Millencollin are one of Sweden’s finest punk export products from the nineties Mälmo scene and still reigning hard with a new album “True Brew” under their belt. This summer they plan on taking Europe by storm again with their unique punk sounds. Time for RMP to have a chat with drummer Fredrik at the magnificent Jera On Air festival about the new album and of course skateboarding since the band name is derived from a skateboard trick. Time to find out how the brew was conceived.

 

1. First, congratulations with the new album, “True Brew”. How has the response been?

It's been really good. We're really happy with it and the response and the reactions on the new songs live. It's really nice to have the new album out. We've been working on it for a while and it's nice to be able to play the new songs live.

 

2. You played Groezrock in early May, how was that show?

Every time it's super nice to be there. It's like a big homecoming party almost. There's so many bands that you meet up with. This year there were like four or five Swedish bands, a lot of bands we haven't met in a while. It's super great organised. European festivals are in general really good and well-organised.

 

3. So “True Brew”, the title of the album is almost a description of some sort of philosophy. Could you explain this to us?

Yeah, I’m actually the one who came up with the title. First of all it sounded very good as a title. I think it fits us as we've always been in charge of everything about the band, it's us four in the band. It's always been the same guys in the band. We have a lot of respect for each other. When we make songs we always say that we are boiling notes,which is like a brew. We have always been true to ourselves too. It’s always good to stand back all the decisions and the music we make. So it fits the album really well.

 

4. You also made a great video for the song “Bring Me Home”. The “Life On A Plate” yellow bird is skating around different cities getting into all sorts of problems. Who actually skated in that suit and what cities is it filmed in?

There are several people, it's different in each city. We had a friend of ours making the video. So we travelled around and found some skaters at every location. It's different. Even if you don't know the story about the yellow bird it's like an easy going, funny video. I heard some junkie in NY grabbed one of the skaters.

 

5. Millencollin is 100% skate punk, not just in sound and style but actually by really skating. The band name comes from a trick called ‘Melancholy’. How tied up to skateboarding is the band and are you guys personally?

It's probably as big of a reason we are a band, we started a band like the bands we were inspired by like Bad Religion and that stuff. If it weren't for those bands and skateboarding we would have never started a band in the beginning. It's been a huge part. Millencollin is music and skateboarding is skateboarding. I’ve never been a skateboarder; the other three guys all skated back in the days. These days they don't skate as much as before. Matthias and Erik, they skate every now and then. We always let the skate movies borrow our music and we played a lot of skateboard and snowboard events. It fits with skateboarding really well.

 

6. Milencollin also have a skate park in Örebro, Sweden?

Back in Örebro we put up skateboarding contests and give some money to this local skate park to keep it running.

 

7. So how great was it when Steve Caballero joined you on stage to play bass? How did it happen?

Oh yeah, he's the best of guys. Amazing skateboarder, he's been friends with us for a long time. Every time we meet up at events he ends up on stage with us.

 

8. Any other famous skaters/musicians you would love to perform with?

We toured with The Rats (Mike Vallely) like ten years ago. Mike is also a very nice guy. Usually it's some of us playing with other artists, mostly Steve Caballero.

 

9. In the beginning of the band you were on Burning Heart records. Over the years they left, but now they're back. Any plans on working with them again?

It's been really good thing to been working with Burning Heart through the years. They have so dedicated people working there. They helped us a lot and we helped them with bringing their name outside of Sweden. We're on Epitaph now and we like it there so that's probably where we are going to release our albums in the future.

 

10. Any last words or plans you want to share?

We have a lot of plans. The touring just started but we're super stoked to be out playing live again. We're having such a good time doing that. Really been looking forward for this summer for all the festivals and coming back to Europe in hopefully October or so. Check us out then.

 

 – David Marote