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Babylon Bombs

Introduce yourselves – Who’s in the band and what do they play?
Marty: Hello, I’m Marty, I play the bass guitar, Fuck you, I love you! (laughter)
Dani: I’m Dani, I play guitar and sing, take care of yourselves
Swaint: Hi there, it’s Swaint playing the drums, and I didn’t get laid last night. (laughter) Sorry.

How has your trip to the UK been so far?
Dani: Great, really great. We’ve just played the one gig, last night, it was an extra gig, we we’re only supposed to do this one. A guy called Stuart contacted Swaint and told us he wanted us to play in Crewe
Marty: It was a great show! We played with some local bands, they were good man.

Who would you say your heroes are?
Swaint: Everything from Tommy Lee to Diego Maradona! (laughter)
Dani: I guess Bret Michaels had a big influence on me, after that I discovered Steven Tyler, and of course Nikki Sixx is the coolest guy on the plant, ‘nuff said.
Marty: I listened a lot to the Sex Pistols, I don’t think Sid Vicious was the greatest bass player, but he was the greatest rock n roll star. And The Clash of course.

A lot of people have accused sleaze bands of being all about the image. How important would you say image is for you?
Dani: Image is really important, but if you don’t have the songs, then image means shit. You have to start with writing a good song, then you can add on the image to make a great live performance, but you’ve got to have songs first. A lot of bands spray their hair first, and then try to write a song.
Marty: Number one in Babylon Bombs has always been the music. We want to put on a great show, you have to have something. You don’t want to look like you just got out of bed, you want to look cool.
Dani: People pay for the ticket, so I guess they expect to see something a bit extra, but as long as we’re happy having a good time onstage, that’s natural, its not like we’re putting on makeup like Kiss or something!
Swaint: You look at Keith Richards, or Joe Perry from Aerosmith, you can’t be even cooler than those guys. They have cool sneakers, they have a bandana, those guys are the coolest on the planet. Now that’s a role model (laughter).
Marty: That’s image in the best possible way.

What is your stance on drugs on the rock scene? Is that much of a problem in Sweden?
Marty: When we tour Europe, you say you’re from Sweden, people offer you drugs and stuff, an we say no, I don’t do drugs. And then you tell them that in Sweden you drink a lot of home brewed alcohol, and they say ‘No! You can’t do that, it’s so dangerous!’ In Sweden, since you’re two years old you learn never try any drugs, but have this drink… (laughter)
Dani: And we scared everyone outside Scandinavia with our snuff! (Takes out enormous tin of evil-looking brown powder…)
Marty: I think alcohol is enough.

It’s been a couple of years since your last album – when can we expect a new one?
Dani: We’re doing it right now
Swaint: The single’s finished, we’re playing it tonight, it’s called Goodbye and Good Luck. We’re releasing it end of August, with a single and video hopefully, then recording for the album late September, October time, hopefully released next year.

Who are you recording with, anyone we’ll have heard of?
Swaint: Maybe, it’s a guy called Chris Laney, he’s done all kinds of stuff, glam rock, heavy metal…
Marty: He pushes us harder than we do ourselves, we don’t have any patience in this band you know! (laughter) It’s like, lets do this song, we’ll record it live, our first two albums we’re pretty much recorded live. You’d say, this is a good take, let’s do the next one, and the producer would say ‘Why don’t you try this?’. In the beginning it was really hard to get used to people changing your songs, saying ‘Why don’t you do it like this?’ ‘Hey, I’m the bass player, don’t tell me what to do!’, but in the end it turned out so much better. We learned a lesson there.

If you could, would you go back and record the first two albums like that?
Swaint: I don’t think so. Sometimes you wish so, but everything has its time, you can’t look back, we have to look forward.
Marty: The thing is, when you tour on a record and you play the songs live, you find things and you think ‘Whoa, that’s amazing, I should’ve done this on the record’.
Dani: But if you wait and try out the songs for three years, the record would be so boring and old like a Rush album!

(Swaint takes a picture, a pretty lady walks past and there is much distraction)

Swedish bands are very big in the UK at the moment…
Dani: Are you sure? I don’t see any money in my account! (laughter)
Marty: When we’re playing shows here, everyone comes up to us and asks if we know this band in Sweden, names I’ve never even heard of, but everyone knows them over here!

What next for Babylon Bombs?
Dani: Writing, Recording, Releasing!
Swaint: We have some festival dates in Sweden…

Aren’t you playing with Alice Cooper?
Band: YEAH!
Martyn: I’m gonna get a picture of me with Alice Cooper!
Dani: Maybe a small tour in Italy
Swaint: We’re hopefully gonna play here and there, during the recording, we’ll always play live, we’re fortunate to be out there playing live, its in the blood.

www.babylonbombs.net / www.myspace.com/babylonbombs

Hell N' Diesel

Introduce yourselves – Who’s in the band, what do they play and what are their vices?
Evil: I am Evil, I’m the lead singer, and my vices are PORN and BOOZE.
Blanco: I’m Blanco, I’m the drummer… MEAT!
Sudden: I’m Sudden, I’m playing the bass and my vice is BEER
Maxx: I’m Maxx Whyte, one of the two guitarists and I’m in love with FAST FOOD
Blanco: ...and we’re missing Sledge, who’s vice is to never be anywhere in time!

What made you guys decide to form a band?
Band: The love of life… Chicks… Meat… Booze and porn!
Evil: For the vices!
Blanco: Live for the vices.

What we’re your guy’s favourite bands when you were growing up?
Evil: Motley Crue, and Boston, Twisted Sister, I was a big fan of those bands. 80’s music in general I think. My bigger brother fed me with rock n roll music, like Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper…

How’s the reaction been to your last album, I hear it’s going down really well in the US, it’s getting lots of radio airplay.
Evil: Well, it isn’t released in the states yet, but the US has been really sweet for us so far, we’ve got great response from the US, and we hope that when we release the album now its gonna get even better. That’s like the mother country for our kind of music, we really want to go to the states, it would be like our shallow dream come true (laughter), we’re hoping for the best.

How about at home and across Europe?
Evil: In Sweden? Well, Sweden sucks! (laughter) No, we’ve had a great response in Sweden as well, but Sweden is a really hard country. There are so many bands in Sweden, and a really big scene, but we don’t have so many stages to play. We’ve got maybe three or four good clubs in Sweden, and all the bands play in those places, so there is great competition. Swedish bands often try to go abroad instead because it’s easier to get gigs…
Swedish bands are really big over here these days
Evil: Yeah, well I think Swedish music in general is working pretty well abroad, there are some great bands. We’re not focusing on Sweden so much now, we want to go and play abroad, we think we’ve got a bigger shot abroad.

You’re playing an all-Swedish line-up tonight – who are some of the best bands you’ve played with?
Evil: It’s part Finnish actually, the first band tonight Crumbland is from Finland…
Blanco: Hehe, played with… (laughter) Played a show with…We’ve done a couple of shows with Babylon Bombs (also playing tonight), that’s a great band. We have had some crazy times with those guys! Most of the bands we play with are nice people, but I can’t really put my finger on one band, aside from Babylon Bombs…
Sudden: The Tomb!

Any you’d really like to play with?
Evil: Aerosmith
Band: YEAH!
Evil: Also Motley Crue, I’m the biggest Motley Crue fan!

What are your ambitions as a band? Just to get out there and play, or try to take over the world?
Evil: We want to take over the world! (laughter). When you play in a band you want to get bigger all the time, you want to go forward. We’re really looking forward to the US release now, we’ll probably do a tour there, but we don’t have any dates set yet.

On a scale on a scale of 1 to 10, how hard do you guys like to party - Coldplay or Motley Crue?
Evil: You should have seen us in Copenhagen a few weeks back, that was Motley Crue times… a lot!

What happened, or aren’t you allowed to say?
Evil: Lets just say that everything happened that should happen… We had free beers that night, we played The Rock in Copenhagen, a great rock club, and at four in the morning they said ‘We can’t give you any more beer. You have had more beer than any other band we’ve had at this place before.’ It was madness!

What next for Hell N Diesel?
Blanco: Writing music for the next album
Evil: Yeah, that’s the priority, and trying to get to the US of course, to promote the album there. We’re trying to complete the new album this year so we can release it in 2009, we have some material at the moment but we have lots of work ahead of us there. And of course we’re going to try and play as much as we can, maybe try and go to Germany, maybe try and come to England again. We have some plans, but nothing’s really set yet… it’s in the making!