The BIG Über Rock Interview – Adde Andreasson and Vic Zino (Hardcore Superstar)

Written by DJ Astrocreep
Sunday, 07 October 2018 10:45

They say there’s no rest for the wicked… if that is indeed the case then I must have been a very naughty boy in a past life as, on a recent trip to London, ÜR had me running around the city like a mad thing catching up with rock stars…

Fresh from a long chat with The Damned’s legendary drummer, Rat Scabies, it was back into central London as fast as the Tube could carry me… My destination? The Gibson Guitar Studio, where I was to hook up with Adde (Andreasson – drums) and Vic (Zino – guitar) from Hardcore Superstar to chat about their new album, the Swedish rock and metal scene and how much Lego is too much!

But first, as we were in a guitar studio, where better place to start than with the story of how Vic joined the band following the departure of band founder Thomas Silver a little more than a decade ago…

It’s a funny story. The first ticket I bought for a live concert was Motörhead. I don’t remember what day or year that was, but it was quite a long time ago. The opening act was Hardcore Superstar. It was when they were on the first album I think, ‘Bad Sneakers’. It was quite interesting for me being with the band. It was quite cool!

And that didn’t put you off in any way? *all laugh*

Vic: No! It was so funny. Thomas was playing guitar at the time, so I was like yeah. He took a copy of the CD and said “does anyone want this?” – and nobody answered. He threw it up in the air and it just fell on the ground, and he was like “OK”! *all laugh*

Who was it that inspired you to pick up the guitar in the first place?

Vic: Me! My friend was making me pick up a guitar and learn Metallica songs because he wanted to be James Hetfield and he needed a Kirk Hammett. So, I kind of learned guitar from there.

And how about yourself Adde?

Adde: it was Peter Criss, yeah: Kiss. My big brother had them on the wall, posters all over his room and I was about four or five years old coming into my big brother’s room filled with posters of Iron Maiden, Kiss, Judas Priest and I was like I wanna do what they do on the wall and Peter Criss obviously stood out. Early memories when I was sitting in my big brother’s room and he had the Kiss ‘Alive Two’ albums, and I just looked at the gatefold… that gatefold is one of the most beautiful things still that I had ever seen. It’s probably like the encore you know in the show where the drum rises so Peter Criss was actually the one I wanted to be when I was a kid and it kind of stuck with me!

Vic: You wanted to be a cat? *all laugh*

I guess everyone has to have some ambition!

Adde: Drums came later! *more laughter*

How do you think the bands developed over the years? Obviously, you’ve been there almost from the start (Adde), but I think it’s ten years that you’ve been in the band now, has it, Vic? So how do you think it has developed from like the early days through to when Vic joined afterwards?

Adde: I think we’re taking a lot, we’ve never been afraid of taking a lot of risks and we could easily have stayed a pure sleaze/hard rock band but we’ve been like fooling around with thrash combining thrash riffs through big choruses. We’ve never been afraid of like experimenting and the more, the longer we play as a band the greater the risks are, the greater the risks we take because we keep trying out new stuff. That’s really something cool I like about this band, that we are not afraid to really go out there and try something new because at the end of the day we are a pure rock and roll band, like Queen is a great example. They were never afraid of going out there and taking risks.

Like ‘Stone Cold Crazy’ quite early on in their career which is very different from ‘One Vision’ or ‘Radio Gaga’.

Adde: Yeah and I love that with a band that can stay creative and maybe when they release an album at first. I kind of like the older stuff cause it’s so new and fresh so we can’t really compete with older stuff so after a while like now when I listen to older queen albums I can totally hear like the good stuff in every album!

Yeah, speaking of albums, you’ve got your new one, ‘You Can’t Kill My Rock N Roll’. So how do you think the new album compares with what you’ve done before?

Vic: I think this album captures a lot of what we are as a live band, like our energy. I think this is how people see us as a live band. There’s all this energy that’s on this album. This is what we do live!

I was listening to it actually when I was on my way over before, and the first song ‘ADHD’… It’s quite different from the rest of the album, well throughout the album there’s a lot of big sing-along choruses, almost like big stadium rock, to Journey, that kind of thing. Although you’ve done bits of it before it almost sounds like there’s been that evolution where you said you keep trying new things. There’s a lot of back towards the first couple of albums as well in terms of sound but with the big choruses in. So was that a deliberate ploy or was just the way the songs came out when you wrote them?

Adde: It’s kind of something that you can’t really control cause we just fall in wherever we get inspired. You know the last album before was kind of a dark album and that’s nothing that we can control. You go where inspiration takes you. Like where creativity takes you and this time it’s all the ideas made this album and you just follow where it takes you. It like you’re almost like a slave. It’s like we want to go there. It’s like when you find that path of where we’re going it then becomes very easy but finding the you know where, when all four of us come to a straight line we find a way there and it’s just fun times. It just comes so naturally. These hard riffs with big choruses are just something that’s in us, it’s something we love.

There’s almost like a punkish sense at times like punk and roll and in a lot of the songs there are not as many big guitar solos. I think ‘ Electric Rider’ has quite a good solo in it but there’s not as many in the likes of ‘We Don’t Celebrate Sundays’, where you’ve got the solo and such.

Adde: For me, the solo has never been the main part of a song. If you don’t have them in the song then it doesn’t matter if you had the greatest solo in the world if the song still sucks. So for me, the solo is not the most important part of the song. I mean if it’s a good solo it makes the song better but that’s not the main focus.

Vic: I don’t mind not having the solo in the song, it just doesn’t bother me!

So, what is the meaning of ‘You Can’t Kill My Rock N Roll’?

Adde: It’s kind of our way of, like you can hear this on pretty much the whole album, you can see it in the artwork, you can hear it in the music, our influences, the bands that influenced us through over the years. You can hear a lot of bands, you can see a lot of bands in our artwork. You Can’t Kill My Rock And Roll is kind of our way of paying tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, which is in the song You Can’t Kill Rock And Roll from Diary of a Madman. I was thinking of getting a tattoo of pieces of the lyrics on the back of my shoulders. I love that album because it was the first album I bought. That’s a fine first album!

That title track as well was absolutely incredible because it’s quite theatrical also, which is different from a lot of the Ozzy Osbourne stuff

Adde: I love it, it’s so hooky but it’s not commercial. It’s like all the songs have their own identity; it’s very hooky but it’s not very obvious hooky. It’s how hard rock’s supposed to be like. You can hear a lot of creativity going on on that album and in the lyrics of course. I also love ‘Bark At The Moon’. I love all the stuff in our scene, to be honest with you. ‘You Can’t Kill My Rock N Roll’, that’s kind of our homage to Ozzy really who is really like one of the most important hard rock singers of all time, if not THE, coming from Black Sabbath obviously.

The first doom riff, the first stoner riff…

Adde: They invented so much. He came from Black Sabbath and he started the whole scene with Randy Rhoads, like Eddie and Van Halen came out and Ozzy went in that direction as well and did some of his own thing with it – and he totally dominated that as well!

I think the way that he had the keyboards used was more kind of Black Sabbath-esque rather than say the likes of ‘Jump’ by Van Halen it’s quite upbeat.

Adde: It’s like ‘Mr Crowley’, like everything with ‘Mr Crowley’ is just genius. Everybody involved in that song should just be put on a pedestal cause it’s maybe the ultimate hard rock/rock and roll song ever written because it’s so beautiful and so dark and so experimental and everything in it is so great and the lyrics. ‘You Can’t Kill My Rock N Roll’ was very much like a homage to Ozzy and he was almost like a guide.

Were there any problems that you encountered when you were writing the album? With it being that little bit different from being from the evolution of what you’ve done before

Adde: At first, the first ideas are almost like the first whole year. The songwriting was very much like, it sounded like something we’ve already done. A lot of the stuff so that was probably the biggest problem to get rid of, those songs were really good, we like those songs but we don’t really want to repeat ourselves because it sounded a lot like ‘Dreamin’ In A Casket’ kind of era, a lot of riffs and stuff. We love that stuff and we might go back to that, you never know but on this album, it’s like it took us almost a year to find a way in something new, and getting there like we talked about earlier, getting there was kind of hard. We just want to try something else. you know. It’s like ordering something else from the menu

Do you have a particular recording process, like do you write a couple of guitar riffs and then add in the drums?

Vic: Almost all of the ideas come from Adde. When he has an idea, he goes to his studio and records a basic err what do you call it? Ground? Seed? So he sends it to us and then we get to say what we think and which direction we think the song should go and this sounds like I get this vibe, I think we should go this way and maybe give him something like have you listened to this sound? Try something like that. So that’s kind of the process and then after that we just… sometimes we do different versions of a song and take them too different maybe a ballad would make it better than a tempo song of the same style. We’ve done that on the album as well.

How’s the Swedish rock scene at the moment? There were bands like Backyard Babies that came through that obviously paved the way for the likes of yourselves. Is there anyone that you think is starting to come through behind you?

Adde: There’s a lot of bands coming through all the time. You see it on social media, just crawling with new bands. The last band that we had with us on the last tour: look at Fozzy (er, I think they’re actually Canadian – Ed), great band, great melodies, great live act and really good songs. There are always new bands coming through, and that’s an inspiration to see, as well like bands that supported us like bands like Avatar… they’re huge now. It exploded because they believed in what they were doing and that’s so inspiring!

Does any particular song always have to be part of the set? One that you love to play and that you think gets the crowd going more than maybe some of the others?

Vic: I don’t understand people not liking people playing their biggest songs. I love playing ‘We Don’t Celebrate Sundays’ every time because you get a reaction from the crowd. They love it and you feed off that. If they’re standing still, they’re not enjoying the gig, I mean I don’t. If the guy in front of me doesn’t lose it when we’re playing ‘We Don’t Celebrate Sundays’ then we’re doing something wrong. So with all songs it depends on people’s reactions.

Quite often if someone goes to a festival they might not know lots of your back catalogue but they’ve probably heard ‘We Don’t Celebrate Sundays’ and maybe one or two others or something like that; so maybe that’s why they kind of don’t move – and then they’re all of a sudden “yeah” and then they go mental!

Vic: That usually happens at the end of the show because we have to work until they give up you know. We just wear them out. *all laugh* I think that’s just one of our biggest advantages as a band, we’re like a train!

Is there a particular gig or maybe festival performance that sticks out in your head that felt really, really good? Like maybe when you feel you’ve hit another level?

Adde: It’s always something, you know when you play your hometown it’s always a bit special because you have all your friends there and it’s always going to be special but also doing the great festivals like we talked about Sweden Rock festival and Download festival, Wacken and all these great festivals. All those festivals you feel a little something extra before you go up, because it is such an amazing vibe you know. You play Download and your neighbour’s are Marilyn Manson and Phil Anselmo you know and we’re in the middle, and it’s like “fuck this is fucking great” – and there’s Motley Crue and the whole vibe. It’s like “guys you’re up, you have to go in the van over to your stage now” and that whole adrenaline that goes through your body it’s just amazing!

Vic: You say any special gigs that we value more than others. It’s so funny because when we have a good gig you know that everybody’s having a good time because when you look at their face, and you’re like “ok you’re in the zone, ok you’re in the zone as well”. When we’re not in the zone you can see that, because we know each other so well and can see he’s clearly having a hard time and something like that but when we’re in the zone you can see it.

It’s a little bit strange but there are some really great names going at the moment. Sabbath quit last year, Slayer have announced their final tour. Which bands do you think are going to be most likely to step up to headlining the likes of Hellfest or Download or Sweden Rocks?

Vic: That’s a very good question, but a band that has to be proven to headline… We actually headlined Sweden Rocks but In Flames… they headlined, really headlined a couple of years back. Sabaton headlined it a couple years: they draw a lot of people, they sell a lot of tickets, so they are kind of natural headliners if they just stick together you know?

Adde: They work extremely hard as well. If you work hard enough and you believe it, you know, you just have to work hard. I mean look at Sabaton: I mean they’re on their own constantly, constantly. They spend shit loads of money on props, just because they want to offer people a show. Then the promoters know “oh they have a great show, we have to book them”. It’s just smart moves and smart planning.

I remember the first time I saw Sabaton, it was supporting Dragonforce just after ‘Through The Fire And Flames’. To be honest I had not heard Sabaton but one of my friends said to me “make sure you see these, they’re really, really good”. I got down early and they were better than Dragonforce, easily: this was still when they were pretty much up and coming, and they’ve gone from supporting in a 1000 capacity venues that are not sold out to headlining Manchester Apollo, which is over 3000, and selling it out easily. It’s a big step up. Do you have personal preferences yourselves for playing a really small intense gig where you’re right in front of the people or like a big festival stage?

Vic: I think both sides, because when you do festivals you kind of miss the sweaty environment of a small gig but when you do smaller shows you kind of miss the arenas or the festivals so you kind of need both to function, for me.

Adde: To me, it’s almost like a lottery, you never know when it’s going to happen. It can be a night in front of 175 people but you just go out and you feel that there are some really good vibes in the air and the sound is just right and to me to be honest with you I don’t care if it’s 10,000 or 500 or 100 in the audience. If we’re having a good night I’m going to take advantage of it and I’m gonna milk it and enjoy it. It can really, really happen when you might have a terrible hangover and you’re like Oh man I don’t feel well and as soon as the intro starts and you go up a hit a couple of strokes like dum dum and you feel tonight’s the night. I’ve got to take care of the night and I don’t know what’s the er, I don’t know what’s the ingredients that what makes it go that way, but sometimes it just happens and sometimes it doesn’t even though there’s a lot of people in the audience and the atmosphere’s right and you don’t feel anything.

It’s like sometimes you go into a different headspace, you said about the zone before so it’s pretty much that…

Adde: That’s something that happens to all musicians, if you did 100 shows, you can’t do 100 shows and feel the same way.

Vic: It’s mostly not about playing, it’s mostly about technical difficulties like if there’s something wrong with the amp or pedals or something like that it kind of sets you off from the focus. It’s kind of a hard way back because we have to kind of erase the memory back to before the show when everything was positive. It’s mind games during the show.

A little bit about the technical side, what backline do you use, what guitar, what speakers?

Vic: I play Marshall amps and Sgt Doom guitars. It’s a guitar made in Sweden. I’ve known him for many years, he started building guitars and we started talking and he’d build a guitar that I can’t be without. That’s my basic. The rest is in the fingers I guess.

Rock and roll’s about the party spirit in excess in a way. Who’s the hardest drinker in the band?

Adde: It depends on what you mean, The fastest, the longest running, most intense?

The longest running…

Adde: Martin (Sandvik – bass) has to be the longest one. He can go on and on… *all laugh*

Who’s the craziest member of the band then? *more laughter*

Adde: Me. Everything from breadcrumbs in the asshole…

Can you elaborate from that?

Adde: That’s another interview! *all laugh*

OK, that’s for a different type of website! *all laugh*

Adde: Drinking is a part of touring, it is. I always try to follow Mickey Dee’s ground rules – like no liquor only beer. You can make a lot of shows if you only stick to beer.

Vic: Is that what you said when you drank half a bottle of vodka at that last show?… You didn’t follow that rule *all laugh*

Adde: Sometimes I don’t listen to myself!

Well rules are there to be broken! What’s the most rock and roll band rider you’ve ever asked for or that you’ve heard of from another band?

Adde: In the beginning of our career, in the summer of 2000, every show we would have a rider in the dressing room had lots of Lego *all laugh* After about 20 or 30 shows we were like “here’s the fucking Lego again, what’s up with that?” They’re like “oh it’s on your rider…” *all laugh* what?! It’s like look it’s clearly here on the rider “band needs a box of Lego before the show” we didn’t put it there. It turns out that our booking agency Markus is the responsible guy. He put it there just to fuck with us. That was so much fun because Lego kept on turning up at all the shows and he just did that just to fuck with us.

Vic: That’s more for the kids! *all laugh*

Adde: Yeah, but we actually started to play with it, get creative. Look at my tower!

So THAT’s why you were half an hour late on stage! *all laugh*

Adde: Too busy building a castle! Yeah we’d build stuff and break it!

OK I’ve got one last question, if you had to cover a mainstream song like pop or disco or anything like that, what would you like to cover?

Adde: Queen!

Vic: What song?

Adde: It’s got to be, if it’s mainstream, ‘We Are The Champions’.

What about a non-rock song, cause obviously, that could be a little more revealing about a band!

Vic: Sia’s awesome. ‘Chandelier’ is a great song. She’s got a couple of really great songs

• ‘You Can’t Stop My Rock N Roll’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.

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