HAMMERFALL - It's Thunderous At The Top... Page 3
By Martin Popoff

"It's the studio in Andi Deris' house," clarifies Cans, referring to the Helloween singer and his Tenerife home. "We were down in his basement. And that was really nice. I can't be in a big city recording an album. There are too many things happening and I can't really relax. When I wake up in the morning I just want to look out the window. And if I see an ocean and see some seagulls flying around, that's pretty nice. It was really great to be down there. I think we worked more or less the same way we did on Renegade. Anders did his drums; he went back home. Magnus did his bass, then went back home. And then Oscar, Stefan and I spent four or five weeks together; it was pretty much the same as before. I spent more time on vocals, though, because we really wanted every word to be as powerful as the other. I'm used to working one and a half hours every two days. Now I had to work five or six hours instead. But listening to the final results, I'm really happy we did it."

Looking at the album lyrically, Joacim explains that "there's a link connecting some of the songs. There is no concept album whatsoever, but if you're really open-minded (laughs), you will get that there are some links tying the majority of the songs together, and that is the battle between good and evil. I think on this album I show a much darker side of Hammerfall. There aren't so many fights and swords and words like that on this album. I didn't really feel like talking about that this time."

How about some comments on Renegade now that some time has passed?

"Still one of my absolute favourite albums when it comes to the songwriting; I really love the songs on the album. Some people didn't understand the production. That was actually something we planned to do because I was so fed up with the over-compressed and triggered drum sound from almost every heavy metal album. We just wanted to do something different, something that had a little touch of a live performance, but of course a lot of people complained about it. Still, that album gave us our first gold album, our first No. 1 in the charts in Sweden."

HAMMERFALL - It's Thunderous At The Top... Page 4