You don’t have to be a punk rocker to know who Millencolin are and there are countless numbers of punk rockers, like me, who can associate one of their first experiences with punk rock to be with a Millencolin album. The band turns a mighty 20 in 2012 and by all accounts, have no desire to slow down or fade away.
We spoke with guitarist, Erick Ohlsson about what the secret to their longevity is, the infighting that comes with being married to a touring band, organizing the 20 year festival, and the new Millencolin album. A Millencolin concept album? It’s not something that is out of the realm of possibility. Read the full interview here.
“The Melancholy Connection” is out through Epitaph Records.
Millencolin have celebrated two massive milestones in the past few years. 2010 saw the 10 year anniversary of their breakthrough album “Pennybridge Pioneers” and 2012 will see them turn 20 years old. An anniversary most modern marriages will fail to come close to. When asked what is the secret to their success Erick informed us it wasn’t always rainbows and roses. “First of all we were great friends and we played music because we hung out together. Then it got more and more serious and around that time we fought, a lot actually. That was during the first years when we really started to tour and we were on tour all the time; we were barely at home. Around that time we really started to annoy each other a lot.”
However, you don’t do something for 20 years unless you really love it and there is no doubt that Erick is as dedicated to Millencolin as he was 20 years ago. “I’ve been playing in this band longer than I haven’t. I was 16 when I started playing in this band. I love it. It’s like a brotherhood. I have a sister, I don’t have a brother but I imagine this is how it is to have three other brothers,” Erick said.
As beautiful and strong as this marriage may be, it wouldn’t at all be possible without those people who have been listening to Millencolin. Some for 20 years, some for two years but it’s the same story with a lot of people whose first purchase was a Millencolin record. This is a band that introduced many to punk rock, albeit in a more digestive form. But these four humble guys who were just trying to emulate the sounds coming out of California at the time had no idea the juggernaut that Millencolin would become. “We were just trying to record some songs that sounded like Californian punk rock which we were influenced by. That was in ‘92/93. Around that time this kind of music wasn’t played on the radio, tv or anything. It was hard to find this kind of music on vinyl record. You had to go to some special kind of punk rock store to pick up this sort of music.
“Then around that time Nirvana, then The Offspring, became really big then in Sweden we were already there. It was like “hey, we got this Swedish band already sounding like this,” which was Millencolin. That gave us a really big boost in Sweden. We were everywhere, on TV, radio, everywhere back in ‘95/96. Our record did really well. That success made our record label bigger; they got distribution all over the world, which made us tour the world. All this was complete science fiction for us when we started the band. We wanted to work on it a lot, put a lot of effort in but we never imagined that this was possible,” Erick explained.
It’s not only that Millencolin are responsible for many people’s love of the genre. There is no doubt that their sound defies the normal limitations of the “punk rock scene” with many knowing the name Millencolin thanks to their mainstream successes. Erick attributes this to being a bunch of skaters before being a punk band. “We were skateboarding before we started to play music. The skateboarding connection has always been there. Skateboarding is always a little bit more mainstream than regular punk rock music. Also I’ve designed all our record covers and our merchandise over the years so maybe it helped that people are walking around with Millencolin shirts that look like a skateboard t-shirt rather than a regular band t-shirt.”
“We’ve never been a regular punk band in that sense of giving the middle finger to the world. We always felt more like skaters playing punk rock music, which maybe is a little more mainstream than regular punk rock. What’s punk rock these days? Green Day. We’re playing the same kind of music as them and they are huge. When we started the band this type of music was a little bit extreme, now it’s just fast melodic pop,” Erick said.
To celebrate their marriage to the band the guys undertook the massive task of organizing a festival in their hometown. They are involved in every aspect of the festival but had no idea what a gigantic task it was to organize such an event until they were in the thick of it, “I’m doing all the artwork and we booked the bands and all the decisions go through us like choosing stages and tents and a whole huge budget which is scary to be watching. It’s definitely do-it-yourself stuff,” Erick tells of the task.
Along with the 20-year festival, the band are just about to drop their second album of B-sides, “The Melancholy Connection.” Being their second album of B-sides it’s not hard to imagine that in ancient tunnels somewhere under Örebro there is treasure trove of Millencolin unreleased tracks that they are just sitting on but this is not the case Erick explains, “there are a few cover songs, acoustic versions of other Millencolin songs and some live songs that didn’t make it to this album. We’re not hiding any old unreleased Millencolin tracks. I’m still surprised when listening to all this material which was recorded over a span of 10 years that they still work and sound good together.”
Is it cheating to release B-sides in lieu of new material? The answer to this I don’t know but Erick said that sometime in 2013 Millencolin fans will have a new album to satisfy their appetites, “I’m going to be honest. If we write a new album, record a new album, set up a marketing plan with Epitaph then the quickest it could happen would be April next year but that would mean we would have to start right away with everything and we definitely need a little bit of a vacation. We definitely are going to start to work on new stuff but I can’t say when it will be released.”
There’s no doubt that the Millencolin sound has evolved over the past twenty years and, surprisingly, it’s not out of the realm of possibly that the new Millencolin album may be a concept album. It’s an idea the band has toyed with for a long time and their eighth studio album just might be the one to bring that idea to fruition. “We’ve been talking about that ever since somebody did one. I think we’ve been talking about this every once in a while, “maybe we could do this and this and this,” and then it never happens. A concept could be a minor thing that nobody would pick up but it would still be a concept of something. We’re not going to do a punk rock opera but I still think it’s great if you have some sort of concept,” Erick explained. Regardless of whether or not it is, the new Millencolin album will be classic Millencolin. Happy 20 years and here’s to 20 more!