The influences comes from a lot of directions

Thanks for taking the time to talk to Metal on Loud! To start with, could you provide a little background information on your band? How and when did Blues Pills get started?

Hey! The band formed in 2011, Elin was traveling around in USA and met up with Zack and Cory who was living in California at the time. They started to jam and make songs together, eventually they contacted Dorian from France, which they had met while Zack and Cory was on tour in Europe with another band. They all moved to Sweden, Örebro in 2013 and that’s where I met them. We started to hang out and jam together from time to time, so when they searched a new drummer they contacted me and we started to play with each other.

A lot of heavy metal bands come out of Sweden, but you’re one of the first Swedish artists I’ve seen to be classified as a blues or psychedelic rock band. Does your style of music have an established scene there or would you consider yourself pioneers?

There is a lot of good bands coming out of Sweden, different types of music styles and so on. But I think you can find kind of a lot of bands with the blues and psychedelic influences actually, bands such as Dead Man, Graveyard, Witchcraft etc. And there is always a new band popping up from somewhere in the country that play this kind of music.

From where do you get your blues/psychedelic influence? Would it be safe to say you draw a little from Led Zeppelin?

We are all influenced by different bands, styles of music and art. Some of us got introduced to the 60’s and the 70’s music as a child by our parents and it just grew from there I think. We are listening to tons of different bands so the influences comes from a lot of directions.

You remind me a lot of another band, Purson, which is also fronted by a female vocalist and has a blues/psychedelic sound. Have you heard of them before? If so, what do you think of them?

I have heard of Purson as a band but I’m unfortunately not very familiar to their catalog, I need to check it out!

You recently released your second full-length album, Lady in Gold. What can you tell us about it? How does it differ from your debut album?

This album has more of a soul touch to it, we also of course blended in elements from the first album such as the blues and the heavy rock parts. But it was really cool to be able to blend in some new instruments like the organ, piano, wurlitzer and even clavinet. Elin also putted together a choir and arranged the choir arrangements which added a lot to the sound. We are really proud and exited to share this with the people.

How does the writing process work for you guys? Does one band member do most of it or is it a group effort?

Its Zack and Elin who comes up with the song ideas or a guitar riff for example, along with the lyrics for the songs. But for this album, since we had to write the songs at the same time as recording, we all kind of sat down to help contribute together with our producer, Don Alsterberg. 

What’s it like being signed to such a major heavy metal label like Nuclear Blast? How did that come about?

We are really happy being able to work with Nuclear Blast, they have been giving the band great support. It all started with Zack sending over an email with a short introduction of the band along with a live video. Shortly after they replied and we have been working together since then.

As a non-metal band, how do you feel about metal as a genre? Are any of you fans of heavier music? Does it influence your sound at all?

For me personally, I use to play in some hardcore and metal bands before I joined up with Blues Pills. And I think that gave me a lot and influenced my way of playing the drums, which I’m still using. Whenever we have been playing a metal festival we have always been very well treated by the metal crowed. Not that we ever thought we wouldn’t, but its been a positive surprise for us that we can play after a heavy metal band and the crowed are still into what we are doing, even though we are a more blues and soul inspired band.