Project Description

Interview with Jocke Berg

of Hardcore Superstar

Interviewer: Sarah Sykes

Hello, how are you going today?

Pretty good thanks, I just woke up though!

That’s good to hear. Let’s get straight into it then. Over the past six months, you’ve released a bunch of singles off the new album, when’s the album actually gonna come out?

Ah, 21^st of September. We’re releasing Baboon, next Friday – the 18th – then we’re releasing another single, I think in August maybe, I’m not sure yet.

Well that’s definitely something to look forward to! Have Mercy On Me came out in October – it’ll have been out for almost a year old by the time the album’s out. Is there a reason you’ve decided to slowly release the singles so far in advance?

We like the band Ghost. On their last album, they released like five singles. So we thought that was a cool idea to do because then you keep the fans updated along the way – all the way through to the release of the album. Instead of releasing two singles, and then having the fans wait six months before the album comes, we give them little teasers.

Yeah, I reckon it’s gone down pretty well.

It sure has!

You’ve got a lot of variety in your music, big balls out songs, but then you’ve also got songs like Touch the Sky off your last album which are pretty different, what did you aim to do with this album, and are there any surprises on there?

No, not this time. This time we went back to the, if you can say the “Hardcore Superstar” sound, more like if you take Split Your Lip – that place in our career. When we released that album with Touch the Sky, we got a lot of people with issues. 50% were like ‘oh okay, we love it!’, but the other 50% were like ‘what the fuck are you doing now?’, so it was two camps of fans liking it and not liking, but we had to do that album. We love the songs, and we had to do that record to get it out of our system. But on this new album You Can’t Kill My Rock and Roll, we’ve moved back to the traditional Hardcore Superstar sound.

Ahh yes, that’ll keep a lot of people happy.

Yeah – maybe this time people won’t hate us!

In that vein, what were the biggest influences on you for this upcoming album?

I think on this album – it was the same thing as when we wrote our self-titled album, Hardcore Superstar back in 2005-2006, we didn’t have influences this time. We just wrote songs that came out. These songs came out naturally. I think we write songs the best, when we just sit down and write songs. When the band is feeling ‘this is awesome’, and we’re loving it, then the people will love it, because they see that when we play them. This time we just wrote good songs. I think me and Martin wrote 25 songs together, and Adde, who’s the energy bunny, he wrote like 50 songs. And Vic as well – so we did a lot of song-writing!

At least you’ve got enough to keep you going for a while!

I mean, not all of them were good. Some of them were shit, of course. But you have to do that, as well.

Yeah – you’ve gotta go through the shit ones to get the good ones, I guess! You’re going to have 11 albums by the end of the year. How do you pick which songs to play live?

It’s hard. Because we have to play We Don’t Celebrate Sundays, Last Call for Alcohol, Moonshine, Above the Law, Someone Special and that’s five songs already! We usually have about 15-16 songs in the set, so it’s hard… Because I’ve got my favourites, Adde has his favourites and so on. So, it’s not that easy. There’s a lot of fighting. But we try to play the songs that the fans wanna hear. That’s the important thing, then we put in what we want to play. Because we love the songs we wrote, but sometimes we get tired of them. When we rehearse for tour, we never ever rehearse Someone Special, for example, but we always play it.

Well you wouldn’t need to after so long!

No, otherwise we would be stupid to not remember that song!

It would be pretty crazy if you didn’t! What’s the song you love playing live, that you don’t get to play very often?

The song I love playing live? We’ve not played that song in a while, but it’s a song off our self-titled album called Bag On Your Head – that’s a powerful tune, with a lot of energy. I don’t know… maybe we should do that song in Australia. Bag On Your Head – I love that song!

Aw yeah, it’s a pretty great one. What are you looking forward to about coming over here the most?

Where are you calling from?

Melbourne!

AC/DC lane. Is there like a bar there?

Yeah, Cherry Bar.

Yeah, I want to go there! I also remember last time we were there, in Sydney, we went to Manly beach – you take the ferry for 45 minutes or something, it’s a beautiful beach. I wanna go there again.

I hope the weather’s good for you!

Yeah, it’s winter isn’t it?

Yeah – raining outside, pretty grim.

It’s not like Sweden is it? Like minus degrees.

Oh no, you’ll probably think it’s pretty warm in comparison! When you originally formed back in ’98, did you think you’d still be touring and releasing albums 20 years on?

No, not at all! I was talking to Thomas Silver – our former guitar player – ‘no Jocke, bands like us only exist for like, 5-6 years, then they form another band’. But 20 years. It’s a long time.

What’s something you’d like to do, musically or otherwise, that you haven’t had the chance to do yet?

I think it would be cool to do an acoustic album. That would be awesome. Like they had MTV Unplugged back in the day – I think it’d be cool to do something like that.

Yeah, you’ve got that stuff like Here Comes That Sick Bitch that’s really acoustic but heavy and interesting – that could be awesome! Do you feel responsible for the beginnings of the ‘New Wave of Swedish Sleaze Metal’?

Yes. We are the grandfathers! I think we had a thing or two to do with that. I read on Instagram last night, this band who are supporting us down under – they said, ‘we are proud to announce we are supporting the titans Hardcore Superstar’. Thanks for that!

Yeah you definitely have massive status in the community these days!

I hope there’s gonna be people at the shows though – we haven’t been there for 10 years you know!

Well most people I’ve talked to are super excited for it, especially after the Soundwave thing.

Ah Soundwave – don’t talk about that!

Yeah – I didn’t know if I should ask – if you’re even allowed to talk about it.

I’m allowed to. But it’s weird. It wasn’t our fault, you know. We had the schedule and everything sorted out but then he changed it – the guy who’s not around anymore to do that. We don’t take shit because we’re not Korn or that kind of big band. We’re Hardcore Superstar and we don’t take shit from no one. That’s what I wrote to him.

Good on you. It sucked, but I think people understand.

Now we’re coming anyway!

Exactly! Thanks for chatting today!

Thanks for the support!

Catch Hardcore Superstar in Australia!

Tickets available from Silverback Touring.

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