GRIMM: You started in 1993. Are you happy with where the band is right now? Did you imagine HammerFall would ever make it this far?

Oh no! Absolutely not. I am very happy and didn’t imagine anything like this. Musical climates for heavy metal in ‘93 were kinda frosty. In the States and England of course but also in Sweden it was considered very outdated to play heavy metal. But we didn’t do it for any kind of recognition. I didn’t think anyone would like this. I felt alone in liking this type of music, so I never thought we could reach any kind of level. We played the music very loudly for ourselves. When we recorded the first album, Germany was one of the frist countries to open up to us. Mainly through Nuclear Blast. Now there are ten or a hundred times more metalheads now than there were back then. Or a thousand times more than I ever thought there were in the whole world. I couldn’t believe there was anybody out there like us but, boy, was I wrong. New bands were really agressive and rhythm-based. There were no melodies anymore and I fucking hated it. I wanted melody because that’s what I grew up with. That was one of the things we decided to do early on: write heavy metal music with melody and and power and passion.

GRIMM: Where did the name of the album ‘Dominion’ came from?

Well, I’m a wrestling fan. And there’s this Japanese federation called ‘New Japan Pro Wrestling’ and they have a yearly event called ‘New Japan Pro Wrestling Dominion’. I thought that was a very cool word. so I looked it up. This was a couple of years ago and I thought: “Yeah, it fits, so I’m gonna keep that”. I have a bank of lyric and song title ideas, so I put it in there. The music for ‘Dominion‘ was ready and I thought: “This is a good title for that song”. Then I sent it to Joacim. Usually the way we work is: I write the music at home, make a demo of it if I have a melody on it. He will then put the vocals on it, lyrics and stuff like that. And when I sent him ‘Dominion‘, he heard the song and he said: “I think we have our album title”.

GRIMM: How was it to work with Noora from Battle Beast for the song ‘Second to One’?

It was Joacim‘s idea. The song makes the album a little more unique, because he and I were almost done with the album. If we hadn’t made it, it would have been fine too. We had enough songs but we wanted to write one more with James Michael, the producer on the vocals from the last three albums. He produced the whole ‘Infected‘ album nine years ago. We worked with him because he is a songwriter, and the lead vocalist of Sixx AM. Since he’s also a producer, he knows all about it. He knows what it’s like to be on the other side. So Joacim feels very comfortable with him, and really likes working with him. He knows when James says “I would like you to do this, instead of what you did just now”, he has to do it. He trusts and respects James. They worked really well together. He lives in Los Angeles, so we decided to go there on a Thursday and go back on a Sunday or Monday, I don’t remember. Like I said, if we came back with nothing, we already had the album. It would simply have been a fun time in L.A. So I had several ideas, and I played him one. He sat down on his piano/keyboard and I played it on the guitar and he started singing. It took us about three or four hours, maybe half a day. We discussed and brainstormed and basically wrote the song, on which Joacim put lyrics afterwards. But the song title was there and he got the idea for the lyrics. Joacim wanted to do a duet with someone and the tour with Battle Beast came around. Perfect timing. So the idea was to ask Noora to come to the studio and record the song. Their voices match really well together.

This interview continues on page 3.