Horndal: Hometown Heroes

Metal bands love a good concept. Some craft specific, meticulous stories for listeners to disentangle over the course of a record. Others focus on more general themes, sometimes weaved through multiple albums or even entire careers. Few bands however have ever looked for a concept as close to home, quite literally, as Sweden’s HORNDAL. Taking their name from their own hometown, the four-piece have told said town’s story of degradation and decline over two full-lengths now. Their first, 2019’s Remains, detailed the 1970s closure of the town’s steel mill and resulting economic devastation. Their second, Lake Drinker, was released just a few weeks ago, and takes us to present day Horndal, where a tech company is laying waste to the town and its surrounding environment.

“I remember the shutdown and stuff like that from the 70s,” recounts the band’s guitarist/vocalist Henrik Levahn. “I remember the old Horndal, when it was like 3,000 people and the steel mill was going. Then we had like three grocery stores, two restaurants, a flower shop, clothing for men and women and stuff like that. Then, like ten years after that, when I was in my teens, it was like one shop. Now it’s like one shop, one petrol station, and a flea market.”

“That’s the Horndal that I was born in,” adds Henrik’s brother and HORNDAL drummer Pontus Levahn. “For me Horndal was never more than that. I was really used to it being an empty place, and didn’t know anything else until I got older and just understood ‘Fuck, that’s a ghost town right there.’”

It’s a sad picture, and one that the brothers are all too aware isn’t isolated to their own home. Henrik is quick to point out that families from all over the world have found themselves in similar situations. “We don’t tend to be that political a band, but this is a political question of course. There is a problem when you have a town that’s totally dependent on one company that employs pretty much all of the people, and when that company goes down, it takes the city with them. If that is blaming capitalism, I guess I am then, but you don’t have to be a communist to see that problem you know. I don’t think the Tories like that [either].”

“It’s just the sad proof that humanity isn’t as important as everything else,” Pontus adds. “You have people living in a place that’s their home and if you take away the possibilities of making that place a home, I mean work, then there’s nothing left. If you don’t come up with any other solution then that’s just so sad, that that comes in last. We find these questions interesting and we make sort of ghost stories about them, but in the end it’s [just] that. We’re not politicians and we’re not journalists either. We’re artists in a way who happen to make metal music, so we’re inspired by these kinds of issues and turn them into dark, bleak and aggressive music.”

While the story definitely came first for HORNDAL, there was never any doubt that metal was the means through which they wanted to tell it. Henrik explains. “Coming from Horndal, it had to be hard metal music, because, I think it’s the same in the UK, metal music is like working class music. Every guy in Horndal listened to heavy metal when I was a kid, everybody. That was the music you listened to, so that was kind of the obvious.”

Pontus couldn’t agree more. “It felt obvious that these stories should be in a metal environment because it’s dark, it’s gloomy and there’s a lot of anger in there. We always wanted to start a hard and more aggressive band. Both Henrik and I, I think we had BLACK SABBATH and ENTOMBED sort of in the breast milk. So that’s just so obvious because it’s something we listened to since we were really young.”

The general sound may have been a sure thing then, but the band have still tried to push themselves on Lake Drinker. “Another thing that we did is that we have intros,” Henrik points out. “On the first record, the song just starts. Some people like that, and some people think that’s annoying – ‘don’t bore us, get to the chorus’ kinda stuff – but yeah that was very interesting.”

“We’re sort of on our toes all the time and really eager,” adds Pontus, “but when we started playing the songs live it was so obvious that we sort of rushed through every part. It was like ‘is this part really over already?’ So we just started experimenting live, like ‘This part should be twice as long’. It’s not symphony rock, it’s not YES lengths on the songs, but they’re not two and a half minutes, they’re more five minutes, and to us that’s a really fucking long song. So we just tried to be brave about that too.”

Of course, some may be wondering whether HORNDAL have more to tell from their hometown going forward. It’s a question the band were already receiving off the back of their last record, but the brothers don’t seem particularly worried. “We have a lot of ideas,” says Henrik. “If you’re specific and tell the small story about the small place, about the small people, everybody can understand it and relate to it, so it’s not a problem. As Pontus often says, if that doesn’t work we can be like CHICAGO and just have the name of a town and write songs, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen, I’m gonna stick to Horndal.”

Lake Drinker is out now via Prosthetic Records.

Like HORNDAL on Facebook.