Just before they absolutely owned the O2 Academy Islington, Sweden’s kings of fuzz granted us an audience. We chatted to guitarist Dango (Niklas Kallgren) about life on the road, their revolving door relationship with drummers and their plans for the future.
HTF: You’ve toured absolutely everywhere this year. What were the highlights?
NK:The first tour we did when we released the album was fun because we had new music. There were lots of people at the shows, so that whole tour for me was a big highlight and a success, as well as some of the festivals we played in the summer. We did one show in Canada where we were two slots before Soundgarden, which is one of my favourite bands so that was cool. It turned out that my guitar got lost on the way and the luggage got delayed, so I ended up borrowing one guitar from Soundgarden (laughs). But I also liked Sonisphere a lot, Best Kept Secret in Holland was fun. This year we played a few bigger festivals for the first time. Most of them have been very fun because people have been coming to the shows even though we’re far from a ‘headline act’.
HTF: Do you enjoy the tour lifestyle or do you find it quite hard work?
NK: Both. It is hard work. Today has been very stressful. Time just disappears … lots of things to do, it’s hard work but it’s also fun, I guess it’s a lifestyle so either you like it or you don’t like it.
HTF: Josh Homme (of Queens Of The Stone Age) called you “the best band that’s ever existed” according to your documentary film. What does it mean to have such a key figure in the sub-genre as a fan?
NK: Of course it’s very fun that he seems to like it, I’m not sure how serious he was. But I’m sure he heard it. We actually met him when they played in Stockholm a few years ago They seem to be nice guys so hopefully we can play a support tour or something one day, that would be cool.
HTF: Sweden is arguably more famous for its death metal bands (and ABBA). Do you find there’s any cross over with fans of both scenes? Do you have a big following at home?
NK: I think there’s a lot of people who think we are not ‘metal enough’ to like us properly, but I’ve noticed the last year or two that more and more of the metal fans have actually started listening to us and we’ve drawn bigger crowds back home. So perhaps people are getting tired of the ‘metal metal metal’ style and like our kind of metal as well. I think it’s a bit of, maybe not a trend, but I think this kind of alternative heavy music that is not classic metal or death metal in that sense feels like it’s getting a bit more accepted. Not in a commercial way, of course, but in a wider underground perspective.
HTF: Do you feel pressured to write lyrics and sing in English in order to reach a wider audience? Or was it always your choice?
NK: Like 99% of all the music we listen to is English, so it’s more natural to sing in English. It’s always been like that, it’s almost weird to sing in Swedish.
HTF: How did you come up with the name Truckfighters? Have you ever actually fought a truck?
NK: No, we found a book that was called ‘Truckfighters’ and after that we started a band (laughs). So the name was first. It’s like a pulp fiction style, really crappy, written for twelve year olds, about two truck drivers driving around doing more or less nothing. It’s entertaining, but it’s really bad. It’s like watching a really bad action movie where it’s fun but it’s bad.
HTF: How have fans been reacting to material from your latest album Universe? Could you summarise what the album is about?
NK: The album is about feeling, music is emotions. This album took five years from the previous album, and I would say we worked on these songs for three years. It’s a wide span of impressions, I think it’s life, y’know. The name comes from that wide perspective because for us it became our universe for so long to try and finish this.
We don’t have a ‘theme’ in that sense. We write music, we don’t have an idea before what to write. We do it and if we like, it we keep it. The only thing we have on purpose, that we try to do, is to try and do something that is different from other bands where we try to find out own sound and do our own thing.
HTF: You have seen a lot of drummers come and go over the years. Does it still have an impact or is it something you have gotten used to?
NK: Every time the drummer changes it’s a pain in the ass cos it takes so much energy and time to find a new one, get to know a new person and to rehearse all the old songs again. It halts the whole process a bit. But it’s also fun to play with new musicians and get more input from different people, of course.
(Speak of the devil, drummer Enzo [Axel Larsson] walks into the room as we are talking about him)
AL: Are you talking about me? (laughs)
NK: Yeah! So hopefully we’ve found one that’s gonna hang around here for a little while.(laughs)
AL: Yeah hopefully! You’ll have to be nice to me.
NK: We are not so good at being nice, but we try at least. (laughs)
AL: That’s actually pretty true!
(As if to prove a point, Dango jokingly throws an empty water bottle at his bandmate)
HTF: Do you find that they give you a hard time being the ‘new guy’?
AL: No, not at all. In the beginning when I started touring with them it felt more like they were really stressed about the fact that we had four days of rehearsal and I was playing drums in the band. And they were kind of big shows, like the first show we did in Helsinki. I actually almost vomited after the show because it was so intense. I was not prepared for the live show that they put on. But I think it’s getting there.
NK: I think it sound really good right now. We are ‘probably the best band in the world’ right? (laughs)
HTF: Stoner rock still has quite a large following. Do you feel like the genre will ever lose this popularity?
NK: I don’t think so, I think it’s too underground to care about ‘hypes’ and ‘trends’. So I think it’s just gonna be around for a long time. Kyuss had the first ‘wave’ that was mostly them and maybe Fu Manchu. Now the bands that play are kind of ‘wider’ in terms of sound, but they still have that same fundament. I think it’s gonna stay for a while because it’s not so dependent on what’s hip at the moment, it’s totally from the underground.
HTF: What’s the plan for 2015? Taking a well earned break?
NK: We had an idea of resting in January and February but then an Australian tour popped up, so we’re going there in January. And in February we had a plan to rest, but then maybe we’re going to Canada then. So it’s not so easy to just rest, cos this is our job, and we don’t want to say no if we can do shows because we want to play, but we also want to keep it fun. But we also need to make a living.
I think we’re gonna play a lot next year, festival season in Europe again. And after we’re gonna take a break early 2016 for two or three months at least, and make a new album, so maybe not just be totally ‘off’ for three months.
HTF: Do you specifically sit down with the intention of making a new album or do you write stuff when you’re on the road?
NK: We want to write stuff on the road but we never have the mental strength to do it. It doesn’t happen. We’ll record some ideas that we have sometimes from soundcheck, but we need to sit down and go through ideas and just relax and sit in the studio and work on it. And especially now we are so ‘progressive’ and ‘alternative’ the songs are hard to get together, it’s a lot of work. Listening and thinking and trying stuff. Of course some songs are still quite simple, but we do tend to work quite a lot on the songs nowadays.
