There I was sitting on the hill of Sabaton Open Air Festival. When this amazing band walks up on me. Lagerstein had arrived! I am surprised that almost the whole band was there. Because we all know these guys know how to party! And I bet they had a heavy night. I interviewed: Captain Gregarrr (CG), The Majestic Beast (TMB) and Mother Junkst (MJ).

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GRIMM: How did the band actually come alive. Where did the idea come from?  

MJ: Like with Lagerstein? It came very organically I think. Like Neil and I started the band with his brother The Majestic Beast when we were way younger.

TMB: It was like nine years ago now.  When we were 17. I wasn’t even old enough to drink yet.

MJ: We were playing in some other bands and Lagerstein was a bit more of a side project. Originally it was more of just partying, silliness, fun, Vikings, pirates and sometimes just about beer. And it just kind of kept going and solidified our new vocalist at that time: Ultra Lord, (who sang before Captain Gregarrr on the first album). He said like just pick one and be something.

TMB: Really focus on one and try not to be everything. You are spreading yourself to wide. Give yourself an identity.

MJ: It definitely never started like: Let us be a pirate metal band. Pirate metal was not really a thing at that time.

CG: It was more the word party that got us together.

MJ: Like at the time it was just Alestorm killing it. they had two albums out. And there was Swashbuckle before them. And now there is a world wide Pirate metal scene.

TMB: Even on the gigs we play all around the world, there is nine times out of ten a pirate metal band playing. It is awesome, I love it so much . I am happy and excited to be part of a scene that keeps growing and growing.

MJ: I think when there is one really big band that maybe people think that belongs to them. But I have seen the scene and there are a lot of creative people fondling their ideas and creating lots of different Pirate metal. 

GRIMM: Like you said in the beginning, it can be like that. That it belongs to one band. But now it is endless.  

MJ: I think in one way it still have somewhere to go. There are going to be more interesting bands coming the next decade. If you watch and see what happened to Viking metal. It started so early in the 90’s. And now it is just in the head of everyone it is just a thing now.  

GRIMM: What are the visions for the band? Where do you want to go with the band?   

MJ: I want to do that (points to Sabaton) play next to them or headline on Wacken.  

GRIMM: You also want your own festival?  

TMB: We already have our own festival. Called Lagerfest. We have done it for five years now. This is not open air. Actually, we have done a couple of open airs once. Last one was Brisbane Open Air. But it is a lot of fun. A little bit like Sabaton Open Air on a smaller scale.We had like a bouncing castle over there and stuff.  

GRIMM: So it really fitted the party like theme? 

TMB: Yeah, it is really Lagerstein. Beer festival meets music festival meets fun.

MJ: Meets Lagerstein!

TMB: It really has come to its own thing.

CG: We really want to continue and see how long we can keep building it up. 1 year at a time.

TMB: Yeah, but we love touring so much that we are able to give up seven months of our lives to live on the road. And live the party life. And grow the band. Because we always see the bigger pitch of that. The more we sacrifice now the more we can work towards our future.

MJ: I think that is an all of us dream. To become a legendary band that does his own thing.

TMB: Definitely comes with it’s own complications and hurdles. Because we are not signed to a label or anything.

CG: we are really “do it yourself”.

MJ: This album we are releasing from our own label. We started our own record label called: Kegstand Records. We are really trying something different. Going the whole pirate way. And do everything on our own. It is a complicated world the music business. So we just try to grow in what we think is right.  

TMB: We are the underdogs from down under! It is super excited to be honest. We love what we do and we are all best friends. Even to this day we never really had an argument or something like that.

CG: It is really crazy if you think we are away for 8 months at a time and really are living on top of each other. You are really living in a nine seated van with eight people. And still there is no beef between us. Everyone is just happy to have a beer.

MJ: We just all know that we are all in this together. And we are a crew.  We are so proud of what we have achieved together. We are sitting here on a beautiful morning in Sweden at the Sabaton Festival.   

CG: It is so exciting. There is really no time to have negative thoughts about it. Look at what we are doing. We are travelling the world with our best mates playing music that we created. There is no time for bad times.

MJ: Indeed, but that does not mean that it is easy all the time. You leave a lot back there in Australia when you leave.

CG: Indeed, as soon as you leave your life in Australia just goes on hold. We all have jobs where we can come back too.

MJ: It definitely is a bit of a shock when you come back home? It is like: I have been this thing for so many months and now I need to come back. Who am I aside my music?  

GRIMM: Can you easily adjust when getting home again? 

MJ: It takes some times. Usually the first week you are dead anyway. But the more you go away the better you get out of it. We  start to cooperate all together a bit. That makes it a bit easier. In Australia we live far away. Sometimes it is like you are in different worlds.

CG: It is a whole different world walking around on these festivals being a VIP and treated like kings. And everyone is there to help you and is excited that you are there. And back home, you are like kind of nothing for a while. It keeps you hungry, but also humble and keeps your feet at the ground. It makes you want to strive more.

TMB: We always want to be grateful even to play Sabaton Open Air. It is such an iconic sort of event. Like it is Sabaton‘s own festival. 

GRIMM: Yeah, indeed but you also have your own festival. I really would like to hear a bit more about it. 

All: Lagerfest?

TMB: Alright, it started in 2013 and it was actually the day before we flew out on our first European tour. Supporting Alestorm and Ex Deo. We wanted to set up like this big going away Birthday party. this and a fundraiser thing.

MJ: We were 21 at the time.  We were a bit useless.

TMB: But we found this awesome venue and wanted to do an open air. And they put all these different kind of beers from all over the countries we were playing on the upcoming tour with Alestorm. I don’t know they really helped us out and this makes Australia really excited for us. Everyone had a wild party and we somehow stumbled on the plane at 8 AM the next morning. And that was the first one and it just seemed so much fun and natural to do it again.

Like kind of the same thing with our label thing. We always have been our own promoters at home. The thing is we do it all on our own the bookings for the shows and stuff. So it was a very easy jump for us to go from running our own shows to keep growing the festival. It just became a thing in our calendar. And then  two years ago with Lagerfest four and five we decided to tour around the country. And Brisbane city and Melbourne. We had some great responses playing with some great bands from Australia. In 2016 we brought out Rainbowdragoneyes. He played our festival in 2016. 

MJ: Last year on Lagerfest number 5 it was the first time that we took two stages. And in Brisbane we had 17 bands. It is so much work. But a massive party!

CG: It is so fun there are like chili eating competitions, bouncing castles, competitions who can hold their beer the longest with a stretched arm. The festival is really something about what we like doing.

TMB & MJ: It is! Silly games and drinking games and awesome bands. We would love to bring Lagerfest to Europe once. We are still kind of nailing it out now. 

TMB: In some ways it is probably easier in Europe because the laws in Australia are very restrictive. That is why there are no festivals in Australia really… It is already so expensive to fly bands to Australia and when you go to a festival you can’t drink a full strength beer. You have to take a 3.5. Kind of what they sell here in the stores so nothing really strong. 

CG: You can’t really drink in the camping or stuff. It is pretty crazy when you come to Europe then and everything is possible then. 

MJ: It is always a bit of a challenge for our festival. Like you come here and see what the camping from an Open Air vibe brings. It is such a fun touch to the festival compared to the club. That is a bit of a challenge for Lagerfest because we can see that there is where the festival would really shine. Like in this exact setting, but it is hard to see how to get it out in Australia without going broke.  

GRIMM: And aren’t there a lot of local bands that can play at Lagerfest? 

MJ: It is not so much the bands it is more like the legal things. You got to hire a lot of security, a lot of stagehands, toilets,.. Like all of the things that are in the background. Get licences from the government. Which, if you play a club these things are already provided for you. That is why we like coming here. Because we see a lot of our own festival in Sabaton Open Air.  Like fuck yeah they are a couple of years ahead of us.  

GRIMM: Yeah, indeed but this is also not a big festival. 

MJ: No, indeed I think about a stadium tour where you get about 5000 people a night. That is almost the same like here. I don’t know if they actually even get profit from it. I think it is also just for fun that they do this. It is more like a celebration of the band and their home town. And that is something that so strongly resonates with us and what we do.  

GRIMM: A question from a friend: Who can drink the most rum? 

TMB: That is a hard hitting question to Lagerstein. Because we all like to think that we are the biggest and best drinker.

MJ: Honestly, I think the Captain can drink the most rum.

CG: Well, I already have my luck that I drink from on stage. It is always half rum half cola so I am always pretty tanked when I get off stage.

TMB: Next time on tour we have to make a count your beers on our shirt. So every night we can see who did the most.  

GRIMM: Let us test that it in Ghent soon. 

MJ: Well, yes. I am looking forward to it. Same organisation like previous times. It will be fun. Thanks for doing this interview with us. Like we said before, it is not easy doing everything on our own, but with our little team we manage that and we take a little proud of it.  

GRIMM: You should be! You really do everything alone. 

TMB: Yeah, and it is pretty exhausting like fuck this is a lot of emails. And since you work in so many different time zones the work never really stops. You could be like in Europe organizing things in Australia, which is 8 hours ahead of us now. Say like on a Friday night you are working in Europe time. And Sunday night it is already Monday morning in Australia and you already lose that day too to get replies. But it is fun though. I never worked on Lagerstein like: well that sucked this was the worst day ever. It are always fun activities. Like it is your own project that you work on.

MJ: Exactly and you know nothing really beats results. You do something and if it works, it is like: Fuck yeah that worked.  

TMB: We dropped ‘Down Under’ today and you hear the first comments from the first listeners and those positive comments are so rewarding. This puts a smile on our face and makes us want to do more. Bigger and better. Let’s do it one step more.

CG: It makes work easier. Because the work is not really work. So you keep pushing to achieve new things. 

GRIMM: So what are you guys planning for the rest of the day? 

TMB: Watch all the bands and have some beers and keep ourselfs at a place where we are still able to play the show.

MJ: I feel like the only downside here is that it is Sweden and the beers are so expensive.  

GRIMM: Is that a downside or a upside for tonight’s show?  

*laughing* 

TMB: Alright, yeah. I want to see Arkona and Alestorm today, Bloodbound and U.D.O. 

MJ: For me the highlight is seeing Sabaton play. Because seeing them play a really big show at Wacken first and now a small show here in their own hometown is exciting. I have a hunch that I will enjoy this one even more.

TMB: Yeah, like it gives a thrill to play a big show like Wacken. But there is this little bit of proud to play on your own festival. To show the fans like this is what we did and thank you so much.

CG: Yeah, if you play for a massive crowd you get really lost in it. But here it is not so big, so you experience a lot more I think.  

MJ: Tonight will be a big party. Because we come off stage pretty late. And have nothing to do tomorrow except watch bands and party a lot. We always stay on the festival and watch as many bands as we can and just stand in the crowd.

TMB: When I grew up and was like 16 or 18 before Lagerstein came taking off. All I did every weekend was going out and see bands. It brings such a joy to my life. Heavy metal is the best. 

MJ: This whole project starts because we love music. And at the heart I am just a fan.

CG: We are always in the crowd, no matter where we are playing clubs or festivals. We always check out who is playing and we discover new music. There are so many great artists. 

GRIMM: It is so much fun seeing you in a crowd. You are not a machine band that plays your show and go to the next. You enjoy where you are.  

TMB: Definitely and some of our favorite things to do is going to campsite parties. And meet as many campsites as we can and meet as much people as we can. We always take the beer bong with us. We cause 10 minutes of chaos and begone to the next party.  

MJ: But to come back like you said about these machine bands. It gets busier when you get more famous. And it gets a lot more professional. But this is something we really never want to lose. There is a lot of love between us and what we do. If you aren’t loving it, then it does not matter how big you are.  Then you better go do something else.  

GRIMM: Thank you so much for your time. And it is so much fun to see the whole band instead of one person here. 

TMB: It was our honor. Thank you and well, yes. We were arguing I want to do the interview. No I want to… So we all came out. Thank you so much. Ghent is going to be awesome because it is the last in Europe. We are going to be exhausted but you will see us come to live again during the show. And after that we have a first off day after about 30 shows.  

GRIMM: So life moto: Drink, sleep, repeat?  

TMB: Yeah, definetly something like that. 

GRIMM: Thank you for your time and see you soon in Belgium! 

As I said a final goodbye and took a picture with these guys we all went back to a day full of parties with Lagerstein at the end of the evening. The show was a blast! Not so many people out there because of the fucking weather, but the ones that were still standing: hell, did they give the band a good time!