Email Interview with Charlie of Hellsingland Underground

Location: Sweden

Date: December 3, 2007

MT:  For people not familiar with Hellsingland Underground, describe your music.

Charlie: Hmm... it's always hard to describe the sound of something with words. How would you describe the sound of a jet plane for a bushman who haven't heard one?
 
But I'll do my best here: if you would imagine a mad scientist inventing this band from scratch, he would probably have used the DNA from southern rock bands like The Allman Brothers & The Marshall Tucker Band, steal the brain of Bob Dylan or Neil Young, add some blood from Thin Lizzy & Led Zeppelin, some dope damaged sperm from Aerosmith's drug period and finally spice it up with the sound of Appetite For Destruction by Guns N Roses. Then he would let Gimli from The Lord Of The Rings movie play the bass, ha ha. If you like these ingredients, you will will probably like Hellsingland Underground too.

MT: Again for people not familiar to the band, tell us how you got together.
 
Charlie: It's a pretty long story that kind of developed over many years. The first time I met Mats & Patrik was on a record company meeting, about 5 years ago. And it's pretty surprising that we now actually have a band together, since our first meeting was kind of fucked up!
 
I'm an artist/illustrator, and I was asked by Sound Pollution to make an album cover illustration for a band called Maryslim. I had heard about the band before, seen their posters and stuff on the streets of Stockholm, but I had never heard their music. Carl von Schewen, the record company boss had sent me a burnt CD with their music, which I hadn't really had the time to listen to before the meeting. So as we sat there discussing what kind of cover they wanted, I thought that they would go for something that represented their music. Then Mats asked me what kind of music I thought they were playing. And since I hadn't had time to listen to their album (Split Vision) I just assumed by the way Urrke and Kent looked with all their tattoos and stuff that it must have been kind of glam/punk/garage.
 
So I said "Well, you're kind of like Backyard Babies, The Hellacopters aren't you?" And Mats almost freaked out, "What the fuck do you mean? Have you actually listened to the album?!" I lied and said "Yes, many times." "And you still think it sounds like Backyard Babies/Hellacopters??" "Yeah, well... sort of". Ha ha, not that he doesn't like those bands, but he was pretty pissed. Then the band started to argue with their record company about some other issue that I can't remember, screaming at each other, and I was just sitting there feeling awkward. When Lisa, my girlfriend, asked me about how the meeting did go I said "Good I think, but the singer (Mats) was kinda weird". Ha ha... But to my big surprise he called me up a week later and asked me if I wanted to go to The Solution's release party with him. We did, and we became really good friends instantly.
 
Some years later, backstage at a Maryslim gig, I told Patrik about this band that I wanted to form one day, and he said "If you ever form that band, I have to play drums in it!" and I said yes instantly, because I think he's the greatest drummer ever.
 
In 2006, when I had been writing all these songs over the summer, I called Mats up and asked him if he knew any great bluesy guitarists, that was into Allman Brothers and stuff, because I knew he was going to all these blues gigs and knew those kind of musicians. "What about me?" he said. I didn't even consider him because I thought he was a more metal oriented guitarist, cause that was all I had heard him play in Maryslim. So I said "Naah, I don't know..." Play me one of your songs" he said. So I started to play "Northern Country Boy" on my acoustic guitar over the phone. He picked up his electric guitar and started playing a bunch of really beautiful melodies and solos on his end "You want something like this, right?" And it was perfect right there! So I said a little surprised "I guess you are that guy". So we met up and jammed, drank a lot and wrote "Child Of Another Time" together, and we felt that we had something really good going on. And now all we needed was a bass player.
 
I had just arrived alone to a party, when I spotted a guy with long hair and the thickest beard I've ever seen and a beer in his hand. And I thought that he looked exactly like a guy that would be into this kind of music. And if he would be a bass player it would be like a divine intervention. So I just went up to him and asked him "Hey, you're not a bass player, are you?" He started to laugh and said "Yes I am." I told him about this band that we were putting together, and he became interested, even though he had two other bands already. So we set up a rehearsal and Patrik brought along Mathias, the keyboard player, who he had been playing with in various blues & soul projects before. And it sounded so incredibly good right there, that it felt like it was meant to be! I had never experienced anything like it before actually. Magic moment.
 
Half a year later, before our first gig, we thought that we needed an extra guitarist, so Mats called up his childhood friend Peter and asked him if he would like to join the band. He said yes. And then the whole band came up to our house in Ljusdal two days before the gig for some rehearsals and drinking. And we were a full band.

MT: How did you come up with the name of the band?

Charlie: Hälsingland (Halsingland but with 2 dots over the first "a") is the place were I was born and raised in. It has a lot of old legends about strange creatures living the dark woods and rivers and stuff, most of them are trying to lure people into temptation and doing bad things. Like the nude guy, playing his violin naked in the river. Or the Forest Lady trying to seduce hunters in the forest by showing off her beautiful naked body, and then when they followed her long enough into the woods, she turns her back on them, and there's a big dark ugly hole in her back! Like a scar or something... But my favorite legend is about Satan coming to town playing his violin so extremely good that the young people can't stop dancing. So they dance and dance until their feet start to bleed, and then fall off, so they're dancing on their bloody legs, and finally it's just their heads dancing around in a ring up on the Horga Mountain. You can still see that ring up there, like a path. Me and a friend had an idea of making a horror movie about that, but in a new version with Satan returning as a techno DJ, and we would call the movie "Hellsingland".
 
But since he had a serious drug problem it never happened. One day, him and I talked about this guy who lives in a trailer out in the woods outside of Delsbo in Halsingland. Where people from all around go to buy weed from. He's an old hippie kind of guy who just sits around with his sawn off shotgun and don't talk so much, just like some character from an American road movie or something. And it struck me that this is a side of Halsingland that you don't read about in the tourist brochures or in the local papers, where all they do is try to describe how wonderful everything is...  That's Hellsingland Underground, I said. I just thought it sounded great. That trailer guy is the same guy that I wrote the lyrics to "Child Of Another Time" about.

MT: What made you start a band?

Charlie: I've been playing in different bands since I was about 15 years old. It used to be the only thing I ever did. Rehearsed four, five days a week, writing songs and drinking with my band, and that was about it. It came to a point where I felt that I had missed out on a lot of other things. You know all my friends had travelled around the world 2 times when I had just stayed home because I never had any money, or I had to play with my band on some shitty club or something. So when my last band broke up I felt like I wanted to do something else. So I didn't play any music at all for about 5 years, I was just concentrating on my art & film projects, and getting drunk a lot. And I thought that I never wanted to be in a band again.
 
But I think something happened when me & Lisa had our baby daughter in the summer of 2006, and moved up to our summerhouse in our childhood town of Ljusdal again. Right on the shores of the Ljusnan River. I sat on the balcony every night, high on life, ha ha, drinking wine and playing guitar and I just started to hear all these songs in my head you know. I guess I just got really inspired from that huge change in my life. So I just had to do it. I can't play guitar properly myself, so I knew I had to have a band. And also, I'm kinda sick of all these "lonely men with a guitar" kinda artists. I could never see myself as a solo artist. And I really missed playing live and the feeling of being a bunch of guys against the rest of the world kinda thing. A bunch of outlaws driving from town to town steering up trouble, you know, ha ha...

MT: Tell us about your OTHER job!!

Charlie: Job? What do you mean, job? Ha ha ha...This is not a job to me, it's my life and my biggest interest beside the music, that I have been lucky enough to make a living of... And I'm grateful every day for that. I do illustrations and design for record covers, I make music videos and that kinda stuff. Everything I've ever been interested in evolves around some kind of artistic and creative expression. I couldn't have an ordinary job. I tried it, but I fuck it up every time. I even got kicked out of college because I just couldn't get myself to do all the boring stuff that you were supposed to. Like getting up in time and stuff. So I thank God or Satan or whoever gave me my artistic side.

MT: Musical Influences?

Charlie: I first got really interested in music when I was a kid and saw a Rolling Stones concert on TV, I still remember the chills down my spine and how every little tiny hair on my 8 year old arms just raised as they played "Start Me Up" and I saw Mick Jagger's spastic moves. It was like some new part of my brain just had been opened!
 
Then my moms sister who still was a teenager at the time, gave me a tape of old 50's stuff, you know with Rock around the clock, Bee Bap A Lula, Let's Twist again, Jailhouse Rock and all those hits of the 50's. And I played it until the tape broke. And learned all the lyrics to all the songs, without having any idea of what they meant. Dad had all the Beatles albums so I grew up listening a lot to them as well.
 
Then when I was about 10, a guy in school had played me the song "Motörhead" by Motörhead and I was blown away, and I asked him what it was, and he said "It's Heavy Metal". I went home directly after school and asked my dad if he had any albums with Heavy Metal on them. I think he had no idea what that was at the time, but he did his best and took out an album with Santana!! "This might be kinda Heavy Metal". So I listened to that album, but it didn't sound anything like the song my friend had played earlier, except for one riff! I listened to that riff over and over again, thinking that this was the shit.
 
Later I discovered AC/DC, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. And Black Sabbath of course. Then came "Appetite for Destruction" with Guns N Roses, and it completely changed my life over one summer. I still think that's one of the greatest albums of all time. And by discovering them I sort of opened up to other kind of music as well, since they were more of a rock n roll band, and not so much classical metal. Bands like Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Neil Young e.t.c. Wich then led to even more "rootsy" stuff like The Allman Brothers e.t.c.

MT: If you could switch lives with anyone for one day who would it be and why?

Charlie: I would switch with my 1,5 year old daughter just to experience the world through her eyes. Feel the pure excitement and insane happiness that she get when I sing "Twinkle little star" or some other children's song for her.

MT: Take us through the writing process of the band.

Charlie: Most songs so far have been written by me on an acoustic guitar. But since I'm a pretty lousy guitarist, it's usually very basic chords just for the band to get the hang of it you know. Then I play them to Mats, or directly to the whole band in the rehearsal place. And they all add all their little melodies, riffs, and punctuations here and there and just basically jamming out until it sounds great. With "Child Of Another Time" I just had the whole song melody in my head - but no chords, so I just sang it to Mats and he came up with the chords and stuff. The instrumental track "Ljusnan Riverside Jam" Mats wrote all by himself. So it can be a little different from time to time.

MT: Will you be touring in 2008? What are your plans for the band?

Charlie: First of all we will get our album out, in March hopefully. Then we will try to play live as much as possible. We don't have a real booking agency yet, just a bunch of people that really likes us that helps us getting gigs here and there. So if you're a booking agency reading this, give us a call! Our plan is to continue to write and record good music. We are writing constantly and have already 6 or 7 new songs.

MT: Give me 5 facts about yourself.

1. I have serious tinnitus, both my ears are constantly ringing.
2. I will move back to Ljusdal permanently on the 15th of December. And I have no idea how that will affect me.
3. I tend either to talk too much, (as you may have noticed!) or not at all.
4. I hate sleeping, it's such a waste of time. Somebody please invent some kind of super drug that makes sleeping unnecessary! You would have twice as long life.
5. I can be a very grumpy little bastard from time to time, according to my girlfriend.

MT: Give me one word to describe your music.

Charlie: Solid.

MT: Message for your fans?
 
Charlie: You have made us so happy since we first put up our music online the first time, all your comments and e-mails, and all the love you've been showing us. We couldn't dream about so many people liking us when we started this band. It feels like we are doing something meaningful, even though were not cancer scientists or anything. It's pretty amazing that I wrote a bunch of lyrics about my life and my friends in a small little town in Sweden and we get mails from people from countries like Japan, Brazil and Bosnia saying that they can relate to it. We love you all. See you on tour - or in hell!