Hisingen Blues

Far be it from me to do anything today except prostrate myself in the mud to the rain gods. That said, tomorrow's Graveyard show outside at the Mohawk with Radio Moscow and Eagle Claw might not appreciate further forecast for rain. Either way, the Swedish metallic psych band's drummer Axel Sjöberg had one last check-in from our email chat last week.

Lead “Recommended” in last week's paper, my back-and-forth with Sjöberg about Top 10s and Graveyard's critically-hailed sophomore release Hisingen Blues included the quartet's anchor commenting that live shows meant more than year-end accolades. My next question, answered here past deadline was then, “What are your Woodstock moments, live performances never forgotten?”

Axel Sjöberg: Well... If you look at what we've done this year there's easily a couple of shows that stand out:

We opened for Iron Maiden in [our hometown] Gothenburg, playing in front of 27,500 persons.

We went on tour with Motörhead in Germany.

We opened for Deep Purple in Stockholm and Gothenburg.

One of them was actually playing a big metal festival in Gothenburg. The tent we played held 2,000 people and it was packed with about a thousand more outside. Meanwhile it was kinda empty in front of the big stage.

Or. Just the fact that we've sold out all six shows we've done this far on this tour. We didn't really know what to expect, so it's a bit overwhelming even though it's not arenas we're selling out.

Maybe you could say that this whole year had been a prolonged Woodstock moment. It's been going really well since the release of Hisingen Blues. It kinda took a year to take in all these things. We're nominated for the Swedish Grammys and some other awards....

Hope it doesn't sound like I'm coming on full force with total hubris. It's just been a hectic year.

Maybe Austin will be the Woodstock moment?