After numerous albums and European and American tours, Sweden's melodic death metal warriors Soilwork are finally starting to gain some serious recognition within the metal scene. After a successful US tour with support from legendary bands such as Dark Tranquillity and Hypocrisy, Soilwork is storming the Second Stage at Ozzfest, bringing their sound to a whole new audience.

Peter: It's been cool. It's a new experience for us, but we like it. It's a lot of time to kill, but it's cool.

Peter: Not really. It's a fair chance for everybody, everybody gets twenty minutes, so of course you have to think extra hard about what kind of songs you want to play on Ozzfest that best represent your band.

Peter: We had five extra minutes yesterday, believe it or not, so we exchanged two songs, but other than that, we usually do the same kind of set every day, but we'll see. Toward the end of the tour we may do something different.

Peter: Not really. Actually, I think some of them think that it's weird. Since they're both on later in the day, it wouldn't work for us if we headlined, actually. We need to be there at seven o' clock in the morning on Ozzfest every day. So we have to have a short set and just get going. But it's cool, 'cause we haven't toured with Killswitch in years, so a lot of people don't even know that they opened up for us in the past.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: Oh!

Peter: That was crazy. That was one show that we highly apologize for. There were crazy things going on.

Peter: Yeah, God. No, that wasn't soap, that was actually Yoo-Hoo or whatever it's called, with honey in it that was poured in our faces.

Peter: So, yeah, we got a little pissed off.

Peter: In what way do you mean?

Peter: I haven't really encountered a lot of people like that; they usually don't come out to the shows. I mean, there's a big fanbase that likes the melodic death metal and the brutal death metal, too. Back in the day, we toured with a lot of death metal bands and of course, you came across as a very soft band when you toured with those guys. But I think people might be a little bit more open minded now, since there's so much melodic death metal out there.

Peter: Yeah, that's usually what I do if I come out to see a show, I usually come when I know the band I like is coming on. I mean, I'm older, the demographic crowd that we have is sixteen to thirty-five, I'd guess and those people in the earlier ages usually come out to see all the bands, so you always have a chance.

Peter: We're so terrible at videotaping a lot of shit, but we're hoping that we can get some footage so we can do a little bit of a DVD. We thought a little bit about waiting for the next record for a while and doing one or two songs and then putting some live footage together and stuff like that and release a DVD, but it's nothing we've really sat down and discussed. So we'll see?

Peter: He's good. I actually talked to him before I went over here. He's moving to the States too, actually.

Peter: Yeah. He's married to a girl from Chicago, so he's moving over here. He quit Defaced and his other bands back in Sweden, but he's coming over here, and me and him are doing a little bit of side stuff together, so we'll see.

Peter: I doubt it. I don't think that Bjorn can do two sets vocal wise. Maybe there will be the chance of a Terror 2000 tour, who knows? But you would have to ask Bjorn about that.

Peter: Close call. I know we're six guys; we'd probably beat the shit out of them. I would think so. (laughter) I don't know, there's not really… nah, we would kick their asses. (laughter)

Peter: It's crazy. Crowd-wise, I think people move around a lot more, that's the only thing I can use to explain the difference between Europe and the States. In Europe, it's really cool, but usually, people don't do a lot of the mosh pits and stuff like that, only in certain countries. But overall, I'd say that people go a little bit more crazy over here, I would say.

Peter: We've tried every time after "Natural Born Chaos", but he's always been very busy. He was offering us timeslots when he could work and that didn't really work out with our time schedule, so we ended up not working together. But we don't know what's going to happen in the future, there might be a possible collaboration.

Peter: We try to make a set that represents all the albums. We cannot afford to do that on Ozzfest because we only have twenty minutes, so we have to focus on the newer material. But on the off dates we try, as well as we can, to represent a little bit from every record. Of course, personal taste has an influence on the whole thing. When we in Europe, we played stuff off "Steelbath", we played stuff from every album. You just got to try to know what works well live and put your personal opinions to the side sometimes. But "Grand Failure Anthem", I don't know. Maybe. (laughs) It's a tough song to play.

Peter: Oh, really?

Peter: Yeah, we hate the label for putting that song on the discs. (laughter) That is definitely that hardest one we've ever written, actually, guitar wise.

Peter: We don't know yet. We're looking into the possibility of a follow-up tour in November. But at this time, we don't know. We're hoping to do a short one, maybe headlining or main support for a bigger band or something like that. We haven't done anything for "Stabbing The Drama" over in Europe, so we're going to go over in October and do Europe headlining.

Peter: Yeah.

Peter: No problem, thank you.