FULLFORCE - None Of Your Concern (Photo video)

Snow

Our street. Yesterday it was snowing all day.

Our plant covered sun screen thing made out of wood couldn't handle the weight of the snow. It did with and awful sound...

Bench

At the gym. William and I do powerlifting. Here I lift 158 kg or 348 punds. But I never go past the 90 degree angle or the sholders will pop.

Leaf and snow

It's been snowing lots lately. This a few days ago. More has come since.

Jenny got an autumn leaf on her hat (cap or whatever you English speakers call it) without noticing.

Drum clinic

This is the poster Magnus did for my drum clinic at his place. He thought I looked like a criminal. I agree. And he thought the drum sticks I'm holding were baseball bats.

Anders trying to hang with rockstars

This is me hanging with some friends/rock stars. Everyone else looks really cool. I look like a freak of course. I really never had a clue about clothing or style. Check Joey Tempest out. Or Yngwie. They knew what to put on. A fun note is that Joey has a pink land line phone. Cells were not comon back then (1988). This was from John Levéns apartment in Upplands Väsby where we all grew up. The skirt I'm wereing was from my mother. "Here, Anders...some clothes before you go on the next 14 months world tour!" Well, I now understand why I never had any girls or groupies. But in general our band (Rising force) played the wrong kind of music. We had a 100% male audience since we played musician's music. When we did videos we hired girls to be in the audience pretending to be our fans.

Drumming in Studio Bohus

We are almost done recording. Today was pretty hard work. Next HammerFall album will have some fast songs for sure. But also a bunch of the normal stuff.

Drumming in Kungälv.

Me and my drums and cymbals.

The drum producer, Tobbe

At work in studio Bohus. Abba was here as well as Status quo. One of the recorders has an Abba reel (Arrival) still on.

Jens

In the middle of the night you might hear strange thumping sounds, maybe a loud bang, some low monotounus hum-swish and last night a power tool outside the house late at night. I took this pic with a strong flash. He was "caught in the act". :-)

Power sanding away all night long.

US-weekend

Atlanta, Georgia. John Finnberg and Joacim Cans, tour-booker extraordinaire and HammerFall-singer extraordinaire, having a few drinks. The drinks were actually flouresent. I'm not kidding.

Finnish people

In Finland people buy cheaper and therefore weaker beers in the bars and then mix in 96% pure alcohol (ethyl alcohol), which they brought with them into the bar secretly, to make it stronger.
In the pic: Jens Johansson, who is only half Finnish, that's why he brings only half a bottle of alcohol.
Another odd thing. People bring spices like curry and Tabasco with them to restaurants since the food is often un-spicy and somewhat tasteless.

Jenny and I sold some fish.

Here they swim at the zoo shop, Akvarietjänst in Malmö. Jacobfreibergis (not seen here) and some Red Zebras. The Red Zebras are a mix from our own and Åke Unger's price winning zebras caught in the wild.

We went to an Indian restaurant afterwards.
Jenny had some picled gouramies.

X-mas i coming.

I try to beat everyone to be the first one to put up some x-mas decorations. This year Paul and Anette won.

Ukraine/Russian trip with Hammerfall.

Kiev's Mc Donalds. A Porn-Burger maybe? Everyone was a bit worried if they would develop three eyes (four eyes) or/and start glowing after eating. Chernobyl is just outside Kiev.
Porn means: Royal.

A typial "eastern looking car" This is a Lada. They are always in really bright and strong colors.

Our (cross)dressing room. "Primadonja" it says. Yes, I know the Cyrillic letters a bit.
Maybe Primadonja means artist in Russian?

Kiev Railway station. Everything in Ukraine and Russia is big except the cars. The cars btw you will see breaking down (or broken down) at all times. If you go ten miles on any road you will see at least 50 broken down cars at the side of the road.

On our way to Moscow.

Oscar and my train compartment. It was a twin room with no heater control. It was probably 30 degrees in there. Oscars bed to the right (with all the beers and wine). Joacim was directly on the other side of the thin wall bunking with Fredrik. They try to get the calm ones together and the wild ones separately. The band and crew had a whole train car to ourselves almost. A few other poor bastards where there as well. I guess they didn't get any sleep either since Oscar and some of the crew were in party mode. Between the Ukraine border and the Russian border it was a three hour train ride. A bit odd.

In the 80-ties we toured the Soviet Union with Rising Force for six weeks once. The trains where similar then but I think they hade open fire heaters in our car. We sold 15 millon records in Russia with one album (Trilogy) and got a bunch of coal and oil stocks as royalty. I personally didn't get any coal just a bunch of Borscht soup...

STOP-KRAN. Emergency break handle.

Jazz concert

Bobo Stenson (not seen) on piano, Stefan Kärfve bass, Sammy Rimington sax/clarinet and yours truly on kit drums. We played swing and standards for an hour and 20 minutes. Jazz musicians are so different than rock musicians. No rehearsals almost, even though no one had ever played together before. Music is like a language, with different dialects. I speak many different dialects.

Strange thai dish

Number two (excuse the pun). Gay Toad crap.

Fredrik

This was taken at Gästis in Anderslöv.
Some beers later...

Paul and Anette

Different personalities here. Paul is extrovert.

And Anette is shy. I have 25 pics like this one of her. She hates the camera.

Horse show

Jenny and Tina Mollington took me and Sören (Vettu-Fardvik) to a horse field competition. They were galloping (cantering) at full speed over sturdy and sharp obstacles. If they mess up it's quite dangerous since the obstacles don't collapse at all.

Jens

We tried to go to a somewhat fancy restaurant with Jens. He was making really loud puking sounds while having dessert. I mean, it was LOUD! Really embarrasing. He kept going on and on and on...seemed like an eternity.

Tommy Lee Bass

We played at Sonissphere this summer. We played before Mötley Crüe. This is their drummer's bass drum. It was raining a lot that day. When we played it was a light drizzle mist but when we were done a terrible down pour started for hours. It created a small lake wher the 48 000 people were standing. The worst weather at a festival I've ever seen in my 30 years as a musician.

Party at Paul and Anette's.

Jenny and I drank people's beers. It's a weak beer you can buy in ordinary shops. It's better than the strong stuff in many ways. With strong alcohol at least I start misbehaving and do stupid things as well as feeling like crap for days. Paul and the rest were drinking "Stockholm 7.0's and Rekorderlig cider 7.0's" Paul with popcorn in his face.

Party on!

Diaper.

Dancing the night away. Martin to the far right. Behind him you can almost see Anya.

Boating on the west coast.

Krister at the helm.

Kalle stearing and getting lessons in seaman ship by Krister.

Niklas and I was in the smaller boat. Smaller but still very fast. Niklas was doing "donuts".

This boat, a zodiak, had to be mended first. A propeller accident had punctured it. It took some glue and patches and it was ready to go again.

Wipers breaking down

At the possible worst time the windshield wiper motor broke. Luckily Jenny's father found a few used ones on the internet by a scrapheep-online-site. I mended the motor temporarely but in pouring rain on the E6 it stopped completely. Had to get it started again at a gas station by fiddling with the motor. Our fried Tina helped out and drove and got a used motor for us as well as baking a nice lemon curd cake. Her boyfriend Sören, drummer in Plantera, helped to install it.

Cruising for burgers

Kalle ate a huge burger at Snapparp road diner in Halland.

I ordered a tripple Whopper in Svinesund (swine-straight). The guy had a hard time at first understanding the concept of adding an extra slab of meat.

Trying to impress :-)

Limberness is not my thing, being stiff as a tree trunk, but I have been getting the roundhouse-kicks a bit higher lately.

Italy, Switzerland and Germany

We hung out with Chris Tsangarides. Chris has done like a million records. And worked with a lot of the biggest bands. I know him from doing a Yngwie Malmsteen-record. Backstage in Balingen, Germany.

Pontus cooling off after the gig (in Hutwill, Switzerland).

Henjo Richter (left) and Daniel Zimmermann (right) after thier gig with Gamma Ray. They were in a good mood. Pistonia, Italy.

Daniel Zimmermann's hi-hat pedal has a funky name.

Mikael Stanne, Dark Tranquillity. The DT-boys can really drink. Late night at Bang your head, Germany.

Tolmin, Slovenia.

We headlined so we got to put our bus next to the stage. It was so loud from all the other bands it was impossible to sleep. The bus was special. Had all sorts of nice features.

Next to the gig there was a nice little creek of ice cold and clear mountain water.

Oscar having a drink, self serve style.