HAMMERFALL - Canada Lets The Hammer Fall! Page 2
by Martin Popoff

Dronjak laughed and warned me as well, offering me the long, medium or short version. And, as any predictable human cow on any given day would, I picked medium (later wondering what the long answer would have been).

"Well, what it boils down to is this," begins Oscar, "when we started with Hammerfall - and we started releasing albums eight years ago now, at that time - there really wasn't anything going in terms of melodic heavy metal. So when we came out with our first album, a lot of people went, 'Yay, this is cool! I like this!' The second album, was also... I mean, they liked that as well, but I could notice a change, not from what they thought about the music, but people - the first ones who were there - some of them said, 'Woah, Hammerfall is starting to get big now, and more people like it, so I don't like it anymore.' And that was annoying, a little bit. But that's the way people are. And when Renegade came out, we had some sort of breakthrough in Sweden, when it comes to the mainstream, radio and TV and stuff like that, and all of a sudden, there were younger people. I mean, younger people have always been buying our albums. Which is something I never expected, not even when I saw the teenagers in the crowd. Because it was so... they shouldn't be listening to this; they should be listening to something else (laughs). But we have always had a new generation on our side."

"And now also the girls started coming in. They don't actively go looking for metal, but if it's on TV, and their friends like it or whatever, they start listening to it. And I do think that heavy metal has a lot to offer anybody who's a little bit open-minded. If you listen to what's on TV all the time, then maybe you're just too narrow-minded for it. But if you just give it a chance... I know this for a fact. A lot of people say, 'Wow, is this what your band is like? Is this heavy metal? Well, I like this!' So you don't know."

HAMMERFALL - Canada Lets The Hammer Fall! Page 3