This band is just so cool. So many different influences, and with such diversity. I felt the need to interview them just to find out what lurked behind this bands fun lyrics and raging music.
I have absolutely no idea when we started it. But it was put to an end on the 19th of July. Done by email.


Hey Putto. Do I stand correctly when assuming you�ll be the one answering my questions? Please, just introduce yourself and the rest of the band to the readers. Not an entire biography, but just a small presentation if that�s ok�? Hehe.
Putto: Okey. Like you said it�s me Putto who�s answering your questions and I�m the drummer. Then we have the absolutely fabulous bunch of freaks like Drown on guitar, Troy Dixler on guitar, K-Pat on Bass, Gay Vulture on vocals and Captain A on vocals. It might be possible that we get our old guitarist back, Bruno M�rker (a.k.a Fredrik Reinedahl). He was in the band but got too much to do with Phlat Planet, HIS studio, so he left us standing with only two guitarists. The future will tell.

Oh, and also. It would be great if you could try to paint a picture of your music, to the unfortunate who has yet to hear you. I find it extremely difficult to explain your sound.
Putto: Well it is kind of hard to label our music but I think that the base is old thrash music. When me and Drown started the band we were quite different people and took our own influences into the music. So we came up with a mix between punk, thrash, metal, a little bit of hardcore and large bit of madness. We didn�t wanna do the same old thrash metal that were out there like The Haunted so we changed the concept a little bit.

Drown: I love The Haunted..

In Sweden you gained a reputation quite instantly with the first demo. Not saying you became famous, but everyone I know that heard your demo loved it. So still, some sort of reputation I suppose. Any comments on that?
Putto: We actually worked a little bit with this band and tried to getting through to people with our music. There have been so many bands in the past that just get stuck in the rehearsing local and we didn�t want that with this band. But I have to say that we haven�t promote it that well so I�m amazed that you say we have got some sort of reputation. But that�s nice to know. I think it�s a lot more easier nowadays, with the internet and all, then it used to be. You don�t see that much cassettes around anymore. It�s a little technical revolution. Then if you like it or not is something else.

But other than Sweden I have no idea what people have said, or if people know of you. Though, you have an upcoming split-CD on 2+2=5, which is a Brazilian label, so I suppose some foreigners know of you. What�s the response been like abroad?
Putto: We have got a little attention abroad and I think it�s mostly because mine and Troy Dixler's (a.k.a Jonas Rydberg) other band Burst. We have linked The Kolony site on the Burst site and I think that�s the main reason. Like this split cd we will do with Intifada. They first wrote to Burst and asked us if we wanted to do it. So I wrote back and said that we weren�t interested but my other band is. So they listened to the songs and liked it. So we can say we had some luck with this release. But isn�t it like that always. And then we had a little bit of contact with the French label "Listenable" records. He said he liked it but that it was too hard to get people to like it. I can understand what he means because we do not categorise our self as a metalband. We have very different background in this band and I think that they are looking for "Pure" metal bands.

Drown: We are not very pure.. :(

Ok, just clearing something up for the readers now. You, Drown, are taking over the answering now as Putto went on tour with Burst. Am I right?
Drown: Yes thou are

Are there any other projects on the side of The Kolony? Does it cause problems with rehearsing/recording/gigs that Burst is a fairly big name, and might take a lot of time away from other projects?
Drown: Yes, most of us have some more or less serious projects outside of The Kolony. We have a very cool atmosphere here when it comes to music, people from various bands jam with each other in different projects all the time..
To me, that's gotta be the absolute best way to start a band. Just jamming different music with different people however you feel like, and once in a while it just develops into the right combination of people and visions and you feel that this is really good enough to put your soul into and push to its max. You shouldn't start the band, let the band start you! :) As you've probably understood this is exactly how The Kolony began..
Concerning Burst, that's not really a problem for us, even though it takes up much of Troy's and Puttos time at the moment. It's all a matter of using time to your advantage, when they're busy with Burst I can still make new songs and plan for the future and when the time is right we rehearse and gig with The Kolony. I'm not worried, the time for The Kolony will come... Time, time, time.. :)

And now, a question in four parts.
Part one: What do you want to achieve with The Kolony, do you have any goals or is it just playing for the fun of it?
Drown: The primary goal with The Kolony is to have fun. Really, I think that is the primary goal for all good bands. "Having fun" is a very relative thing though.. One way to define "fun" could be: "satisfying feelings that inspires", and there's probably one million different versions of those feelings out there.. I mean, some people think being depressed is "satisfying and inspiring".. Of course we have more concrete "goals" with The Kolony as well, the next one being to record a full-length album.

Part two: You mix a lot of different genres in a way that would just become messy if other bands tried it, but you do it very well.
Drown: Thanx! When it comes to mixing genres and stuff, we decided from the beginning to not have any boundaries at all, but at the same time not fall into the trap of feeling forced to mix as many genres as possible either- like saying something like "We need a punky riff in this song or it will become to much thrash-metal". That's when it becomes messy.
We are really scared to get comfortable with a specific sound and style though, so we always strive to make something completely new in every song. The only constant element is the grinding, we don't compromise with that..

Part three: And you also put a very humoristic touch to it with your quite funny lyrics.
Drown: The lyrical part is actually a very big deal to me. When we started out we didn't really care and I could write just about anything I wanted. This resulted in some more obviously humorous lyrics like "Seeds of Satan" and "The Ballad of Sir Bastard".. As time went by and we started to put a lot more work into the music I started to care more about the lyrics as well. Now, it has become something of my private therapy and I'm almost embarrassed to admit how much time I spend on each text.. I'm trying to portrait thoughts and phenomenas that has not earlier been dealt with in hard music. I think most people (including myself) is rather fed up with the usual anti-religion/warrior/macho-violence-stuff.. These things can be really cool, but they have already been done thousands of times.. Why clone when you can fuck? I also try to get some sort of weird poetic touch to the lyrics, creating some kind of "insanity or genius?-atmosphere". They still tend to get a humorous feeling, but that's really just a result of my way of dealing with reality. I believe that reality is something really scary to us humans, since it is not definable. As humans we feel forced to define reality into something understandable anyway, or we would go insane. Some people filter their sensical impressions through religious explanations, some (perhaps the majority) boost their egos, sticking to easy answers, keeping their minds small, compact and concentrated on the most basic needs only. There's many other ways to deal with this mysterious world, but I think most of them are really just an easy way out. You only live once and I think you'll get the most out of your life if you keep your mind truly open, accepting that there are no answers. To stay alive you need some kind of defence against this overwhelming unknown though, and my defence is humour.. All my impressions and creations passes through this filter of ridicule, hence the "comic" result.
The lyrics are often kind of hard to explain and maybe those "great visions" of mine will only be clear in my own head :) Anyway, writing this nonsense is a wonderful creative and healing process for me and that's reason enough..

Part four: Are you trying to attract people from as many musical directions as possible, and that's the 'cause of the diversity and humour?
Drown: Allow me to generalize and say that there's two kinds of people:
First, the ones that takes themselves and their taste very seriously. They can't take too much change in their well-organized little realities and therefore they are (maybe subconsciously) extremely careful with recognizing new entertainment as well. They feel comfortable with having "favourite bands" to cling to and accepting something completely new as "good" is a long and difficult process for them.
It's these kind of people that loves to make little ranking-lists of their favourite-bands/albums/whatever and liking something is a very big deal to them, it's a fucking statement! Personally, I belong to the other category, and I think anyone who would appreciate The Kolony does to..

Well. So one of your next goals to achieve is to record a debut fullength. Are there any labels that you have in mind, maybe someone even offered you a deal? I know we�ve talked a little about labels, but I�m still curious to see if someone hasn�t picked this great band, called The Kolony, up.
Drown: Again, thanx for the credit man, you're making me blush :)
We've been sending some promos out and received some response, but noone's been willing to put up a reasonable deal for a fullength so far.. The most common motivation is that our music is too odd and "undefinable" to make any bigger profit for them.. I'm very pleased with that motivation though, since that's exactly what we're aiming for and I'm pretty sure that we'll prove them wrong someday.. I think most recordlabels underestimate their buyers and that there's actually a big interest in "new" metal.. They seem to think that the only acceptable "new" metal is "neo" metal..
On the other hand I have to say that we haven't really been working our asses off to promote ourselves so I probably shouldn't whine about it.. I also feel that we haven't recorded anything yet that is really representative for us.. There's some really sick stuff coming up in the future :)

Haha. No reasonable deals, but that means you�ve had deals. Are you asking for a lot in a deal, or has it just been completely silly deals?
Drown: I would say that 99% of all deals that are made in this business are silly..
There are not many (if any) labels out there that you can trust.. Even if you get a killer-deal on paper it's far from certain that they will live up to it and not many people (especially not us) have the time, money and energy it would take to go through a legal process against them..
It's much easier to deal with people when there's not much money involved and everybody included is really working non-profit DIY-style just for the love of the scene, but I think the best thing to do if you wanna release something in a bigger scale, is to pay all the way to a finished production yourself, and then start looking for a label to pay your expenses and release the record.. You're in a much better position to negotiate when you have a finished product to offer..
If we don't find a financier in a couple of months (which we most certainly wont, since our lazy asses are merely looking) that's probably what we'll do..

I see� And I also agree. That seems to be the easiest way for a �new� band to get a reasonable deal. Would you accept a DIY-styled deal from a small label, or are you out for the full-scale-assault-styled deal?
Drown: Of course we'd accept a good DIY-deal from a smaller label, that's kind of what we've done with this upcoming split-CD..
Basically, if a label can pay the expenses for a production and offer a good deal in general, I don't care how big they are.. The problem (as always) is money.. Smaller labels naturally means smaller budgets and distro as well.. The productions we've done so far hasn't really held the quality to be worth releasing in any bigger scale so the deal with this split was perfect for that recording, and we'll always stay open to similar suggestions..
However, in our next production we feel like it's time to do the absolute best there is of this band, which means we need a reasonable budget and good distribution, and it's much easier for a "bigger" label to provide that..

Have you been thinking about which songs to put on an eventual album, any re-recordings of old songs?
Drown: Yes, in fact I think we'll re-record at least 6 old songs.. This will actually be the third time we record the Choose Your Poison-songs.. It might seem a bit boring, but we feel that those three songs, together with some songs from our first demo, is something of a base for The Kolony.. We really want to give them the production they deserve and put them on our first album.. Most of our songs are very short though, we can easily squeeze in 15-16 tracks on a fullength, so there's still plenty of room for new shit too..

I�m not too familiar with your entire history, and I�m not really up-to-date with your bio, hehe. But if I�m not mistaken you�ve had some additions, and changes, in the line-up a couple of times, right? Has that affected the music in any way, considering the variety of influences you use?
Drown: Hmm.. Me and Putto started the band and made our first recording in our friend Bruno M�rkers (a.k.a Fredrik Reinedahl) studio Phlat Planet..
After this we decided to get a full line-up and so Bruno joined in as second guitarist and K-Pat (also an old friend of ours) started to play the bass.. After this I don't remember in which order things happened, but the only changes we've had in the line-up is when we've recruited more people and I think our sound has improved with every new member.. The original idea was to have two vocalists and three guitarists, and it still is, but we shortly came to realize that it's hard enough to organize six retards to show up for rehearsal at the same time.. Bruno's also been busy with private problems lately, so the 3-guitars-thing is on ice at the moment.. Bruno will definitely be a part of The Kolony in the future as well though, if not as a guitarist then as a producer..
If it was realistic I would recruit even more people to The Kolony.. Imagine a percussion-dude, a keyboardist, a childrens choir and a brassband in the line-up! So cool we'd probably freeze to death.. :) Unfortunetly, it's almost impossible to organize that many people, as I said we have enough problems as it is..

Hahaha. That would truly be original :)
To be honest I think I�m all out of serious questions. So on to some funny stuff instead. First, some fast questions:
Latest record you bought?
Drown: Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
Latest record you listened to?
Drown: Circle - Fraten (Right now, actually :)
Latest book you read?
Drown: My idea of fun, by Will Self
Latest show you went to?
Drown: Metallica, at Ullevi Gothenburg
Crappiest record you've bought?
Drown: Ever? That has to be a Marky Mark and the funky bunch album.. That was also my first CD ever.. I think I bought it cause all my friends did..

And now, some questions that I just find interesting to know the answers to.
If you could choose any band, dead or alive, to do a split with, which would it be?
Drown: Voivod.. or maybe old Hawkwind..
If you could erase any person from the history of our planet, who would it be?
Drown: Hmm.. Noone, I think.. There's been a lot of assholes throughout the history but I don't think the world would be better today if they had never existed.. We humans are stupid, we have to learn from our mistakes.. Sad but true.. I also believe that even if you get rid of an idiot, somebody else will take his place.. It's the "role" itself that has to be wiped out and I don't think you can do that with violence.. But OK, if I have to choose someone it would be Mark David Chapman.
If you could just smack, or beat anyone up, without any repercussions, who?
Drown: The king of Sweden! Raping the royal retard!
If you could meet, and talk to, any person, dead or alive, who would it be?
Drown: Don Juan Matus
If you ever were to commit suicide, how would you do it?
Drown: OD heroin

Oki doki� But that�s it. �Cause I�m completely out of questions, at least any I can ask without getting bullied, haha. So I sincerely thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. It�s been both interesting and fun, and say hi and thanks to Putto too.
As usual at the end of an interview it�s up to you to end it with some general wisdom or whatever. Say whatever you will. And thanks again!
Drown: Thanx to you, I've had fun too!
If you want wisdom, I can truly recommend to get a cat. A good cat can reveal the deepest secrets of this world, if you learn to ask the right questions..
Well, for those interested in The Kolony, check out the webpage: http://change.to/thekolony
Thanx for reading, cheers!



Related links:
Burst
2+2=5 Records