Rock City Nottingham, 3rd December 2009. Guitarist Robin Sjunnesson talks about the new line up, and album re-release of LOVE AND DISASTERS featuring the new BURN THE CITY E.P.

Your Current tour shares the same title as your New EP…

Well we wanted to bring attention to the new material and the things that happened with the band, and it sounds cool when we write on the site after a tour that we’ve burnt down a city. Unfortunately due to the venue size, we can’t actually have any pyrotechnics, the licensing and health stuff is a nightmare, so it’s just pure rock and roll on the stage.

It’s been four years since your initial success after winning Nuclear Blasts unsigned competition, but how was it for you when you won that?

It was amazing, it was really like a dream coming true, this label has some of rocks most prestigious artists, and it was unbelievable to join their roster. After we signed it was very unbelievable for us, we where seeing ourselves on MTV, and releasing albums, and we where getting these great big tours with Nightwish, and In Flames. It was a like a roller coaster that just keeps going up and up, and we are still on that now, it’s the same feeling, everything is cool and exciting.

Your first release EDEN FIRE in 2005, was prior to your success on Nuclear Blast, but was it a stepping stone release?

That album was released through an American company called Pivotal Recordings, and was only available in the States, and maybe some large places in Europe, but, well now of course you can get it, but yes initially it was a very small release. Nothing really much happened after that, we did a few shows at home in Sweden, but there was no touring or anything like that, our career as it is now only really started after we signed and released ONLY IN HUMAN (Nuclear Blast, 2007).

Considering your background, did you face initial skepticism after your first release?

A lot of people though that we where like a casting… or how you say, manufactured band, as if we’d been put together as a fake band, so we had to work to show people that we where a serious rock band, or kick ass rock band actually (smiles), but we have won some awards, and even best live act in Sweden.

Where you guys nervous on your first North American tours with Amon Amarth, and later Nightwish?

Those tours where amazing, we played various shows, small and large, but the American fans are so open- minded. No one knew who we where on those tours, but in total we must have played to over 200,000 people and out of that lots of people where buying the merch, and we gained a whole new fan base. And we still get loads of support on Myspace, and Facebook, with fans saying how much they enjoyed our shows, and turn people who have never heard you before, especially when you play with bands who sound so different. It is their shows, to earn the support of the crowd was phenomenal, and I think those tours in particular marked a big change, and a step up for us. But also like I said, it is like a dream to get to play with the bands that we grew up listening to, NightWish, In Flames, Soilwork, to meet them, and know them on a personal level is pretty amazing when before they where just pictures in a CD sleeve or something like that. But to tour with them, and open up all these big venues for us, its unbelievable, a fantastic ride.

You’ve also played some of Europe’s biggest festival dates, Wacken and With Full Force…

Wacken was insane, it was I think only the third time we had ever played in Germany, and we where on, maybe 12 or 1 o’clock in the day, and we thought maybe there would be a few drunk germans there, still partying from the night before. But when we walked out, there was 25,000 people, and I thought, shit, how the hell do these people even know who we are? But I can’t describe how brilliant it is to play those shows, the big festival shows, we have those memories for life.

So more recently, you guys have had a line up change, but before we mention new vocalist Nathan J Biggs, was there a bleak period for the band after the loss of Robin Sjunnesson?

Well we felt that there was something wrong before it happened, because despite everything we had, he wasn’t that into the band, so when he announced to us that he was leaving it wasn’t that much of a shock, still we where surprised considering how well things where going for us. But after he left, we had a meeting that same day with the 5 of us left and decided that we would keep this going, and then we found Nathan.

How did you guys, a Swedish 5 piece, end up with a Welshman on vocals?

We advertised on a Swedish radio channel that we needed a new singer, and we set up a thing so people could send us in video’s or a song or something like that, but to be honest not even we know how he ended up finding about the application process in the first place, because he is all the way over in the UK, and it was on a Swedish Radio? But he was persistent, and he would write us everyday to get our attention, and so we brought him over to our studio, and he was a great singer, and he was also fitting into everything. He is our age, and we get on, he is like the brother we never had in the band, but he just fitted perfectly, and we are very glad he is here.

Are there ever any communication problems between you guys?

Not really, we mainly always speak in English, on tour or in the rehearsal room, sometimes we are all sat speaking Swedish, and suddenly we are like, oh shit, Nathans in the room, but, most of our crew are American, or English, so it’s not very different for us to get used to, and we learned it from a young age anyway.

Has the change affected the bands writing style?

Since he came to the band, it has still been great, he has so many ideas, we will come up with something, and he is constantly thinking and brain-storming. When we write we all add so much, it’s a little hard to explain, but his melodies are good, and the new single when we started it, we new Nathan was perfect for it, and we knew we would use it to show him to the world, and show them where we are at as a band, and everyone likes him a lot (smiling).

You did the new material with the same producer Jonas Kjelgren, who also worked on your last album. Did you consider anyone else, or where you looking to keep a degree of continuity to your material?

We want people to recognize our sound, and Jonas has a special sound in the studio - like a Sonic Syndicate sound, you could say, and we wanted to keep that. But we are friends, and we know him so well, and for the new single we wanted to keep all that.

Any news on a new album?

Yes, we are looking to record in January, and we will have Toby Wright as the producer, which will be cool, he has done Metallica, and Motley Crue, and all bands like that, and hopefully we release that, maybe May sometime. It’s a little early to say what it is going to be like, because we have no idea, you can’t really put us in the same genre as some of the other bands, we mix it all so much, we have the death metal songs, but we also have the MTV ballads. We have no borders or boundaries, so you can never say what is going to happen the next time you write or record, we have no idea ourselves, well of course we have some idea from the 2 new songs on the EP, so we have a little idea of what is going on, but it could be more brutal or more commercial, it depends how it turns out.