Recently Tungsten did a tour with Sonata Arctica, Firewind and Serious Black. How was the tour?
Yeah we did a short little tour we could get. We did Scandinavia. I think it went really well. The other bands all played power metal, down to earth power metal. We don’t. So I think – this might be just my personal opinion, but… – I think the audience was happy to have something different, because it was four bands and there was a lot of tones and a lot of playing. We have power metal too, but also different kind of things. I got the impression that the people were glad with this slightly different style on the bill. By now our band is quite experienced. We haven’t been around that long, but there were no mishaps or fucked ups or anything like that. Everything went well. Although… the only thing that happened was that I have these backing tracks like most bands use. I have them on my cell phone, just to make it easy and while we were playing, Spotify stopped playing and another time the phone started to upgrade itself when we were playing. Well, you learn to make a professional way through the backing tracks and that was what we did.

Technology is always changing and always developing and sometimes it is hard to follow…

The more technology you have, the more problems can occur. I think about a band like Rammstein. They have like four computers going, in case one breaks down, they have three more for security. When you play in stadiums I think that is important, instead of just one computer.

‘The Grand Inferno’ is already the fourth Tungsten album in the meantime. Was it written by your sons again or did you also write something?
More or less it is them who make the music. In my case I am not that interested in writing and particularly I am not that good at it and thirdly I am also much older than they are, so they are more in tune with what the people today like I think. They are more modern. If I would write songs, it would turn out like Deep Purple or Whitesnake or things like that or fusion. Me and Mikael (Andersson – singer – Vera), we leave it to them. Mike of course sometimes makes melodies and of course I am involved in it, but most of the time it is the younger guys who make the music.

Is this now more pleasant than playing in a bigger famous band?
When playing in a big band – for example in Manowar – then there is an obligation to it. I mean, you cannot do it when you want to. They have a tight schedule and they have huge arenas. That is really cool in a way, but playing in a small band like this, it is more low fi and less stressful. It is not stressful playing in Manowar or a lot of bands either, but you know what I mean, everything is more serious. It is better to play in big bands, because you can have crew and you can have more luxury like that, but I think… well, it is just different. For me it doesn’t matter as long as the place is kind of packed. When they got three people coming, then it is of course not so much fun – I have done that too – so to me nothing surprises me any more.

Was it easy to find your way back to the stages after the pandemic?
I think the pandemic was kind of nice in a way. I know a lot of musicians hated it, but after doing this for so many years, I was glad not having to go on tour all the time. Of course the pandemic scared me on the biological and human scale, but playing-wise I did not hate it personally. I know a lot of bands did, but for me personally it was like a break and I could do other things that I hadn’t done before so much.

Like what?
I spent more time with the family and that sort of things. It was nothing really new, but more free. The thing was, when it started again, everything was different. The flights were different, the flying industry had changed a bit. It is still not the same anymore. Some things for good, some things for bad, but it is  surely different now.

Touring in the US is a lot more complicated for bands now, and more expensive…
America has always been difficult. You need work permits and when you are there, power metal and heavy metal is not that big either. You don’t really play in huge places and stuff like that. A club at the best. You don’t really make any money there. It is more to promote a record, you know. When Tungsten toured there, we did not book any hotel room. We stayed on the bus the whole time, because the bus is like a big rolling hotel. I thought it was going to be weird, but it was actually pretty okay. You get used to anything, I mean, human beings, they are adaptable.

We saw that during the pandemic…
Yeah the Netherlands were really hard struck I think. Maybe that was because you are so densely populated. When we are there, we are always surprised how close it is between every little village. If you are here, you don’t see a house for many kilometres, only forests and lakes in the north of Sweden.

The band is pretty focused on bringing out singles. Is that a conscious strategy or not?
The thing is that every band does that now. It is a strategy for the record company to get the songs on a play list in things like Spotify and iTunes and stuff like that. When you have a single out, they will add it on the play list. When you have an album out, they don’t seem to do that. This has changed since before. The albums are not that important anymore, so it seems. It is song-based and with us, when we make songs, we don’t think about fitting on the album. We just make a song, if we like it or not, we record it. We are the same guys recording and singing, but the songs can be very different. We can play pretty good on mainstream festivals, not only on metal festivals. People all like it. It is really hard for a metal band to play on a mainstream festival, but I think we are in between there somewhere.

Yes, it is a diverse record, but yet accessible. You can appeal to many audiences, that is a pro I think…
We are not trying to do that, it has turned out that way by accident.

The most recent video clip is for ‘The Grand Inferno’, the title track. That is a very nice video…
Every video clip now, from this new album, is the guitar player (Nick, Andersson’s son – Vera) who makes it. Doing videos can be pretty expensive. We have given him a little bit of money, but it is way much cheaper than doing it with the so-called ‘real producers’. There is nothing wrong with the video producers, but if we can make them ourselves, we do. This guy also recorded the album and did the mix and everything.

It is a talented guy, all in the family…
(chuckles) In our family, from way back, like generations back, we had musicians. I think the music gene is pretty strong, even if you do it or not I think. If you have it, you inherit it. It is passed on from generation to generation. Our cousins were playing in Boney M and Donna Summer. Another guy played in Abba.

Your father is also a musician, isn’t it?
He was a jazz musician. He played a lot of big bands, but he is most famous in other countries for making the Pipi Longstocking theme. He did a lot of other things, but in the world he is known for that theme, because that is a Swedish TV series or movie.