ninehertz

The Sword recently toured with Lonely Kamel from Norway and they've been causing quite a stir. We sent our intrepid interviewer Sam off to speak to them about cooked breakfasts, battered mars bars and kidney pies in Manchester.

9hz: Has England and the tour been treating you all well so far?

It’s been really great; we’ve only had two shows so far but its turning out great. We played Glasgow and Wolverhampton so far and they have been good shows.

9hz: What are your combined influences? Like who inspires Lonely Kamel collectively?

It’s the sound of us guys really, we have influences, the common influences in us all is kind of like the British heavy metal, early stuff like stuff from the late 1960’s and 70’s, Blue Cheer also.

9hz: What inspired your retro stoner rock sound and not church-burning, Norwegian death metal?

Hahaha! It comes more from what we grew up listening to I guess, we never had any interest in the black metal side, for us they we just silly nerds up in the woods with nothing better to do. I was never interested in that stuff personally.

We could have ended up there though, hahah!

Norwegian black metal is much bigger outside of Norway as opposed to inside Norway.

9hz: With regards to recording, do you tend to use different techniques in recording in order to keep it retro or do you embrace any digital stuff?

Nah, for the latest album, we just used the best sounding studio in Oslo where we’re from and tried this one.

There was a lot of good records done there, we recorded the whole thing live too.

9hz: Which guitarists are you number one heroes?

There are so many good ones, man, I guess Lucas would say Jimmy Page; I’m going to say Angus Young because I have an SG guitar! Haha! Seriously I’d go for Paul Kossoff from Free, definitely.

9hz: Is there much of a scene in Norway for your kind of music or was it difficult to get going?

There’s not a big scene at all, theres maybe about five bands that do what we do. It’s getting better though, there seems to be a few bands coming out off the back off seeing us and the other bands coming up.

9hz: What equipment are you currently using to tour and record with?

Normally we use Marshall Amps, but this tour we are using Orange as it’s the Sword’s backline and it cost way too much for us to bring our amplifiers over. The tour started here so it’s easier to use their stuff that they hired over here. We tend to keep the sound clean and use the power from the amp mainly. I use a Pro Co Rat distortion pedal and a Boss Blues Driver to get the dirtier sounds. The Bass player is using Ampeg SVT heads and 8X10 cabs.

Drum-wise we’re using Gretsch drums, 26” bass and 18” toms for a big sound.

9hz: Have you seen any bands in Norway that are worth a mention?

Yeah, we have some friends called Brutus, they’re pretty heavy, we also know a band called Tombstones; they are a lot slower than us. We also know a band called Black Debbath, they’re really funny and they’re great musicians too.

9hz: Have you had time to sample any of our famous English food yet?

Yes! We’ve had a fry up breakfast; that was good stuff we also had fish and chips too, Fuck! I just remembered we didn’t get a battered Mars Bar in Glasgow, man! I think I may have had Kidney pie too.

9hz: If you could all meet another band from the history tomes, who would it be and why?

Hmmm, Free...No actually Black Sabbath on acid, no scratch that, Van Halen.

9hz: What was the last record you bought or downloaded?

I bought Gentlemen’s Pistol’s on vinyl actually, we played a festival in Germany with them and they’re really good so, I got their latest album On Her Majesties Service.

I got an old ZZTop album too, Fandango I think.