Cola Freaks Interview January 2010
By: Steve Rose
In some ways, Europe is totally awesome. They have amazing beer, really good fresh food and they let you smoke indoors. It's also warm(er than England) and they have some really commendable institutions set in place to support upcoming music and arts scenes; things that we don't have. This continent, despite consisting of approximately fifty European union states and roughly 731,000,000 people, is pretty bad at making new music. I went to Europe recently on a music related trip, and at every show I was dumbstruck by how terrible most European bands actually are.
The only decent band I've ever seen in Europe was Aarhus, Denmark's destructo power-pop-punk act, Cola Freaks. With a shed load of high energy seven inches put out on a plethora of underground euro labels (P.Trash, Local Cross, Taken By Surprise, Hjernespind), US tours and what will probably be a super rad record; inspired by psychedelia, new wave and nineties hardcore-punk - to be released later this year. Cola Freaks vocalist Morten explains his own take on whether Europe really is sh*t for new music, and if Denmark's best export (CF not Carlsberg) would ever make it to the shores of Albion (aside from the two members who joined the idiot savant Jay Reatard for a stint), amongst other things:
Rockfeedback: Pardon my naivety if you disagree, but I have been to europe quite a few times, and It seems to me most European bands suck. Do you agree?
Morten: I believe shitty bands are all over planet Earth. I don’t know. I can think of more than a few European bands that are pretty good...but also of a lot who really suck - but isn’t it like that everywhere?
RFB: Are there any bands that you see as your contemporaries, either nationally or internationally?
M: De Høje hæle maybe?
RFB: I saw you play last year at Lades Kælder and it was an amazing show; really busy, with a really good vibe. Is there a good scene for DIY/punk rock in Denmark?
M: Since the late ’90s early ’00s new labels and interesting bands have kept popping up over here. And at the moment there’s people putting up shows in almost every medium sized city. So yes, I think the danish DIY/punk rock scene is alive and well.
RFB: What's it like being in an awesome band from Denmark? Do you feel isolated from US punk rock which inspires/influences you?
M: We steal from US punk-rock, but also from a lot of European / Scandinavian / African musicians and bands, and I don’t feel that we’re isolated from anything or anybody really. We’ve done smaller European tours a few times, toured the US twice and touring US and Euro bands play here often, so Denmark seems to be as good a place for us to be as any other.
RFB: You played Goner Fest last year in the US, how was that? Do you feel it was a massive achievement for yourselves?
M: Goner fest is the best and most well respected garage / punk rock festival of the 00’s in my opinion, so of course I was pretty excited to get to play there with our small Danish punk rock band. We had a great time, played a decent show, saw great bands galore and partied with a lot of nice people for a couple of days before we went on with the tour.
RFB: You've been to America more than once but you haven't travelled to England yet, how come?
M: Touring the US was a defined goal from the beginning, and when we started booking the first US tour we only had 4-5 songs ready and hadn’t recorded anything yet, so it was really our number one priority at the time. We made good contacts on the first tour, and Eric from Goner asked if we wanted to play Goner Fest 5 if we came back next year, so we just had to go again. The Jay Reatard support shows came along and we ended up doing a 7 week tour again. We’ve talked about touring England for some time, and by now I think we have the contacts now to get some good shows there.
RFB: So you have plans to come to the UK
M: If everything works out we’ll be touring Iceland, UK, Europe and the US in 2010.
RFB: I heard that there will be a Cola Freaks studio album in 2009...is this true?
M: A couple of weeks ago we recorded 22 songs and the best ones will end up on an album in (hopefully early) 2010. My guess is that we’ll be done mixing it late December.
RFB: What records/bands have you been listening to of late?
M: Danish bands: Furekaaben and Love Potion, Others : Box elders, Dow Jones & the Industrials 7”, Fairuz, The Boys LP’s, Venom and Debris – Static Disposal LP.
RFB: What is coming up for Cola Freaks in the not too distant future?
M: We’ll have a 7” out on Shattered records soon, and Jacob and Anders (drums & bass) are touring with Jay Reatard for the next couple of weeks or so. The rest of us will focus on getting the LP done. Three of us just recorded 3 songs for a 7” with Seth from the Useless eaters. It’ll be out sometime early 2010 on Mastermind Records.
Artists in this article: Cola Freaks