On Thursday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Feffe Berglund, the guitarist and vocalist for metal band Bombus.
- Could you tell me a bit about the origins of the band?
“We started off in 2008/09, that’s when the first rehearsals were, it was myself and Matte, the other guitarist and vocalist, originally I was playing drums and singing as well, and we were a two piece. But, as I write most of the songs it became easier and more obvious for me to play guitar and sing as well, so we then got a drummer and a bassist, Peter our drummer has been with us since 2009 as well. In terms of influences, initially we were more into bands like the Melvins and Black Sabbath, things like that, and then gradually we evolved into a metal band. As to the name, well it’s like whenever you’re starting out and you’re looking for a name, we settled on Bombus, which actually is latin for Bumblebee-and no we’ve never done Flight of the Bumblebee, though I have seen people cover it before- and it was quite a nice name, it wasn’t your usual metal name, and it was quite nice to create a logo for as well.”
2. How do you approach the writing process?
“I write the songs, and it’s an ongoing process. I can’t just pick up a guitar and bash out a song like that, I have to tinker with it and move around with it. I’ll usually have a fair few ideas in my head, I’ll be doing something, might be playing with my son, when an idea will pop up. Thankfully I’ve got a home studio, or something like it, and I’ll sit down and make a rough demo of the idea, write some lyrics and work on it. I’ve been doing this for ten years now, so I’ve got a bank of ideas, lyrics and riffs for inspiration for songs. Sometimes I’ll get stuck on an idea, leave it for a period, and then come back to it, some time later, maybe even years later and finish it off. It’s a really interesting process.”
3. What approach did you take for the new album, were there any themes you explored? And do you have a favourite song from the album?
“So, with the new album, we sort of wanted to approach it differently to how we did our previous album. On the previous album the songs were quite short-about three and a half to four and a half minutes long- and to the point, whereas our older albums were longer. So, what we wanted to do was take the best parts from those albums and fuse them together. We also approached it from the view point of wanting to be able to play each song on this album live, whereas previously we’d never really thought about that before.
As to my favourite song on the new album? It’s a ballad entitled ‘It’s All Over,’ that I actually wrote about ten years ago. It’s a soft song, with soft vocals, and as I said before I had written the initial idea a decade ago, and then came back to it. We’re going to be playing that song live for sure.”
4. On that note, how do you translate the songs from the studio to a live setting?
“It is sometimes difficult, you know. Because I see an album like a book or a movie, with a great many chapters and scenes. Whilst a live show is like a play, and you’re turning the book into a play, whilst it might be the same content, you have to make changes and adjustments, you can’t include everything in a play from the book. In a way it does make it easier to make an album because then you can figure out what you can and can’t keep. That’s why on this new album we wanted to make it so that we could play all the songs live.”
5. What plans have you got for the future?
“Our album is being released in the middle of November, so we’re playing a few shows in November and December, and then taking a break for a bit. In that time, in January, I think we’re going to be recording a music video for ‘It’s All Over,’ we’ve got some cool ideas for it. And then we’re also going to be planning the demos for the next album, and planning to have them done by May of next year. It’s six months away, but everything can move so quickly, so I’m writing material now.”