First of all, congratulations with a terrific new album. How is life these days?
Thanks dude! Life is a blast nowadays, it is really. I guess we’ve never been this busy ever, and that’s a helluva lot of fun. The reviews are great as well – 5/6 in Scream magazine among others.
What are your plans in promoting the album?
Well, we’ve completed the video for the first single, ”Playstation,” and we’ll begin the next one in a week’s time or so. Gigs in Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim, and Lillehammer are booked, and we’ll head off to Europe in October/November. Then, I guess we’ll do some gigs in Oslo, and after Christmas we’ll go back into the studio to record a few tracks to a compilation album we’re planning. It’s pretty packed, as you see!
When I listen to Getting Away With Murder, one of the first things that strikes me is how the sound fits the songs perfectly. Talk a bit about the recording process.
We basically tweaked the knobs on the board and plugged in our instruments, I guess, haha. The most prominent change was that we focused more on channelling energy than getting clinically perfect takes, playing-wise. We’re at a level now, as musicians I mean, that gives us the option to focus more on other aspects than just getting things in time. We’ve also used a different studio for recording this time, and although it really pushed our budgets to the limit we got a f*ckin’ great result out of it!
Lyrically, there’s a lot of sex, drugs, & Rock ‘n’ Roll here, but one song title needs a further explanation: ”Playstation.” What’s behind that title?
Hehe, if you’d read the lyrics you’d see that it’s pretty much sexual themes there too. The thing is that my girlfriend was a bit jealous because I never had written a song for her, and that’s why I wrote that one. The regular love songs are not my cup of tea, so I approached it from sort of a different angle, haha.
You celebrated the band’s 10-year anniversary last year, and released the DVD 10 Years Of Thrash. Talk a bit about the DVD.
We’re very proud of that one actually. We had our 10-year anniversary and all, and originally we’d talked about releasing Getting Away With Murder to celebrate that, but the economic aspect ruined that idea. We still felt we had to do something for our fans and the idea of a DVD came up. The project just grew bigger and bigger –- from a 20 minute DVD-R to something much more ambitious. We looked through a total of 25 gigs to find the best clips, and all of a sudden we had enough musical material to include interviews as well. We’ve done it as sort of a documentary, with the interviews in-between the music, and I’m pretty sure more bands will use this format in the future.
To change the subject a little, your image is pretty much all-out Rock ‘n’ Roll. Do you really practice what you preach?
I guess that depends on who’s judging us. The image has been with us our entire career, and I guess we live our lives pretty much like people expect us to. I can only speak for myself, but my day is pretty much jammed with Rock from morning to bedtime, but we’ve cut down on the partying a bit. It really wasn’t good for us! I guess we still could party the asses off of most people if we wanted to, though …
If you lead such a lifestyle, how come you manage to still answer questions this well?
Haha, I guess it’s all about what interests you, really. I know people that do heroin, booze, and everything, and they hardly know their own names, but they still can list the date they recorded specific songs, albums, gigs, etc. There are times when I’d have serious problems telling you what I had for breakfast, but still I should be able to list every friggin’ fact about Trashcan Darlings there is.
How about the groupie side of things? Do you have anything you want to share with the MER readers?
That subject is pretty much covered on the DVD, haha. We have a bunch of groupie stories, like all other intergalactic Rock stars, haha. I’ve actually experienced a time when a guy came up to me and asked me to scr*w his girlfriend, which I did, of course. I’ve watched, and kept the beat for other band members scr*wing groupies, and, yeah, been there – done that really, hehe. Playing in a band is pretty much like going out and trying to get laid, except that you never really have to do all the talking before getting ready for action. Pretty comfy, actually!
How did you recruit the considerable amount of naked females pictured on the cover?
Well, we wanted to have women on the cover, but wanted something different than using the models everyone else is using -– most of the time the girls are actually more famous than the band, hehe. We brought out our small, black books and called our hottest female friends, and only 2 or 3 said no when asked to pose nude on our cover. We all spent a pretty hot night on Elm Street (Rock café in Oslo) and it all was pretty neat, hehe.
Trashcan Darlings’ latest, Getting Away With Murder, should be in the stores as you read this, and this is a must-have for all Rockers out there!
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