HammerFall guitarist Oscar Dronjak recently spoke with Dead Rhetoric about the band's new album, Built To Last, their longevity, and the surprise departure of drummer Anders Johansson following HammerFall's 2014 album, (r)Evolution. An excerpt is available below:

On Johansson's departure: "It was a huge shock, and a huge disappointment initially too, because he didn’t say anything to us. He didn’t even notify us when it happened. We found out from our booking agency, actually. They wrote us an e-mail saying that ‘Well, since Anders is no longer going to be touring these next shows, we need a name to be able to start securing the plane tickets and visas – who is your new drummer?’ And we were like, ‘Wait- what are you saying’? It’s a typical Anders way of doing things, and it felt weird. It was the end of the relationship - it felt like being dumped by your girlfriend after 15 years without her telling you why, basically. To this day I still don’t know why it happened, because I haven’t spoken to him. I’ve gotten some texts and stuff.

What I think happened is he saw the touring plans that we had - he has been touring since the early 1980’s, he’s 10 years older than I am and he’s done this for a long, long time. He was tired of touring the same cities over and over again. I just think he was tired of the grind – he didn’t want to go through this again. He has a new family- at that point he had a son that was two years old, and also another on the way. That played a role for him too, being away from the family for a while. I can respect and understand that totally - I just wish he would have told me in person, but that was what happened.

So we got David (Wallin) afterwards, that was a blessing in disguise that Anders took this step because David has invigorated the band quite a bit. He’s four years younger than I am, it’s not much but with the attitude he has he hasn’t done a lot of big stuff. To have David on board has been a big shot in the arm for everybody else, especially live. The gigs have been much more energetic since he’s appeared with the band. I think we sound better than we ever have."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

HammerFall’s new album, Built To Last, was released on November 4th via Napalm Records. The clip streaming below features the unboxing of the wooden box edition of the album, strictly limited to 1,000 copies and exclusively available through the Napalm Records mailorder, here.

The album artwork, designed by Andreas Marschall, and tracklisting can be seen below.

Built To Last tracklisting:

“Bring It!”
“Hammer High”
“The Sacred Vow”
“Dethrone And Defy”
“Twilight Princess”
“Stormbreaker”
“Built To Last”
“The Star Of Home”
“New Breed”
“Second To None”

“Hammer High” video:

“The Sacred Vow” lyric video:

Built To Last track-by-track video:

Part 1:

Part 2:

HammerFall will embark on another celebrated tour over Europe, beginning on January 12th, 2017 in Bremen, Germany. Now the band announce that special guests Gloryhammer will be joining HammerFall on their extensive European Tour, and the support will come from Lancer.

”We got exactly the support bands we wanted”, says guitarist Oscar Dronjak. ”There is no doubt in my mind that Lancer will be thoroughly enjoyed by all our fans, and Gloryhammer's mighty and epic music will be the perfect lead-in to the HammerFall show that will follow. The World Wide (r)Evolution was a resounding success on every level with half of the shows sold out, and we can’t wait to get back on stage again to have a gigantic heavy metal party every night with all our Templar friends!”

HammerFall and Delain have joined forces for a co-headline North American tour, set for spring of 2017. Tickets and VIP packages for all shows are available now at this location.

HammerFall’s Built To Tour 2017 dates can be found here (with ticket links).