WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: VOLBEAT’S MICHAEL POULSEN HAILS THE KING

Elvis-metal, riffabilly, retro-aggro, whatever you call it, Volbeat’s sound is their own, and you wish you’d come up with it first. Formed in Copenhagen in 2001, Volbeat immediately surprised the scene with its brand of rockabilly-infused power groove; now the band has three gold records and one platinum record in its native Denmark, and its latest, Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood (Mascot), debuted at the top of the charts in Finland. (Enter to win a copy of that CD and a shitload of other Volbeat goodies, right here.) Back from another leg of his group’s grueling tour schedule and about to kick off their first US tour, frontman Michal Poulsen took a moment to talk to Revolver about Volbeat’s rising success and their unique sound.

Photo by Andreas Bønding

REVOLVER How has response been to the new material? Is there new stuff in the works?
MICHAEL POULSEN The response has been amazing. We’ve already received platinum in Denmark. It’s been great. Right now we’re writing new songs for the next album; I’m writing on the bus, in the hotel, in the venue. And so far with Guitar Gangsters, things have been really good. We’re very excited.

Volbeat has so many different influences—where’d your sound come from?
My parents were always playing a lot of old-time rock-and-roll music from the ‘60s. My father was a really big Elvis fan, but he also liked Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, all the oldies. When I moved away from home, I was a big fan of heavy-metal music and death metal, and later on I would miss the old records they used to play. When I started Volbeat, I was leaving a death-metal band named Dominus, and I got really tired playing that style. I said, “Why not mix it? Why not take this sound and these melodies from the ’60s and mix it with a more metal or hard rock sound?”

Is there certain stuff you can’t do in Volbeat?
No, that’s why I started Volbeat! In Dominus, there were certain rules—you’re not allowed to do this, you’re not allowed to do that, it has to be metal. On our third record, we started to work with rock, and people turned their back on Dominus. I want to do something where it doesn’t matter how many different styles are mixing, as long as you can think straight from the heart, then that’s the real thing. Right now, as long as we keep the sound and all the ideas, I can do whatever I want in Volbeat. These days I listen to so many different styles of bands, I don’t like to paint myself into a corner. I like to keep it wide open.

Do you get a lot of negative response from the metal community for your strange sound?
See, the thing is, we’ve been touring around Europe to very big crowds, between five and nine thousand people. We know our audience is very mixed—you can see the punks, you can see the metalheads, you can see the rockabillies, the mainstream listeners—and I think it’s beautiful. But there are always people who don’t get it. They go and post some complaints on the Internet. They say we’re not “true metal” or “true rock and roll,” but the truth is that Volbeat has never tried to brand itself. Sometimes when people discover their favorite band in the beginning, they find an identity in it, but it’s sort of wrong somehow. When you become popular, they turn their back on you because now they have to share you with the guy who works at the bank. They should look at themselves. We’ve been touring so much, playing so many shows in Europe, and now we’re making a good living in Volbeat, and some people can’t handle that. It becomes too much for them.

You guys have some awesome album titles, so I wanted to ask—what is a “guitar gangster”?
I really like to play around with words, which is why a lot of my lyrics are themselves small stories. Guitar Gangsters & Cadillac Blood is a small story made up of about seven songs. It’s about a guy found in the desert with seven bullet holes in his body, laying in a Cadillac, bleeding to death. When the law enforcement comes there, the car is gone and he’s gone. He walks into a city you can’t find on any map, and the whole idea is that he’s got to find his killer, so he disguises himself as a musician and he gets a band together that he calls Guitar Gangsters, though he himself goes by the name Mr. Cadillac Blood. He has an idea that he has to spot his killer from onstage.

One of the songs on the album is a cover of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Is it hard to really metal-out such a mellow track?
It’s always a little bit more complicated to do cover songs than your own songs, if you ask me. When I do my songs, I write all my material and we play it. With cover songs, people have different feelings, both in bands and in songs. When I heard [punk band] Me First and the Gimme Gimmes do that song, I thought, I want to do that but Volbeat style.

You’re a huge Elvis fan—what would you say to the King if you met him today?
You know, that’s actually a question I’ve thought about time and time again. I don’t think you could prepare yourself for those sorts of things. I went to Memphis to see where he worked, where he lived, and it was a very emotional trip. You can always ask yourself, What would I say? But I don’t think you should think so much about it. The reaction and the feeling should do the work. I’ve always said I don’t want to touch the songs of Elvis, because you don’t touch the King’s work.

Interview by Chris Krovatin