Interview with Mats Johansson from MUSTASCH

Thanks a lot! You find me hung over and at home, and doing some website work.

No more than before. I think you always should compete with yourself when making a new album, or else there is really no point in doing this at all.

In most cases I think that's true, but as we are our own label and have licensed the new album to Nuclear Blast, we set the standards by ourselves.

We have never listened to anyone else regarding our own music, and that was also the motto of the band right from the start. But we wanted this album to have a forward approach with a more even quality of the songs.

It's hard to say because Ralf writes 80% of the music and David the rest, but it took maybe 6-12 months. No other difficulties than our drummer left the band while in studio, so we became six weeks delayed schooling in our new one.

I would say it's up to the producer himself/herself to be or become important for the band. As to decide whether the band needs one is really depending on the band itself. MOTORHEAD is probably a band that doesn't need one, as opposed to GREEN DAY who really always should be produced by a high roller.

No concept album here. The lyrics are mostly about Ralf and his experiences in life, which of course sometimes are ours as well. As for me, I don't listen to lyrics at all. I only listen to the melody and expression of the vocals, and as long as that is good I have no problem performing thereafter.

About this life we are leading, to be able to live entirely out of our work with music: our dream.

The previous one is more laidback and has in my opinion only 4-5 really great tracks, whereas the new one is more aggressively sounding without any fillers. We also let the sound effects sound trough on the new one.

We have already licensed the album to Regain Records for release in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, so we gave Nuclear Blast the license for the rest of Europe including Russia.

Not to my knowledge, but maybe in the future.

Not close at all at this time. I think we left that genre already in 2002, to evolve into Rock 'n' Metal.

Yes, and I believe that happened long ago, which is why we tried to arise from Stoner rock when we did.

Absolutely! The initial goal was to live off our music without compromising it, which is pretty much where we are at this moment. So, now we have set a new goal for the band, which we will of course only announce when we?ve achieved it.

We're going to wait and see how the Nuclear Blast release is going and take it from there, but I would expect us to do some kind of European tour in March or April, and we'll try to include Greece in that plan.

Well, for smaller bands the touring is just about the only income they have, but the CD market is not entirely dead. I think in maybe five years or so it will have stabilized with a larger portion of it through downloads such as iTunes etc.

Thanks! The director is Alex Hansson, and he had this idea for years but no-one to do it with.

We have, and it's for the track Mine. It's made during our Swedish tour, so it?s sort of a live video, and the premiere was at MySpace Germany on December 4th.

We're going to take it easy the next two months with some shows in Sweden and Denmark, but then we are going to start working for real in the rest of Europe.

If you want to support us but can?t both buy our music and see our shows, download the music and instead come and see our concerts. Heavy Metal Hard Rock!!