RAISED FIST - Screaming For Change

January 29, 2015, 9 years ago

Greg Pratt

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RAISED FIST - Screaming For Change

Raised Fist vocalist Alexander Hagman is excited. When we reach Hagman via a transcontinental phone connection that is, surprisingly, more crisp and receptive than most bands we reach in the same country as us on their cells, he's ready to talk about the Swedish hardcore band's new album, From The North. And he's happy.

"We think this is a classic album for Raised Fist," he says. "We knew this in April of 2014 when we recorded it. You know these things when you notice your head is moving to every song and you feel like you can listen to every song even though you wrote them (laughs)."

It's not like Hagman is just going through the motions, pumping his band's albums: the frontman admits that "I don't think I like one song" on Veil Of Ignorance, the band's last album, which came out in 2009. (To bring this back to a metal level, ex-Dark Funeral/ex-Defleshed drummer Matte Modin joined the band for 2006's Sound Of The Republic and has been with them since.)

"I didn't think any song had this extra little bit... musician-wise and composition-wise, everything was good, but I don't think I did my best job with the vocals," he says of their last album. "When I stepped into the studio this time, it felt like, okay, just drop the gloves on the ground and spit the lyrics out there (laughs)."

 

 

Indeed, the vocals are a huge part of what gives From The North its almost ludicrous amount of energy and enthusiasm, Hagman just running the show (although that drumming is great, too) with his hardcore screams.

"I worked nighttime many hours from like 9pm until 4, 5, 6 in the morning," he says about recording the vocals. "I recorded myself, and worked alone so I could really get into the songs and really work on everything. Some things I recorded myself, just running from the mixing table to the mic. The producer sometimes took it and said, 'It's not 100% pitch-wise right, it's not 100% right timing-wise, but it has an attitude I want to keep.' This is what makes the album real, not polishing things up."

Talking to Hagman, he mentions many times how he doesn't like a lot of things about current metalcore bands: the production sounds, the vocals ("Other musicians know my vocals are fucking crazy, and they are."), the fact that it's basically background listening. The phrase "boy band" comes up. He didn't want this new album to be a soothing listen, and it's not.

"When we mixed the album, we knew people were going to listen to it on earphones, and we knew it was going to be a little bit stressful, and we wanted that," he admits. "This is not a clean-cut, polished kind of album."

As for his vocals, Hagman's scream is certainly distinct when dealing with metallic hardcore bands of various sub-genres, the man yelling in a far higher pitch compared to the growling we've become used to. And that's for good reason, he says.

"I don't want to sound like a troll from Lord Of The Rings while I sing my lyrics," he says. "I like old-school hardcore like Gorilla Biscuits, Youth Of Today, Strife... it has more attitude because it's not like overdrive all the time. It has character. That's what I think is good about the old-school hardcore bands: you have normal voices."

Wait a minute: did we say up near the top there that the band's last album came out in 2009? Yup, sure did, and although three- or four-year delays between albums are normal for these guys, this is a pretty long one. Still, Hagman brushes it off and says it might be even longer some other time. It's the band's approach to making music, and it's an honest one.

"It sometimes takes three years, sometimes five years, sometimes six years. It could take 10 years, or there might not be a new album, ever," says Hagman. "We can't just sit down like a professional writer and say, 'I'm going to write a novel so I wake up at eight in the morning and I sit down and I work.' It doesn't work like that."

Photo credit: Richard Kårström



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