Volbeat: The Joy Of Music

VOLBEAT have never been a band to sit quietly for too long, usually playing shows and tours stretching far and wide across the globe for lengthy periods following on from album releases. As with most best laid plans in the last couple of years, this didn’t quite go as they anticipated.

“We were supposed to go on tour in America in the Spring of 2020 and that got postponed, we had a festival run planned in 2020 and that went out of the window too,” explains drummer Jon Larsen. “We thought we may as well have a bit of a break but after a few weeks we were meeting up in the rehearsal room and jamming through songs just to make sure we were doing something and not just sitting at home.”

With an unexpected wealth of time on their hands, VOLBEAT found themselves jumping into another album cycle quicker than they probably anticipated. This was to become what we now know as their eighth full-length release Servant Of The Mind. “Michael [Poulsen, vocals/guitars] joked to our management during a conversation saying ‘I guess if we’re not gonna tour I might as well write an album’ and they were all on board for that,” discusses Jon. “Before we knew it we had 12 or 13 songs ready to go. Towards the end of 2020 there were still no signs of touring so we went in and did the proper recordings in the studio and then we are ahead of schedule and had them good to go. We had everything recorded in the studio in a couple of weeks. Everything was just super fast and super smooth so we decided to look into doing some cover songs and that is when the opportunity to do the METALLICA song came about. Not being on the road actually gave us a newfound energy.”

Servant Of The Mind saw the band delve back into what brought them to the dance, adopting a heavier edge to their writing for this release whilst still maintaining the fun, vibrant energy that we have come to know and love throughout their extensive career. Something which wasn’t necessarily part of the plan. “Every time we begin working on new material it’s like a new open book, we don’t tend to go in with any kind of existing ideas as we like to do it the natural way,” admits Jon. “It just depends on the state we were in at the time, we don’t really think too much about it or worry about how to stay relevant we just do what we do. It just felt natural for us to go in this direction. There are still plenty of hooks and melodies still present in the music. It may have been the fact that Michael has been doing a lot of podcasts and talking about the early days of VOLBEAT and his previous bands so it may have been on his mind when he started writing. We’ve went through a lot of stages in our style and our influences. We went from listening to bands like HELLOWEEN and RUNNING WILD then onto METALLICA, SLAYER and ANTHRAX and on from there. From what I can gather, I think the response has been really positive. People seem to really be enjoying it. A lot of people are saying it’s a step back into the past for us as it’s a lot more riff based. We always get excited to see how people will respond to new material. It’s kind of like sending your kids off to school for the first day.”

The fanbase of VOLBEAT has exponentially grown and grown in adoration over the years and in turn they have acquired a sea of accolades such as multi-platinum albums, singles topping the charts and headlining slots at some of the biggest festivals in the world. There are zero signs that they plan to slow down any time soon.

When asked what keeps the fire burning Jon states, “it’s simply down to the joy of playing music, the joy of being together and the fact that we still have fun doing it. That’s all that actually matters. I’m sure people can see that when we’re performing too. All the accomplishments we’ve had are amazing and it’s really mind blowing, sometimes I really can’t believe it but for me it’s just the excitement and enjoyment of being able to play music. I definitely didn’t expect when Michael and I formed the band like 20 years ago that we’d still be doing this. He basically had the intention of playing whatever he wanted to play and it sounded like a lot of fun. At the beginning I kind of wondered ‘who is going listen to this kind of music?’, it turns out a lot of people!”

Servant Of The Mind is out now via EMI Records.

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