We caught up with Chris Adam of Swedish rock band Smash Into Pieces at the Download Festival to discuss their excitement for playing their first ever UK festival, the popularity of their song ‘All Eyes On You,’ and the story behind their music video for ‘The Tide.‘ We also talk about APOC, the Apocalypse DJ who reflects the band’s mentality of pursuing dreams despite struggles, and potential plans to sell masks resembling his iconic one. The band discusses upcoming festivals they will be performing at and hints at changes in style as they return to Arcadia.
RAMzine: We are here at Download Festival and I’m with Chris of Swedish rock band Smash Into Pieces who are gonna be playing Download Festival later on today. Are you excited? Are you ready?
Chris: Yeah, of course I’m excited. I’m looking forward to it a lot. And it’s our first ever festival in the UK for Smash Into Pieces. It’s our first time and it’s Download. It’s a good first. And the sun is shining. We have this stereotypical view of UK that it always rains.
RAMzine: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, sometimes it does rain a lot. Like, we’ve had very muddy Downloads before. But last year was sunny as well. It’s really nice when it’s sunny. I prefer it. What do you think of the whole Download setup so far?
Chris: Well, because it’s my first UK festival experience, I think it’s perfect. [Chris says perfect in an English accent copying us from before the interview starts as he loves the English accent, he says].
RAMzine: So, your track ‘All Eyes On You’, obviously that came out three years ago. But it seems to me to be your most popular song, would you say that?
Chris: Yeah, and it was kind of weird because at the time when we released it, we had a song called ‘God Sent’, which we had like the first track on the EP, which was a two-song EP. And we didn’t really believe in ‘All Eyes On You’. So, it was the second track on the EP. And like one year later, it kind of blew up. Then ‘All Eyes On You’ just blew up everywhere. And it was like 70% of our total revenue in Smash Into Pieces in one year. It was crazy how fast it went up. And it became the biggest song for Smash Into Pieces ever.
RAMzine: I really like that track I think that it gives a sense of hope in the darkness and it’s empowering. That’s what I get when I listen to it. Can you tell me the story behind your music video for ‘The Tide’ that was shot in Latvia?
Chris: Well, I haven’t written that song, but I heard Banjo, who has written the song, his explanation about the song. It’s a little Darth Vader kind of thing. You show the evil side and you’re kind of struggling with showing the good part of you. It’s kind of the ego thing that’s going on inside of you. And that’s the hardest thing to fight. That’s the ego.
RAMzine: Do you guys struggle with that at all, do you think, being a band?
Chris: I’m a human being. All the time, man. As everyone else. There’s nothing special about me.
RAMzine: I also like your track ‘Valhalla’. I wondered, are you guys interested in Norse mythology at all?
Chris: I really don’t remember how that song came up, but I guess, because that’s also a Banjo song. And of course we need to have a song called ‘Valhalla‘ from Scandinavia. That’s my answer. It was fun though to record it.
RAMzine: I wanted to talk about the Apocalypse DJ. Has his identity ever actually been revealed? Do people know who he is?
Chris: Do you know?
RAMzine: I don’t know. I’ve never met him. I’ve just seen the mask.
Chris: I guess APOC actually reflects the whole mentality of the band. We have this saying, anything standing between us and our dreams, we smash into pieces. We have been touring and being a band for 15 years. We have been struggling a lot, but still we have tried to pursue our dreams. We haven’t given up. The results come now. Things start happening for us. That’s the whole thing that we have. We just fight and fight and fight all the time.
RAMzine: It’s good to hear that you’re passionate about it. You have to have that determination to push through in this industry these days. I wish you guys all the luck in the world.
Chris: It doesn’t really matter what it is. If you want to become the best doctor or whatever, you need to negotiate for yourself all the time. Like 24-7. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rock singer or whatever you do. If you have a big dream, just go for it. If you want to do something, go out there and do it. It sounds like a cliche, but it’s really true. That’s what life is all about, really.
RAMzine: We 100% agree with that! Back to APOC for a second. Is he just walking around with his mask all the time? Surely at some point someone’s going to go, oh, thats the guy.
Chris: He shows up on stage. I don’t know his personal life. I know he hangs out with Superman a lot. Do you know who he is? Do you know his identity? Is it a he?
RAMzine: I don’t know.
Chris: I know it’s a thing walking around near me.
RAMzine: Do you sell those masks, the Apocalypse D.J. masks?
Chris: We’re actually in the beginnings of that thing. I can’t really say much more. I know there’s an internal discussion about that. We’re going to sell some kind of paper mask or something like that for people to wear on concerts.
RAMzine: I feel like Download Festival would be the perfect place. People love wearing all sorts of outfits here.
Chris: They’re built-in sun shades, sunglasses. The sun is always going to shine when the smashing of pieces is going to come here.
RAMzine: That would be cool. Have you guys ever been to Camden in London?
Chris: Is that a place?
RAMzine: Yeah, it’s a place in London. It’s an alternative town, but they have a shop there called Cyberdog, and the mask reminds me of basically everything that you can buy in Cyberdog. It’s so cool. I think it would be your guys’ vibe. If you play in Camden, go to Cyberdog.
Chris: Yeah, we should go there. We should bring APOC there.
RAMzine: Yeah, he would love it. So what’s next for the band after this?
Chis: We’re actually flying back to try to have some kind of time with our families for a couple of days, and then we’re going to go to I believe Townsend Rock next week, which is in Norway. And the whole festival summer is going to be, just keeps on going all around Europe. And also we’re trying to find the time to record a new album in between.
RAMzine: Have you started writing it already?
Chris: Yeah. I think we’re up in like six songs, something like that.
RAMzine: How’s it sounding?
Chris: Amazing. Perfect. (He says in an English accent).
RAMzine: Do you think you’ll be doing any dramatic style changes or the same sort of thing?
Chis: We’re constantly evolving, we’re in that all the time. And yeah, I think there’s going to be a lot of things coming because we’re going into the Arcadia world again. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it. But so yeah, we’re in the beginning of that again, to go into that and we’re doing some kind of changes now. Yeah, you will see.
RAMzine: All right, well, thank you very much for speaking to us today. And the last question is, you’ve played a lot of countries around Europe now. Which is the best one to play in?
Chris: Download.
RAMzine: I knew it.
