Interview with Fredrik Larzon, drummer. One taste of Millencolin and I was hooked. That "taste" came back in 1995, when Epitaph Records licensed Life On A Plate from Burning Heart Records. The song was album opener "Bullion," a spunky slab of melodic punk with an infectious chorus and a hyper rhythm that practically overflowed into the next tune with its fireball burst of amphetemine-fuelled energy. The album ranged from upbeat punk to bouncy ska, always conducted with a sense of humor, amazing melodies brought to life via the distinctive delivery of vocalist Nikola Sarcevic, and an abundance of energy. And hey, any album where its "love song" possesses a chorus which describes the object of affection as "a pig in walking shoes" is all good in my books! Fast forward five years later. The licensing agreement between Epitaph and Burning Heart still stands (and has, in fact, expanded to cover releases by Refused and Bombshell Rocks, among many others). Millencolin still rocks - no big surprise there. At first glance, the band's latest studio album, Pennybridge Pioneers, picks up where its previous release left off...only there is an obvious sense of growth percolating through the album, revealing mature arrangements, additional emphasis on the midpaced tunes (although there are plenty of uptempo numbers for you speedfreaks), and the conspicuous absence of any ska songs. Pennybridge Pioneers is one of those infectious punk records that will stick to you like a freshly-chewed wad of bubblegum to the underside of your shoe on a warm day. The only difference is, once you listen to this album, you don't want to scrape it off. Opening with the midpaced one-two punch of "No Cigar," Millencolin fires on all pistons through such memorable cuts as the playful "Fox," the lead-off single "Penguins & Polarbears," the heartfelt "A-Ten," and the acoustic-led closer, "The Ballad." I had an opportunity to speak with drummer Fredrik Larzon, and jumped at the opportunity. Below are excerpts from our conversation. THE NEW ALBUM It feels like it is a follow-up to For Monkeys, but without the ska songs and with way better production. The songs are heavier...we don't have songs that are as fast as "Light's Out," [track ten on For Monkeys] but we still have many fast songs. A lot of the songs aren't as poppy as the songs on For Monkeys, but the arrangements, especially on the guitars, are much heavier and we put a lot of work into the guitar arrangements. Brett Gurewitz produced the records and we had Donell Cameron as engineer. We had a great time. THE FREQUENT USE OF ANIMAL-RELATED LYRICS AND IMAGES We are all animal lovers. It's Nikola who usually comes up with those funny titles and the ideas about animals. We were all vegetarians for quite a while - me and Erik still are - and I think that has had a lot to do with the animal titles. Erik is the one that draws everything for the band, like covers and t-shirts and that stuff, and he always tries to refer to the song titles and stuff like that [in his artwork]. And it's just fun to write about animals! THE MEANING BEHIND THE TITLE, PENNYBRIDGE PIONEERS Our hometown is called Örebro, and in English it is "Pennybridge" if you translate it. It's half a joke, and half serious. We're the first band from our hometown to [tour] everywhere, record four albums, stuff like that. It's a bit serious, but it's also in fun. THE VIDEO FOR "PENGUINS AND POLARBEARS" It's about us being the four elements. Matthias is fire, Erik is mud, Nikola is water, and I am oxygen. Nikola comes up from the ocean, runs over the beach and into the city. Matthias, he comes from the sunshine, and Erik comes from the mountains. I come from the air, and we meet in an alley and then there is a big supernova [explosion], and then we're playing live on the rooftop at the end of the song. We haven't seen the finished product yet, but it feels good and I think that it's going to turn out pretty good. TOURING EXPERIENCES We've had like, four or five car crashes, but none of us got hurt. On the Warped Tour, we did some skydiving, that was pretty crazy....Once, we played a show in Southern Sweden. We were heading back to our hometown - it's like five hours of driving - and after three hours [of driving], smoke started to come out from the back of the car. We stopped and checked it out, but we all just wanted to get back home so we continued driving. But then after a mile or two I saw flames coming out from the back of the bus. We pulled over and got out of the bus, and saw that the whole back of the bus was on fire, so we had to unhook the trailer and get the most important stuff out of the bus. And then it just burnt down. There were cars a mile in every direction watching, and some stupid people were filming and laughing at us, and we were scared to death because on movies you see these big explosions when cars are on fire. So we just ran away from the bus and stood there, staring at it. But it was actually pretty good, because we all hated that van. THE NEW HOME VIDEO, MILLENCOLIN AND THE HI-8 ADVENTURES We always had a video camera with us, and we had a lot of material filmed. Erik just felt that we should do something with this - put something together so that people could see what has happened with us from 1992 to 1998. Erik put together the whole thing on his computer, and we put in all of the videos, and some skateboarding, which is a big hobby for almost all of us [Fredrik no longer skateboards]. THE YELLOW BIRD MASCOT It doesn't have a name, but we always have had that bird on the covers, and we all have it tattooed on our left leg, and it was just a thing that we wanted to have there. [in fact, it's even on the front cover of Pennybridge Pioneers - can you find it?] MILLENCOLIN VS. WARNER BROS. (Same Old Tunes, a collection of older pre-Life On A Plate Millencolin, was originally called Tiny Tunes, until Warner Bros. caught wind of it and deployed their legal team) I think that they [Warner Bros.] were pretty serious, because Burning Heart had big troubles with them, and they had to pay a lot of money for lawyers and stuff like that. We had to change the cover as fast as we could, because they wanted money from every record sold. We had to change the name [of the album] and the cover....I think they've got enough money...they didn't really have to do that to us. Check out Pennybridge Pioneers and Millencolin's terrific back catalogue, most of which has been licensed to Epitaph Records in North America.

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