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leviabeat · 1 year ago

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IT'S NOW OR NEVER

HOW INTERNATIONAL MEN OF MYSTERY VOLBEAT ARE SEIZING THE MOMENT TO INTRODUCE THEIR "ELVIS METAL" TO THE U.S.-WITH THE HELP OF A LITTLE BAND CALLED METALLICA

Revolver Magazine | Mar/Apr 2010

By Richard Bienstock | Photos By Justin Borucki

It's just past 7 on a fall evening in New York City, and the lights have dimmed at mega-arena Madison Square Garden. As four men in black don instruments and take the stage, the opening anthem to the cartoon American Dad blares from the P.A.: "Good morning, U.S.A.!" To those in the know, the introduction is a humorous poke at the rest of the audience: Onstage stands Volbeat, Denmark's finest heavy-music export and possibly the biggest Scandinavian metal band you've never heard of.

"It's very obvious when we take the stage that a lot of the crowd isn't familiar with us." said Volbeat singer-guitarist Michael Poulsen the previous night. "If we're lucky, maybe a few people in the front even know who we are. [Laughs] But most everyone doesn't have a clue."

This, of course, may soon change, as Volbeat spent much of the fall playing to thousands of American metal fans a night, and in some of the country's largest venues, as the opening act on the final U.S. leg of Metallica's World Magnetic Tour. It's the gig of a lifetime for any band and one that begs the question: Danish popularity notwithstanding, how did a relatively unknown act land a coveted spot on the biggest metal bill of the year? Easy: Metallica asked them to do it.

"Apparently James [Hetfield] and Lars [Ulrich] are fans of the band," Poulsen says. It's the afternoon before the New York show, and the Volbeat singer is relaxing with guitarist Thomas Bredahl in a hotel bar across the street from the venue. (Bassist Anders Kjølholm and drummer Jon Larsen are absent.) The Metallica gig marks only the second time Volbeat have performed in the city, and, as Poulsen gazes out the window at the arena, he jokes, "I guess it's not a bad venue. Though I don't know where we'll play next time we're here. Is there anywhere bigger?"

Bredahl goes on to explain the band's connection to Metallica, which extends back to both acts' Danish roots. The members of Volbeat hail from around Copenhagen, Denmark's capital, where Ulrich spent his childhood years. "A few summers ago, Metallica came over to Denmark to play some shows on their Sick of the Studio (2007) Tour," the guitarist says. "Lars is still connected to people back home and likes to know what's going on there with new music. So he made some calls, asking. 'Who should we get on the bill with us?' And people mentioned our name to him. So he checked us out, liked what he heard, and we wound up as the main support for their Danish shows."

That led to more gigs together and, eventually, a friendship. When Metallica returned to Denmark on later dates, Hetfield's assistant phoned Poulsen inquiring if he would like to grab a bite with the frontman on one of the band's days off. "James wound up coming over, and my girlfriend cooked dinner for everyone," Poulsen says. "I mean, I remember being a teenager and lying in bed looking up at posters of this guy on my wall, and now here he was, sitting in my house, having something to eat. It was very weird, to say the least." The next time Poulsen got a call from the Metallica camp it was the offer to join the band on select U.S. dates of their World Magnetic Tour. The Volbeat frontman says, "It wasn't a hard decision to make."

The appeal of the pairing from Metallica's standpoint is easy to understand. Volbeat's music, in particular on their third and most recent release, Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood (Mascot), mixes beefy "Black Album"- type riffing with pop-punk hooks à la Metallica faves the Misfits. In addition, the band evinces a serious fixation with early rock-and-roll and outlaw country artists - in particular Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, and Johnny Cash - which permeates everything from the music's swaggering rhythms to Poulsen's soaring Elvis-via-Danzig vocals. Essentially, Volbeat is a straight-up metal band that also manages to sound more inherently "American" than most current American acts.

"If you ask me, all great rock songs were written in the '50s and '60s," Poulsen says of his inspiration. "Everyone since is just a copycat. Including us. You can listen to any of those early American rock or country songs and they still sound great. So it's my way of paying respect."

Poulsen, who grew up in the small Danish city of Ringsted, credits his father with first exposing him to classic rock and country music. "My dad would always be playing Elvis, Fats Domino, Jerry Lewis, stuff like that around our house," he recalls. At the same time, Poulsen's older siblings [I would like to add a correction here. It was his uncle, not his older sisters] introduced him to Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. As a teenager, he got into Metallica and Mercyful Fate ("We have two kings in Denmark," he says with a laugh. "Lars Ulrich and King Diamond") and then into metal's heavier subgenres. "In the early '90s I really got into the death-metal thing, when the Florida scene was exploding." he says, "and then the melodic death metal that was coming out of Sweden."

At age 16, Poulsen formed his own death- metal act, Dominus. The band relocated to Copenhagen and made a name for itself in the city's underground scene. Dominus first two albums, 1994's View to the Dim and 1996's The First 9, were staunch death metal efforts, but Poulsen soon found himself growing bored with the format. "It was very rigid," he says. "I could feel that I wanted to write songs that were a little loosor, a little more rock and roll." His band's next album, Vol. Beat - a mashup of the words "volume" and "beat"- awakened Poulsen's dormant rock tendencies and laid the groundwork for his eventual exit from the group. "A lot of people thought that album shouldn't have even been called a Dominus album," he says. "It was pretty different sounding." After one more record, Poulson disbanded Dominus, adopting the title of the group's transitional third effort as the name of his new project.

Although Volbeat's sound wasn't an immediate hit - "at our early shows," Poulsen says, "some people were still screaming for Dominus songs, while others were like, 'What is this shit?' " - the band's unique blend of music genres soon began to find an audience. "Suddenly, a lot of girls started to show up," Poulsen recalls. "It certainly wasn't due to our looks, because we're ugly bastards! But they could find something to like in the music, because there was melody. And so then the guys thought, OK, maybe we'll give it a chance, too..."

As the band's following grew in the underground scene, mainstream Danish music fans and press began to take notice. Volbeat's first full-length effort, The Strength/The Sound/The Songs, was awarded Debut Album of the Year at the 2005 Danish Metal Music Awards. Two years later, the follow-up, Rock the Rebel/Metal the Devil, entered the Danish album chart at No. 1, eventually reaching platinum (30,000 copies sold). Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood earned the group their second No. 1 and platinum record and cemented their status as Denmark's biggest metal act.

"For a band like Volbeat to be so well known, and to be played on the radio alongside international pop stars like Madonna and Britney Spears, it's really pretty unbelievable," Poulsen says. "It's not typical at all. You don't usually hear double-bass drums on Danish mainstream radio."

And while no one will mistake "Hallelujah Goat" for "...Baby One More Time," Bredahl does believe Volbeat's accessibility has opened doors previously shut to metal bands in their country. "Some people have tagged us with the slogan, 'Metal even your mom would like," he says. "And it's true - my mom really does like our songs! Even people who are not necessarily huge music fans can hear one of our songs and say, 'That's a good melody.' It reaches people."

The following evening at Madison Square Garden, Volbeat do an impressive job of connecting with the rabid Metallica crowd during their brief 30 minutes onstage. Although most in the audience, as Poulsen says, are not familiar with their music, the band whips through crowd pleasers like "Sad Man's Tongue" - a virtual rewrite of Johnny Cash's classic "Folsom Prison Blues" - and a faithful cover of the Misfits' "Angelfuck." When the audience responds to the final tune, "Still Counting," Poulsen counters, in his best Elvis sneer, "Thank yuh. Thank yuh very much."

"We tell ourselves we win more than we lose," the singer reasons, and at present, they appear to be on a pretty good winning streak. Volbeat just released a two-DVD set, Live: Sold Out!, that will provide newbies with a crash course in the band, with one disc devoted to live performances, and a second featuring a biographical documentary and video history. In addition, they recently signed an international deal with Universal and are preparing to begin writing and recording their fourth album. At the moment, anything looks possible.

"You look at a guy like Lars Ulrich, who grew up right outside of Copenhagen, playing tennis, going to rock shows, and then he came to America and started the biggest metal band in the world. That's a nice story," Bredahl says, perhaps seeing hopeful parallels in Volbeat's path. "It's inspiring."

Of course, as Metallica's frontman learned on this tour, you may be able to take the musicians out of Denmark, but you can't necessarily take Denmark out of the musicians. "Backstage the other day." Poulsen says, "the Metallica guys posted a sign that said "No Danish Language Allowed." Basically, it was James and his assistant who were behind it. Because Lars will walk into our dressing room, and we'll sit and talk to each other in Danish. And then James will drop by, and he doesn't know what the fuck is going on." Poulsen laughs. "He's always like, 'Speak English!' "

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