Hammerfall - Interview - 2007

Between The Hammer And The Anvil

Enough about the cold already. It’s currently eight below zero at the Bohus Fortress, a seven hundred year old castle 20 km north of Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast; the setting for today’s photo shoot. The snow is over a foot deep at its shallowest, and there is only a little consolatory heat in the low-lying sun as it cuts through the cloudless sky. This week Hammerfall’s native land reported its coldest temperatures since records began: a staggering minus 56 degrees Celsius. The nearby river is frozen solid and car tyre marks run its length.

The five members of Hammerfall have driven for up to three hours to this castle to stand for photos in the snow. The band admit as they change into their signature stage costumes that the outfits weren’t designed for the cold. Nor were they designed to be changed into with ease, and the band struggle with zips, buckles and laces with fingers fast going numb.

Through all of this founder Oscar Dronjak (guitar) and his fellow bandmates Joacim Cans (vocals), Stefan Elmgren (guitar), Magnus Rosén (bass) and Anders Johansson (drums) remain surprisingly chipper. 

“I don’t know who’s worried about global warming?” asks the short and sturdy guitarist, Elmgren with a grin. “It’s just local warming for people who live in the desert. For us this is the coldest weather we’ve had for fifteen years.” 

The band continue to dress themselves like knights before the Summer Solstace after-show party.

“If I wasn’t in Hammerfall,” ponders Elmgren as he offers his naked tail end to our photographer’s lense as he changes into his leather jeans, “I’d be a fluffer.”

Kids wrapped up in layers of North Face and Berghaus chatter excitedly as they spot the potty-mouthed local heroes disrobing in the car park. 

“I’d be a fluffer in animal porn,” says Johansson over his shoulder as he urinates against someone’s car. “I’d take care of the animals.”

 “I think,” smiles Cans , “I would actually fluff the fluffer.”

In Britain we complain about the rain, the snow, the cold, the heat, the sun. Whatever the weather, we’ll complain. Exhaling quivering vaporous breaths, the band stand for photos in small leather vests, fishnet shirts and leather waistcoats without a grumble. Even Dronjak, whose two metre frame carries as much meat as a bakelite telephone, is only a little disgruntled as his fingers start to turn from white to a dull blue.

During one of too few brief breaks, Cans  – who looks like a warm-hearted Axl Rose with good hair – talks about the appropriateness of today’s shoot. 

“Well you got the castle right,” he says with his kind eyes squinting in the sunlight. “That element of heavy metal is something people have connected strongly with Hammerfall. But just standing in front of a castle with a big sword is quite cheesy.”

As we move down the hill to shoot in some frozen reeds, the band all wisely don fleeces, hats, coats and gloves as they shiver like underdressed school boys in an icy playground. As we all hobble on numb toes, Cans  explains that there is a fine line between a cool shoot and belittling heavy metal cliché.  

“We only used swords once. I’m not a big fan of that. It looks kind of cheesy.” Cans reads our look that says, ‘swords are cheesy, but a big hammer made out of plywood, rope and leather-bound plastic isn’t?’

“I know we’re holding a big hammer, and you’d think ‘What’s the difference?’, but it depends on the situation. Today as a cool environment and the pictures look great, so what the hell. Give me a sword and I’ll hold it no problem. We don’t take it too seriously. It’s fun.”

So Hammerfall don’t take themselves seriously? 

“We’re dead serious when it comes to the music that we play,” he says. “We only play the music that we want to play. We’re very serious when it comes to our stage show. We’re serious about making it fun.” 

There’s that ‘fun’ word again.

“People see a picture of us and think we’re just a bunch of heavy metal posers. But the fundamental thing is that while you should always be serious about what you do, you must remember to have fun along the way.”

“Joacim was attacked because we play the kind of music we do.” Dronjak looks like a young heavy metal Vincent Price as he explains the kind of shit-slinging Hammerfall have suffered for their unconditional love of heavy metal. 

“He was just having a drink with his girlfriend, when these guys started hassling him. They were even spitting on him, and when they started harassing his girlfriend, he knew he had to do something.”

Sitting in the warmth of his new Gothenburg flat in clothing more suited to the 21st century, and certainly more suited to the cold, Dronjak thaws his hands on a mug of tea.

“When Joacim stepped in this guy shoved a beer glass in his face. There was blood everywhere. The glass was millimetres from his eye, so in some ways he was very lucky.” Dronjak pitches his long body forward and knocks on his wooden coffee table. 

Hammerfall are all about the fight. The fight to prove heavy metal’s worth, and to prove that if you stick to your guns you will in the end be victorious. The band started in 1993, a bad year for heavy metal. Like an injured bird the genre limped on in the shadow of such massive alternative and grunge behemoths as Nirvana’s 'In Utero', Smashing Pumpkins’ 'Siamese Dream' and Pearl Jam’s 'Vs'. 

“In 1991 the good heavy metal albums just stopped coming,” Dronjak states. “Grunge was the driving force behind us forming. We were a reaction to all that miserable music with boring stage shows. We were the backlash.”

“We started the band to play the music we wanted to hear, and put on the shows we would want to see.”

It seemed that Hammerfall weren’t alone, and by the time the band released their debut album, ‘Glory To The Brave’ in 1997 on their long term label home Nuclear Blast, the band had a fast-growing following of fellow disenfranchised metal heads. The band enjoyed immediate success, with healthy record sales and an enviable number of people witnessing the bands awe-inspiring live show (including a drawbridge from where the band would all emerge at the beginning of the set).

Around 2000 – the time of the band’s third album, ‘Renegade’ - the band started to receive mainstream media attention, finding their music in the charts alongside Madonna and Eminem. It was a break for both Hammerfall and heavy metal in general.

But it was too good to be true.

“In the beginning it was ‘cool’ to like us,” says Dronjak, “because nobody else was playing heavy metal in the mid nineties. But then people turned on us - especially in Sweden. Swedes are very jealous. We resent other people’s success. People think that success means you’ve sold out, and that you’ll an asshole to everybody. Hammerfall never had that attitude.”

“Back then even the radio stations and TV were interviewing us with a smirk on their faces,” Dronjak admits frankly. “As if they were saying, ‘Ok you’re selling records now, but you guys can’t be serious.’”

Unfortunately, while the band’s domestic profile was raised to a level they never thought they would ever reach, all the media coverage failed to help the band shift any more units.

“Lot’s of people only liked us when it was ‘cool’ to like us. When we started getting popular those people went off us.”

But Hammerfall hadn’t formed to get rich, be famous or receive chat show invitations. They existed to play metal: not nu metal, but true metal.

“We still wore leather in the ‘90s,” he says, “This is how I want people to see me. If they laugh, fine. If they think it looks cool, then great. But this is the way I want to be seen. I know it might not be ‘hip hop cool’, or trendy, or macho, but I think what we do is cool. Fun is cool.”

Early in 2006, the band released a new album ‘Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken’; a title as much a statement of intent as a ‘fuck you’ to all the nay-sayers who doubted the band in the past. Turning your back on Hammerfall is like turning your back on the unconscious presumed-dead baddie at the end of a bad American slasher movie.

“Hammerfall is my life,” says Dronjak, his tractor-beam blue eyes shoot honesty like a harpoon. “Anything musical that I do is Hammerfall. I never do anything else. If it’s not to do with music, it’s not to do with Hammerfall.”

“The band gives back everything I’ve put into it, and so much more,” the lengthy Swede concedes. “When we started in 1993, none of us thought we would be sitting here after ten years doing an interview with Metal Hammer.”

“Hammerfall is my life,” he says again with another warm and penetrating look.

Dronjak and Cans  concur that there is no tenuous link between the way the band approach their music and the way their fans approach the band.  

“I’ve been playing metal since the ‘80s,” he says. “Even when it disappeared in the 90’s I still played metal in the original way. People laughed behind my back, but I didn’t care. I never cared. This is the music I love and the music I understand.” 

It’s no wonder that Hammerfall fans derive a sense of pride and dignity from their idols.

“I think our fans respect that we’ve stuck to our guns,” he says. “They know that it doesn’t matter what the critics say, or if people talk shit about the band: we don’t care, we’ll still do our thing. We’ve done what we believe in against the odds, and against popular opinion.”

“There are so many trend bands that change their style. But why follow a trend when you can create your own? That’s what we did. We are a constant. And our fans know that we will always be here for them.” 

And so will their music: brimming with tales of triumph in the face of adversity, of the might of self-belief and of pursuing your dreams no matter what. Like the snow and ice in Sweden’s frozen north that survives the seasons, Hammerfall have remained through a decade of fashion’s fickle wind.

“Our music encourages the self-confidence to be what you want to be and do what you want to do. This is a metal way of thinking. Don’t care what anybody else thinks. It’s your life so live it the way you want, because at the end of the day you’re the only person who will feel unhappiness or joy from what you do. If you believe in something, fight for it. In the end it will pay off, maybe not with huge success, but you will have been true to yourself.”

This article originally appeared in Metal Hammer magazine