Erik Ohlsson - Millencolin (29/04/2015)
The 59th Sound was recently privileged to have a chat with Millencolin guitarist Erik Ohlsson while they successfully tore up Australia on Soundwave 2015 throughout February and March just gone. Melbourne and Adelaide were a roaring, sold out success (at least for Millencolin sideshows), and the veteran punk rockers were on the cusp of the second week of shows when we spoke. Promoting the release of their immediately critically acclaimed new album True Brew (their first in seven years), the exceptionally friendly Erik was more than happy to chin wag to the hilt of our fifteen minute phone allowance regarding their new album, Soundwave festival, and even my fan boy gush about seeing them play with Area-7 fifteen years ago in Melbourne at my first ever punk gig.
“Haha! Oh, I remember that! That’s great to hear. And, yeah, Soundwave is awesome. We love this festival. We did it back in ’11, and last year we did Warped Tour which felt like a mini-Soundwave. Of course you can’t really compare it. First of all for us Swedes, we escape the nasty cold winter down here and tour with great bands and great hotels… I can’t complain at all. Great people and everything.”
Soundwave sprawling to the two day epic it so successfully became this year made an already dense, whirlwind schedule that much busier for most bands on the line up. Although it must have been tiring flying back and forth multiple times between cities for the festivals and various sideshows, Erik is all for an ever busier run, while still planning to watch bands in amongst the shows.
“When we’re on tour, we don’t want days off at all! We want to play a show every day. I think days of are a waste of time. We would love to do a side show every day on our days off here. Since Soundwave are booking this tour, they choose the Sideshows and put them up for us.”
“Honestly I haven’t seen much (bands) yet! I plan to watch bands Saturday and Sunday now, because when we arrived we were so weirdly jet-lagged. I couldn’t sleep at night at all and during the day time I was… really strange (laughs). After we played it was about 6 o’ clock, then we’d have some food, then a signing session, then head back to the hotel. But now we’re adjusted! So Saturday I would love to see Lagwagon. We’ve played tons of shows with those guys, but they are playing earlier, so that kind of clashes. But then at night I want to see The Smashing Pumpkins, for sure. Yeah, (vocalist) Nikola stayed and watched them in Adelaide and said it was great. They played some of the old classic songs, which are the ones I want to hear. There’s tonnes of bands though, so I’m just going to walk around and check them all out. Then we’ve got a press day in Sydney, then we’re heading back home again.”
A whirlwind may be an understatement, considering Erik’s deduction of just how long they’ve spent down under for the tour.
“If you take out flying, I think we’re just in the country for nine days, or something! But absolutely something is better than nothing.”
Soundwave’s hectic run aside, the catalyst for their latest Australian tour is Millencolin’s new material. Single Sense And Sensibility was released with a clip before Soundwave, and months before the subsequent release of the rest of the True Brew album. Erik happily explains, at length, the band’s latest offering, and touches on his long standing job as art director for the band as well.
“I do everything! I even shot that (Sense And Sensibility) video (chuckles). It was never meant to become a real video clip for the song. Epitaph, they just wanted to put on some stationary graphics or the lyrics, or something, for the YouTube clip. But I was like, ‘Nah, nah, I’m going to try and make a DIY clip using GoPro cameras. So that’s what I did! I’m actually surprised at how good it turned out (laughs).”
Aforementioned clip finds Millencolin barely fitting in to the back of a garishly lit up and speeding van, and attempting to simultaneously play and keep their balance as it careens around corners of a city at night. Characteristically matter-of-fact, there were no camera tricks or CGI involved in shooting the video.
“We were driving, we were actually driving. That was crazier, actually, than it looks. We had all the LED lighting, so the van it was shining, like GLOWING. We saw people filming with their phones and stuff, plus we had this big sound system, so it was super loud everywhere we drove!”
“The windows were maybe shoulder height, and we’re standing. So when you’re standing and playing, there’s no way you could look at the road. Everybody got really car sick too because we were just bouncing around in there. We shot those scenes for maybe like two hours, and afterwards I was super close to puking when we got out the van. But it’s definitely worth it!”
“The driver (worried about getting arrested). We were based outside our recording studio where we had all the equipment and stuff. When you pull out there, there is the BIGGEST police station and it’s right. Out. There. We had to pass that by a few times, so he’s like ‘Go down! Turn off the lights! Turn off the lights!’. We kind of snuck around the police station, and also when we were close to a traffic light and he saw people with phones, he was like ‘Oh no! That guy is calling! That guy is calling!’. He was super nervous (laughs). I guess he could have lost his licence for doing that without some kind of permit, but I can’t imagine you could get a permit for doing that anyway. I’m glad it turned out good, and no manager under arrest either.”
The first single unabashedly touches on ‘racist clowns’, and is lyrically dead serious. Erik expands on the subject matter, and whether or not it’s a theme throughout the new album.
“With the extreme right-wing movement in the whole western world, and it’s messed up what’s happening in the middle-east as well, people are so scared these days. People are scared, the economy’s bad, and they turn in to some strange egocentric, y’know… just filled up with hate. People are just scared, and we feel that’s the major cause of why this (racism) is happening, everywhere in the world. It’s a bad global situation. I don’t want to… yeah, but it could get really bad from all this. You get total world war vibes, world war 3 vibes.”
“Us, we haven’t been writing much about politics, just occasionally in our lyrics. But this time it felt like really important for us to say what we feel about everything. I’m really proud of it.”
With harsh modern realities more than worthy of musical exploration indeed becoming more prevalent across the globe, it’s worth enquiring as to whether or not True Brew is nothing but a serious address of social and political issues.
“We have a few uh… usual (chuckles) Millencolin lyrics as well, but yeah. Nikola has written, I’d say, about 50% political songs. That’s never happened before.”
Lastly, Erik helps fans understand the story behind the name for the latest album.
“It’s kind of… Nikola is brewing beer. He has his own micro-brewery thing with a thing at his house called Microfoam. That’s maybe why we though about brew, but it’s more like... in Swedish we say we are brewing notes when we are making songs. Brewing tunes. It’s like slang, or whatever. Boiling notes, actually, but it’s still like ‘brew’. The four of us came together and everybody’s putting their parts in to the mix to create this new album, so it’s like brew of Millencolin, and it’s pretty true to us, so… (laughs) that’s why we called it True Brew!”
True Brew is out now through Epitaph records. Buy it everywhere.
Todd Gingell
“Haha! Oh, I remember that! That’s great to hear. And, yeah, Soundwave is awesome. We love this festival. We did it back in ’11, and last year we did Warped Tour which felt like a mini-Soundwave. Of course you can’t really compare it. First of all for us Swedes, we escape the nasty cold winter down here and tour with great bands and great hotels… I can’t complain at all. Great people and everything.”
Soundwave sprawling to the two day epic it so successfully became this year made an already dense, whirlwind schedule that much busier for most bands on the line up. Although it must have been tiring flying back and forth multiple times between cities for the festivals and various sideshows, Erik is all for an ever busier run, while still planning to watch bands in amongst the shows.
“When we’re on tour, we don’t want days off at all! We want to play a show every day. I think days of are a waste of time. We would love to do a side show every day on our days off here. Since Soundwave are booking this tour, they choose the Sideshows and put them up for us.”
“Honestly I haven’t seen much (bands) yet! I plan to watch bands Saturday and Sunday now, because when we arrived we were so weirdly jet-lagged. I couldn’t sleep at night at all and during the day time I was… really strange (laughs). After we played it was about 6 o’ clock, then we’d have some food, then a signing session, then head back to the hotel. But now we’re adjusted! So Saturday I would love to see Lagwagon. We’ve played tons of shows with those guys, but they are playing earlier, so that kind of clashes. But then at night I want to see The Smashing Pumpkins, for sure. Yeah, (vocalist) Nikola stayed and watched them in Adelaide and said it was great. They played some of the old classic songs, which are the ones I want to hear. There’s tonnes of bands though, so I’m just going to walk around and check them all out. Then we’ve got a press day in Sydney, then we’re heading back home again.”
A whirlwind may be an understatement, considering Erik’s deduction of just how long they’ve spent down under for the tour.
“If you take out flying, I think we’re just in the country for nine days, or something! But absolutely something is better than nothing.”
Soundwave’s hectic run aside, the catalyst for their latest Australian tour is Millencolin’s new material. Single Sense And Sensibility was released with a clip before Soundwave, and months before the subsequent release of the rest of the True Brew album. Erik happily explains, at length, the band’s latest offering, and touches on his long standing job as art director for the band as well.
“I do everything! I even shot that (Sense And Sensibility) video (chuckles). It was never meant to become a real video clip for the song. Epitaph, they just wanted to put on some stationary graphics or the lyrics, or something, for the YouTube clip. But I was like, ‘Nah, nah, I’m going to try and make a DIY clip using GoPro cameras. So that’s what I did! I’m actually surprised at how good it turned out (laughs).”
Aforementioned clip finds Millencolin barely fitting in to the back of a garishly lit up and speeding van, and attempting to simultaneously play and keep their balance as it careens around corners of a city at night. Characteristically matter-of-fact, there were no camera tricks or CGI involved in shooting the video.
“We were driving, we were actually driving. That was crazier, actually, than it looks. We had all the LED lighting, so the van it was shining, like GLOWING. We saw people filming with their phones and stuff, plus we had this big sound system, so it was super loud everywhere we drove!”
“The windows were maybe shoulder height, and we’re standing. So when you’re standing and playing, there’s no way you could look at the road. Everybody got really car sick too because we were just bouncing around in there. We shot those scenes for maybe like two hours, and afterwards I was super close to puking when we got out the van. But it’s definitely worth it!”
“The driver (worried about getting arrested). We were based outside our recording studio where we had all the equipment and stuff. When you pull out there, there is the BIGGEST police station and it’s right. Out. There. We had to pass that by a few times, so he’s like ‘Go down! Turn off the lights! Turn off the lights!’. We kind of snuck around the police station, and also when we were close to a traffic light and he saw people with phones, he was like ‘Oh no! That guy is calling! That guy is calling!’. He was super nervous (laughs). I guess he could have lost his licence for doing that without some kind of permit, but I can’t imagine you could get a permit for doing that anyway. I’m glad it turned out good, and no manager under arrest either.”
The first single unabashedly touches on ‘racist clowns’, and is lyrically dead serious. Erik expands on the subject matter, and whether or not it’s a theme throughout the new album.
“With the extreme right-wing movement in the whole western world, and it’s messed up what’s happening in the middle-east as well, people are so scared these days. People are scared, the economy’s bad, and they turn in to some strange egocentric, y’know… just filled up with hate. People are just scared, and we feel that’s the major cause of why this (racism) is happening, everywhere in the world. It’s a bad global situation. I don’t want to… yeah, but it could get really bad from all this. You get total world war vibes, world war 3 vibes.”
“Us, we haven’t been writing much about politics, just occasionally in our lyrics. But this time it felt like really important for us to say what we feel about everything. I’m really proud of it.”
With harsh modern realities more than worthy of musical exploration indeed becoming more prevalent across the globe, it’s worth enquiring as to whether or not True Brew is nothing but a serious address of social and political issues.
“We have a few uh… usual (chuckles) Millencolin lyrics as well, but yeah. Nikola has written, I’d say, about 50% political songs. That’s never happened before.”
Lastly, Erik helps fans understand the story behind the name for the latest album.
“It’s kind of… Nikola is brewing beer. He has his own micro-brewery thing with a thing at his house called Microfoam. That’s maybe why we though about brew, but it’s more like... in Swedish we say we are brewing notes when we are making songs. Brewing tunes. It’s like slang, or whatever. Boiling notes, actually, but it’s still like ‘brew’. The four of us came together and everybody’s putting their parts in to the mix to create this new album, so it’s like brew of Millencolin, and it’s pretty true to us, so… (laughs) that’s why we called it True Brew!”
True Brew is out now through Epitaph records. Buy it everywhere.
Todd Gingell