Ahhh... This incredible, crushing hardcorecrust... I, I don't know, it's just so freakin' intense and ferocious! I'm very impressed by this band, and I felt myself forced to try and get an interview done.
It was done by email. I sent the first question at the 2nd of March, but I didn't receive the last answer until the 1th of September. My computer got infected with a major virus and broke down. So for a couple of months I hardly had access to the internet, and the interview had to go on holidays for some time.


Hey Rosali.
Let us just start out with a simple question. Could you give me a small introduction to the band? Not a biography, but just a small presentation of yourself and the rest of the members�
Howdy, well Ambulance is a band from Ume�. We all come from different parts of Sweden but started up the band while we all lived here. We have been playing together for about 3 and � years now. We got a new singer since last spring, Skitsylen from �stersund and bands like Human Waste. The rest of us are: Fredrik-drums, Louise-guitar, Fredrik-bass, Rosali-guitar. Ambulance got pretty "young" bandmembers between the ages of 20-25, so we're looking forward to rock n' roll until we're too fat/lazy to be on stage.

Well, I�d like to get right on to the reason of your old singer, Sofie, leaving the band. I don�t know why this happened, but I can easily say it�s a damn shame. Her ferocious vocals are unmatched! Not to trash Sylen, maybe he�ll prove to do an excellent job behind the mic. I�m just fond of Sofie�s vox� But anyway� Was it just a simple reason, like maybe she moved or something? Or do I have the opportunity to hear some juicy gossip? Hehe�
I'm sorry to disappoint you but the reason why she left the band will stay in the band. That's something I won't write here. I also like/liked her vocals, she really developed her vox under the three years in the band. If you listen to our demo or the 7" and then on the LP you can really here the difference, it's amazing.

How has the change of vocalists affected the band? Have Sylen already claimed a permanent place in the writing process?
I'm actually very impressed by Sylen, he jumped in to the band pretty fast after Sofie quitted. He was the perfect choice for us. A very nice and good person and very musical. He does not just write lyrics, he comes with good ideas for the arrangements in our songs. And he is really a good singer on stage!

Well I�m glad to hear that Sylen fills the missing spot with pleasant result. But now your other guitarist, Lousie, is disembarking the Ambulance-ship. From what I understand there are no hard feelings with this decision either, but to me it would seem like losing two members in a short period of time could cause some turbulence within the band, true/not true?
Well, of course it effects us when we loose a member and have too search/look for another person to take that place. It's not easy, we all have to feel comfortable with that person and enjoy that persons company. For us much is about having fun with eachother. Not just the "playing part". It hasn't even been a year since Sofie left the band so there has been alot of changes within the band, and now with Louise too. But as you wrote, there are no hard feelings with this. It was her decision and unfortunately it had to be done. The rest of us really want to take Ambulance to another level, we want to play live much more than we do today, release albums and rehearse more. It's hard when not everybody in a band wants to put the same energy on the band. So for us it felt kind of natural... but of course it feels weird.
Louise has been in the band from the start. Actually it was me and her that "started" ambulance, we had played our last gig with our other band and we didn't want to quit playing so we called the others and they were into the idea of starting a new band.

And you�re also heading out for a small Finnish tour. Excited? What are your expectations? I�ve never been to a show in Finland, but from what I�ve heard they sound pretty capable of some heavy moshing, hehe�
Yes, finally we're going over to Finland! Ambulance has been on the way over there for about two years now...so yes we're very excited. Reign of bombs, another dbeat band from ume� will also follow on the trip, they're also our friends so that feels great. Haha, well I have also heard some things about Finland, crazy stories mostly but for me that's just positive! I'm sure we can make the finnish "m�skpunks" mosh and party with us.

Well� By the time you�re answering this next question you�ve just returned from Finland. So it only feels natural to ask you how the tour went� Fill me in, please! Hehe.
It was really great!! Finnish people are crazy! The whole tour went on good without any problems. We have meet so many good people on this trip. And we got awesome reactions from the audience's. The best gigs we did were in Vasa and in Helsingfors. In Vasa the kids gave us a real adrenalinerush! Probably one of the biggest/most fucked up moshpits we ever had. Finland injoys drinking beer maybe even more than swedish people..hehe.In Helsingfors we played with Unkind, an awesome band from Finland. Worth checking out if you haven't already heard about them. So "summan av kardemumman" is very good, I'd love to get over there and play again, that's for sure! Now we're planning for one week in England in june and two shows in Norway in may.

Excellent, I�m glad everything went alright during the tour� And it seems like you have things going on for you when speaking of touring. How did things go with Norway and England?
We did one gig (no tour) in Trondheim at the annual "P�belrocken", and that was really awesome. The people kicked ass and we got great response from the audience. We couldn't ask for more if you ask me. And England, yes, we're going over to England and Scotland this monday for eight gigs. A great guy called Pete has set up this tour for us. And we're really grateful for that. He and his band Flyblown will join us on all the shows. This will be a killertrip!

Ok, so we�ve covered the issue of touring. But what about records then? What have you got planned for the future? When will Sylen make his debut on tape?
Very soon actually, last weekend we spend some time in a studio in �stersund and there we recorded all the music for our upcoming 7". We just got the vocals left. We're satisfied this far about the results. I suspect that this recording will be the best release so far from Ambulance. It will be released by Civilisation Records (Germany) and by Cage Match Federation (Sweden) I think it will be out in september. Also, today we picked up the "THE END OF OUR TIME" CD (CMF) it arrived today. Feels good to finally have it on both CD and LP.

And while on the record subject. What kind of response did the album get? I just totally fell in love with the stuff, so to me it rips some major bunghole. But sometimes it seems like I�m the only one who understands good music� hehe.
We got mostly good response on this album, I saw a review in MMR that wasn't too happy about the record and he mostly compared us to From ashes rise (people seems to do that alot?). But hey, that doesn�t matter. I think it's good to get both positive and negative criticism. But I guess people liked the album, the first press was sold out on a couple of months and there will be a second press pretty soon.

Where there any big differences review-wise if comparing the 7� to the LP?
Hmm...I would say that both the music and the production is better on the LP comparing to our first real release. And the fact that we all where better musicians when we recorded the LP, but if I compare us how we played on the LP and how we play today I can surely say that we're much better now. That's a good thing, that we can develop us both as individual musicians and as a group.

There�s been quite a long delay in the interview, so I have to ask if anything�s happened since we last spoke? Found a permanent replacement for Louise?
Yeah, we asked a guy called Adde that played with us on a tour last summer (as a stand in guitarist). On that trip everything worked out fine, he is a kick ass person and a hell of a good guitarplayer too! So now we're a complete band again, and I must say that it feels awesome. We're all on the same level now when it comes to touring, release new stuff and all that.

Ok so, back from the Britain tour now, how was it?
We had a great time (as usual) we did the whole tour with the band FLYBLOWN, they are awesome people. We're not a "big band" so for us it was really good to get over there and spread our music by playing it live. I broke a rib on Skavsta airport just 2 hours before the departure, so we all panicked but I got some pills from a doctor and we continued as planned.
We did some really good gigs in England and some crappy too, but the best gig (maybe ever for us) was in Boston, it was totally fucked up. Never seen kids that crazy before. We sold a lot of records and merch and met lots of good people. We even got to record three songs in an awesome studio, so we did a toursplit with Flyblown. Those three songs will also be on a split 7".

Are there any differences from playing in Sweden, Finland, England etc? Get treated differently by club managers and such? Crowd act differently?
One really strange thing is that we only got food on two places, and even though we mostly played at rock clubs and bars we never got any beer or what so ever. That was the thing that surprised me most. Except for England we have only toured Finland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Belgium and Sweden and it has never been like that before. Especially the food, I mean when a band is on tour they really need food at the gigs, it got very expensive for us to buy food all the time on the road. The crowd was mostly old, if I compare what we're used to. As I wrote before we mostly played at bars, and I think there was a lot of people that just happened to hang around there that didn't know that there was a gig that night, and because of that the crowd got pretty mixed. Not just punks. One really positive thing is that there were pretty much girls/women on the shows. But sadly there wasn't one single female on stage!

Damn� How did you manage to break a rib? And it was probably a good thing they didn�t give you any beer, considering you were taking pills for the pain ;) hehe�
First of all, I did party alot on the tour anyway. What else can you do in the car? The pills didn't stop me. I didn't break it in a cool way, unfortunately. I had been coughing very much for about a month before to tour, and just some hour before our departure I coughed as usual and I felt some really heavy pain in the ribs and I assure you it hurt as hell! Afterwards I had problems with walking and sitting, and well pretty much everything. Bad timing de luxe!

Hehe, well I wouldn�t say �only�� That�s six countries (seven if you count Sweden). A lot of bands never even get to play in another country.
Well. Have you discussed touring anywhere else? Any hopes/dreams for bands to tour with?
We have discussed touring in the US, Spain, Europe, Japan...well everything..haha. That's the funniest thing you can do as a band (I think) so of course we have "dreams" of doing everything as long as we continue as a band. But to tour for example the US we've got to get more distribution over there. A band to tour with? Hmmm.. That�s a hard question. When I'm on tour I want to be with good/nice people it doesn�t really matter which band. And it's more fun if the band got another "style" then ours.

And while on the subject of dreams� What would be the ultimate band for you to do a split with?
M�TLEY CRUE GOD DAMN!

Now, on to some less serious questions, but that I find fairly amusing asking�
Latest record you bought?
Hmmm... I think it was the latest Looptroop album or something with Queens of the stone age.
Latest record you listened to?
Iron Maiden s/t
Latest book you read?
White line fever (Lemmy)
Latest show you went to?
When I played with ZionEye (one of my other bands) at Klabb�le and H-mag.
Crappiest record you've bought?
Haha...well, I bought some CD with some drum things, don't really know the name but it sucked big time.
And, if you ever were to commit suicide, how would you do it?
Hook myself to our anchor (I'm currently living on a boat) and jump in.

Hmm� I believe that to be it. I�m glad you seem to be getting the attention I think you deserve, and it sounds like you�ve got things working in your favour. So I would just like to thank you a lot for this interview, and wish you all the best in the future!
Up to you to put an end to this, as usual this last space is yours� Enjoy!
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Rock on!

Related links:
Ambulance
365 Dagar Av Synd
Human Waste
Skitsylen