So, first up, please introduce yourselves.

Kongh is a heavy rock band from Småland, Sweden consisting of three persons; David (vocals/guitar), Tomas (drums) and Oskar (bass). We've been a real band for about 2 years. Last year we recorded our first demo (4 Songs/45 minutes), and a few months later we had a deal with Trust No One Recordings. This summer, 2007, they put out our debut album "Counting Heartbeats" (5 songs/65 minutes). Some call us doom, some call us sludge, some call us post-hardcore. I guess none of them are wrong.

You’re gonna play Roadburn next year, which is pretty nice, what are you looking forward to the most?

Pretty nice, indeed! Yeah, being asked to play at Roadburn is something that we didn't expect to happen this quick, we're totally stoked! Being a part of a festival of that kind is a great chance to reach tons of new listeners and to have a good time. Don't really know what we're looking forward to the most. Our gig i guess, but all the other bands, people and beers will sure be nice too.

This will be our first trip ever outside Scandinavia, so it's quite exciting. We're planning to set up more gigs around Europe after the Roadburn fest, so more people will get their chance to see us live. There's been lots of interest lately.


It is said that you have very different musical backgrounds, please tell us more about those and how do you think those backgrounds influence your songs the most?

We've had lots of different bands before Kongh came to life. I've done everything from punk to grindcore. Tomas has been playing blues, Rock'n'roll and hard rock. Oskar has been playing grindcore, punk and Blues. And so on.. I don't know if we're directly Influenced by any of our earlier/other bands, but we probably are in some ways. One could probably guess that we've had lots of heavy, slow and riff-oriented bands before, but we haven't really, and I think that's the main reason why Kongh turned out the way it did, musically. I personally always wanted a really heavy and extreme band when I was younger but at the time I didn't really have any friends who liked that kind of music and who wanted to play it, everybody was into punk rock and shit. So when we eventually met In 2004 and started the early carnations of Kongh, it was kind of the opposite of everything we'd done before. The first jam sessions between me and Tomas
was just total worship of low-end loudness just for the kick. Get wasted, set the amp to 10 and let it out. Nothing could be extreme or slow enough.

As to how our earlier bands have affected our playing styles and song writing, I don't find many similarities.

What are your personal 10 most influental records of all times?

This is a hard one to answer. I could easily name 10 kick ass albums that affected my musical interest, but what bands influenced Kongh? I don't know. We don't think of other bands when we write our music at all, It's not like "I want this song to remind people of that band" or anything. When I get ideas for riffs or melodies, it's never when I listen to music. It's mostly just out of thin air, It can come to mind any time and then I just pick up a guitar and starts to play around with It.

Of course i can tell which bands had a larger influence than others and probably fucked up our ways of thinking, here's a few good ones: Mastodon, High On Fire, Earth, Black Sabbath, Sleep, YOB, Bongzilla, Necrophagist, Meshuggah, Led Zeppelin, Neurosis, Melvins, Metallica, Crowbar, Switchblade, Sigur Ros, Electric Wizard, Nirvana, Sunn, Goatsnake, Mayhem, AC/DC, Cathedral, Big Business, etc. You get the idea!

Might i also add that things like movies, photos, persons, memories and feelings in general has a major influence as well, probably in a more direct way than music.

So your Music Results more from emotions and impressions  than from music you listen to?

- Yes and no. I can only speak for myself here, but I've got my different playing styles which are always the core of everything I play, and of course those have been shaped by bands I've listened to through the years. It's just the music I like, my musical language, it comes natural. But while writing music it's always based on trying to achieve a certain atmosphere (related to the above mentioned sources of inspiration) rather than trying to sound like some other band.

Speaking of influences and stuff like that. What’s the bandname about?

It is a homage to the big bad ape who lives beyond the unknown. We picked the name in 2005, when we were still a duo of just me and Tomas. Before that, we had been using a bunch of more or less mediocre band names which we weren't really comfortable with, and then one day we thought of "Kong" and thought: "perfect!". We're huge King Kong enthusiasts and apart from being the star of a great old story and piece of motion picture history, that ape describes our music really well: he's dangerous, monstrous, huge and heavy as hell, but (I know this will sound cheesy) has a lot of beauty and warmth on the inside. The whole phenomena of Kong can pretty much be used to describe the existence of everything in this world. Not long after we decided to use the name Kong, we found out that It's already a well used name in the history of music. So we added a silent "H" at the end. The hidden meaning of the "H" is, and will remain, a secret.

Come on, tell us.

Sorry, we're planning to keep it a mystery for now.  

It is no sercet that your artwork is done by Seldon Hunt, who might be known to most, how did that come and what does your artwork express?

We've been familiar with Seldon's work for a long time and when it was time to wrap up our release, we got in contact with him and he gladly worked with us. We think the artwork melts together well with the music and they kinda expresses the same things. What they express is up to the listener/beholder.

Tell us more about your album „Counting Heartbeats“. What are the songs about and what does this first album mean to you as a band?

The album means a lot to us. The fact that it exists is proof that people dig what we're doing. We've put a lot of our souls into the making and we're really happy with how it turned out.

Since I write all the lyrics I should be able to say what the songs are about. Though, the lyrics are more or less abstract. I rather not talk about the specific things I thought of when I wrote the lyrics, the important thing is what people get out of reading them. Just random stuff inside my head put into text really, but with a lot of thought. I mainly write about personal matters, about people around me or thoughts about life in general. Absolutely nothing about society, politics or anything like that, it bores me to death.

Your music is intense and massive, but there is much more to it than in most doom/ sludge/metal bands. Do you take a lot of time in arranging and writing songs or do you take them the way they come along while rehearsing?

I agree, that's what makes us wonder if we can really be called a doom metal band. We're really into doom and listens to it a lot, but at thesame time there's much more to our music than just doom (and sludge).

And yes, arrangning and writing our songs can take a lot of time, and it should. If we'd just come up with some ideas and put a song together in a day or two, it wouldn't feel right. We've never been that kinda band. Well, if we have basically all the riffs and ideas ready, a song can be completed in 2-3 practising sessions, but the creating of the original ideas always take a whole lot longer. Normally when I bring ideas to the other guys, I've already been working with them alone for weeks and months. Some ideas are even a few years old. When we have enough ideas for a song (I should mention that I'm not the only one contributing), we start playing the ideas together, trying them out and stuff and maybe completes a couple of minutes of music. Then at the next practise, we've all done some thinking since the last time and then we go a little further than the previous time, and so on. We can go on like that with the same song for months before it's finished, and when it's finished it sounds nothing like it did in the beginning. So it's quite a creative and living process.

What can we expect from kongh in the next time?

At the moment, it's hard to say how the next album will sound. We already have lots of interesting ideas though, and lots of them differs from the songs on our last album, but they still have the same vibe. We never want to write the same song over and over again, so expect something new and fresh, but still Kongh.

We're actually heading into the studio this weekend to record an exclusive song for a split 12" with Swedish doomsters Ocean Chief. Our song is over 20 minutes long, and it's quite a journey. Limited heavy weight vinyl out this fall on Land O Smiles Records. Definitely a must to check out!

Sweden has a lot of bands playing a similar style of music, where does this result from you think?

I don't really know what style of music you're referring to since there are lots of different kinds of bands here. It's said that we have lots of good bands in general coming from Sweden. I don't really know why, since I've never lived anywhere else and can't tell any difference from other places.

Well, I mean there are a lot of dark, angry or massive and slow bands. But maybe that’s just my imagination or I just know bands like that.

I see what you mean, and there also might be pretty much truth in it. I don't think there's much of a doom movement here, but we have lots of bands with cold/dark atmospheres and then there's the whole black metal scene etc. Again, I can only speak for myself, but the swedish climate, especially in the fall and winter, tends to be very inspiring. For many months of the year, Sweden is a dark, cold and somewhat depressing place to live. Even though I dislike it most of the time, I get lots of inspiration from it and kinda look forward to it during the summer in a weird way. A frozen landscape under a light purple sky can be pretty damn beautiful. And horribly cold.

So yeah, weather, nature and climate is probably affective on music. As an example, a band based in some south american redneck town who plays black metal makes no sense to me. It doesn't add up. 

Scandinavia seems to have a very lively and connected musicscene, do you agree? And if so, are there any collaborations planned?

That might be true, but Kongh hails from a really dead part of Sweden. There are no bands like us where we live. There aren't any clubs, venues or even good heavy bands around for many, many miles. A blues band here, a crappy punk band there, but that's pretty much it.

Your music is very emotionladden and intense. Are emotions your main influence when writing the songs, or is the sound more of an intention you want to achieve with your music?

I guess you can tell by listening to the music that It's a lot of emotion behind It, no fooling you. Expressing emotion is an important part of the music, both through the lyrics and through the music itself. That's what makes music interesting in my opinion, being able to capture something more than just empty riffs and melodies. We also play for the love of heaviness and kick ass music, and combined with the emotion and dedication behind it I guess it creates a really powerful force.

Thanks for taking the time and giving some very interesting aswers! If there is anything else you wanna say, go on.

Thank you very much for making this interview, we really appreciate it! Hope to see you soon on the roads of Europe. 

 www.kongh.net