The energetic sound of Swedish hard rock quartet Thundermother is made for the stage. That’s why it might come as a surprise that it took them six studio albums to finally release their first live album ‘Live‘n’Alive’. Guitarist and sole remaining original member Filippa Nässil shares some insights into the recording of ‘Live‘n’Alive’, as well as Thundermother’s upcoming new studio album.

Since the entire line-up except Nässil quit Thundermother in 2023, ‘Live‘n’Alive’ is a nice opportunity for fans who haven’t been able to see the band live to hear how the current line-up tackles the band’s older material. “Time goes so fast!”, Nässil exlaims. “It’s been three and a half, almost four years with this line-up, but we all felt pretty fast that this is a pretty good live band. And that has a lot to do with steady drums.

Joan Massing is a great drummer. She is from France, but she lives here in Sweden now. It was quite early on, I guess, that we all felt together that this needed to be recorded. Everyone in the band is a fantastic musician, so it’s just a blast playing with them. Majsan (Lindberg, bassist) is a returning member. She played on the ‘Heat Wave’ album (2020), so she is the original from ‘Driving in Style’. I missed her a lot. I’m so happy she came back. And she’s always nagging me to play even older material, from our first album ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Disaster’ (2014).

Also, we simply had the opportunity on the European tour to finally record some stuff. I have a few hard drives full of gigs that we recorded last year.”

Four Really Good Gigs

Although the entire tour was recorded, only recordings from Thundermother’s concerts in the German city of Cologne, the Danish capital Copenhagen, and the Swedish towns Huskvarna and Gothenburg were used for ‘Live‘n’Alive’. “We recorded a lot more than what ended up on the album”, Nässil nods. “But because we did everything ourselves, there were always some technical issues. Hi-hats falling down, the guitar cracking, amps breaking… And that’s the whole gig. If one track is damaged, you can’t use anything from the entire gig.

That was the case a lot of the time. So in the end, we had four really good gigs we could choose from. But it still feels like you are listening to an entire gig, because it’s our set list you are listening to. We had our own microphones on the drum kit and the amps, so we had a pretty similar sound for all the gigs, though the venues themselves and the audiences sounded different. The only thing we had to add on the album was some audience in some of the songs, but otherwise, what you hear is just how it is live.

We did have two microphones pointed at the audience, but they were very low in volume, and our crew didn’t really prioritize them on the recordings. Also, in some cases it was a simple case of a sound choice, in the sense that it sounded like there were only five people in the audience, because for some reason, you could only hear the five people in front of me sometimes. So we just had to fix little bits with the audience sound, haha!

We are a live band, and we want people at home to experience a live show. People who can’t come down to a gig, people who live too far away… There are so many people who have never seen us live. They deserve to hear us how we really sound.”

Preparing for Something Completely Different

What helps the recordings is that Thundermother travels with their own gear. “We just need a blank stage”, Nässil states. “That’s also why we could do this; because it sounds the same every gig. But it was also the first time we actually had the opportunity. So we just thought: let’s do a live album, straight away! Fucking crazy, now that I think about it, because we had not really planned it through, haha!

We were actually preparing for something completely different. We were preparing for a new studio album. Right now, I’m actually outside the studio, because we have spent all day in the studio today. I’m actually so freaking excited right now, because we just finished a bad-ass song, haha!

We’re doing pre-production right now. Today is maybe the third time we have been working on this pre-production thing, and then we go home and learn what we have come up with. Then when we have the real studio time in April, we’re playing everything live. So we have a lot of work to do. We have to know every note before we go into the studio.

Today, we came in with six new songs. None of them were finished songs – they were maybe sixty percent finished. Søren (Andersen), our producer, is a songwriter as well, and I have been working with him for seven or eight years now. Very often, he helps us finish the writing. He switches up my verses and choruses a lot of the time. He’s great! And I’m open to everything, as long as the result is a good song. I love him for it.

We are a live band. When we are recording in the studio, we all stand in the same room as well. That’s how we like it. We miss each other and we miss playing live when we don’t do it.”

Made for Riffing

“I use two different Gibson Explorers. And I just bought a new guitar that I haven’t used live yet for Thundermother. It’s an SG, but it’s called a Les Paul because it’s so old. A white one with three pickups. I’m using that in the studio right now and it’s really fun. It’s fun to use on the more bluesy, rootsy stuff, more mid-tempo things, when it’s more about the groove than the riff. It’s perfect for that.

But the Explorer is my main guitar. A Marshall stack and an Explorer makes you happy. That’s just a fact. You have to try it! It’s the perfect riff guitar. It’s really made for riffing. And I see myself as a rhythm guitar player. That’s my thing: to play riffs. And there’s always something with other guitars, like a string falling off the nut, or it gets out of tune… I never have to tune my guitar, ever, and I can play two gigs with the same strings; they never break.

Like I said: you have to try it to know what I mean. And you have to keep it really loud. Somehow, these shiny guitars with golden hardware have become my thing, but that’s not really me at all. I don’t really know how that came to be. I just have these shiny Gibsons, but what I really like are really dirty, old Melody Makers or things like that. But I don’t even own a Melody Maker. I don’t know why. I need to get myself one.”

All the Tricks

Given that Nässil is the only guitarist in Thundermother, a balanced live sound is required. “Feedback is my forte”, she explains how she keeps the solo sections from sounding empty. “I do long bends. Bending half a step up, or if they sound out of tune, I do a full one. You can always add an A between two notes. Just do all the tricks, and you can be the only guitarist in a band.

Having said that, Linnéa (Vikström, singer) just started playing guitar as well. So we have some extra guitars on a few songs on the live album. I have to credit her, because she’s a fast learner. Very fast. One day, she just said: I’m going to play guitar now. And she did. A very, very fast learner.

How we play the songs live is something we really discuss in the studio right now, because some of the songs are really freaking groovy in the studio, when we are mainly focused on making the songs sound as good as possible. But then we think: we want to play these kick-ass songs live! That’s also why we decide on writing more riffy songs for the album, because those are more fun to play live.

We do have some great groovy stuff now, so I guess I can’t play the whole tour with Explorers next time. I don’t know what to do, haha!”