in Europe, they got back together, they did a couple of festivals, and that was it, no new album.  I think that is what you have to do.  You have to realize that a lot of these bands are older now, they get back together and want to record an album, but they want to sound modern, they try to write songs the way the young guys are writing them today.  But they have different influences.  These guys grew up in the 70s and they made something out of their influences that became heavy metal, the heart of heavy metal, like Judas Priest.  Halford quit to do his own thing and then when he decided to quit dong the more aggressive stuff, the rest of Priest were like, 'Hey, now we want to do this aggressive stuff,' and it didn't really work.  As long as you have something to provide to the fans then, okay, do an album, but it is not necessarily the best thing to do.

Magnus did some benefit shows in South America a couple years back - has the rest of the band been involved with anything along those lines?
Joacim:  Mmm, yeah, I heard something about that. (laughs)  It's a personal thing.  He's doing so many things outside of HammerFall… I just read today he was doing something else and was like, 'Okay.'  It feels like he has 48 hours where I have 24, I don't know how he keeps up with everything.  But I am so involved in HammerFall and everything concerning HammerFall, I don't have time to do anything else.

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