INTERVIEW:

Interview: Swedes Sounds Like Violence might just win the award for world’s most appropriately named band. Their debut full-length, With Blood On My Hands, proves it: an intense, passionate tearing-out of collective hearts, that manages to bloody the living rooms of post-hardcore, indie and punk without quite settling in any. Catharsis never sounded better.
Kill The Noise caught up with drummer Daniel Petterson to find out more.

You released The Pistol ep in 2004, and now have just released your debut full length - what took so long?

Well, when we released the ep we only really had those 6 songs so it took some time writing new songs, and we really only wanted use the best songs for the album so we rejected some songs, and then we really didnt want to stress through this recording, we wanted it to come out the way we wanted it to sound. There was also some label negotiations and paperstuff that took some time and then the labels wanted to push the album forward to get a better release date, all these things added up and time went by.

How have SLV changed in those 3 years? How would you say the album compares or contrasts with the ep?

We haven't really changed that much, we still make music that we love and try to be really honest and direct in our writing. The album is more varied than the ep, the songs differ a bit more in sound and style, the ep sounded sort of the same, raw and in your face, and thats great for 6 songs but for the album we really wanted the songs to be more different, and to make an album with 12 songs like the ones on the ep would be hard to listen to.

Can you let us in on the meaning behind the title With Blood On My Hands?

The album is focused a lot around relationships and friendship and the title reflects how you sometimes have to work really hard for friendship and relationships and how that work sometimes can be really destructive. It also reflects the way we feel that we have worked on the band and the album, we have worked untill we bled so to speak.

The lyrics of SLV are always going to catch attention. What inspires such passion and bitterness?

Well Andreas, the singer, finds inspiration in old relationships and friend's relationships. We all have demons that we deal with in some ways and I feel that Andreas and we in the band have dealt with some of our demons/memories on this album. We use things that happens to people all around us as inspiration. Some of the lyrics on this album are really personal and others are more ironic and playful. The passion is something that we feel we create through the music we make when we play togheter, the intensity we feel when writing songs.

A SLV song almost sounds like an emotional release or expulsion of inner demons, would you agree with this? And do you ever feel any better afterwards?

Sometimes yes, it's a release of demons, othertimes it's different emotions. When you get that release of emotions you definitely feel better, other times I feel inspired and energetic. We really like playing together and when doing so we get energized.

Is it hard to capture such a cathartic sound on record?

Hmmm, tough question. We try to capture the kind of emotions and sound that we create in the rehearsal, we really enjoy playing live and the kind of energy and intensity that we produce live is what we wanna get in the studio.

Do you think SLV will ever mellow out?

Don't know, maybe, who knows what will happen in the future. We don't really think too hard about what kind of music we wanna make, we simply go in to the rehearsal and play, what comes out comes out. But I dont think it's going to calm down for some time yet!

SLV have been described as indie-rock, post-hardcore, emo, pop, punk, rock n' roll - where do you see yourselves? Is this genre-elusiveness something you consciously aim for?

We don't think about it at all, we don't think there is any real need to put music in different categories. For us it's simply good music, if you wanna call it emo, indie or punk etc, that's ok, but we aren't really thinking about it. If it happens that we create music that "belongs" to or can be described as different genres then that's great, then we really have made something new and different.

The video for the first single "Glad I'm Losing You" has just been released - how was the experience filming that? Can you explain the idea behind the video?

It was great, some parts were actually shot in Andreas' home! That was fun! Making videos are always fun but at the same time hard, especially the performance parts, playing the song like 30 times in a row isnt that exciting! The idea behind the video is that death surrounds these two persons that are having dinner, and that we, the band are the only thing holding them (us) alive, when the music stops the couple dies. It's taken inspiration from an old painting showing death taking many people's lives except for two musicians, those two are the only ones living.

What's next for SLV?

Well we really wanna tour as much as possible now and during the summer, playing some shows in may and then doing some festivals this summer. There are also plans for making a new album and we hope to start writing songs for that this fall, you won't have to wait two years for a new album, promise!

Sounds Like Violence's debut full-length, With Blood On My Hands, is out now on Deep Elm / Burning Heart Records.
Site: soundslikeviolence.com
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