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Fresh
from their first gig in Belfast, Johan Hegg kindly agreed to meet with
the Mystic Metal Mutha (MMM) from the Mayfair Mall Zine in Dublin on the
24th Oct and what a great opportunity it was!!
As
well as an interview, we offered Johan the opportunity of having an
Angel Reading, which thankfully he agreed to!! Over a pint of Guinness
and an explanation on what an Angel Reading is, the Angel cards are
shuffled and we begin…….
I
drew 6 cards for Johan. There was a lot of green in the cards which
would indicate that Johan has a healing nature about him.
The
first card to be drawn is:
(1)
Focus.
For
Johan there would seem to be a lot going on for him at the moment and he
is being pulled at from all angles, he needs to take a step back and
prioritise all the issues. This is best achieved by writing things down,
as the written word seems to put things into perspective. At the moment,
Johan has a tendency to keep things in his head.
(2)
Divine Timing.
For Johan in his life at present, things are happening as they should.
Things have happened for a reason.
Johan
didn’t agree with this point as he firmly believes that you make your
own fate and it comes from yourself through hard working and not
anything supernatural.
The
cards indicate that where opportunities have been taken away it is
because this was not the right opportunity for Johan. However Johan he
believes that it is due to not working hard enough to deserve it or it
was down to circumstances outside his control. He puts these down to
coincide and chance. I would believe the coincidence is not coincidence,
but Johan begs to differ.
(3)
Answered Prayer.
Your prayers are being answered and the things you are looking for in
life are making their way towards you at this time. It is very much a
healing time and as you receive each answered prayer; it is a healing
for you.
Johan
does agree things over the last few years have been building they way he
would want them, from both a personal and professional level.
Professionally the band is doing very well after years of hard work. As
they have achieved each dream he has been able to relax and focus more
on the other parts of his life. This is the fruits of his labour!! This
to me is karma, what you put out there is what you get back.
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(4)
Playfulness.
Johan needs to make some time to have a bit of fun in his
life and not let the business side of things take over too much.
He agreed with this but said that the band try and have as much
fun as they can while on tour and on stage.
MMM:
Is it difficult to keep the band going as your chosen career and
also make sure that it is still fun?
Johan: At
certain times it can be difficult because the business part is
sometimes very dominant. You need to be available all the time,
and although there is free time ………It is difficult to say
that I may want to go on vacation, but there is still phone
calls, emails and interviews to deal with but there are 5 of us
in the band, so there should be someone else to deal with it.
But it comes with the business and you have to take it for what
it is. You have to know when to say no.
MMM:
How difficult is it for bands to financially survive in the
business today?
Johan: Touring
is the best means to make money and it is
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virtually
the only way to survive in this business unless as a band you
want to go very mainstream which is not what we want. We want to
do the music we ourselves like and not what gets the most
airtime. A lot of people don’t really realise how much work
effort goes into keeping a band like us alive. It is really
tough on a lot of bands, albums sales definitely hurts smaller
bands.
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MMM:
Do you see yourselves as the shining light in that it has taken you this
long to get this far, but you have finally arrived?
Johan: I don’t
really see us as a shining light, but just that we have had some well
deserved successes. There have been times in the past where we didn’t
have success as we couldn’t put in all the effort required, due to
trying to balance the band with working. When we decided to take the
step to do music full time, that is when things started moving for us
MMM:
How do you make the decision to go full time?
Johan: it
is really tricky, but fortunately for me the opportunity presented
itself to me, the company I was working for laid off a bunch of people
including me (MMM:
divine timing!!).
It gave me the opportunity to get a truck drivers licence and to get a
job that I could work when I needed to not when I had to. It allowed me
to put more effort into the band. The same thing happened to the rest of
the band around the same time.
(5)
Children
.
Presently Johan
has no children, but has 3 cats. However, I would see kids on the way.
Also in terms of trying to resolve issues, it is worth taking a simple
approach. Look at solutions through a child’s eyes.
(6)
Surrender and Release.
Recognise the issues that are out of your control and get them out
of your head, this will then enable you to focus on the more important
things in your life.
Johan:
I don’t think I have a
lot of issues in my head at the moment and I feel very much in control.
There is a lot of stuff with the band which demands attention, but I
know exactly what to do with it.…….then again I have always been
easily distracted and I forget stuff!!
MMM:
Do you celebrate Christmas
in Sweden?
Johan: I celebrated my
1st Christmas in almost 20 years last Christmas year and I
spent with my fiancé and family. They are Christian. I enjoyed the food
and giving away and receiving gifts. It is an ok tradition, but
personally I don’t really celebrate it.
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MMM:
Is there times during the year where you do have a celebration?
Johan:
Birthdays, New Years Eve and Mid-Summers and the Cray Fish Party
in Autumn (traditional festival in Sweden).
MMM:
Where next after Dublin?
Johan lists off a large number of dates in the UK (MMM:
you see too much in your head!!)
MMM:
How do you protect
your voice?
Johan: I
drink a special ginger brew that is an old opera singer trick,
fresh ginger root, grated fresh lemon and honey and hot water.
It is very good, the lemon and the honey take away the spicy
taste. It is good also very for your health, plenty of vitamins.
MMM:
Has the band
discussed the whole swine flu issue?
Johan: Very
much so, we were in Mexico a week after they lifted the landing
ban. The way we see it is like any scare,
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more
people die in the regular flu season than of swine flu. It sells
newspapers!!
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MMM:
What was your favourite
festival this summer?
Johan: Wakken was
good, Summer Breeze and Bloodstock were a lot of fun as well. It is
easier to count the least favourite!! One being a small festival that
hasn’t been around too long. It rained, the campsite was flooded and
the back stage arrangements were horrible, but like all festivals it can
always improve and you should never say never.
MMM:
Have you one band that you
have played with that you have forged a great friendship with?
Johan: You
meet a lot of bands when you tour……
MMM:
Have you meet any Irish
Bands?
Johan: The
one that comes to mind is Primordial. I love those guys, they are a
great band and are one of my favourite. We saw them at Sweden Rock last
year and they were amazing. I knew they were good, but I was blown away
by them. It was that festival where I got together with my fiancée (who
now also loves Primordial). I love their sound and their epic and brutal
nature. I think Olavi said it the best, they are like a continuation of
Bathory from Hammerheart / Blood Fire Death. They are doing what Bathroy
should have done at this point.
MMM:
Apologies for the cliché question, but do you have a favourite place to
play (apart from Dublin!!)?
Johan:
Dublin is great because of the Guinness and the crowd. Every place
where people come out and enjoy themselves at our show is a good place
to play.
MMM:
Who is your favourite band
to go to see live?
Johan: Primordial are
a great live band to see. The last show that I have been to where we
haven’t been playing were probably Enslaved who were really amazing.
It was a small gig in Stockholm and it was such a great gig. The
Stockholm crowd can be difficult to win over.
MMM:
Do you get a big
home-coming when you play in Stockholm?
Johan: Yes, we played
there last week to 1400 people. It was a really good show. Sweden
has become a great place for us to play. It didn’t used to be that way
and we couldn’t play there for a long time until recently. It is
always tricky coming to your home town!!
MMM:
Do you feel more nervous playing in Stockholm?
Johan:
Always a little bit before
you go on stage, but once you hit the stage it becomes like any other
show. The show a week ago was perhaps the most nervous I had, because my
family were there and my friends were there. I started thinking in my
head that I need to watch what I am saying on stage and how I act, but
then when I got out there I just did my normal thing. They loved it,
they thought it was amazing. They don’t perhaps like the music so
much, but they thought it was really cool to see what we were doing and
the whole surroundings and how everything works.
MMM:
In
30 years time do you still see yourself up on stage?
Johan: I never look
that far ahead, as you never know what’s going to happen. I try to
take life perhaps not a day at a time but not too much ahead. Maybe if
we can still write good music and we can continue going as a band. The
time now is just to begin to think about working on our new album. We
hope to start recording next year and maybe release in early spring
2011.
MMM:
How do you pick who you work with?
Johan: The
way we picked Jens (Bogren) was through friends of ours (Katatonia).
Usually we try to listen to what comes out of the studio and then go and
talk to the guy to see if he is interested and if can do something for
us and if he feels he can take us to a new level. The important thing is
that the person we choose to work with us is interested in the band. He
doesn’t have to be the most well know guy, but as long as he has some
kind of a background so that we can hear what he has done before. That
is the way we look at it. It can be tricky as different guys want
different things.
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MMM:
Do you have to like them?
Johan: The
key thing is that somebody is in charge of the whole production
and that we can focus on writing songs and lyrics and recording
and that we don’t have to think about the production. It is
easier for one guy to have a picture than for 5 guys to have the
same picture. 5 guys will never have the same picture!! It is a
lesson we have learned. We had an idea in the past that we
didn’t want to work with a producer, but we didn’t actually
realise what it meant to work with a producer. The producer of
course has a say when it comes to the music and is in control of
the production, but it’s a give and take thing. Working with a
producer is the way to go for us.
MMM:
When
you are going on tour, do you have a say in your support bands?
Johan: We
always try to figure out good
support bands. We try to figure which ones are interesting,
which ones that we like and which ones would be good for the
package. It was our idea to see if Entombed were free to tour
with us.
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MMM:
Is
it nice to tour with a fellow Swedish Band?
Johan: Sure, it is
great; we know them from before which make it easier.
MMM:
Would
you like to be able to champion new bands in the future?
Johan: That’s
always what we try to do and it is one of the reasons why we brought
Evile on the road. It is horrible what happened to Mike and we weren’t
sure if we were going to be able to come on tour, but somewhere deep
down we know that we had to. I feel so bad for his family as he was away
when it happened. However Ol has said at least Mike was doing what he
loved and living his life the way he wanted to, but still he was young.
Everyone was in shock and it is still in the back of our heads and is so
weird. It is horrible. I feel bad for Evile as well because they are a
great band. You can hear old influences of Metallica, Slayer and
Testament, but they make it their own. They want to be Evile, but they
are not ashamed to show their influences.
MMM:
Is
there any band left you would like to tour with?
Johan: If
Iron Maiden or Metallica came knocking on the door, sure. I would also
like to tour with Testament. There are so many great bands out there…
MMM:
When
you met Slayer, were you nervous?
Johan: Prior
to the tour with Slayer, I meet with Kerry King on the Friday night rock
show. I thought it was a radio interview but we ended up hosting the
show. I don’t feel that we are on the same level, because he is Kerry
King from Slayer and is part of my favourite band!!. It was very nerve
wracking!!
On
the tour they were cool. I did an interview with Tom Araya and Matt from
Trivium for Rock Hard Magazine. Tom is one of my main influences as a
singer and inspired me to be a singer. He was such a cool guy and is
such a chilled out person. They all are. There crew was the best and we
really felt welcome on that tour.
MMM:
Do you try and make your
support bands feel welcome?
Johan:
That is the way to go. We
always try to treat our support bands with dignity. We have been on
tours where we haven’t been treated so well. So I think it is always
important for us to be humble and to realise where we have come from, we
didn’t start out where we are now, we had to take the long road, which
is probably one of the reasons why we think about these things. For
example, we had a great tour manager on one tour, but while on a tour we
realised he wasn’t being too nice to the opening bands, but was being
great to us. That was the last time he worked for us!!. It reflects bad
on us, so we want the bands to feel good working with us. The smoother
things run the better the shows.
MMM
– Finally can I just thank Johan and Wolfgang (Amon Amarths tour
manager) for giving us so much time for this interview and for being so
open and welcoming.
Angel Reading by: Janice Brady, Our Mystical Metal Mutha! |