Oscar Dronjak – HammerFall

HammerFall are one of my favourite metal bands. It goes without saying that there is something enticing about their music. Yes, it can be cheesy at times, but it is also incredibly energetic and uplifting. Their music never fails to lift my spirits, and it allows me a unique portal to those fantasies in my head about warrior’s code, epic Templar knights, and so on, in a way I never could within the mundanity of everyday life. With HammerFall set to hit Australian shores for the first time ever on October 13th, I had the opportunity to catch up with guitarist, songwriter and band founder, Oscar Dronjak. Having had the pleasure to interview Oscar last year also (in what remains to date one of my absolute favourite interviews), I jumped at the chance to speak with him once again. The result was as good, if not better than the last. Without further adieu, please read ahead.

Jumping right into it, I asked Oscar what his and the band’s feelings were toward their first trip down under. “I’ve never been there before, not even privately,” Oscar notes, “so I’m really looking forward to it. You hear about Australia as far as metal goes all the time, but since we’ve never been there I’ve never seen it firsthand. But I’ve wanted to go there for quite a while now, and I’m so happy that we finally get to do it; even if it’s just one show.”

HammerFall Australia 2015 – tickets available now via 170 Russell & Oztix

Oscar is quite a passionate gamer in his own life, even going as far as to set up his own personal tour-ready gaming case, complete with an inbuilt TV screen and Xbox One. I asked Oscar about how he began in gaming, “I grew up with Game & Watch,” he began. “I remember when they came out, I couldn’t believe it. My older brother had a Commodore 64. He played a lot of games on that. I have a younger brother as well and we used to sneak into his room when he was at work or university, and play computer games all summer or every time we had a chance, basically. Then when Nintendo came into the picture, I couldn’t afford to buy one when I was that age so I rented with a friend of mine quite often on the weekends, and we used to play Friday for as long as could until we fell asleep, and then we left the game on overnight so we wouldn’t miss any of the progress we’d made, and then come Saturday morning we started playing again through the whole day, until repeated again on Sunday. So it’s been a passion of mine since I was very young.” In terms of the specialist case he made, Oscar explained, “Every time I played it, it felt like I could sit there for two or three hours just relaxed, and not have to think about anything else than what I was thinking at that one moment. I actually saved some of the games (Grand Theft Auto V and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare) for the tour, so I would have something to play on the tour. That was really cool and I’m so happy I did that.”

Oscar has also, both in the past and presently speaking, been invested in the likes of professional wrestling and MMA. “We only had two channels on TV when I grew up, and there was no wrestling in Sweden.” Oscar recalls. “Wrestling in Sweden has always been laughed at, as a ridiculous form of entertainment for Americans only, basically. I discovered it in Texas in ’91. It was when I saw The Undertaker for the first time. This sounds like a cliche, but he was so cool! I knew I had to start watching this. Between ’91 and I would say 2006/7, this was my absolute biggest passion outside of heavy metal. I went to see the Wrestlemania 21 in Hollywood because Motorhead was playing the Triple H entrance theme there (“King of Kings”). He, Micky D, could see that I liked wrestling and I was basically the only person he knew that liked wrestling, so he said, ‘You should come over for a weekend’, and I was like, ‘I can’t come to L.A. for a weekend. Are you crazy?’ And he said, ‘Why not?’ I had no good answer to that question, so off we went!” Oscar laughs. “I brought a friend with me — my wrestling buddy, the only person I knew who liked wrestling as much as I do — and this was crazy. We got to be backstage at Wrestlemania and also at the after party where all the wrestlers attended. This was like teenage Oscar being backstage at a festival where the lineup consisted of Judas Priest, Accept, King Diamond, KISS, Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, all of those people that I looked up to and thought I’d only see on television. Everyone was walking around there. It was the most ridiculous thing I have ever experience in my whole life. It’s one of the highlights of my life.”

Continuing, “After that, my wrestling interest started to fade a little bit, and I had watched MMA — specifically the Ultimate Fighting Championship — since the end of the ’90s. Being a wrestling and MMA fan in the 90s in Sweden was really difficult. If you didn’t have a connection in Germany or England (which were two countries who actually aired the stuff), it was very difficult to get ahold of anything. So I read mostly back then, and I also watched all the Paperviews because I had a tape trader connection who sold me the videotapes of those. And it was through him that I discovered there was such a thing called mixed martial arts. So then when the wrestling interest started fading, the MMA interest was still going stronger than ever.”

Following the release of ‘(r)Evolution’ also came the sad departure of long-time drummer, Anders Johansson. Enlisting David Wallin of PAIN to cover drum duties for the world tour, I asked Oscar how difficult it was at first for him and the band to adjust to no longer having Anders as a part of the lineup? And whether Wallin has fit well into the fold of the band since? “I’d played with Anders for fifteen years, so I thought it was going to be extremely difficult to replace him, both personally and musically, but it turned out that David fit so well into the group that it was almost seamless. What he brought to the band besides his music and his great personality was a lot of energy, and that was necessary. It was needed. A lot of youthful enthusiasm, I guess you could say. And that helped us a lot. You know, if you just have someone who has all of this energy and you have some energy yourself, you feed off of each other. I think that’s what happened with [(r)Evolution].”

When I interviewed Oscar last year, one of the things he and I discussed was his passion for George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series, as well as the significant influence it’s had on his body of work. Now that the television series has reached the most up-to-date instalment in the series – that being ‘A Dance With Dragons’ – it’s already been stated by the producers of Game of Thrones that the series is going ahead, with the guidance of Martin’s notes, as well as their own plans for where to take it next. I pondered the question to Oscar that if he were able to finish the series in whatever he chose, how would he end it? “I have no idea how I would end it,” he exclaimed. “That’s the thing, I’m not writing it, you know? I enjoy it, I experience it, I live it, basically. And that’s why I want to experience what George Martin has to come up with, because I know that whatever way he chooses to go, I know it’s going to be brilliant. I might not be the happy ending or the ending that I want, but I know it’s going to be a brilliant ending.” I then asked whether he’d continue to watch Game of Thrones beyond this point? “Absolutely not. I will not watch one more second of the rest. I love the series, and I love certain things about it, but it’s not the books. That’s the thing. Everything else pales in comparison. And that’s the case with anything. I would be surprised if any movie or TV series adaptation were better than the book. I have yet to encounter that. I don’t think I ever will. It doesn’t matter what it is, everything is better in writing.”

(r)Evolution – out now via Nuclear Blast Records

Before we wrapped, I asked if Oscar had any last words he’d like to offer his fans. “I’m dying to go to Australia, and this tour’s going to be the most fun tour. It’s going to be the hardest tour that we’ve done because we have shows and flights, and I don’t know how many thousands of miles to go in the short span of time, but I really can’t wait to come to Australia for the first time. I know people probably say this all the time, but they should! Going to Australia for me, now, is like going to America for the first time when I did that. As far as I’ve understood, the heavy metal contingent in Australia is much stronger now than it was back in the ‘90s. So I’m really looking forward to experiencing that for the first time, and I really think that the people that come to the show will be blown away by HammerFall. Because that’s the feeling that I get when we play nowadays.”

As an interesting footnote, my friend and I have always wondered what the meaning behind the song, “Titan”, was, from 2006’s ‘Threshold’ album. We believed either Titan A.E. or Warhammer 40,000. Turns out it was neither. “First, you’re going to be surprised but then you’re going to realise,” Oscar enthused. “As we’ve been talking about, you know I’ve been a longtime fan of wrestling, and I’m not sure if they still have it, but they had a building back in the day called the Titan Towers. Titan Sports owned the WWF back then, for a while. But they had the Titan Towers, and I always thought that ‘titan’ was a really cool word, so that’s where it came from. Not bigger or more interesting than that, so to speak!” Oscar laughs. And there you have it!

Thanks to Front Row Touring, Metal Obsession, and Screaming Symphony, HammerFall are coming to Australia for the first time ever on October 13, for an exclusive one-show-only at 170 Russell, Melbourne! Tickets are available now via 170 Russell and Oztix.

Related Posts

• 

  El Colosso – Forgotten Ancestors
• 

  HJELVIK – Welcome to Hel
• 

  AC/DC – Power Up
• 

  Depravity – Grand Malevolence