Beer Capers with Skyfire

Beer is an ingredient that really sets the tone for metal bands. That isn't always a good or a bad thing. With the Swedish death metallions Skyfire, beer makes for adventure! "When we are sober, we are pretty shy, calm and laid back dudes, but as soon as you add beer, that's when crazy s--- starts to happen," Skyfire bassist Martin Hanner told Noisecrep. "Before we went on our first European tour, we decided that we should take it easy and act like professionals so people would get a nice impression of the band.

"This plan didn't really work out though, because after the third or fourth gig, I found our guitarist Andreas outside the bus with the keyboardist of the headlining act. Andreas was drunkenly telling him that they sucked and that they really needed to find a whole new approach to their sound, otherwise everything would just be downhill from here. I think the dude he was talking to was really scared too because he just nodded his head and seemed to agree with everything Andreas said, since Andreas sometimes reminds me of the character Jake the Muss in 'Once Were Warriors' when he is drunk."

And, as usual, the event wasn't exactly fresh in the guitarists mind when it was all said and done. "The day after Andreas didn't remember a thing, and I didn't mention anything either. But a few days after the tour was done, Andreas received an email from one of the other acts that did participated on that tour," Hanner revealed. "Apparently, they had made some 'behind the scenes' recordings and Andreas' 'deep talk' with the keyboard dude was there in all its glory. Andreas was shocked, got regretful and deleted the clip, so we never got see it ever again. But that was many years ago and we were a bit younger back then. We take things a bit more seriously now!"

Another example where beer took hold of Hanner is a bit less somber! "When I was hanging in a bar after a show, I got really drunk and found a mop while I was on the toilet. I have no idea why, but I put it between my legs, used it as a stallion and rode out of the toilet towards the bar while I was spanking my ass, in order to make the stallion go even faster," Hanner told Noisecreep. "I felt a big hand on my shoulder. I turned around and there was a huge dude, who looked like he was an UFC heavyweight fighter who just worked extra as security. He b-----slapped me big time, told me to turn over the stallion."

Musically, Hanner says the band does not chase inspiration when writing. On their latest, 'Esoteric,' which came out in October, they let inspiration fall where it may. "We don't schedule writing sessions where we all meet up and jam. I don't think that there is anything wrong with that. But as a songwriter, you always have good and bad days.

"Sometimes every idea you come up with sounds lame and you can't understand why you try to write anything because it sucks anyway. Other days you find yourself with so many good ideas. Athletes can pretty much tell when they wake up in the morning, that if their body feels great, their training has been rewarding, then there is a better chance for them to succeed. For me, that doesn't work when it comes to songwriting. I can be having a bad hangover, feel like s--- and still deliver riffs, but I could just as well suck and then I usually play Xbox 360 instead to get my frustrations out. So what happens when we write is that we send songs to each other, when we think we have something that might work. Then we discuss things from there, usually over MSN or the phone. That's what we did on 'Esoteric.' On our previous albums, we booked time in studios, so then we had a couple of weeks to get it done and didn't really have time to change anything once we entered the studio. With 'Esoteric,' we recorded everything in our own studio and had time to change things we didn't like once we had recorded them."