Latest Release: Nostalgia
Label: Nuclear Blast
www.enforcer.bandcamp.com
Tour Bookings: www.yourmatebookings.com
Sweden’s traditional heavy metal band, Enforcer, have been steadily carving out a solid niche for themselves in the international metal scene, building their fanbase up through a solid work ethic. Now touring Australia, with their sixth and most recent album Nostalgia likely to feature in their live set, and being their first time here, they intend to serve up a feast of heavy metal anthems. In light of Enforcer making the trek to Australia, we caught up with the band’s founding member, frontman and guitarist, Olof Wikstrand.
Hello, by the time you get down here, it’s going to be stinking hot.
Olof Wikstrand: I’m excited. January is usually pretty cold in Sweden.
I had a listen to Nostalgia again and on revisiting it, reminded me of what a good album it is. You must be proud of it.
OW: Yeah, I listened to it myself the other day. I rarely listen to my own music, in other contexts other than for reference. I reference our own music and my mixes quite a bit. But I went back to it the other day because I was sending out orders and I had a vinyl copy of the album, so I thought I had better listen to what it sounds like. I was extremely pleased with it now that I could listen to it with a bit of distance to it. I’m really happy with it. It covers so many bases.
Do you have the same kind of feeling when you listen to your live albums?
OW: To the live albums, yes. I don’t think I’ve listened to their live albums [Live by Fire and Live by Fire II] in full since they were released. Maybe I might go and listen to it. If I see somebody sharing a link to it or something on Facebook or Instagram, I might think, ‘Oh, this is pretty good.’ But I haven’t listened to them in full since they were released.
That makes sense, but of the two, which one do you prefer?
OW: Well, the second one is much better. I sing better and i’s a better production. I mean, we develop. I think we develop as a band all the time, and we get better and better, so that’s the way it should be. I guess it would be way worse if we were getting worse and worse for every year that passed, but I think we do better shows, we do better songs, we perform better, and I sing better. We all play better.
In listening to the album again, I found that there’s some Scorpions influences in there.
OW: Hell, yeah. Scorpions has been one of my top three favourite bands, since I can’t remember when, maybe since the past 15 years. Absolutely, Scorpions is definitely one of my biggest inspirations.
Given there are two guitars, so do you divvy up the solos? Or is it one of those things where, as a front man, you’re doing a lot of solos and you’re writing them?
OW: No, I think we split them pretty 50/50. But on the latest album, it was a bit weird because it was mainly recorded during the pandemic, and we couldn’t really rehearse properly. So, it was put together piece by piece, and we couldn’t really write stuff. So, I play the majority of the guitar solos on the album. But then when we perform the songs live, we split them up a bit between us.
Okay, fair enough. There are also bits of harmony guitar in there as well. So, was that one of those things where when you’re in a pandemic situation, you just say, ‘Okay, I’ll write a melody line, and I’ll just double my tracks’?
OW: You know, when it comes to harmonies and things like that, there’s nothing set that way. I can kind of see how it looks from an outside perspective that if you do a harmony part, which is a part where both guitar players do their thing and contribute to the composition. But it’s not really like that normally. You write the guitar solo and then think maybe it should work with a nice harmony so then you harmonise yourself, and that’s really how it works in most cases.
Does that apply to how you approach vocals and backing vocals?
OW: Yeah, I mean, I record all the harmonies and do my own harmonies, but I don’t do, the choirs or the backup. There are two different things. So, there’s harmonies and then there’s a package of harmony vocals that works more as a choir. On the past two albums, my brother’s [Jonas Wikstrand – drums] been doing pretty serious doubling of himself and to put together this bigger backup vocal track stack. But, for the simple harmonies, I dub myself for that normally.
The title track, to me it had some Abba vocal melody aspects which I guess you cannot escape being from Sweden, right?
OW: Yeah, maybe. I mean, I love Abba, and I think most people in our band do too. I mean, it’s just a showcase of how you write good songs and how you use songwriting techniques to write good music, regardless of genre. So, you’ve got to appreciate it for what it is, man.
Did you find it difficult to get used to singing and playing guitar at the same time?
OW: Yeah, when I started to play music in my childhood, there weren’t a lot of people who were around who could play in bands, you know. I think we formed our first band when I was in primary school or something, and even back then it was hard to find people. Not everybody in my class wanted to play heavy rock, they were way more into whatever was popular at that time. It’s always been like I’ve been forced to both play guitar and sing at the same time, even from the beginning. So, I played guitar and I’ve been singing and then in other bands have only played guitar; it’s been a bit on and off. But when we started Enforcer, it obviously started like a ‘one band’ band, then after a couple of years we decided to go on as like a four piece where I would put down the guitar and I would only sing and we would only have one guitar. We discovered it sounded a bit weak because we had made a lot of harmonies that needed to be reproduced live. So, we got another guitar player and then we were a five-piece for a couple of years. But it was hard to keep a five-piece together because it gets a weird group dynamic when you’re five, so to speak. There were a lot of conflicts, a lot of logistics that became very hard to be a five-piece. So, when our previous guitar player [Adam Zaars] at that time decided to quit the band, we decided to continue as a four piece mainly because I’ve been playing guitar and singing. I did it in the beginning of Enforcer and then I just continued from there.
Is that the kind of thing that a producer also gives you advice on or is it just you live it?
OW: No, but I’ve been more or less producing all our albums. Okay, more or less. The second album [Diamonds], we had a friend of mine producing it from start to finish. But all other albums, that’s something that I’ve been responsible for producing. Honestly, I think that Enforcer would fit perfectly as a five-piece with me being the only singer. But it’s the logistics makes it really hard. We all have high costs for getting around, since we don’t play so much locally, we just play globally. That makes it really expensive to get around and to make this work. We’re not teenagers anymore and so I think that everybody who plays with us should have a decent payment, or a decent cut for every show that you do, so that you feel that you do something for yourself also, and that you can support yourself and pay your rent and pay food when you get back home. So, it’s also like you’ve got to support another person, completely. That’s also very economically demanding. So, unless we see major success or a major rise in payments and economics in general, I think we will stay like a four-piece.
Yeah, I understand. You’ve got Marshall amplifier heads in your studio visible behind you but as a means of saving costs, have you embraced the digital age, such as using Kempers?
OW: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a bit hard. I mean, in the studio, it’s one thing I try to use a nice blend. I record everything digitally, but I also split it so I can, run it through a live cabinet. So, it’s a nice way. I’ve been using the Axe-FX [Fractal pre-amplifier and multi-effects processor] for a couple of years now that I’m really happy with because it sounds amazing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a complete nerd when it comes to guitar tone, but it’s the first time ever that I feel that a digital reproduction of a tone gets accurate enough so that I can use it. I mean, once you get it dialled in a bit, I think that it sounds good. If I just A/B my 1980 JMP with my V30 elements, if I A/B that to the same setting on the Axe-FX, the digital versions sound like the old one; like a perfect copy of it because they also differ so much from copy to copy. So, it’s really hard to maintain a tone. I use both in the studio but when it comes to playing live, since we’re a global band, you cannot travel with 100-pound amps. I have been focusing on only playing digital live and you know you can use a split. So, we’ve been using splits lately where we have like the digital sound to the board and to our in-ear listening, so we always have a consistent tone. If you have a different tone every night, even if it’s just like micro-movement or whatever, you have to adjust your playing towards the new tone and that makes you perform worse. But if you always have the same tone, it’s so much easier. You just put the guitar on, and it sounds like it always should, and then you can just go on from where you were yesterday. So, we do that and then we split the signal to live amps on stage normally. So, we use that for the stage sound, and for the first rows we do live amps, and for the PA and for the listening, we use digital. So, it’s a bit mixture there.
I guess that for a song like “When the Thunder Roars (Crossfire)”, it’s convenient that you’ve got the digital aspect because you get your chorus and delay exactly as you want.
OW: Yeah, and then I’ve programmed everything to a time code, so I don’t even have pedals on stage. It just switches automatically. It’s super convenient.
That stuff wasn’t really around when you started, right? It’s only really just developed.
OW: No, no, hell no.
So, when you play at festivals, and you see these massive bands like Maiden or Priest and they’ve got this entourage with them and they can bring out all the amps, they can bring out all the pedals and stuff. Do you think they’re kind of wasting their time doing that?
OW: Well, I know some of the sound engineers working for these bands and you’d be surprised to see how many of those bands that rely completely on digital amps and then they just have live amps for the show or for the looks, or for just the stage sound. But, a lot of the sounds, you know, have the dry signals too because it’s also a matter of separation. It’s really hard to separate the guitar tone from everything else going on onstage, and when you can have, a dry, perfect guitar signal and it’s just going to make life easier for everybody.
Is there a particular track on Nostalgia that you most enjoy?
OW: I think the title track, “Nostalgia”, is probably the one that I’m most proud of because for me, it’s like one of the songs where we get a little bit more creative. We explore some areas we haven’t really been to before. So that’s one thing that, as an artist, it’s really reassuring to always explore new areas. That’s so important for my own creativity to be able to do that at the same time as some other songs are pretty much replicas of older songs. But you have to do that because you have to find a middle way between being true to yourself and also satisfying your
creativity. So, yeah, it’s always a balance, and on album six, it’s a tight, tight balance to do something like that, especially since there are so many expectations on the outcome of an album, not only from the fans, but also from us. So, it’s much harder to make album six than album number two, where you’re freer to do whatever, you want because nobody has any expectations on you.
So, in that light, if you look at “Nostalgia” and “Heartbeats”, they’ve both got acoustic elements to it, so I guess it’s a 12 sting or a mandolin?
OW: It’s a funny, it’s a production technique that I stole from Boston. I didn’t steal it really, but it is a pretty common thing where you record a bunch of guitars and then you record them in octaves, so you’re pretty much layering in octaves. I think we didn’t even do that. I think it’s like 12 cents pitched up and one like another is 12 cents pitched down, and when you put it together and you mix also nylon strings with steel strings, and you put it together to get this blend. I think that it has been pretty detailed information on this recording technique, and I think it was invented by Boston in the first place for the acoustic guitars on their debut album from 1976 or something?
Yeah, that sounds like a Tom Scholz [founding guitarist – Boston] type method.
OW: Exactly. Yeah, and he’s been pretty detailed about how to do this. So, there’s a lot of information about how to achieve that guitar tone, and that’s totally what we went for.
Speaking of guitars, I gather it is flying V’s all the way.
OW: I like to play V’s but, in the studio, I definitely prefer Stratocasters because they’re sensitive. There’s more room for interpretation. They’re not like the Gibson Les Pauls on and flying V’s with a glued neck and everything. That makes them a bit more dead for expression. But on the other hand, that makes them, according to me, a much better guitars to play live on because they’re more forgiving. So that’s pretty much the reason why I play glued necks when we play live and bolted necks when I’m in the studio, because it gives me more control.
Then there is the aspect of touring risks where guitar equipment gets destroyed.
OW: Yeah, however you do it, no matter how many shows you’ve done in your life, when you get up on stage, there’s this adrenaline involved, and when adrenaline is involved, it will set your micro movements off slightly. It won’t be the same as sitting at home playing guitar. In my case, I discovered that I hit way harder on the guitar, and I think I push more when I’m singing. I have to actively think about what to play, and to make my instrument and my voice sound good when I play live. That’s also why I’m using more forgiving type of guitars live because if you hit the Stratocasters too hard, you will have a hard transience and then it will die. It will have almost no sustain. The trick with playing Stratocasters is that you have to be extremely loose to make them sound good. That’s why, the best Stratocaster players like Yngwie Malmsteen or John Norum [Europe] play through extremely quiet gain on the Stratocasters while the Gibsons are way more forgiving. So, you can like bash the hell out of them and they will sound thick even if you hit them hard. But yeah, the Stratocasters you’ve got to be careful with, and that’s the problem.
Have you found that that also applies to your approach to vocals in that getting your tone, your timbre, essentially?
OW: Oh yeah, yeah, and that’s something that I discovered pretty late. In the first 15 years of the band’s existence, I couldn’t sing. I could sing in the studio where everything was perfect, when I had perfect listening, when I was relaxed in my body, when I was perfectly warmed up and I was in a good place. But playing live is completely different. You know, you get the adrenaline, you don’t know how much you’re pushing, and also, I had the idea back in the day that was like everybody who had a high-pitched voice, they are really like pushing it so hard. I lived with that idea for like such a long time before I started to listen to more singers who are way more controlled. I realised, ‘Wow, they’re singing so quietly and I’m singing so loud.’ So, I try to learn a bit from that to be able to maintain a drive and the voice, while not pushing it so hard also because it’s been making me a much better vocalist live to start to think about these things. Also, one thing that I learned a lot before the recording of Nostalgia was to sing more softly. I could never sing softly because have a lower register. I couldn’t sing because I had no idea how to use my voice in the lower register because I thought that I would push it as hard as I would push it when I’m up high. But, looking to other vocalists, you have to use the dynamics. So, I think I developed a lot in my lower register too because now I know where I should push and where I can sing airier or softly. That gives so much more dynamics to my voice and I’m also able to deliver a much more nuanced vocal take.
That sort of explains to me, being a Rush fan, how Geddy Lee sings to an extent.
OW: But when you think about it, I mean, if you listen to Dio, for example, which in my world is the best rock singer that ever walked on this planet. I mean, he’s so soft in “Don’t Talk to Strangers” or like in some of those songs like “Catch the Rainbow” and then he goes from extremely hard to soft vocals because he has the entire dynamics of it; from soft to hard, from flat to theatrical. He had everything, all that in his voice at the same time. It reminds me about that music, after all, is about dynamics.
Indeed. Finally, what can we expect from the set list?
OW: Oh, that’s a very good question, but I think we’re trying to pull off a 20-year anniversary set list, more or less with one or two occasional deep cuts. The covers we’ve been doing has been a bit depending on what era we’ve been in. We did a Judas Priest cover [“Tyrant”] within the Diamonds setting because it was a fun thing. I’ve never even played that song on guitar, so I think that would be a hard thing to do as a four-piece. There were other songs we played like “Countess Bathory” [Venom] with our old guitar player Joseph [Tholl]. He was singing that song because it really worked with his voice. So, we haven’t been doing that since he quit the band either, or it’s just a lot of those things that are fun in the moment. But we will find new covers to play around with in the set.
All right, thanks very much for having chat to us. We will see you here very soon.
OW: Absolutely. Nice talking. Have a good time.