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| BAD POETRY BAND - The One Way Romance LP | |
HRR 248, ltd 500, 150 x black vinyl + 350 x red vinyl, 425gsm heavy cardboard cover, cardboard lyric insert | |
| Martin Mula Gustafsson - vocals & guitars Daniel Birath - guitars Johan Lundh - bass Peter Müller - drums & vocals | |
| -We´re goning down -Not in love -Wait for tomorrow -Dig me when i´m down -Regret it -Predator -Make-up made for make out -All in vain -Half hearted -So long | |
SOLD OUT! | |
The Bad Poetry Band was formed in the small working-class town of Karlskoga in 2008. Karlskoga is close to Örebro which is kind of a rock town having given birth to bands as diverse as Witchcraft, Millencolin,The Accidents and the Truckfighters. The Bad Poetry Band (whose members are all ardent supporters of the Rögle BK ice hockey team) put out a couple of demos and recorded an album in 2010 which went over everyone's head. They toured Sweden, Norway and Italy before working on the new album entitled “The one Way Romance”. High-energy songs like “We're going down”, “Half hearted” or “Wait for Tomorrow” are sounding like as cross between classic AC/DC and early 1980's UK Glam Hardrock along the lines of Pet Hate, Demolition 23 and Hanoi Rocks. “Yupp, pretty much”, agrees bassist Johan Lundh. “It's always hard to compare your own music with other bands. All we can say is that we grew up listening to these bands among many others in the 1990's. But you can hear a lot of different bands in Bad Poetry Band, some Beatles's harmonies, Motörhead guitars and Atomic Swing melodies. We aren't a groundbreaking band, we just try to balance all the stuff we love.”
As already mentioned briefly, the Bad Poetry Band (whose childhood heroes are Guns n' Roses, Monster Magnet and Iron Maiden) is a pretty busy live act and that is what they like best – getting up on stage and performing their songs. Johan states: “Writings songs and hanging out in studios gets old fast, performing on stage never does! Recording an album is just a warm up for the main event, to go on the road. Selling records and t-shirts is a way to keep us on stage as much as possible. We've been working on 'The one Way Romance' for some time now and it's kept us mostly at rehearsal or in the studio so we're really eager to get out there!”
It is indeed an open secret that Sweden seems to have all the cool new bands (and High Roller Records have snatched up quite a few already). Johan has a theory why that is: “Well, I think it has a lot to do with the Swedish music schools. Every 4th grader gets the chance to learn an instrument and a lot of the youth centers have rehearsal studios. Nowadays there are a lot of small studios all over the country which makes it easy and cheap to record albums. And that bands can tour with unemployment benefits makes it all possible to get by and thereby creating a lot of free time for music. We were psyched when High Roller Records contacted us after sending a promo video because they have released some really good stuff in the past, like Sonic Ritual, Dr. Living Dead and RAM.”
Some people have voiced the opinion that the new Swedish Rock/Metal wave is more or less a rural phenomenon. The big cities like Stockholm an Gothenburg even less do not seem to be playing a big role … Johan has a different point of view: “I don’t think that we ever will see a new Seattle phenomenon because of the internet. It's more about who you are than where you're from now. Connections aren’t made in person as much as online nowadays which for us is good because we do live in the middle of nowhere.”
The front cover of “The one Way Romance” could at first glance be quite easily mistaken for Stoner Rock art. However, Johan does not see it as a problem: “Snakes are cool, snakes scaring a girl are even cooler. We wanted a piece of art made by hand rather than a photoshop image so we asked Lars Buller to make the cover art and I think he did a great job. But yeah … It might look a bit Stoner-ish now that you mention it but that’s not what we went for. We just wanted an image to describe the album title 'The one Way Romance'.”
It is one of the big aims for the Bad Poetry Band to be able to live off their music one day: “We are all working full time jobs and playing music for a living would be a dream of course. But working full time doesn’t mean you can't still go on the road and release music. But you never know, we are hard working and do spend a lot of time both in the rehearsal studio and promoting the band.”
Matthias Mader