Interview with Aleksander Eriksen of Molotow

Molotow hail from Norway and recently released their album "feat. Rock & Roll". I interviewed vocalist/bass player Aleksander Eriksen and got to find out more about this band.

Tell us a little about how and when this band formed?
Molotow as we know it today first met in September 2004 when drummer Terry the Tank joined and finally completed the band. The rest of us had played together for a few years, but was moving out of our hometown, Horten, and heading for the capital, Oslo. We soon decided to build our own place to rehearse and record and that was the beginning of Molotow and “feat. Rock & Roll”.

Who are your influences?
It’s different from member to member, but mainly everyone who makes good music. Actually it can be everything from 80’s giants as Mötley Crüe, Iron Maiden and Bon Jovi through Swedish 70’s pop acts, symphonic metal and Norwegian rock acts as Turbonegro, Span and Gluecifer. It’s all about getting the influence from the right part of the music! In other words: The raw guitar licks and the catchy melodies.

What is the music scene like in Oslo, Norway?
Musically it’s a good mix of rock, indie, metal, pop, singer/songwriter, both great and shitty bands, like everywhere else. Like many other places there are more bands than places to play, which makes it hard to get good gigs without the right contacts. It’s actually nothing to complain about, after all the more bands the more great (and shitty) music you get, so it makes us more eager to stand out in the crowd. We play the local rock scenes from time to time, but we’ll focus on getting out of Oslo in 2008. Sweden, Germany and Norway will be our priority this year, though we welcome record buyers from all over the world!

What has been the response to your album “feat. Rock & Roll”?
The reviews we get are beyond every expectation! Playing 1980’s style rock & roll these days you don’t expect good reviews, though we think the album rocks (of course, we wrote it!). Surprisingly almost every review gives us credit for standing out as a fresh breath in the sleaze-rock genre. We have record buyers from Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, USA and Switzerland. We get fan mail from Italy and Japan. Our single, “Beam me up (for glam and glory), is listed on radio stations in Norway, Italy, USA and UK and it was also chosen to promote Glamnation vol. 1 in USA and another compilations in China.
What can we say? It’s been a good year!

Where is your album being distributed so far?
Our album is digitally distributed in over 200 online music stores in 26 countries. It’s also available in records stores in Scandinavia.



Do you have a tour lined up yet? Any chance you will play any festivals in the summer?
We are currently working on booking for 2008 and we’ll play as many gigs as possible. Hopefully you’ll see us in a few festivals in Europe as well. Check out the gig section on www.molotow.no for updates!

Obviously you guys are very much influenced by music from the 1980’s. Why do prefer music from that decade to music from other decades?
It’s just the whole setting. The rock & roll image, the stories, the music. If we only were teenagers in the 80s…

Why should people buy your album?
Because it’s great 80’s rock & roll with a modern sound! And if you like it, you should really look forward to the next album, which we are recording right now.

One of the things I was most impressed by on your album was the production. Has anyone in the band had much prior experience in producing any music?
Our lead singer has a sound engineer education and has written and produced music of his own for several years. We ended up building our own studio to record this album, which made us “time independent” to experiment and do things the way we wanted. The album was mixed by our good friend Jonas Kroon at DaVinci Studio (www.davincistudio.no) and he has also been involved as a producer. He’s done a fantastic job and we decided to bring him in earlier in the process now that we are working on our second album.

Since you are playing a style of music that’s based on something from 20 years ago, do you get many younger fans or is your crowd mainly over 30?
Actually it’s everything from 10 to 50 as far as we know. It’s not about age, it’s about the dedication to rock & roll.

Do you play any cover songs when you play live?
No. We used to mix a few covers into the set a few years ago, but we feel we have enough good songs of our own.

What current bands do you like?
Oh, that’s tough to answer because we all have quite a different taste in music. Some like the mother. Some like the daughter. In Molotow we like the whole family! Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith, Gluecifer, Span, Nightwish to mention some…



How has your music and songwriting progressed since you formed?
It’s taken a hell of a step forward from the first songs! I guess it’s natural to use a few years to find your style and we are now pretty confident in the sound we’ve created. Every new song sounds Molotow one way or another and variety is more and more present. Arrangement is important to us so that’s something we work a lot on, though less is more doesn’t quite cut it for us.

What do you hope to accomplish by the end of 2008?
At the end of 2008 we have released our second album, which hopefully is a huge success. We have created a name in the rock & roll business and our fan base has grown from big to huge!

Is there anything else that you want to say about your band or your music?
Get your ass to www.molotow.no and listen to a few tracks. If you like it, buy the album! If you don’t, come back in spring 2008 and listen to some new tracks. If you don’t like them either, just keep your distance!

-Thanks to Aleksander for doing the interview.