After the very talented Rock the Rebel/Metal the Devil, everybody expected for the chance to trip Vollbeat up, but they really took up the challenge with this new album. They polished up their style, their influences now mix with their own ideas and the tunes are very catchy with some “gangsters and cadillacs stories” as a backdrop. Check out this outstanding album that will surely be on many top lists at the end of the year and see them live in Paris on october 8th


"Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood" : a danish bomb!

Interview by Anne-Gaëlle

Date : 2008-09-15
City : Paris

Radio Metal : Where did you get the inspiration for the story “Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood”?

Thomas Brendahl (guitars) : You got to have a name for an album, what we did was thinking about how we're gonna call this thing. The previous album had slash, slash, something. We wanted a long title that could settle on things. We were listening to Social Distortion and at one point, the singer sings : i'm a guitar gangster without any tune. We were like : guitar gangster, that sounds pretty cool. We love the American lifestyle, old movies... Gangsters are all over the world and they probably don't look like the guy on our cover but that's the image you get from movies. But we don't really like this “I’m not in tune” syndrome because that's one of the most stupid things you can do. Social Distortion’s singer, Bruce Springsteen, or Rancid can actually sing out of tune and make it sound cool. So we had this “guitar gangster” thing and we came up very quickly with this “cadillac blood” or “cadillac something”. Cadillac is something cool as it reminds us of Elvis, and the 50's, 60's American lifestyle. If one should take an image that could actually define that age in America, it would be a Cadillac. Elvis is also known as a Cadillac lover or addict. And then the word “blood” came in, and it sounds cool. Blood is always cool in Metal. Imagine a “blood red” Cadillac : it would be like...

Blood on white

Yeah, or pink. So, we had the title, and we were like : “how should this cover look like”. Of course, we needed Cadillacs and some gangsters, maybe some guitar, and keep the same colours of the previous album. We had some ideas and the story started to unfold while we were thinking and talking about it. The result ? When you open the cover, you have this band ready to play in a small bar... It's like when you write a song : you start with some ideas in your head and then you evolve and go where you didn’t expect to go at the start.

How did you decide to divide the story into several parts ?

We haven't written anything yet so we don't know but it's more like when you read a book or watch a movie. Sometimes it's good to have an end like : “ok, he was the killer and that's it” , or something like that. But on the other hand, it's cool to have a kind of “opened ending”. We've done that before on the first album where two songs are connected (illusion, fire song), and that story continues on the second one. The same thing happens on “Mary Ann’s place” and on this one. On the new album you have seven connected songs. Our songs are 3 or 4 minutes long, so it's hard to tell a whole story. Sometimes you just don't feel you have to end a story and you continue with another song. Actually, you can be inspired by your own songs : “Oh that's a good idea, let's work on that a little more and let’s get back to...” An example : what happens to Lucy’s parents (…) and on “Mary Ann's place” we finish with the visit of her grave. You see, your head starts to spin. Therefore I think that since we wrote seven connected songs, it’s open for a follow-up. But new ideas came up after the bio was written so maybe we're not going to continue the story on an album, but merely in a written form : not in a book, but on our webpage or someone else’s webpage. Some people say that it could be a good idea for a movie, why not ? I don't know how to make a movie…



Maybe start with the clip you've made and others linked together...

Yeah, it's more the direction that we’d like to take. Maybe we’ll have only one song on the next album, maybe five, or maybe it’ll be a whole album.

So let’s say you will have other songs : do you think that one day you could do a show only with the songs related to this story ?

If we keep on writing some songs, that could be a funny idea actually...




Who worked on the cover ?

It's a guy called Kars, he’s an artist. He didn't do the two previous covers.

You wanted to work with him ?

I think he works on t-shirts, so it was a natural thing to try to work with him. Whatever you want to do (record an album, print t-shirts), it's always important to find some people who understand your idea but also know how to be creative. We know how to play music and write songs but I don't know how to draw, I can't even draw a man who looks like a man or a car or anything.

Your success is growing, but as a musician, what do you think has changed in the music business or in the way you consider success ?

That's a hard one. Business is hard but the good thing for us is that we are now able to play our cards well. When you start a band you have to find a label, ask if you can play in clubs. Now we can pick who we want, we can say “we want to go there, or not”. Of course we’d like to play with Metallica or Iron Maiden, but we’re closer to do that. During our European tour, we picked who we wanted as support band. At some points of your carrier, you have to be a support band, pay a lot of money to go on tour, then you reach a level that allows you to be co-headliner, but you don’t decide. We were enough lucky actually to skip that step because we headlined our own tour. And now we are able to even bring some really good bands, but not big bands. Motorhead would probably laugh if we called them and asked them if they want to play for us. We can choose support bands that we like especially in Denmark, Sweden, where we’re doing really well. In Denmark, we played four weeks and we picked four different bands, like old friends, people that have worked their asses off but never achieved success. We can tell them to come and play in front of a thousand people, and to be paid for that, well, it’s pretty cool. We're still musicians, but what has changed for us is that we've got more power than when we have started, and that's a good thing.

So what’s the next step ?

In terms of success (laughs) ? We’ve just released this album, we'll see. We’re happy to see that people like it and want to buy it, the reviews are good, people check out our myspace and say they like it. The next step is to sell tickets for the tour in October and for the Denmark, Norway, Sweden tour in November / December. All my teenage dreams have come true since a year and a half : I don't have to work anymore. I can sit in Paris on Monday and do interviews even though there are a lot :) It's still better than to drive a bus or to work in a fast-food. We headlined our own tour, played in a lot of good festivals, met Metallica, Megadeth, said hello to James Hetfield, thanked him for letting us play with them. Lars even thanked us for letting them play with us ! All these dreams came true so I now hope that we’ll continue. We're able to make a living out of our music and tour but it can easily stop fast. If we go higher, that's good, if we stay at the same level, I’ll be satisfied.

Is it why there is such a few years between each album or is it a natural rhythm for Vollbeat?

I guess that it's just natural for us. We worked our asses of, toured a lot and started writing songs while on tour, in hotels, rooms, toilets, backstage, in the bus or during sound checks and it was just natural to say : “ok we've got an album now, let's take some time off because at home, you need some time to focus on that process. Then, we decided to delay for a few month the studio recording as we actually needed more time to write some material. Timing was perfect : we had the songs ready and time for the studio ; it was right before all the festivals started, so we recorded it and then played at festivals for 4 months and now we're here, releasing a new album.

Is it not too quick ?

It might be quick but I don't think so. I think it's perfect. It's not too much, like all these bands who release their albums too quick, it’s hard after to keep a steady rhythm. When Metallica released the Black album, they toured for 3 years. After that, you may need one or two years before being ready to write another album. Some bands do this, they write an album, go on tour, then go back home and take some holiday for one or two years before they want to write a new album. We're pretty lucky, we are just glad that we are able to do what we do, we're like doing music. Give me three days off or one week, that's ok, there's no need for us to sit and watch movies for half a year before going back to work again.




So you don’t plan anything ? You just play your music and you see what comes next ?

Of course you have to work, to have ideas. We listen to songs on the radio, we buy a new CD and we say to ourselves “ that was good, let's try to do something like that”, but we didn’t plan anything for the next album yet. We recorded the album in April and we started writing it maybe a year ago, so for us, it's not new anymore. Therefore, it's natural for us to keep an idea that we find while on tour. It's hard to tell, it also depends on the success of this album. If we make it in the US, maybe we’ll have to go and release this album there.

Do you feel isolated within the Denmark scene ? You've got quite an original style...

You don't have ten or five bands like Vollbeat in Denmark. We don’t have a Danish sound. But we don't really feel isolated, because we came out of the metal scene and there's a really one in Denmark at the moment. You have bands like Hatesphere, Mercenary, Raunchy and I’m probably forgetting a few bands... You have also Illdisposed, and DAD, which is not really metal : they are more rock and have also been around for years. They’ve released a new album. There's a lot of younger bands coming out and releasing their first album. We're only five and a half million people and there's only like one big city, so if you go to a show the others bands would probably be there. We do show or festivals together so we don't really feel isolated. Now that we’re successful, we don't do only metal festivals in Denmark : we play with a lot of different bands. Some of them have been around for years. So you meet bands, we become mates and you say : “hey, where were you yesterday ?” “Oh, we played at this festival” “oh, we're going there tomorrow”. There is also a big and nice crew so we really don’t feel isolated.

Metallica is one of your big influence. Did you listen to the new album ?

Yes, of course.

em>What do you think about it?

I bought it yesterday here in Paris, but I had the chance to listen to it a little earlier. I like it, there are some lines that I catched on. It’s cool. It's not as good and will never be as good as the Black album for instance or And Justice for all but I like it. It's interesting to see what those guys can do as people are always breathing down their necks. They are good guys and have been around for so long. They have a huge pressure on their shoulders every time they're doing something but I think they managed to do a good album. When I’ll be back home, I’ll listen to it with good earphones and not on my computer as it sounds like shit. I’ll take some time to really listen to it.




I heard that Lars Ulrich talked to you and said something like : Denmark can be proud of Volbeat ?

When we played with them, we talked to James and Lars. Lars said :" why are you guys so tall ?" Hey, I’m not tall at all, but he's like really small ! He thanked us for playing with Metallica. He did some promotion for the new album on a national TV show : he had to choose three videos. He chose one of ours and said: these are my friends from Volbeat... Call me Lars ! We’re not close friends but it's a nice thing that he knows the band. We played last summer with Metallica in Denmark ; this summer we played a festival together in Belgium but we didn't meet them. We didn’t ask for it. But there was this guy who was about to meet them for an interview or something, so we asked him to give them our CD as we don't know where they could get one in the US.

I don't know if you know, but King Diamond played with them on stage in the US, so I guess you’d probably want to do so...

That would be fun if we can keep up playing.

For a cover, maybe ?

I think we could agree on some stuff. James came backstage and said : I’ve heard that guys play some sort of Elvis Metal, and I think I like it. He actually watched half of our show with is daughter on his knees and head banged. You play in front of 15 000, then you look and see James Hetlfied : you really got to be the best !

Talking about Elvis, do you know if there are people that started to know more about him since they knew that he was one of your influences ?

I hope not. Everybody should know Elvis. I’m not a hardcore fan, but Elvis is the biggest in the music history. He was the first rock star, there were no one before him. He was the one who took the black sound and presented it to the white people. Maybe somebody else did it, I don't know, but after Elvis came the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, rock'n'roll and metal. I guess that without Elvis, those guys wouldn’t be there. Metal wouldn’t exist either, and especially Volbeat because we mix sounds together. All that we know about modern rock music wouldn’t exist without him. And then of course, he was a great performer : he had so much charisma. If he walked down the street he would still be like glowing. There are some people who manage to have that charisma.