You are reading an interview with Sounds Like Violence
conducted by Dan Claydon on 20 July 2004
Gamefoe: Could you introduce yourself and tell me what you do in the band?
Sounds Like Violence: Absolutely. My name is Daniel; I’m the drummer in Sounds Like Violence, a Swedish band.
Gamefoe: I’m guessing this is your first time in the UK, how have the shows gone so far, and what have people’s reactions been?
Sounds Like Violence: I think they’ve gone pretty well, everything, when you do the first four everything goes up and down, some of the places have been quite small and hard for us to, you know, when we go on live you’ll see later, we’ll try to propel a huge amount of atmosphere and that sort of thing. It’s quite hard when you’re in a small place and you can’t really up. But it’s all been working out fine, the crowds have been ok, they’re up and down of course. In smaller venues they couldn’t, yeah those places might not have been able to push the EP or whatever but there’s always a decent amount of people, and you know, it’s been great.
Gamefoe: How did the name ‘Sounds Like Violence’ come about and do you think your music actually sounds like violence?
Sounds Like Violence: Hmm, I'm not sure about that, we had actually another name when we started which was “Heartattacks”, from the song, but that didn’t pan out because there was another band in the US that had copyrighted various, you know; Heartattacks, The Heartattacks, Heartattack and so on and so on, and there was a lot of legal shit about that, they’d stopped playing but they still had the copyright and they won’t sell it to us and stuff, so we decided to drop that and since we’re going to start from a new bowl anyway ‘cos we hadn’t released anything as Heartattacks or anything, we decided to look for a new band name. We went through the various options and put them on a list of things that we thought represented the band, and the atmosphere, and actually I don’t think the combination “Sounds Like Violence” ever came up but when we were looking through it we had something about sounds or whatever and then violence came along and we thought ‘violence…sounds like ah! Sounds Like Violence’. Basically it wasn’t anything we planned out.
Regarding the name and the music, well you could call it Sounds Like Violence because of the sort of angst or whatever that we compel through the music, you could call it Sounds Like Violence but at the same time, you know if you sound like violence when you play you can’t be very positive but you could say it sounds a bit like violence, but it should be the friendly violence, like a friendly slap.
Gamefoe: Like a controlled violence
Sounds Like Violence: Yeah *laughs*
Gamefoe: Why is it that you don’t write your lyrics in your native language?
Sounds Like Violence: It’s been more natural I think for Andreas because we played together for a really long time and we’ve always written in English because when you write in Swedish, if you use a word in a bad way it can get corny or, erm, I'm not sure how to compare it, erm, sort of Tom Jones or something really cheesy and that doesn’t sound too good so its been easier to write in English, and of course, all of our favourite bands are from the US or Britain who mostly sing in English so its been that sort of inspiration that we go from.
Gamefoe: So the fact that you sing in English, is that why you’re here?
Sounds Like Violence: Yeah definitely, we would definitely have been narrowing our market if we didn’t do it but that was never our concern. We never thought we had to write in English to go to the US, that’s not what we did. As I said, it’s more comfortable doing it in English. We wanted to get all our self-interests and put them in a bag and then you play your kind of music, and one of those things was the English language.
Gamefoe: Did you find it makes it harder to express yourself how you want to?
Sounds Like Violence: Not really, I don’t think so, I think it might be for English speaking people, they might take it as cheesy because we might not know how to put words together in a way that might sound cooler, but no, I don’t think its hard because we…*interruption by merch guy*. No it hasn’t been a problem at all, I think there’s better ways to express what you feel in English than in Swedish.
Gamefoe: How did the signing to Deep Elm come about?
Sounds Like Violence: We recorded four songs a few years back, maximum two years, and we started sending out demos and Deep Elm, after a while I'm not sure how long it was, they got hold of it and listened to it and said “this is really good”, they called us up and we talked over the phone and email. Basically they said they really wanted to put out some albums with us, and we knew about Deep Elm and what they do and how they work with bands and that’s the most important thing of course, and we thought yeah, we feel secure going with them, and that’s how it was basically, the Deep Elm kid came over “(John) and saw us at a show and we talked from there, it might sound a little bit too easy but that’s the way it was.
Gamefoe: Did you set out to appeal to Deep Elm when you sent out the demos?
Sounds Like Violence: No, we didn’t set out to do anything at all, we basically played our music that we liked, recorded it, sent it out to whoever wanted it and then of course we were never into getting it to Sony or Warner or anything like that but at the same time we weren’t looking for an independent label. We could have gone with another label but Deep Elm was definitely the one for us, we felt that they could work as intensely with the band as we wanted a label to do.
Gamefoe: Where do you see the band, and what do you think you’ll have accomplished in five years time?
Sounds Like Violence: 5 years time, hopefully we will have released at least three full length albums, I don’t know, tough question, I think we’ll be sort of a medium sized band, hopefully we can live off the music, that’s the goal right now.
Gamefoe: So you’re still part time?
Sounds Like Violence: Yeah, I’m studying right now, I have like three days of school a week, and the other guys just hack their way through by getting odd jobs and stuff, so the goal is definitely to get a fan base and the labels to be able to live off the music, that’s the goal right now, we don’t want to be like Metallica or Nirvana or something like that, we just want to play music and live off it, that’s what I’m hoping, I’m not sure we’ll make it but I’m hoping that’s where we’ll be in five years, able to live off the music and that will make us able to create more music, better music, because right now you’ve always got in the back of your head ‘argh I’ve got to be at work’ or ‘argh how am I going to feed myself or get money for rent’ so that takes a bit of energy off it. The music is the main thing and when you can live off music I think you know, it can only get better.
Gamefoe: I don’t think I’ve heard one bad word about your EP, The Pistol, does this surprise you at all or have you been playing these songs live for ages so you knew how much praise you would get?
Sounds Like Violence: It was a big surprise actually, we never thought that it would be picked up as well as it did, we knew that we loved the songs and people always said it was good and we thought it was good but no one ever really jumped on it, no bigger magazines, no labels ever jumped on it so even when deep elm contacted us it was like ‘that was surprising’. Great fun because you always stop getting your hopes up in the music industry because it’s so easy to get let down. If you start hoping ‘we’re going to record these 3 or 4 songs that will be huge and nothing happens you really get bummed out, that’s basically how I think bands stop playing together, because they get bored trying to get that sort of energy up all the time, trying to send out their albums, but it was a big surprise especially because of the fact that we were told by our publicist James that we were in kerrang and I remember reading kerrang.
Gamefoe: 5 out of 5 K’s!
Sounds Like Violence: Yeah, it’s incredible, I used to read kerrang when I was a bit younger, I still do now actually, when I was into a bit more heavy metal, I listened to Guns n Roses (laughs) anyway, so that was really amazing, being featured in one of those magazines, but it was a bit of a surprise. Man I’m rambling on here aren’t I (laughs).
Gamefoe: I imagine it’d be tempting for people to pigeon hole you as just another emo band or as a post hardcore or whatever. How, if at all would you like your music to be labelled?
Sounds Like Violence: I would Label it just rock music, it’s an easy, non-explicit way of saying what it is, because I don’t think its either Indie or Rock and Roll or Emo, it’s a mix of everything so I’m not sure, it’s really hard; what is Emo? So if someone asks me what it is I’d probably say Rock music and that’s the best way for me to define what we are.
Gamefoe: Does it annoy you when people call you Emo as people might not want to listen to you because of it?
Sounds Like Violence: In a way it does, I don’t mind if they call us Emo but listen to the music then tell us if we’re Emo, If you listen to the album and say we’re Emo, fine, that’s your label, call it whatever, just listen to it. But if they don’t listen to it because it’s Emo it’s their loss.
Gamefoe: Lastly, I read that Deep Elm and Disney have a deal together...what Disney character are Sounds Like Violence and what is your favourite Disney Film and Why?
Sounds Like Violence: No, that was a joke, John at Deep Elm took the piss out of all the bands and said that Deep Elm And Disney had a collaboration where all the bands would get their own Disney character and they would always be on the front of an album and stuff. And of course everyone was like “what the…” Our singer was really pissed off, so he started mailing them and I remember I said, “look at the date”… April 1st, so it was a big joke and everyone laughed, I thought it was hilarious.
Gamefoe: What is your favourite Disney film and why?
Sounds Like Violence: I love Disney, I’m gonna go with the one I love, and that is Aristocats.
Gamefoe: What Character are Sounds Like Violence?
Sounds Like Violence: I like that question, best question I’ve ever had, you know The Lion King, those two laughing Hyenas, probably one of those.
Gamefoe: Anything Else?
Sounds Like Violence: No, not really.
Gamefoe: Is there a question that you’ve always wanted to be asked but never have?
Sounds Like Violence: I don’t think so, I would sort of think, what’s your shoe size, erm, I don’t think so, no sorry, I can’t think of one.
Gamefoe: Thanks for the interview.
Sounds Like Violence: No, thank you, it was a pleasure.
Gamefoe would like to thank James at Division PR, Sounds Like Violence, Daniel for doing the interview and Joe for writing it up even if it did take ages!
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