Interviews

Interviews: Hypocrisy

Check out the Hypocrisy at Nuclear Blast's site.

Interview with Hypocrisy bassist Mikael Hedlund.

Jeremy-When did you decide that ending Hypocrisy would be a mistake?

Mikael-Peter at that time…he was very tired of everything, I think. He had to take care of his studio, and he also had a baby at that time. So, he had a lot of thing to do, so he was quite tired. But, I don't know, we had seven new songs for a new album. I don't really know why. It just happened, you know? He said we were going to continue.

Jeremy-I'm certainly glad you did.

Mikael-Thanks.

Jeremy-So, do you have any shows or tours lined up for the states?

Mikael-We will see what happens. We talked to Nuclear Blast in America and maybe in November or something. But, we will see what happens. Hopefully.

Jeremy-Does everyone in the band share Peter's obsession with science fiction?

Mikael-Oh, yeah. Most Peter, he's most into it.

Jeremy-How does that influence the music and lyrics?

Mikael-Lyrically, yeah, we wrote about it and we have it like a theme or something like that, but musically, I don't know actually. I don't think it has anything with music to about really.

Jeremy-Tell us what to expect on the new album.

Mikael-It's going to sound like Hypocrisy, we're going to try to mix some fast songs with slower songs and I think it's going to be more slower this time.

Jeremy-Will the vocals be more like the ones at the end of the live album?

Mikael-We're going to mix it all. Some songs with clean vocals, but it's still aggression in it. And have some songs he'll sing "The Final Chapter" album. It sounds really, really good.

Jeremy-Of course, there are lots of copycats in Death Metal, so how does Hypocrisy keep everything so original?

Mikael-We do our own stuff and I guess it just became natural for us. We have our own sound.

Jeremy-What are some of your favorite bands right now?

Mikael-It's hard to say. I listen to every kind of music. You mean Black or Death Metal?

Jeremy-Anything.

Mikael-Anything? I listen to Pink Floyd a lot and Covenant. The last album, that's a killer album I think. We listen to every kind. We can listen to Depeche Mode. It's really good.

Jeremy-How do you guys get your tone? What equipment do you use?

Mikael-Equipment? For guitars, we use Mesa-Boogie Amplifiers. And for the bass, we have two. We mix one clean bass with one distortion bass. We split it. So we got one distortion and one clean bass.

Jeremy-How did Peter get into the studio and recording thing?

Mikael-He was in America for 3 years in Florida and he came back. He knew a guy before he left to go to America and he had a studio. When he came back to Sweden, he didn't have any place to live in, so he lived in the studio. So, the guy there learned him how to do. And then he bought the whole studio from him and then he built it up by himself. He did some recordings and had some money, you know, and he invested in it. He bought some new equipment and now he has 3 studios in the same building. He uses the biggest of them all for the bands he's producing.

Jeremy-Final comments?

Mikael-I really hope that we can do a tour in America because we really want to do it. We only have played four gigs over there. We really hope to come over to play. Hopefully, we've got some people over there that like us. Check out the new album, it's absolutely the best album we've ever done.

- Jeremy