"Melancholy" is one of those uniquely
bent, but totally appropriate, trick descrip
tions. Bastardized further in a bent, skater
kind of way, "Millencolin" becomes the per-
fect band name. This band has a lot of fun
with the English language in their songs,
too, and not just because they're skaters in
s in a new school punk
their early twenties in
their
band or that they're fond of cultivantly
own private slang, but also not
because they're Swedish.
where the skate/snowboard
Sanden is a than anywhere else, inter
twined with a music scene. All the tands singin
English and don't bother with last names. The mem
bers of Milencolin met through skating and were
scenes are almost more the
skaters before they started arist, Mathias
Millencolin still actively skate
rode mostly New Deal boards for Streetstyle, which
was Sweden's biggest distributor in the late
eightieslearly nineties Milencolin were first exposed
to the American punk bands they so admire and emu-
late-NOFX Lagwagon, Operation Ivy-through skate
and snowboard videos
Getting their Swedish-released CD distributed by
Epitaph brought Millencolin to the US early this
spring Thrasher caught up with them on a day none
of them will soon forget the day of their first show
in New York City We talked about their just-complet
ed cross-country tour. They were ecstatic about the
curb specs in the States, and especially fond of our
wheelchair access laws and yellow "No Parking"
paint, which requires
es no waxing
It's about an hour before showtime, and Nikola
still hasn't shown up to the club. Their road manager
Mel Parsons, had set them loose on the town early in
the afternoon, and Nikola was determined to make a
pilgrimage to the Statue of Liberty, which, of course,
involves a boat ride And it's raining His bandmates
couldn't dissuade him and he went by him
self 's becoming like the scene from A
Hard Day's Night when Ringo is late for
The Beatle's big TV appearance Mel is
probably starting to re-think his policy of not drinking
on the road when Nikola finally pops in, having suc
cessfully braved New York harbor, the Japanese
tourists, hiked up to the armpit of Lady Liberty, and
returned no-worse-for-wear in true Nordic spirit
Millencolin opened for Good Riddance and Down By
Law that night and won the locals over with their solid
energetic tunetul set and Operation Ivy cover song
Is "Millencolin" a mispronunciation of the
English word by Swedish skaters?
Mathias: No Actually, I think we called it "sad air"
Erik In snowboarding it's a more well-known word: fd
heard of it. We read it somewhere. We just changed the
word to make it more like a name
What's the first American punk record you
ever actually bought?
Mathias I remember I travelled with my parents to
Germany, and I bought some Descendents albums and
other stuff we couldn't get around where we live
What are skating conditions like in Sweden?
Mathias: It's not like in America. In Sweden, it's like
rocks just cut out of a big rock big mountains
Erik Hacked out like big sshssher, ee. ece
Mathias You can't grind.
Erik Swedish curbs are really low
Next time you come to New York City, set
aside a day to go down to the banks.
Mathias We should put curbs in our rider, too
Talk about the skate and music scenes in
Sweden when you first started out.
Mathias: In our hometown, there was a real big punk
scene with local bands, and me and Nikola wanted to
have a band ourselves, too, so we started one.
Erik If you skated, you played in a punk band
Mathias: There was like only ten people in twenty
different bands
Erik The soene is very different in Sweden for us and it
has changed a lot in the past few years. I met three
Swedish guys on the town today, and they all
recognized me
Mathias That's stracod
Now that you're international, is your video
"The Story of My Life" going to be on MTV?
Erik We did Epitaph we didn't want to get on MTV
What'd they say?
Erik "Okayou can do what you like
Mathias: Personally I like videos. I think it's a fun to
watch them, but not as much fun to make them
Larzon: That's the last video I'll ever do. We'd rather have
our music in skateboard and snowboard videos, instead
of acting like clowns in some stupid video we make
Nikola We'd
We'd rather have respect from the skaters and the
punks In Sweden, sometimes it's hard for us, because a
lot of skaters don't like us anymore, because fourteen-
year-old girls do, so they can't. I mean, it's their problem
but we still want to
to have the right vibrations going
It seems to me that writing lyrics in English
instead of Swedish allows you to be more
creative with words.
Mathias Sometimes we take two words and make one
word of them, make something more of it
Erik Nikola especially likes to do that it's like a code
For example. "Move Your Car was from "The Creature
from the Black Lagoon" pinball machine, where the crea
ture says. "Move your car" The song was supposed to
be about pinballs
Mathias Yeah, maybe, but it was better to write... (Erik
and Mathias speak to each other in animated Swedish
It's about Move on, don't think about old problems, just
move on with your life
Nikola On our first demos. I sat in the library at school
and just wrote down words, strange words: blah, blah
bloch, blooh, and wrote it down and said. "Here's the
lyrics. I spend more time on them now, but I still try to
just write down what comes up in my head, try to come
up with a different line that's not too pathetic
Tell us the story of the burning van.
Mathias Who told you about that? He speaks in angry
Swedish with Erik Okay, we had a green tour bus a
Volkswagen, and it was a real bad bus. We were driving
back from a concert, and it started smoking in the back
and we all jumped out, and it burned down
Did your equipment go with it?
Mathias: No, we had a trailer that we
took off when we jumped out
Enk We thought we'd taken care
of everything, then we said. "Shit
there's fire underneath I never
imagined that a van could burn
down like that so quick. The
windows: bloosh!
Mathias: The tires blan
Erik: We started a big line of cars
in each direction took thirty
minutes for the fire department to
come, because we were far from
cuation
Mathias Before the firemen came,
the van started to move forward
Was it still burning?
Erik: Yeah
Mathias: It tried to start itself
Erik The windows and the engine
exploded.
Mathias It was fun
-Morgan Walker
KMFDM
NEWALBUM
XTOAT
Available at record stores everywhere. Wax Trax!/TVT Records, 23 East 4th Street. New York, NY 10003 tel 212.979.6410 fax 212.979.6489 www.waxtrax.com