Berlin’s Rockcafe Halford is dedicated to The Metal God himself. Jam-packed with Judas Priest memorabilia, and with its own Halford Hell beer on tap (delicious, by the way), we never want to leave. Hammer have been invited here to hang out with Michael Poulsen, frontman of Volbeat, whose label offices are in the city.
When the great Dane arrives, he’s obviously as impressed as we are, nodding his head and muttering “very cool” a lot as he takes everything in. Rockcafe Halford must indeed be “very cool” to get a reaction from Michael, a man who exudes effortless, quiet confidence and who has made Volbeat the biggest metal band to come out of Denmark.
Since forming in 2001, with a sound that melds 50s rock’n’roll with heavy riffs, they’ve shared stages with big guns such as Metallica and released eight albums – the ninth, God Of Angels Trust, is on the way. We sit down to chat, him with a Coke Zero and us with another Halford Hell beer. As we talk through his move to Copenhagen to seek fame and fortune as a young man, international success, grief, parental pride and more, his gruff, hardened rocker exterior melts to reveal a deeply thoughtful, sensitive and spiritual soul.
“I’ve always been dealing with the dark side of life as much as I am the light side,” he smiles, as he considers where he currently finds himself. “But we never know what tomorrow will bring. I’ve found a balance where I accept the good and the bad days.”
You grew up in Ringsted, a small city about 70 miles west of Copenhagen. What’s your earliest memory?
“Riding around on the drive outside our house on my bike. I had a bike that was very special to me – I can’t tell you why, but I’ve been told I tried to ride it everywhere. I was about four.”
You have a twin sister. People often wonder if twins have a kind of psychic connection…
“I definitely feel I can get in a certain mood where I have to call my twin sister and ask, ‘Are you OK?’ And I hear, ‘No, I’m not fucking OK because this or that!’ I sense that, that’s why I’m calling. So, there is that kind of weird connection that’s special. That’s just the way it is.”
Your father was a boxer. Did you ever consider following in his footsteps?
“He did have a couple of fights in Copenhagen. But when I was a young kid, I started playing football, and when it was more fun to get drunk and just party on the weekends instead of going out playing football, I skipped playing football. Now, there was no way you could go and have boxing fights and then go partying. So, that was a no go! Ha ha ha!”
Was it a musical household?
“Very much so. I come from a home with parents that were huge fans of 50s music. So, in the background, the radio was constantly playing. It was a lot of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry.”
Obviously, that sound became a core part of Volbeat. Were you drawn to it immediately?
“Totally. It became such a huge inspiration in my songwriting in Volbeat, to take these melodic tunes from the 50s and turn around and switch a little bit into our own versions of how we wanted them to sound. So yeah, they still have a deep impact on me, those kinds of songs. They planted the seed for everything that came out afterwards.”
Did you stand out from the crowd for liking 50s rock’n’roll?
“It was normal for me and my family, but I guess, yeah. I have two more sisters – older sisters who are also twins. I remember one of them, Anya, had a boyfriend called Dennis. In fact, they are married now, and have been together forever.
He came into my room one day and I must have been listening to Shakin’ Stevens or Elvis Presley or something like that, and he just couldn’t quite get his head around it. I distinctly remember him saying to me, ‘Yeah… we need to start getting you into something heavy.’ I remember that he had an Iron Maiden cassette, he was a huge fan of them, so that was intriguing to me.”
Is that when you started to get into metal?
“My mom’s brother was living next door, and he had a huge vinyl collection. So, a lot of times I would be jumping over the fence, going into his room, sitting with him and listening to a lot of vinyl. I was not that old when I discovered the first Black Sabbath album. I was like, ‘What is this?’ because the cover was pretty scary and, as a young kid, that was definitely interesting. He said, ‘You’re way too young to listen to that. If you play it backwards, Satan will haunt you!’”
That’s surely going to make you want to listen to it more!
“Exactly! You don’t tell a young kid that, because then the mission is ‘I have to listen to this record.’ So, when he took his bike and went up to the city to buy some groceries, I jumped over the fence. I knew where his key was, I got in and put on the Black Sabbath album, and heard that riff – ‘Dowwnnn dowwnnn!’ – and Hallelujah. Wow! That was it. I knew from the minute I heard that Black Sabbath guitar that I wanted to play the heavy guitar.”
When did you get your first guitar?
“It’s not something I’m proud of, but I stole my first guitar when I was in school. I had a girlfriend in school who was cleaning a house. She said, ‘You should see this room, they’ve got so many crazy guitars!’ ‘Oh really?’ I thought. So, there was one day where she had to clean the room and left the window open. By night, me and a friend went through the window and stole the guitars.”
You were like a heavy metal Bonnie and Clyde!
“Ha ha ha! Not quite! Of course, my father said, ‘Where did you get that guitar from?’ I sheepishly said that I borrowed it from a friend. He knew – he wasn’t buying it. ‘You return that guitar and you return it tomorrow!’ He had the sense that I stole it. Next night, I crawled back through the same window, put the guitar back and went home.”
You formed your first band, Dominus, while you were still living in Ringsted.
“Yeah, the death metal scene exploded in the late 80s, early 90s. I was hanging out with some guys that were a lot older than I was. They used to take the train to Copenhagen and buy those kind of records, early Kreator, Bathory and Celtic Frost. So, it led to us forming Dominus, and that was my total focus from then.”
You moved from Ringsted to Copenhagen during the Dominus years. Was that a big change for you?
“I moved into my girlfriend’s apartment. That’s where I got the first rehearsal room. But moving to Copenhagen was not really about moving into a big city. I’m not a city kid, I’m happier in the countryside. But everything that was going on with music happened in Copenhagen, so that’s why I moved at that time.”
How did your rock’n’roll parents feel about you playing in a death metal band?
“They didn’t quite get the death metal thing. They definitely thought it was way too noisy. Although they did love Sabbath, so it was a mix. If I was playing death metal they’d come in and shout, ‘Turn it down, it’s too loud!’ but if I was playing Sabbath they would come in and say, ‘Turn it up! It’s not loud enough!’ But I don’t really think they understood Dominus.”
But your father was a big fan of Volbeat, right?
“Totally. I mean, that [2002] demo we did – I think there were 10 songs on it – was constantly on in his car. He was playing it 24/7. He was so proud and said, ‘If this doesn’t turn into something, there’s no fairness in this world.’ He gave me all the freedom as a young man to chase my dreams.”
The latest Volbeat album, God Of Angels Trust, touches on a lot of personal things, such as losing your father in 2008. It must be hard to have experienced such success with Volbeat, and for him not to have been there to see it.
“For a long time, yes. My dad died at 63, and that’s way too early. But you must accept that it’s truly a part of life. What changed the whole thing of me dealing with it and accepting the passing of my father was when I had kids. I have an eight-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son and, even though I was a bit miserable about him not meeting his grandchildren, if my father could watch me right now, the last thing he’d want is to see me being miserable. I owe him to be thankful for the great life he’s given me.”
You’re a very proud father yourself, aren’t you?
“It’s defined me more than anything. I used to be about Volbeat 24/7, I couldn’t leave it behind, always thinking about touring, recording, writing. I got to the point where I thought, ‘Who are you? Who is Michael?’ and I know now. Because of my kids I found out who Michael actually was, a lot of different things; caring father, caring friend, a guy on a mission, a guy that’s celebrating life. Not just the guy in Volbeat. My kids are my biggest accomplishment.”
You do touch on some dark things on the new album too. In fact, Volbeat has always nodded to the arcane and evil. Do you have much of a fascination with Satanism?
“I was totally into the spiritual world, but never into religious beliefs or directions. For me, it was always the spiritualism that was in the front seat, but I was curious enough to explore the whole Satanic thing with the Satanic Bible. So yeah, there were definitely years where I was digging deep into the subject of Satanism – what is it, what’s the message, and all that. Being a young dude trying to figure out your own personality and direction in life, that’s just one of the paths I needed to go on.”
And it’s so prevalent in the rock’n’roll you love.
“Sure. The Elvis thing, you know, he was dangerous at that time in the 50s. They believed he was possessed by the Devil, it was the Devil’s music – the churches protested against Elvis Presley! It’s such a typical thing.
Mankind is camouflaging their own bad deeds to cover up for their own wrong agendas. You kind of have that on the new album from Volbeat, too, where the true Devil is mankind, but mankind has a tendency to always camouflage it as a goat for many years.
We have to deal with a lot of rules, regulations and religious directions, but it’s always interesting to me that the ones who break them tend to be the creators. So where do we put our trust? We’re always being told to look at outside forces, and the new album is putting a question mark on that.”
You seem to be pretty interested in goats!
“Ha ha! Yes. Goats should definitely sue mankind for putting up with that kind of shit! There are subjects on the new album, about us having to deal with a lot of laws, rules, regulations, religious directions, only to see them being broken by the creators.”
Being a big death metal fan must have also drawn you toward exploring Satanism as well, right?
“Oh yeah, trying to figure out who this King Diamond dude was. Why is he calling himself a Satanist? Does it hold any value in life? Oh my god, his concept in Mercyful Fate and what he’s doing in Diamond was amazing.”
King Diamond must have been a huge influence on you, seeing as he was the biggest Danish metal musician?
“For sure. I had met a guy who had a record store in Copenhagen. I’d be spreading my flyers and demos in there. The owner was a friend of King Diamond’s and told me that the way I was working reminded him of King Diamond. He said he would be coming to his shop when they played Copenhagen, and would I like to meet him? Which was huge!
Discovering King Diamond was definitely something special, because suddenly in the Danish newspapers, there was this big face. It was like, ‘Who the fuck is that? He looks scary, he looks cool!’ And then I read that he was Danish!”
Instant hero!
“Completely. The owner told me, ‘He’ll come into my store when it’s closed, just be here on Tuesday and you’ll meet him.’ I didn’t sleep for days. I showed up at the record store, and there was King Diamond. He was standing there going through the vinyl, and that was the first time I saw him without the make-up.
This was 1994, and Dominus had just released our first record [View To The Dim]. He turned and said, ‘Hey Michael, I heard you’re a young guy in a death metal band…’ We just stood talking and nerding out about music. And now he’s one of my friends, I can call him up on the phone and we talk for hours. Whenever we go to Texas, he comes to the shows.”
A few years later, Volbeat would have the first Danish metal album to reach the Top 20 in your homeland for more than a decade. Did that change things very much for you?
“No. I’ve never thought about it. It was never about that. It was just to belong somewhere. We thought there was no way that we would become just as big as Metallica, but that was OK, because that was never in our mindset. It was just to belong somewhere and see and meet guys and girls who had the same passion for the same kind of music and playing in bands.”
Do you feel like a rock star today?
“I’ve reached a certain level and popularity with people who are definitely looking at me as a rock star. But I don’t feel that, I’m not carrying myself as a rock star. I’m still just a country boy, living in the countryside. I don’t go places to get seen. I know a lot of people will hang out in the right places to be seen and heard constantly, because that’s their thing. It was never my thing. I’ve never done anything like that.”
You’ve gone from playing underground death metal in a small town in Denmark to playing venues like the O2 in London to 20,000 people. It feels like you’ve run the race slow and steady.
“Which I’m very proud of. Management would tell us to do something, but we’d not be feeling it and say no. We’d rather take 10 years to do something our way than a year and it not feel right.”
What do you think your legacy will be?
“I feel good about making people happy. But a legacy? That’s other people’s thing, I can’t put words in their mouths or feelings into their minds. I just hope I can sit up somewhere and hear what they have to say.”
God Of Angel's Trust is out now via Vertigo/Universal. Volbeat tour the UK from November 6.
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