“I think most bands nowadays – old or new – they limit themselves too much by playing a genre”, stressed Olaf Wikstrand, vocalist for Sweden’s Enforcer, “and they limit themselves within that genre. We somehow had an intention, especially with this album, to not limit ourselves in that way and go with all the extremes and do all the ideas 100% instead of be like ‘nah, we can’t do this because it’s not heavy metal! That’s how you build great albums. The classics that everyone worships were all built that way”.
Enforcer entered the music world in 2004 into an age where nu-metal was at its peak. It was a time that was screaming out for more traditional metal with few bands game enough to step up to the plate.
“2004 was still burning 90s in a musical sense”, Olaf recalled. “Everyone sounded like fucken nu-metal – even the bands that claimed to be playing heavy metal were sounding like Limp Bizkit to me – and it was before any type of retro wave so we were… I felt pretty alone in my values of music and heavy metal at that time but it was also what kind of gave way for us to do what we do. We weren’t the baggy pants wearing rapcore shit. We were the real deal”.
In the full interview Olaf discusses upcoming album Zenith, the process leading up to and including the recording, what they were hoping to achieve musically, self-producing albums, the early history of the band and the statement they were trying to make, what impact Enforcer has had on music in the fifteen years since they started plus more.
