Raised Fist Part 1- Alexander Hagman
Posted on January 13, 2008 at 9:50 pm by admin
As always, thanks has to go out to Keith from Epitaph for asking me to do this interview. As I explained in the first question, I didn’t know much about the band because information was difficult to find. I would find out later after the interview, that Raised Fist actually doesn’t do very many interviews! What a stroke of luck! Hopefully a lot of those fans out there will get a chance to learn a little more about Raised Fist, and for those of you who haven’t heard them, give them a listen at their MySpace page.
Way Too Loud: I’ve had some difficulty finding info on the band, and I was just wondering if this was something intentional on the part of the band, perhaps trying to keep an underground persona.
Alexander Hagman: Our MySpace oage is pretty much the thing that is out, and nothing more than that has been put out there, at least not from us! We also don’t write what’s on our MySpace page, or control it in any way. I don’t know why we should give people information. We’re just a band, and we play, and release records. The records have lyrics, and our names are stated there on the back of it, so there’s not much more to say really.
WTL: How did you get hooked up with Matte Modin?
Alex: Matte Modin was supposed just supposed to be a stand-in for the last tour in Canada. He was going to be a stand in for Oskar [Karlsson], because Oskar had a big problem touring, but after the tour, we used him more and more, and then we spoke with Oskar, and we said that we think we’re going to keep Matte for the record as well because he has some new shit that we want to try out, and he said “Yeah, sure, I understand because he tours with you and he has some of the groundwork.” The last drummer lived in Uppsala and played with Defleshed, and then he left, then we had the connection with Uppsala, AND Matte Modin was playing in Dark Funeral and Defleshed, so we took the first drummer from Defleshed, and then we took their second drummer! There wasn’t a clash really because Defleshed had stopped [playing] and Matte was in Dark Funeral and Raised Fist for many years, but now he’s stopped with them.
WTL: The lineup changes appear pretty stable.
Alex: The lineup changes have actually been pretty messy throughout the years. Since we got serious with the band, and we play regularly and tour and release albums, we’ve had the same lineup, except Oskar.
WTL: Did the lineup become stable after your first EP?
Alex: No, it was after “Ignoring The Guidelines”. After “Dedication”, this lineup became stable. Me, Josse [Andreas Johansson] the bass player and Marco [Eronon] have been in the band since we started. Then we added one more guitarist [Daniel Holmberg], and then there was the drummer change. The second guitarist was a friend of the band before. He’s my best friends little brother, so it felt like family when he joined. It was like he was just too young before, and then he started learning how to play, and we said “Yeah, you’re good enough! We think you’re mature to go in a serious band!”
WTL: I’ve heard how fast Matte can go, so are there any plans to utilize his skills and have him play at full tilt?
Alex: You never know! We have some plans. There are some songs that have a pretty fast tempo, but I want to have contrasts every time. If I have something hard soft, and if I play something fast I want to have some kind of breakdown. Definitely we’re going to use that. We’ve already started a bit. We did it on “Dedication” with Oskar, so yeah, we’re going to try and experiment with everything we possibly can, but not to the point where everything becomes complicated, and then it’s supposed to be good just because it’s complicated. It’s like everyone can play complicated. Now you can just pick [something] randomly on your drum program, then just rehearse it and play it. I think it’s harder to write a song like “Breaking Me Up” for example because you have the same bassline all the way, and it becomes a good song, nothing fancy. It’s like rock and roll for example. You can play some easy shit that becomes legendary songs forever. For hardcore songs, I think you need the tempo, the aggression, the emotion, the rhythms, the melody, everything woven into the music. We will not go into black metal, grinding metal, even we can do it. I want to see some finesse in the music, not just showing off.
WTL: Have you found the growing association with metal and hardcore to be helpful?
Alex: Yeah, we have actually! We’ve always been very into both, because some of us growing up, there were some of us playing hardcore and some of us playing metal, and some of us changing with side projects beyond Raised Fist. Some of our members have played in death metal bands. Macro played in melodic metal bands, signed to Century Media I think. Matte has been on 10 albums by now, I think. So it’s metal, rock, everything! So we have everything in there, in the mix.
WTL: I’ve heard that live shows are fairly limited, and I was wondering if it was due to real-life responsibilities like families and day jobs.
Alex: We like to play live, but what we do on stage is very demanding. It takes a lot of energy out of you, so you get very drained after playing some shows. You only have your batteries filled with a certain amount of energy, and I think it gets a little bit boring when you tour, and you have to recoup all that energy every night. We started this tour in Chicoutimi, and the show lasted only 7 minutes because we busted a hole in the bass players head, he was bleeding all over, and that was the last thing we did when we ended the last tour in Vancouver. I have you see [shows me his ankles, they’re in rough shape], and I’m just a singer! I walk every day, and that’s no problem, but when I play live, all of the sudden the shoes become like fucking knives, so we end up playing like 45 minutes max. The guitarists slash their fingers open on the strings when they jump and pull it, so they try to put bandages and shit over it, but there’s so much blood on these guitars, it’s just ridiculous. We have to use spray to get it off, it’s really disgusting! After the last Canadian tour, which was 36 days in a row, I was in such good shape that I looked like fucking Iggy Pop when I got home! I was ripped to the bone! I usually go training a month before we go on tour just to have the conditioning to scream. That’s why we decided to go with 14 consecutive days as maximum nowadays on tour, and before that, it took 7 years before we went on the first tour, because we didn’t feel the need. We didn’t feel live, we just wanted to play music, and we thought that was good. We wanted to hang out with our friends and skateboard, and when they asked us if we wanted to go, we said “What the fuck?”. We were all so young, so it was harder to get into touring at the beginning. Bands like Melincolin, we weren’t on the same level as them at the start, and they wanted us to come on the Burning Heart tour in Australia. We didn’t know how we’d get to Australia. Am I supposed to book tickets? Visas? Cash? I didn’t have money then, I got it from my mom to by candy or something, so going to Australia was too much, like never going to happen, but then after awhile we got into it, and we went on the first tour, a van tour in Europe, 11 days, and that was after “Ignoring The Guidelines”. People were like “What the fuck guys? This is really good shit you’re doing onstage” and we don’t know! We’d played shows in Luleå, our home town and we were always smashing guitars in the rehearsal room, so when we went on stage, that was just the same thing, the adrenaline, and after that, it was like “Fuck this! This is the thing!” Live, you get the energy output, and the input from the people as well!
We are very picky about what tours to do and what tours not to do, not for any career reason, we just ask ourselves if this is a place we want to travel? Are we going to have fun? Who’s with us? Et cetera, et cetera.
We had some bookers that we worked with, but we cancelled them, and now we don’t have any booking agent. We have friends that have worked as bookers before. They do it on a personal level. We have a guy in Scandinavia, a guy named Marco in Europe. He has a label, but he knows how we work, so we do it personally with him. Here in Canada we just use the guy that we used before. We tried agencies, but they were just fucking assholes. Or maybe we were the assholes! Or maybe 2 assholes just clashing! (Laughs) It feels good now though, doing it just however we want.
WTL: What’s the scene like over in Europe?
Alex: First of all, it’s very hard for us to talk about the scene in Sweden/Scandinavia because we’re not a hardcore band in that context anymore. We play a lot more metal, a lot more rock and roll-ish, and I think that Raised Fist has a pretty unique sound as it is right now. Of course we’re influenced by hardcore, and I would say a big percentage of the band is a hardcore band, but we have a lot of followers in Sweden who have never heard the term hardcore, and they come to our shows. Our music plays on the radio, and if we play Stockholm we can play a sold out show of 15 000 18+, and people all the way up to 45 come out, and they don’t know what hardcore is. We sell to the metal people, the hard rock, the rock and roll and the hardcore people. People can relate to it. It’s not only hardcore. In some areas, we play more hardcore shows, and the scene seems good, but mostly now we play very big shows.
In Germany, Italy and Greece, there’s a scene going on. We play more rough shows there, and it’s really cool. Here in Canada we play to a more hardcore-ish style set up. I really love it because I’ve been hardcore all the way. It’s been my contribution to the band, while Matte Modin is the metal contribution.
WTL: I’m curious if a band like Cult Of Luna has any sort of connection with a band like Raised Fist.
Alex: We live very close, they just live in the next city. We’ve played with them before. We played a big festival, and they were in a little tent for a couple hundred people while we played in front of 15 000, so the difference band-wise in Sweden is enormous. They’re a good band.
In Flames comes to our shows, and we go bask stage with Slayer, and the people who set up the festival, so we don’t get the feel of those smaller bands like Cult Of Luna or Nine. It’s been such a development in Sweden, but when we go back to Europe, we go back to the 300-700 person [venues]. We meet some metal bands, but I can’t say that I love hardcore/metal, because I don’t. You know At The Gates? I put up a show with them back in the day when they were still active in my hometown, that’s my relation to them. I met [some of the members] after Hellfest. That’s metal for me. The new thing that’s going on is exactly what’s been going on a long time ago. People grow up and listen to the new shit, but they don’t realize it’s just a copy from the old with a few new flavours!
I’m born and raised with death metal, like At The Gates, the bands before them, and after them that came at that time.
Raised Fist at MySpace
Raised Fist at Burning Heart
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