Getting to Know… Pressure | Interview 🎤

Keeping the interviews rolling, in the 147th Q&A of the Getting to Know… series, we get the scoop from Swedish melodic rock band, Pressure.

“Every song has a personal meaning to each one of us. We want you to listen, and FEEL.” Sigh, just reading that should totally give you the FEELS.  Stockholm melodic rock band 🎙 Pressure appears as the interviewees on the 147^th edition of the Getting to Know… series on The Musical Hype. My, oh my, how those Q&As have accumulated! As always, the listener is bestowed with awesome insight and some truly intriguing responses courtesy of the band.  It all begins with the colorful, joking and jovial answers to our first question regarding distinction and uniqueness: “Well, it’s in the name! Pressure! We put Pressure on you!” For more context, and to get the full effect, let’s jump right into 🎤 Getting to Know… Pressure: Interview #147!

Starting things off right, for those who may not be familiar with Pressure, what would you say makes your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

🎤 Well, its in the name! Pressure! We put Pressure on you! Haha, nah, we really want to connect with our audience not only putting on a great show but also making them think about different feelings and situations in the world today. Our music is all about helping you handle the different pressures around you and to give yourself the tools to be the best you! There is so much to say about this, but we always play each note as it is the last note we ever played. Every song has a personal meaning to each one of us. We want you to listen, and FEEL. And every story we tell has a double meaning. We want to bring back real feelings and music to all the people around their world, fighting their own different Pressures!

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did Pressure form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

🎤 The band started when 🎙 Emil Salling signed up for a guitar class, and the teacher was our Lead guitarist, 🎙 Simon Siirpo Forsell. They became friends and Simon started to drag him out for different gigs. Soon they were touring over Sweden, playing mostly bars, weddings, company gigs and birthdays as a cover band. This was fun at a start but soon they wanted more. They started to rewrite their music and soon became a cover band making really hard rock versions of current pop songs. As time flew by, they went further and further away from the originals and soon they started to write their own stuff. They really needed a strong lead vocalist, a front man who could deliver their message and the search was ON. After a long search they finally found their perfect match in the very charismatic singer 🎙 Olof Jönsson. It was a great match from the start! We are very proud of our current line up! Our early goals were to write strong lyrics, combined with great hard rock hooks to get people to move on the dance floor! We also wanted to find our own and unique sound!

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

🎤 Yeah, it has changed since we started to work on our own material 2018. We have done so much together and really explored different sides of ourselves to find the music and sound we have today. We want to reach out now. To challenge the commercial side of music that has taken music from musicians and fans and brought it to be a consumer product with no soul! Let’s bring back music to the People and give some fire and Life to it!

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

🎤 This is kinda hard to answer, we are greatly influenced by good music! We found inspiration and motivation all around in the musical world. We love a good solo; we love a great voice or a fantastic drum solo or a heart pumping bass line. We crave fulfilled and hard arrangements and love how certain musicians complete each other…But to answer your question! About what influenced the band…

If you take the Vocals from Rammstein or Volbeat, and the backing vocals from Queen or Aerosmith mix it with the guitars of Bon Jovi, Guns ‘n Roses and Motley Crue and add the drums of DIO or Whitesnake and the lyrics of Skid row or Bob Dylan and add the bass of Metallica or Korn.

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

🎤 Oh, there has been many CRAZY things…. One crazy story was when the band was rehearsing a Wednesday, we got call that they needed a band in the northern part of Sweden on Saturday, for a 2 ½ hour show. The band who was booked cancelled and they called us! Well, we came to the rescue, travelled 800km (around 500 miles) and appeared on Saturday. The first thing we saw was very well-dressed people, and here comes the hard rock band…ehm, what to do? We played all the soft songs we knew for the first set, but after that we didn’t knew any more soft songs? But as we sat down and prepared for the second set, our client came to us and asked if we could play some hard rock for them “phew” we went out, opened with a roaring guitar solo and the guys threw their nice jackets of, high heels were kicked off and then we had a really, really nice and cool show! Love how rock can bring people together!

Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

🎤 One of the best describing songs for us is our song 🎵 “Beaten But Not Dead”, a strong song about whatever life throws at you and whoever that tears your down, there is always a little spark left, you can beat me today, you can win the battle, but in the end I will rise again, get back to my feet stronger than ever. The song was written by Simon and the lyrics are aimed at people very close to him.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

🎤 Yeah! Olof, our lead singer is also running his own bakery. So, if you want something REALLY good in life, give him a call. He is even a published baker, with a great book about making the perfect bread.

Closing this thing out, what is you/your band currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure. 

🎤 Haha, We love that you used the “but there’s no pressure.” We are Pressure so, there is certainly Pressure here! We are currently working on our upcoming album which will be released next year. And there is a Christmas song coming out soon! 

Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

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[📷: Pressure, Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype;  Icons made by Flaticon]