HAMMERFALL’s Oscar Dronjak Talks About The Band’s Early Days

In a recent interview conducted by Capital Chaos TV, founder of HammerFall, guitarist Oscar Dronjak reflected on the days when the band as formed in 1993 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Dronjak said of it:

“When I formed HammerFall in 1993 this type of music was very outdated by the people who knew things. If you were a metal fan you were generally a fan of the harder, more aggressive music or grunge maybe, which I wasn’t, I decided to play heavy metal. In 1993 it was quite difficult for me. I had some friends who liked some melodic metal still who weren’t afraid to admit it, but there were not that many. We were just doing this for fun and we loved the music we were playing, and the other bands that were around at that time, some of my best friends from that era, were in bands like Dark Tranquility, In Flames or At The Gates. They all went on to become really famous in their respective death metal fields. It was a great atmosphere to grow up in.”

He also discussed the band switching to Napalm Records:

“For us it was a matter having a label that didn’t have 500 other bands, that doesn’t have 500 other priorities as well, because when we signed with Nuclear Blast in 1997 this was a small growing label and we were a small growing band. It was a really good fit. We were really happy with them over the years, otherwise we wouldn’t have stayed with them for 18 years.”

This interview is available here:

You can also read our review to “Built To Last” here.