Göteborg hardcore punk band TRAMWRECK (est. 2011) have teamed up with IDIOTEQ to discuss their new EP “TW”, their nihilistic, rebellious approach, raging thrash punk faithful sound and the reasons behind running a hardcore band. Dive into the madness by hitting the Play button in the player below and scroll down to read the full interview!
Band photos by Robin Källstrand / Live photo by Anton Ekman.
Hey guys! How’s Göteborg? I was just looking for some cheap, flights to your lovely city and finally show it to my wife. How’s living in Götar working out for you?
Hi! Gothenburg is just fine! At the moments it’s getting a bit cold and it’s getting to the point were you have to switch over to thick, impractical winter coats. So that’s a bummer but probably not a problem that’s unique for Gothenburg at the moment. It still sucks though, but apart from that there isn’t much to complain about so living here is working out all right. We all have different daily activities and routines to deal with which we do with different levels of enthusiasm. Feeling less enthusiastic doesn’t have much to do with the city though, it’s more related to life in general. Gothenburg is real nice!
Do you all come from this area? How did you guys team up for this band 5 years ago?
We’re all from the general area but Robert and Victor grew up in Kungälv, which is a bit outside of Gothenburg. When we formed the band we had all been friends for a pretty long time so teaming up came naturally. Robert and Victor knew each other growing up, me and Robert became friends when we were in our late teens and I got to know Victor through him and we all got to know Björn later on, through some mutual friends. Before starting TRAMWRECK we all played in different punk and metal bands but I think all of us had an urge to play faster and harder. We had been talking about starting a hardcore band for a while and we reached a point were some of our previous bands began falling apart for different reasons and it seemed like a good time to start something new. So during the latter half of 2010 we started rehearsing together and we really clicked musically.
Why call a band TRAMWRECK?
I was dreading questions about the band name, haha! The truth is that the name TRAMWRECK is nothing more than a bad pun. The public transportations in Gothenburg are mainly made up of trams and we thought it was funny calling ourselves TRAMWRECK. In hindsight it turned out not to be the best choice, people often mishear it as “train wreck” and we’re all pretty dissatisfied with it. However, we all agree on that once you’ve released music under a name, it’s too late to change it so it’s a couple of years too late to complain. We usually use abbreviations and refer to ourselves as TW or TWHC and we also keep trying to tell ourselves that the band name isn’t important.
Because it’s not, I believe so too! :) What are some of most important aspects of running a band like TRAMWRECK then?
We’re kind of small time so running the band really doesn’t take that much, but I’d say that patience is one of the most important aspects. We’re terribly undisciplined and pretty much suck at getting things done so we have to be patient. We’ve self-released all our music so far and it normally takes about a year for us to actually release something after we’ve recorded it. Our latest EP was recorded in early 2014 but we sort of lost our groove and more or less put the band on hold shortly after we got done recording so in that case it’s taken close to two years. Before that we’ve had periods when Björn has moved from Gothenburg and we haven’t been able to rehearse for a couple of months at the time. Recently Victor started playing bass in another, more disciplined band so he’s away on tour a lot nowadays but we try to work around that. We do spend a lot of time waiting though so being patient helps.
Ok, so tell me about about your recent work and plans for the next couple of months.
In total, we recorded seven songs early in 2014, which had just been lying around until early this year when we decided to get our shit together and get some stuff done. So we released two of the songs on a seven-inch split with the crust punk band VANVETT, from Stockholm. That came out in June. The remaining five songs are what are composing our new EP, which is called TW, and will be released on ten-inch vinyl as soon as we get the records back from the pressing plant. We’re real excited about TW, since we’ve only released two tapes and a split single before I think it feels like our first “real” release and the songs are by far our best ones yet. Because the songs already are close to two years old and vinyl pressing takes a few weeks at the least, we decided to release TW for streaming on our Bandcamp-page. Other than releasing the actual record as soon as possible we’re planning to get out and play live as much as we can and by the end of the year we hope to record some new songs and this time it hopefully won’t take us so long to release them.
What gives you the motivation to continue?
It’s fun! Of course we all get frustrated from time to time, both with the band and with each other, but playing shows, writing, rehearsing, recording and releasing music is so much fun that in the end it’s always worth it. Playing hardcore punk is definitively the best way to waste your time I can think of. Plus, rehearsing is a good excuse to drink beer during the weekdays.
Haha, fair enough. Thanks a lot for the quick introduction to TRAMWRECK guys and please make sure to keep in touch and let me know about your future recordings and tours. The last words are yours. Thanks!
I’d just like to seize the opportunity then and do some shameless self-promoting and urge everybody to check out TW! It’s on our Bandcamp-page and will soon be available on Spotify and on iTunes and on vinyl! And thank you very much for the interview! Thanks for taking the time and showing an interest, it means a lot to us!
