Interview: Makthaverskan

Gothenburg, Sweden

Makthaverskan

Pretty certain that in 2013 i’ve listened to Makthaverskan‘s sophomore LP in its entirety more than anything else, so i’m really thrilled to post this interview.

Hugo Randulv: I think the band started in 2008. Then it was just me (Hugo) and the drummer Andreas. The band was pretty much as a result of boredom, bad grades in school, and a dislike for all other music coming out of the city back then, which was all really happy and cute pop music. We wanted Makthaverskan to be the opposite of that. A few weeks later we were Joined by Maja (vocals) and Irma (bass/Guitar) since I knew them from school. None of us really played any instruments when we started, but we didn’t see that as a problem and we learned as time went by. We had our first gig in a squatted house in a part of Gothenburg called Gamlestan. We didn’t have all of our songs ready but we decided to play anyways. We knew the day before that we were going to play and we didn’t have any drum kit so we had to use cardboard boxes and metal lampshades to play on, but the show went really good!

After that we recorded a demo and did a couple of shows in Gothenburg and eventually got signed by our current record label Luxury. We released our debut album in 2009 on Luxury and did a couple of festival gigs and a disastrous mini tour in Norway.

The band was on hold for a bit during the gap between the first and the second album, with just a couple of shows, sporadic rehearsals and recordings.

Maja moved to Berlin and the rest of us went on with other things back in Sweden. The second album took a really long time to record because we didn’t have all the songs ready when we started recording and the deal we had with the studio we recorded in was that we could record only when no other bands were booked to record. Which was never. So the album was very delayed, but when it was done we were all really happy with the result!

During the recording we also found a new band member, Gustav Data, whom I also have another band called Westkust with.

By the release of our second album we were struck by some really unfortunate events. Illness in the band, and our drummer was badly assaulted, robbed, and was hospitalized for a while. That caused us to cancel a couple of shows that we were scheduled to do during the summer. But eventually we were able to play live again and did a couple of really good shows, for example the Way out west festival here in Gothenburg.

Right now we are writing new songs that will hopefully become a new album soon!

Something personal: This question was quite hard. No one could come up with anything that was particularly unique about themselves. Our drummer Palle has an almost religious worship for the Norwegian band Turbonegro, especially their guitarist Euroboy. Gustav is a MASTER in World of Warcraft. Irma is the one who is drawing all the covers of our records.

What we like in boys/Girls: We kind of like all people, as long as they’re not assholes.

Work:

This is a good example that captures what we want to do. This is from our release party for the second album. Most of the people ending up on stage during the end of the clip are the people who always come to the Makthaverskan shows, people that we love! Gustav, our guitarist, unfortunately couldn’t play at this show since he was at home playing World of Warcraft.