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Tramwreck Interview
Tramwreck brings that sweet combination of thrash and hardcore. It’s fast and groovy, aggressive but laid back, apocalyptic but party-ready. Plus, you get all the nuclear and satanic war shit in the lyrics. Basically, it’s like Toxic Avenger starting a band with Mad Max while all the punks from Return of the Living Dead do the back vocals. The band’s latest artistic output is called Power Vomit, but as far as I know they should be working on some new music already. Check out the interview.
Tramwreck brings that sweet combination of thrash and hardcore. It’s fast and groovy, aggressive but laid back, apocalyptic but party-ready. Plus, you get all the nuclear and satanic war shit in the lyrics. Basically, it’s like Toxic Avenger starting a band with Mad Max while all the punks from Return of the Living Dead do the back vocals. The band’s latest artistic output is called Power Vomit, but as far as I know they should be working on some new music already. Check out the interview.The one thing that bums me out every time I think about Swedish hardcore scene is why the hell nobody stopped Refused before they recorder plenty of bad music? And worse, why did nobody do nothing to prevent them from doing reunion show? Are they still influential band in Sweden?
It’s hard to say why nobody stopped Refused from reuniting or if someone even should have. Our guess is they reunited because they like money and wanted more of it. We like money too so that’s okay with us. None of us are huge Refused fans, half of us had never heard of them until a couple of months ago when their reunion started getting hyped so they’re not an influential band for us. They’re probably influential to some bands but most new hardcore acts that appear in Sweden are either very old school oriented or total hipsters and you can’t hear much of Refused in their music. Also, some of Refuseds music is very experimental and that doesn’t reflect in other Swedish hardcore bands.
Before we started playing together as Tramwreck Skrevet who plays base used to play with a punk band called Sista Skriket, Björn who plays drums played with a metal band and Jocke who screams and Robert who plays guitar both played in the same horror-punk band. While celebrating midsummer (which is a very important hedonistic ritual in Sweden) in 2010 Skrevet and Björn started talking about jamming together since they both longed for playing faster and harder music. Jocke and Robert immediately wanted in and Tramwreck was formed. Sista Skriket had recently broken up so Skrevet had lots of time and enthusiasm that got us going. With time the rest of us either got kicked out of or quit our other bands so we’re now all about Tramwreck. Robert was even forced to quit his job at NASA where he experimented with shredding riffs in zero gravity in order to devote all his time to the band. As for our goals we haven’t given it much thought. We just want to play kickass music.
You released Power Vomit on tape. Why releasing music on a format that nobody uses anymore?
Tapes are awesome, that’s the first and foremost reason. Of course we’d have loved to release Power Vomit on vinyl but it’s expensive as hell and the release was a DIY effort. So when the option was a CD-r demo releasing a tape was by far the cooler option. And that is of utter importance.
Any plans for vinyl version?
Power Vomit won’t be released on any other format than tape. However, later this spring or this summer we’re going to record new material. If we can find a record label that would back us in releasing a 7 inch that’d be great. If not we’ll just release another tape.
Why people should give Power Vomit a try?
It’s tricky promoting yourself without sounding like a pompous asshole but we really do think people should give Power Vomit a try simply because it’s awesome thrashing hardcore. If you don’t like good music you can still enjoy it for it’s packaging. It’s on a cool green cassette with a cover by Blasting Dead Artwork. Truly beautiful!
Favorite type of Beer?
We are all big fans of Risingsbo and Tingsryd, which is a Swedish phenomenon, called “folköl” which for some reason roughly translates to peoples beer.
This question led to some heavy debate within the band but we finally managed to settle on five albums, as following, in no specific order:
Municipal Waste – Waste ‘Em All
Metallica – Ride the Lightning
Nuclear Assault – Game Over
Toxic Holocaust – An Overdose of Death…
Sodom – In the Sign of Evil
What are some bands from Sweden that people should be listening to instead of Refused?
There are a lot of great Swedish acts that people should be listening to. Some that we are fans of are Håll Käften Vad, Vad Vill Du!?, Fredag den 13:e, Passiv Dödsjälp and Näääk. People should definitely check out The Dahmers, an awesome garage-punk-rock band that opened for us at the Power Vomit release party.
Hardcore scene is quite diversified nowadays, with styles of music running from beatdown to thrash, from punk rock to NYHC worship. How it is in Sweden? Is there any tension between people into different styles of hardcore?
The straight edgers are pretty much running the scene when it comes to booking bands and arranging shows but there’s not much tension within the scene. The hardcore scene is pretty unified in the sense that it doesn’t have much connection to its subgenres or to similar genres. For instance, it’s not common to see a thrash band play together with hardcore bands. The Swedish hardcore scene however is too small to support tension within itself. Most of the people active in the scene seem to be pulling in the same direction.
When and how did you get into hardcore?
That’s a hard question. We all got into hardcore through other music genres, such as punk and thrash metal. However we all yearn for faster, angrier and harder music. And our very short attention span only allows us to listen to, and play, very short songs so hardcore is perfect.
From Viking warriors to gender neutrality, Sweden seems to be interesting country to live in. What are your thoughts about the life in Sweden 2012?
Life in Sweden includes listening to everybody whining about how terrible life in Sweden is. But it’s all right, we don’t have much to complain about. Of course, there’s political bullshit in all countries but as far as everyday life goes Sweden is pretty good, and probably will be all through 2012. It’s awful cold though. And these days it’s a little too much emphasis on gender neutrality and too little on Viking warriors.
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