(originally published in Bootleg Magazine, October 2008)

By Josh Spilker

The Swedish rock duo’s album is like turkey dinner at your grandma’s house gone horribly wrong. Cranky classic southern rock riffs with gore all around. Someone put down the electric knife.

Is Spoonfork based in Sweden?

Lundin: Yes. Me and Adam (Olson) live right outside Gothenburg – some useless trivia, it’s the second biggest city in Sweden. Though there are a lot of rock bands here, the radio stations are more or less commercial, and we all know what’s up with MTV.

I think more or less every rock band – non-commercial, in this country have to stretch beyond the borders to get some, if any, listeners. Plus it’s a small country, nine million people. So if there for every non-commercial listener are ten plastic-pop lovers. We’re talking very small numbers of potential listeners.

I find it really interesting the blend of southern/classic rock with playful-horror-death type lyrics and scenes. Why’d you think the two together would work?

The southern and blues influence, in my case, comes from things like Free, The Allman Brothers Band, Terry Reid, Neil Young, old delta blues stuff, etc. Other than that we both listen to a bit of everything. Though nothing to similar to what the album actually sounds like, and that’s something that we treasure. There’s nothing more boring than when people set out to do exactly what they know and play it too safe. And the horror parts, well, I’ve always been a huge fan of horror movies and so has Adam.

In my case, what the lyrics have been most influenced by, I guess, are the great slasher films of the 70s and 80s (The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw etc). The more desert, dirt and gore you can pile up in one giant masterpiece the better. And the merge between the southern and classic rock with horror has in my mind already been done.

Back in the 70s and 80s, if you look at the road movie slasher films and such, the classic teens on holiday layout, long dirt roads, deserts, all the material is just lying there waiting for you to pick it up. And we can’t forget to mention Rob Zombie’s masterpiece The Devil’s Rejects! Here we have the horror and southern rock put together in a perfect symbiosis. I love that movie.

Was the graphic presentation of the music important to you guys?

We’ve actually gotten some bashing for the “unoriginal artwork,” but I’m glad you liked it. I designed the sleeve and cover art, with Adam as my brainstorming buddy. The style is one that I’ve been using for a while now, when designing T-shirt prints and such, and now it’s become the standard look for everything Spoonfork.

The style is more or less solely influenced by 70s horror posters and such, so I thought it’d work for the album. And we really wanted that clean, somewhat minimalist look, to give it, as you said some more depth, instead of giving it the “classic rock look.”