It's been 7 long
years since we last caught up with these crazy hard rockers from Sweden,
finally with some divine intervention (plus assistance from the lovely
Anett) we get to catch up with the band Fatal Smile to grill them in
person.
MM - Hi guys great to finally catch up with you in person, would you
like start by introducing yourselves to our readers.
Band - Hi, I'm Blade and I sing vocals. I'm Alx and I play the
bass. I'm Y and I am the guitar player. We also have a
drummer Zteff but he's busy eating his lunch.
MM - (Question for Y) - Would you like to start
by giving us a bit of history about the band and how it's developed to
it's current membership?
Y - I started the band in around 1996 in a small town in Sweden and
we did a lot of shows and changed a lot of members and stuff like that
and then I moved to Stockholm as you don't have very good singers in a
small town. I moved out there and got together a band and we
released 2 albums, toured all over the world and then I decided I wanted
to move up to another level. The problem was the other guys did
not want to do the same thing so that's why I completely changed the
line-up, so this current line-up is the line-up that's been together for
a total of about 1 year. It's all about the now and so here we are now
in the UK kicking some ass!
MM - Yes finally we get to see you guys in
action! I had hoped we might have seen you over here in support of
your last album 'Neo Natural Freaks' but for some reason that did not
seem to happen.
Y - Yes we really wanted to come across with that album but it just
did not work out that way, so here we are, better late than never!
(laughs)
MM - 'World Domination' is a great title for
the bands new album, is this the bands mission for 2008?
Blade - It's actually been on the table for a while now, it's kind
of been a joke for a few years, it was like ... what are you guys up to
at the moment? ... and we'd say 'World Domination!' (laughs).
We're dominating the world with our music because that's what we want to
do.
|
|
MM - Who
writes the material for the band now, is it just one individual
or does everyone pitch in with some input?
Blade - It's Y. For this album the rest of us had come
in quite late. Y had already recorded around 18 songs with
just the music so we had the intro's and endings and the
choruses and he said ... try to do something with this.
Alx moved into my house and I have a studio there and we wrote
some stuff. We had Peter come down and I was supposed to
record the vocals in his studio so he came down and we cut it,
then we decided to try different things in the studio.
A lot of stuff was sent to Paul Sabu in Los Angeles and he came
up with lots of great ideas, then we came up with some more new
ideas and I sat up all day and all night and just started to
write back and forth between Y and me and Paul. It's a
great album and we're really proud of how it turned out. |
MM - How did you come to get
Michael Wagener involved with mixing the new album and would you work
with him again?
Y - Yes absolutely I would really love to work and mix with him
again. Actually I deliberately wanted to have a great mixing guy
for this new album because I wanted to make it sound really really big
and I just sent him a couple of demos from the new CD and he really
liked what he heard so we all just flew out for a month to Nashville in
the US mixing the album together with Michael. He's been great and
we would absolutely love to mix and work with him again.
Blade - That's if he will have us! (laughs). Actually we
have become quite good friends with him, he's a lovely chap and we have
all our American back-line for when we're touring in the States, we have
all that in his storage, so we do have a reason to visit him from time
to time.
MM - How has the tour gone so far?
Blade - Well you know the World Domination tour started in January
and we've done 90 shows already including tonight's show, this leg of
the tour is all part of that. We're having fun, you have great
beer here, great chicks (laughs), good beer and some more great chicks!
Y - So far the UK has been fucking great. It's been even
better than I would have thought. It's just so fucking great.
Blade - Yes plus it's not been so far the distances between the
gigs.
Y - Yes compared to the US which was like 10 hours drive between
gigs whereas here it's maybe 2 or 3 hours drive. That's good.
MM - Wow, yes you could cover the whole length of England in 10
hours, in fact probably less than that! (laughs)
Y - Yes. (laughs) We've become really good friends with all the
other guys in the bands as well so that is great also.
Alx - It makes it so much more fun that way. All the other
guys are really funny guys and we're all just having so much fun
together.
MM - It can be quite hard when you are out on the road for such a long
time so that's good that you can have some fun along the way to help
break it up?
Y - Well we've been out touring with a lot of bands like Dio and
WASP and Doro and we've been lucky that they have treat us like
professionals and people basically just have to get along with us.
We're nice chaps, we've always got along with the people and crew we've
been out with. Actually we've always ended up really good friends
with then and for example with the road crew with WASP, their guitarist
Douglas Blair, we got along really well and in the end he came and spent
his vacation in my house over the summer, which was cool.
MM - That's really cool. How would you describe your music to
someone who hasn't yet heard it?
Blade - We have a lot of flavours in this musical stew, this soup of
ours. I'd like to say that there's something there for everybody
but we have such a great groove on the bottom of it, it's not just bang
bang, there's plenty of rhythm to it and it's really hard to describe
but it's got this really vibrant feel to it. Also it has a modern
edge, an aggressive edge and a little bit of anger, but then again you
have the melodies. That's why I think some people talk about us
being there in the 80's and stuff, yes the must is definitely from 2000,
I think maybe the rhythm is from somewhere else but the melodies are
perhaps little bit from the 80's but I think there's not as much melody
and perhaps a bit more anger there and aggression.
MM - The few songs I've heard from the new album
reminded me, particularly with the vocals of an English band called The
Almighty. I'm not sure if you are familiar with them?
Alx - Yes I have heard of them.
MM - They were one of my
favourite bands in the 80's and early 90's but they weren't a glam rock
band or a bubblegum and lipstick band, they were a great band, quite
ballsy rock with plenty of meat in it. It definitely wasn't
fluffy, it was all out ballsy rock with plenty of teeth.
Blade - Yes we are not a
glam band and we're not sleaze, we're just a hard rock band. I
like that though, there's no fluff in our music it's just rock with a
lot of balls in it, well done.
MM - Moving back to the new album 'World Domination' now, what are your
favourite songs off the new album to play live and why those particular
songs?
Blade - That's a difficult question because I love them all.
I suppose I love the power of 'S.O.B.' because it's so powerful, but
then I also love the lyrics and the power of 'Run For Your Life'.
It's also the most melodic song that we have. I love the bluesy
attitude of 'Straight To Hell' or 'Out Of My Head', that's also a great
one as well.
Y - It's very difficult to say because we have 10 tracks that are
all different so it's impossible to choose. What are your
favourite tracks off the new album?
MM - Well I haven't
heard them all yet but I like 'S.O.B.' which is the first track off the
album. I really like that song. Also 'No Tomorrow' which
reminds me a bit of old Ozzy and perhaps a bit of old Metallica before
they went off on a tangent.
Blade - That's about the inner demons and how sometimes we struggle
not to cross over to that dark alley.
Alx - I'm just very proud of the whole album so it's very hard to
pick just one song. I like the last track off the new album a lot,
'Eve Of War', I think that's a really good song. I don't know I
just love that song.
MM - What songs will you be featuring in your setlist for this tour?
Will it be a mixture of songs from all three albums or will it mainly
feature songs from the new album?
Y - There will be a lot of songs from 'Neo Natural Freaks',
almost like half of them, and then the rest will be from 'World
Domination' We don't do any of the songs from the first album
'Beyond Reality'.
MM - How
important is it for the band to travel outside your home country
of Sweden and build up an international fan base?
Blade - Well like I said earlier, if you listen to the title
of the new album it's 'World Domination' and not Sweden
Domination so if you want to dominate the world you have to
travel it and that's what we've done. We said at the
beginning of 2008 that this year would be the year of the
Fatal's and it really has been the year of the Fatal's so far.
We've been travelling the world and doing almost 100 shows so
far and we just eat, breathe and live Fatal Smile. It's
turned out to be an awesome year for us. We really love
life out on the road and we |
|
| love
living the life of rockers on the road, it's just awesome.
If we can keep doing that and we can gain some fans, hopefully
England will love us now that we're here and we'd love to come
back because we love you all back. Right back at you
England! |
MM - Do you get much chance
after the shows to go out and meet your fans?
Blade - Oh yes we always
do. We come straight out after the show and stand by the
merchandise stall and try and sign some CD's and stuff for people.
That's what we do.
Y - Yes and I think people really appreciate it also. To me
and all the guys going out after the show and meeting everyone is really
fun. We've done that every show that we've done so far except a
few festivals where we didn't have that opportunity.
Axl - We always try to get out there if there's a chance then
after about 5 minutes from us leaving the stage we go straight to the
merch stall and just hang out.
Blade - It's great to go out with a towel over your shoulders and
a few cold beers and just chat to the chicks.
MM - Talking of tours I believe the band will be going out with Vince
Neil later this year on tour out around Europe? That's quite a big
tour with a lot of dates involved.
Y - Well you know it's been awesome going out on tour with Dio and
it's been awesome going out on tour with Doro, but Vince Neil, he's a
bit of a house god in the Fatal camp. It's going to be awesome
touring with that guys and we've heard a lot of great things about that
guy, he's supposed to be a real sweetheart so we're really looking
forward to touring with him. Also he has the same audience that we
have, so I think we are a perfect match. Unfortunately though
we're not going to be doing the UK dates. We can't do them because
of other things so unfortunately we won't be able to come over here for
that tour. Those dates we have to miss but the rest of the dates
we're doing. We'll come back to the UK some other time though.
Oh my there's a lot of X-rated stuff because we're a rock n' roll band
so you have to imagine the things we get up to.
MM - What's been the wildest thing that's ever happened to you during
one of your performances, either on or off stage?
Blade - Oh my god you're asking the wrong band!!! (laughs).
There has been so many things happen, if you had a few hours to spare
then I have more than a few stories to tell. We've forgotten band
members in Canada and done just about everything you could possibly do,
but we don't have time to go into all that now. Also there might
be kids reading this and it would not be appropriate! (laughs).
Y - What can I say, we're a bunch of crazy Swedes and when you
put us all together on one tour bus and tell us to rock, I tell you shit
is going to hit the fan! We call it the Fatal Circus because it's
a real circus with all the stuff that's going on when there's these four
guys together but we're having such fun.
MM - The Scandinavian rock and metal scene is probably at it's most
vibrant now for some time, why do you think this is so?
Y - Actually it wasn't until we were touring out in the USA that we
realised that because we found that everyone was crazy about us because
we're from Sweden. They were talking about the Sweden, Finland,
Norway sensation that is going on but I hadn't really realised that.
Over there they are always looking to Sweden and if you look at most of
the places we have played there's a lot of Scandinavian bands touring
over there. That was a big surprise. I think we have a lot
of people who like rock n roll up there. We have the rock n roll
radio and we do seem to have a lot of people who really like rock n roll
in Sweden. I suppose we have the Sweden Rocks Festival which is
the biggest rock festival in the country and even though we have many
other great rock festivals around the country, the Sweden Rocks Festival
is the most famous, so we do have a rock scene up there and plenty of
really good bands up in Scandinavia. It's a national thing.
MM - The competition must be quite fierce to have so many talented
bands doing the rounds and trying to make your band the one that's
different and the one that really stands out from the rest.
Y - Yes, I guess that's what makes us different as soon as we get
out of the country. All those bands that you are talking about are
friends of ours and we get along with each other just great. We
often go out and just do stuff together and hang together in the
weekends in the rock clubs. It's a great thing.
MM - Although you are from Swedish your sound is very American hard
rock, was this your intention from the beginning to step away from the
traditional Swedish sound?
Y - I don't ever think that we're going to go out and try to sound
like an American rock band, I just play whatever comes into my head.
If that sounds Australian, or Greek or whatever to the listener then
that's fine, but we just do what we love to play and yes perhaps we
might not sound that typical Swedish, but that's just how we sound
naturally.
Alx - You know we grew up listening to
those bands like WASP, KISS, Motley Crue, many bands that came from the
US have influenced us as we were growing up.
Blade - I guess what you hear is what you get when you put four guys
with big balls together and just press play. We're just having a
lot of fun.
MM - How do you feel to be compared with the likes of the Backyard
Babies and a Swedish Motley Crue, which I have seen written about you in
a number of places.
Y - We owe the Backyard Babies our utmost respect, but a Swedish
Motley Crue I wouldn't say that because they don't have that raw edge
and aggressiveness that we have. I think we are quite far from
them. I think when people talk about us and compare us to them
they are talking about our looks. The fact that we have the
ability to perform a live show. If they do a cool live show and we
do a cool live show then they say we are like Motley Crue, but it's not
the sound, definitely not. But then it's all about entertaining
people and that's what we do so ...
Alx - We're not about just going up on stage in our working
clothes to perform. MM
- No you'd be a grunge band then. Alx
- Yeh exactly. We just love to entertain people and we're four
front men in one band. We kick ass when we get up there. A
lot of bands don't, they get up there and they play their songs but they
maybe have a singer who's the entertainer and then the rest are like a
backing band, they just stand there. They look so bored. MM
- It definitely has to be about the full package, not just the music or
the looks but the whole thing together.
Blade - It's a bit like
the Backyard Babies because you couldn't really compare the two of us
except they have a lot of balls and we have a lot of balls. But music
wise we're very different in styles, but they have a cool rock show and
we have a cool rock show too. When people talk about us in the
same sentence as the Backyard Babies it's about the shows, it's not
about the albums.
MM - Have you had a chance to think about the next album or is it too
early to say?
Y - Yes it's going to be a great album our next album. However
we still have so much more to do with this new album that we cannot even
think about it at the moment. At the earliest we will not be
thinking of recording it for at least one year from now. We want
to be out on the road in support of this new album as much as we can be
to promote it.
Alx - What we've done with this new album is make a really
kick-ass album that's going to be really difficult to follow up.
|
|
MM - OK
guys, now a fun question for you all. If one morning you
woke up to find out you'd turned into a superhero with special
powers, what would your power be, what would your name be and
what would your costume look like?
Blade - My costume would probably look like Gene Simmons
on acid. I would be able to fly and play guitar and fuck
at the same time and blow fire and stuff.
I would be able to self-implode on occasion. My name would
be Blade, the Phantom. |
Alx - I think my name would
be Super-Boner because I'd have a costume with a full boner built in red
leather with black stars and stuff. That's what I'd call myself
the next morning when I woke up. That would be my special power as
well. I would fly around with my super-boner that penetrates
anything. MM -
Oh my goodness I'm imagining something like Blackie Lawless with his
huge cod-piece with the saw coming out of it! (laughs)
Blade - You would be able to plough really
fast and we could hire this guy out to do wheat fields and stuff.
Y - Actually I don't have a fucking clue! (laughs). I
suppose I would be naked, I don't know. MM
- Well if you are going to be naked then maybe your special power should
be invisibility to hide your modesty? (laughs). Y
- Yes perhaps, I don't know.
Blade - Maybe your name could be Mr Dynamite and as you tend to
explode on occasions.
Y - Yes Mr
Dynamite, that would be my name, that would be cool for me.
MM - In a nutshell what makes Fatal Smile different from all the
other bands that are currently out there?
Y - Great fucking songs, an awesome album, four fucking rock stars
on stage entertaining the shit out of you. We always deliver the
full package.
Blade - The best thing to do would be to ask anyone who's seen us
live what the difference is between us and the other bands.
There's a lot of different flavours in our music and also our drummer
has a huge penis. Most drummers have very small penis's but ours
has a big one. That's the main difference and it's a big
difference believe me, it's the biggest! (laughs).
MM - So does he actually need to use his drumsticks to play?
Blade - No he just uses his penis, even on the kick-drum he uses
his penis. You really do have to see this guy play to believe it!
(laughs) MM - OK well
I guess at least I won't need to use the telescopic lens on the camera
tonight then. Blade -
Yes you really have to see our drummer play as he's butt-naked when he
plays the drums! MM - Oh!
Well I'll look forward to seeing that later then. (laughs)
MM - OK guys, do you have any final words for our readers?
Blade - Crank it up, play it loud, open up a bottle and have fun.
Y - Don't forget to buy the new album 'World Domination'.
Blade - That's a good point because you won't have anything to crank
up if you don't buy the album. Let me re-phrase that ... buy the
album, crank it up and have some fun, kick some ass with it and see you
soon on the road ... naked in a hotel room near you! (the
whole band fall into a fit of giggles at this last comment).
MM - What can I say these guys are wild,
raucous, totally crazy and one hell of a great set of companions to
spend a Saturday evening at the bar with. Their new album 'World
Domination' is seriously tasty and I cannot recommend too highly their
live shows. If you spot them heading your way be sure to check
them out because for once this is a band that really do deliver the
kick-ass ballsy show they promise. |