How does it feel to be back in the US after one year only away?
It feels good. We are playing bigger venues and people seem to be into what we are doing so… it’s all good.

Is you fan base getting bigger here in the US?
It seems like it. We are stepping up in venue size so, yeah… it feels like more people are talking about it. An obvious example was yesterday and the day before that in San Francisco. Last year we played [one night at] Slim’s and this time we played [there] two nights. Same here in LA… we went from the Bootleg Bar to this place [El Rey Theater].

How were the two concerts in San Francisco?
They were great! There were more people on Saturday [Graveyard played Friday and Saturday in San Francisco]. We have a lot of good friends in San Francisco so, it’s nice to hang out and be in the town two days and not having to hop on the next one.

Your tour is almost over now. Was this your most successful visit to North America so far?
I don’t know. This is a tricky question… what is a successful tour can be different from person to person. I mean, yeah… it was a successful tour: we had a good time, a lot of people came to our shows. That’s success enough for me.

You are selling different posters during this tour. One per city. How did this idea start? Which one is your favorite?
Oh! There are so many good ones. How it started? We kind of picked up that over here [US]. The first time we were here, there were posters for single showcases. That first visit, when we played three shows in the East Coast, they had made posters for those three shows. So, we were like: “Cool! That’s how they do it in the US”.

We stayed friends with a lot of the poster artists so we basically hit up one guy and called Alan Forbes, from San Francisco. He has a big network. It’s been really good. We’ve sold out all the posters we had. In Minneapolis… apparently that artist [that created the poster for that concert] doesn’t do posters for rock shows anymore (maybe 3 a year or

something) so, people were waiting in line for like, 4 hours for the posters. But, I think they were ebay pirates because the day after, we saw that one of them went out for $470 or something [like that].

Talking about your latest album “Lights Out”. In my personal opinion, it is a pretty emotional album. Was it intentional or did it just come out like that?
Most of the things we do come out like they come out. But, I guess we wanted to allow ourselves to broaden our music spectrums. You open up to do different things, you don’t automatically repeat yourself. And that turned up, maybe in “maturing”. But it is [the album] also really heavy and fast sometimes too. So, I think it just has a wider spectrum than the other 2 albums. So, I don’t know… semi-improvised, semi-planned? I don’t know. Our only goal was to allow ourselves to do whatever we wanted.

Some of your lyrics are pretty “political”. Did you write them so people would think about it or was it more of a way for you to channel it out?
I guess it is both. We try to be serious about our lyrics even though they are just rock lyrics. I don’t know if they are political but maybe critical about how the world works. I guess that’s political too but I’m afraid of being tagged as “political”.

There are so many “fucked up” things in our world so, I guess you just write about what you see around you, from a more intimate personal level to a worldwide level. If it makes someone think once or twice before they buy something stupid or whatever, that’s good then.

Correct me if I am wrong, but many of your fans are also metal heads...?
Yes…

I guess metal fans are not only into you music but they are also into other more “Rock n’ roll inspired” bands like the former The Devil’s Blood. Even though your music is not particularly similar, the metal community is embracing all of you guys. In your opinion, why is this happening?
I think it is because we have a lot of common ground with a lot of the metalheads. I mean, sometimes, in some of our songs,

we border[line] metal. But, we don’t play metal. And the entire metal bands that exists, 50% of what they do, they owe to blues influenced heavy rock bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. So, without blues, there wouldn’t be extreme metal… at least in my opinion. So, I think we share love for the same roots.

I see it happening here too (as our audience is getting bigger), that we have a very wide variety of fans: from older man to young teenage girls. I like that and I appreciate the fact that there is something in our music that can touch people from very different stages of life and genres.

You guys are very inspired by the 70’s. In your opinion: what was better then and what is better now?
I guess, because rock was quite young, a lot of people were really curious about where you could take music, in what directions and how far you could go in certain directions, experimented a lot…

If you look at the billings, it could be Muddy Waters and Blue Cheer [playing together] and I really liked that. Today it seems like it is much more divided everywhere. It has to be by genre so, if you go show it is like, 4 metal bands in a roll instead of like one rock band, one metal band, one punk band and one doom band, for mixing it up within the limits of rock someway.

But, I think the world… I don’t know… is probably a better place today even though it is more controlled and the “big brother” is watching everywhere. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know, but it seems like the mentality in the musical community [at the 70’s] was really fruitful for experimenting.

What is in your agenda for the rest of 2013?
Touring. We will go home and in March in April we have some shows in Scandinavia and then in May we are going to Spain. And then, the festival season starts in Europe and that’s pretty intense so we are playing a lot this whole summer. What we are going to do in the fall is still open, it hasn’t been confirmed yet.

Any messages to the SOM readers?
Listen to First aid Kit from Sweden or a band named Goat. Not metal at all but really good music!