HAMMERFALL Singer Says New Album Is 'The Most Mature Thing We've Ever Done'

HAMMERFALL frontman Joacim Cans recently spoke to Denmark's Antenna webzine about the group's new album, "Chapter V: Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken", due on March 7 via Nuclear Blast Records. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Antenna: How would you say the new material differs from your previous work?

Joacim Cans: "Like I say after every album, it's the most mature thing we've ever done but it's where we are at this point in life. It's two years after 'Crimson Thunder', and I think we have some elements in the music on the new album that makes it different from the previous releases, but we also have the similarities that make it HAMMERFALL. The last song on the album is probably going to tell everything about the differences I'm talking about."

Antenna: You seem to stick to the well-known clichés within this style. Don't you think that in a way it limits your ability to express yourselves?

Joacim Cans: "I think we have taken a huge step with this album, and I’m not really sure if people would say the step is big enough, but it doesn't really matter where you take the music. People will always say, 'Well, don’t you think you’re limiting yourselves?' We maybe are but I still feel that, after five studio albums, we have been able to release one fresh album after another, but still with the same healthy elements, without repeating ourselves. Maybe the day will come when we sit here and have the fifteenth album, and we have been doing the same album for ten years over and over again. I know bands that sound like they've done that [laughs]. I feel within the boundaries of heavy metal there's still unexplored territory."

Antenna: The true metal boom is long gone, but HAMMERFALL have remained. Please elaborate on this.

Joacim Cans: "First of all, somebody labeled us as a power metal band a long time ago and I think this album is a statement that we are not a power metal band. We play heavy metal as simple as it is, I mean, it's plain and simple heavy metal. Power metal to me these days is something I can't stand because there are too many bands. There's not enough personality in the music. That is a big problem; everything sounds more or less the same, with cheap productions and so on. I've been waiting for the day when the lid comes off and some bands that have been working hard, that have been true to their style and to their music like HAMMERFALL, like STRATOVARIOUS, EDGUY and so on, they will continue for many years, and now the limit is reached for the other bands, I think. There are too many labels, they're releasing too many albums, and the fans decided that the boom is over because they don't wan to buy everything anymore."

Antenna: What's your view on the term "true metal?"

Joacim Cans: "The only way I can define true metal is people playing the music that they believe is true to them. I mean who came up with the term? Maybe that person is the judge, I don't know. What is true and what is untrue? It's just a brand they put there: 'Return of true metal.' I think when they first used the term it was like, 'The Eighties are back.' Like metal the way it sounded in the Eighties is back so that's why it's true metal. Maybe it should be pure heavy metal or pure metal. Essential metal, I don't know. There are too many labels."

The entire interview can be found in Antenna magazine #3, which is available for free download at this location.