HARDBOILED

The energy and dedication that burst out of every song at Storm, the recent EP by Sweden-owned Elapse, makes you think why this band is so criminally underrated. It’s a shame cause they got enough skills and ideas to make their hardcore both sharp and meaningful. The strong DIY ethic within the band makes them release all their stuff all by themselves and usually straight for free download.. That was the case with their previous album, The Mockracy, and that is also true for Storm. I got nothing but respect for the bands that handle their business and I would be glad if any of the kids reading this who have not heard Elapse, would go and check this band.!

The energy and dedication that burst out of every song at Storm, the recent EP by Sweden-owned Elapse, makes you think why this band is so criminally underrated. It’s a shame cause they got enough skills and ideas to make their hardcore both sharp and meaningful. The strong DIY ethic within the band makes them release all their stuff all by themselves and usually straight for free download.. That was the case with their previous album, The Mockracy, and that is also true for Storm. I got nothing but respect for the bands that handle their business and I would be glad if any of the kids reading this who have not heard Elapse, would go and check this band.

Can you give some background on Elapse for those out there who are not familiar with the band? How and when it all started?
The members of Elapse are Love Thübeck on vocals, David Shanks on drums, Simon Flack and Robin Eriksson on guitars, and me, David Tapojärvi, on bass guitar. This band started around 2005 before I played with them. They played all sorts of metal with a lot of different influences, and in 2008 they found their way into hardcore and recorded a 3-track demo under the name of "40+ Bareback Hunterz". I joined them in late 2009 and in 2010 we became "Elapse". We recorded a demo/EP called "General Errors" and in 2011 we released "The Mockracy".

You have just put out a new EP called “Storm”. Can you tell us about that?
It's an EP containing five songs. It was recorded here in our home town Örebro a few months ago and we're just really happy that it's out!

My first thought was that the title might allude to Judge, but is there any other meaning to ‘Storm’?
The title was a bit longer at first. I had a title flying around in my head which was "Storm on a path", then Simon suggested to cut it down to just "Storm". It points to the feeling that nothing ever goes right. That your path, so to speak, is just doomed to fail. I guess it's a bit like the classic "rain cloud over head"-thing.

Is there any chance that ‘Storm’ will be released on any physical format?
"Storm" was actually just released physically. We made a CD version out of it ourselves and it turned out great. On our previous EP "The Mockracy" we had great artwork and all that, but we just slipped hand written CD-R's in to a plastic pocket, which worked okay, but this time we thought if would be fun to make something more "real" out of it. Now it looks like a proper CD release. We've also been talking about putting "Storm" on vinyl, but we're not sure what will happen there. It's also available for free download at a bunch of places, and will soon be on Spotify too.

Lyrically, these songs carry a rather negative tone. What is the main driving force behind your lyrics? What motivates you to write the way you do?
The songs on "Storm" are not necessarily based on concept, but I wrote a lot about things that I guess are in the same frame. It's about finding out what's good for you and what isn't. What you need in life and what you don't. About watching yourself from a different perspective. I would say "Worn Out" is a great example of perspective, where you find yourself looking back at stuff that has been tearing you down, but you've come out stronger and wiser than before. I just felt that I had to get that off my chest.
The motivation behind writing lyrics varies a lot. It can be anything from the society to a line in a movie, even though the song might not end up being about the thing that pushed my buttons in the first place.

The world seems to be in a shitty state these days. How do you feel about things like the financial crisis, unemployment, general instability in many people lives?
Obviously it's not a good thing at all and it's a shame what happens in this world. It's too bad there's more than one way people can feel about this.

Your country is seen as economically stable and generally friendly place to live. How does it all look like from the Swedish perspective?
I guess every country looks nice on a post card. I immediately think about a party called the Sweden Democrats. Their view on immigrants is not the friendliest and they've certainly helped the face of Sweden turn uglier.

What are some of the shows you have played that really stick out in your mind?
For me there are three shows that comes to mind, and I think that the rest of the band agrees. First, the release show for The Mockracy was just awesome, unfortunately David wasn't drumming on this show because of injured shoulders. We hadn't done that many shows before that one, but at this one it was fantastic to see that people had given some of their time to learn our songs.
A few months before that, we played a festival in Linköping called Fat Fest. It was the first time we played outside of Örebro, and there were really cool bands playing there, such as Trapped Under Ice, Bane and Hårda Tider.
The third one that comes to mind we did not that long ago in Gävle. We went there with two other bands from from our town (Chain Reaction and Hårda Bud) and it was amazing. It's a floor stage so they compensated with stools that they kicked around the floor to "stage dive" from.

What other bands out of Sweden you support these days?
There are several great bands from our town, such as Dead Reprise, Chain Reaction, Hårda Bud and Chastise. Then from all around Sweden we've got Lesra, Angers Curse, Bitter Taste of Life, Guilty, Lose the Life and Agent Attitude. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though.

After the EP is out, what’s next for Elapse?
To play as much as possible, basically. We've been hearing a lot of bands talk about this thing called "Euro tour", and it feels like we need to look into that.