Hey, all you girls made of heavy metal – and heavy metal men, of course.

This summer we have finished six tracks on our upcoming album The Art of Metal. We will continue on recording the remaining four songs this month.

We have so far released two singles together with pieces of art: Force Of Metal and Message.

A third single, Heels of Steel, was released in June 28th together with a piece of art made by Daniel Thollin. He is a freelance comic book artist and illustrator.

Our fourth single, Fighters Of The Century, was released in August 2nd together with a piece of art made by ceramist Maja Carlstedt. Thank you so much, Daniel and Maja!

Two weeks ago, Hell’n, our drumnmer, got back to the rehearsals with her little heavy metal man (see photo below). He is adorable and I thought I should teach him how to use a sword right away!

Warriors – please buy our singles from Amazon or iTunes!

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_srch_drd_B0027VMW4W?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=digital-music&field-keywords=Hysterica

http://itunes.apple.com/se/artist/hysterica/id309220067

Stay metal, warriors!

– Anni De Vil

Hey, all you girls made of heavy metal – and heavy metal men, of couse. It has been a busy couple of Hysterical months.

We have been to the recording studio and finished two-thirds of our upcoming album The Art of Metal. On April 11 our single Force Of Metal was released, together with a piece of art made by Bo Andersson. Mr Andersson is a famous Swedish sculptor who interpreted our song Force Of Metal by creating a two-meter-high sculpture in iron. The sculpture is portrayed on the cover of the single Force Of Metal.

Our plan is to release one single every month as a download together with a piece of art until our final release of the album this autumn. We are collaborating with artists from all over the world and from different genres. Beware May 25, which is the date of release for our second single, Message From The Dark!

In other news, our drummer Hell’n is now taking a break for the summer since she is having her second baby in a couple of weeks. We wish her and her heavy metal family all the best. The rest of us are working hard in the recording studio to finish the album. I promise that we, together with our producers, Marcus Jidell (Evergrey) and Pontus Norgren (Hammerfall), are doing our very best to make The Art of Metal sound as mean and dirty as possible.

Please check out our website www.hysterica.se and buy our single Force Of Metal on iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/se/album/force-of-metal-single/id426753175

Stay metal!

Anni De Vil

Happy New Year!

I have emerged from my months of hibernation rejuvenated, re-vitalised and ready for 2011!

This is going to be a good year. Like everyone else I know, I’ve made the necessary and unattainable New Year’s resolutions, like daily scale practising to a metronome, watching less CSI, at least three trips a week to the gym and at least one day a week with no alcohol consumption. But already two weeks into the new year and my expectations have slipped. Nevertheless, it promises to be a good year!

It is the first year since I was 22 years old where I haven’t started the year with a nice pot of gold in my bank account courtesy of Father Christmas (i.e. Paul O’Neill and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra). It is also the first year since I was 22 where I have started the year without the chronic back/neck/knee pain, which I associate with January after three months of hardcore touring.

This will be the first year where I realise exactly what it truly means to be self-employed without the security blanket of guaranteed work – which is a rather daunting prospect. It is like splitting up from a six-year relationship, and realising that suddenly you are on your own! You can acknowledge all the things about that other person which made you into who you are, but you realise that they no longer define you and suddenly all the decisions in your life take on a new depth of gravitas. Suddenly my list-of-things-to-do is important!

This Christmas was the first year I spent it with my family in Ireland. I almost didn’t quite make it after being caught in the winter freeze chaos. I got stuck in Berlin for an extra few days after my flight was cancelled. This in itself was not such a big deal because I was able to stay in my own apartment, but I had been mugged the day before and had no cash or cards!

My last five euros had been spent on a sandwich during the six-hour wait at Berlin airport, where the flicker-timetable screens teased passengers with incremental delays of an hour at a time before telling us the flight was cancelled. I was then an official ‘Schwarz-fahrer’ (illegal traveller?), as I smuggled myself on the night bus back to my flat without a valid ticket.

Luckily, neighbourly spirit still exists in the Berlin quarter of Friedenau, and for the next couple of days the lovely Sonja, who lives in the apartment below, fed and watered me and even accompanied me to the airport a couple of days later. It wasn’t quite Orwell’s Down And Out In Paris And London, but 72 hours with no money was almost enough to poetry and songwriting. Almost.

Instead, I opted for a rural retreat in southern Ireland. My parents live down a country lane in a converted barn. After a month of freezing temperatures it looked like one of those ultra-kitsch winter wonderland Christmas cards – beautiful blue skies, icicles hanging off everything and the entire countryside covered in white frost. A real getaway – especially since they have no internet and no television – where days are spent walking through the countryside, sleeping, reading books, playing music and drinking wine. Bliss!

However, it was made slightly more rural than expected, as two hours after my siblings and I arrived, the water pipes all froze and we had no running water for six days. Now, you really have no idea how much a household depends on running water, until you don’t have the luxury of all those simple things associated with modern living – like flushing the toilet, taking a shower, brushing your teeth, filling the kettle, etc.

The first day we went through about 40 litres of bottled water, supplemented with tankards filled up from the nearest neighbours, and broken up chunks of ice from the frozen stream at the bottom of the garden which we melted down into buckets. Indoor camping at its best. To top it all off, a friendly neighbour came on the third day and helped my dad cut one of the trees in the garden for firewood, and after a triumphant call of ‘TIMBER!’, they realised the falling tree had snapped the telephone line! The first thing I did when I returned home to London was take a long, hot bath, check my emails and spend the evening in front of the TV.

So, that was my Christmas period and now 2011 has begun! I’m looking forward to a year of music making.

Right now I’m on a train heading to the countryside to visit Jon Lord for an afternoon of tea and music. I’m also finishing a bunch of songs written with Nic Rizzi from Jurojin which we’ll be turning into an EP before the summer! Actually, if you haven’t seen Jurojin live yet, they’ll be touring the UK as part of a Classic Rock Presents Prog tour. I’ll be joining them for the Sheffield and London dates.

Until next week!

Anna x

Inspiration Track for the Week

Deep Purple – Concerto for Group & Orchestra’ Movement I

www.annaphoebe.com

The must-hear Classic Rock Podcast is back with its fifth instalment.

Geoff Barton, Malcolm Dome and Kylie Olsson discuss the best (and worst) of 2010, reminisce about the recent Classic Rock Awards, talk about Rush getting coverage in The Sun, Steve Hackett getting trapped in a tourbus – and reveal all about a mysterious gambling game from the 80s called The Suter Stakes!

Have a listen here!

Hey all you girls made of heavy metal and heavy metal men…

During November we have begun the recording of our second album, The Art Of Metal, and had a couple of shows in-between. It has been a very busy but exciting month for Hysterica.

The Art Of Metal is the title of our next album – and you will all understand the reason why after our first single release. The album will be mixed by Pontus Norgren, the guitarist of Hammerfall. Pontus is an amazing musician and all the girls of Hysterica are true fans of Hammerfall. We just can’t wait to hear the final mix!

One of our gigs in November was on a cruise on the Baltic sea called Rock At Sea. We had a kick-ass time and the crowd was fantastic. The after-show party wasn’t too bad either… Thanks to all of you who came out to rock the Baltic with us and made our night memorable! Read a review of Hysterica’s Rock At Sea show here.

In December we are going to proceed with the writing of new material for The Art Of Metal. Our main focus for the next couple of months will be to finish writing and recording the album.

Happy holidays everyone!

Cheers,

Anni De Vil

www.hysterica.se

www.myspace.com/hysterica

Words: Russell Whitfield

BAND: Hysterica

WHERE: M / S Viking Cinderella, Baltic Sea

WHEN: Friday, November 19

If Classic Rock magazine were promoting Sweden’s regular Rock At Sea event, we’d have given ourselves a problem. We’ve got – literally – a boatload of 2,400 hardcore metal fans, most of whom have been drinking some hours before the ship leaves port…and there’s nowhere to run if things go awry.

The question we’d ask ourselves is: “Do we open up with the best act or save the best for last?” Thankfully, the Rock At Sea team decided on the former and fast-rising FeMetal band Hysterica kicked off proceedings with a blistering set that left long-time fans and newcomers alike reeling with its intensity.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: an all female five-piece from Sweden, Hysterica are always going to suffer the stigma attached to girl groups, namely: “Yeah, they’re pretty but can they play?” Anyone who’s heard their groundbreaking album MetalWar or has seen them live (they played last year’s Hard Rock Hell, remember?) will tell you that they most assuredly can.

Hysterica are far more about substance than looks. Each track is well-crafted and played to perfection: the band’s roots are in classic metal, but there’s a modern slant to their music that enables it to span ages and genres. These women are musicians in the truest sense of the word and they bring it all to a live performance. We were astounded to hear studio-quality vocals being belted out not 10 feet away from us, backed by note perfect, hall-filling instrumentation.

Make no mistake – Hysterica are the real deal.

Opening with the anthemic Girls Made Of Heavy Metal, the band got the place rocking with this crowd-pleasing favourite. It’s almost as though the song was a statement of intent – the lyrics ‘We’re gonna force you to rock’ never seemed more apt. Followed up immediately by The Devil In Me, Hysterica grabbed the audience by the throat and didn’t let go.

In a set full of favourites (MetalWar, Helloween, Bless The Beast et al), Hysterica also played tracks from their yet-to-be-released second album. It’s a testament to the professionalism of the band that they know exactly how and when to slacken and then raise the tempo of the gig. Message From The Dark is slower than normal Hysterica fare and it’s new – but we were struck at how vocalist Anni De Vil utterly held the attention of the audience for the duration of the song.

It’s something the band themselves had noticed when we spoke to them after the gig. “Playing a new song is always a risk,” admitted lead guitarist Bitchie. “Especially something like this, which is slower, more like doom metal. But we could see from the stage that the audience were into it. It’s a lot of pressure on Anni especially because there’s not so much movement on stage during a lower tempo number… she has to really lead from the front! But she knows what she’s doing and it went great.”

The band showcased two more belters from the forthcoming album, the sing-along fist-puncher Heels Of Steel and the aptly titled Force Of Metal. On the evidence the tracks we heard at the gig, Classic Rock has high hopes for Hysterica’s next offering.

Finishing the set with We Are The Undertakers (the subject matter of which is unusual to say the least), Hysterica were soon called back out for an encore: the aforementioned Heels Of Steel and Heavy Metal Man. It’s always great fun to see a largely male audience shouting they want ‘a man with long, long hair and tattoos everywhere’… and it does illustrate that Hysterica aren’t too self-aware or po-faced about their act. Of course they’re dedicated to what they’re doing, but they’re confident enough to have a laugh with it too.

Kicking off an event like Rock At Sea is no small ask, but Hysterica managed it with aplomb.

Check out Hysterica vocalist Anni De Vil’s Classic Rock diary entries here.

All at sea: Hysterica on board the good ship Viking Cinderella.

Now that’s what we call a booze cruise.

Look, it’s dark this time of year in Sweden, okay?!

Hysterica guitarist Bitchie Blackwhore.

Hi all you girls made of heavy metal – and heavy metal men, of course!

September has been a busy month for Hysterica to say the least. Besides working on our new album we have also been out on the road every weekend. The gigs at Pub Anchor in Stockholm turned out to be quite eventful. During the soundcheck on the first evening Satanica’s bass broke. A cable inside it had become detached and needed to be soldered back. The only problem was that we had no soldering iron and no soldering.

The sound-tech at the Anchor transformed into MacGyver and started to solder using a nail that he heated on the stove and some soldering from our guitarist Bitchie’s tuner. After a while another staff member found a soldering iron, which turned out to be broken.

Meanwhile, the audience was waiting for us to enter the stage. Finally another soldering iron magically appeared from God knows where, and we were able to fix the bass. Once we hit the stage the gig turned out to be one of our best ever and the place was packed both nights.

The weekend after we got in the van and headed to Avesta, a town a couple of hours away from Stockholm. We were laughing and making jokes about what equipment would break down this time. We probably shouldn’t have done that because during the soundcheck a speaker fell down on Bitchie’s pod. It broke half the channels on it so there were some sounds she couldn’t use, but we still managed to get through the gig. A good time was had by both us and the audience.

Last weekend we teamed up with three other bands, Frantic Amber, De Van and Gormathon, and headed to Metal Night in Sävsjö (in the south of Sweden). Since it was my birthday the girls had cooked up a surprise. Halfway to the gig we stopped for lunch with our good friends De Van. They all sang for me, gave me a killer purse and champagne. Later at the gig Satanica had the audience sing for me as well. That’s what I call a birthday celebration.

After having played like rock stars we proceeded to party like rock stars, but that’s another story…

Rock on!

Anni De Vil

www.hysterica.se

www.myspace.com/hysterica

Satanica gets her bass fixed backstage in Stockholm.

Hi again,

A week ago we had our first gig with our newest member, Marydeath on keyboards, in Umeå up north in Sweden. Since we hadn’t played for eight months and hadn’t played with keybords in two years we were all kind of nervous before the show – especially Marydeath, of course.

It all started on Arlanda Airport in Stockholm. You see, there is always a problem to check in swords on the aircraft. God knows why…

The security guards got suspicious when they discovered a large amount of metal and cables inside Marydeath’s hand lugagge. The guards opened her bag and pulled out her new stage outfit – a dress made out of chains and all of the cables and adapters for her keyboards.

They then made her go back and send every single item in her luggage through the security check one-by-one again, including her underwear. We all started laughing and I think we made the day for the security guys. But it all turned out well and we had a kick-ass time in Umeå.

This weekend we are having our first gig in Stockholm with Marydeath. We are very excited and have been looking forward to this for quite some time now. We are going to play on a club called Pub Anchor. It is a true metal place and we have all had a couple of crazy nights in there…

I’m really hoping to see a lot of girls made of heavy metal and heavy metal men this weekend on Pub Anchor! Make sure to be there!

Cheers

Anni De Vil

www.hysterica.se

www.myspace.com/hysterica

Hi,

My name is Anni De Vil and I’m the lead singer of the all-female metal band Hysterica. This is my first blog for Classic Rock. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wanted to start with. I finally decided to write about my audition with Hysterica.

I was discovered by Hysterica’s guitarist, Bitchie Blackwhore, who found my advertisement on a Swedish web page for musicians in the summer of 2008. I was a fan of Hysterica before I joined the band so I was in complete shock when Bitchie called and asked me if I wanted to try out for the band. After the call I started screaming and crying so badly that my parents thought that someone had died…

My audition with Hysterica is the most nerve-wracking, but also one of the best, memories of my life. I fell in love with the girls at once and after the audition they asked me if I wanted to fill in for their singer at their performance on the Alarm Scene at Sweden Rock Festival which was gonna take place only two weeks later. My answer was YES, of course.

I only had a couple of weeks left in high school and the show at Sweden Rock Festival was on the day before my graduation. That meant we had to drive as fast as we could from the festival all night to be able to make it back to Stockholm in time for my graduation party the day after. It’s safe to say that those were a couple of intense weeks.

A month after Sweden Rock Festival 2008 the lead singer left the band and I became the new lead singer.

This is my dream and I have never been this happy. I live for METAL and my Hysterical girls!

– Anni De Vil

www.hysterica.se

www.myspace.com/hysterica

Anni’s blogs will feature regularly on the Classic Rock website, so stay tuned for future instalments. Below: Anni performing with Hysterica at last year’s Hard Rock Hell festival.

After a week’s holiday in Greece I am finding it hard to step back into the real world.

The week of sun and sea has left me in a strange daze – and slightly at odds with the permanent fifth gear needed for the other 51 weeks of the year.

I spent my holiday in the Peloponnese. After flying into Athens Airport, my boyfriend and I got in a hire car and drove three hours south west – along the amazing European-funded toll roads, and then the not-so-amazing steep and winding roads which take you through the mountains. Let me tell you, it becomes obvious when the European-funded roads run out. Having made it through the mountains and safely on the other side we continued all the way to the coast. A sudden turn down a dirt track road took us through olive groves right down to the water where the house stood.

Our little one-room apartment was 50 metres from the beach, surrounded by olive trees and big old eucalyptus trees. The owner gave us a crate of fresh home-grown tomatoes, peppers, beans and a bottle of home-pressed fresh olive oil as a welcoming present. For the whole week we did not hear a SINGLE English speaking voice – only Greek.

Our day schedule was as follows:
11.30 wake up
12.00 breakfast on the balcony
1.30 beach (sunbathing, swimming, reading and building wigwams out of
driftwood)
18.30 shower and beer on balcony
21.00 dinner
00.00 in bed with wine and crap 80s movies on TV.
Next day: (see above)
Now – that may not seem very rock’n’ roll – or even very sociable – but it was sheer utter bliss!

Back home, and a barrage of 300-odd emails to sift through. Thank you to all the Trans Siberian Orchestra fans for all the lovely messages after the recent announcement – I really, really appreciate it! I had a long chat with TSO guru Paul O’Neill while in Greece and I know that you are all in a treat for this Christmas tour. Although I’ll miss playing to the huge crowds amidst fire and lasers, it’s definitely the right choice for me. Hopefully I’ll be back touring in the States next year!

I’ve been rehearsing with the band getting ready for the Weyfest Festival (www.weyfest.co.uk). If you’re around you should come down. It’s a lovely festival out in the middle of the country in a farm – or strictly speaking, a Rural Life Centre – complete with working steam engine. On September 4, I’ll be doing a set on the acoustic stage with Byron Johnston, then the next I’ll be playing with my full band and guest ballet dancer Maleficent Martini. She’s an amazing performer who combines ballet with a fetish edge. It’s a family show, so I think she’ll be leaving the ropes and chains at home for this one… her website is almost up and running. Check out the pictures here: www.missmaleficentmartini.com

Continuing in the vein of summer relaxing, this week I have some interesting guests coming over for lunch – Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson and Terry Jones (Monty Python). I am making fishcakes. They haven’t met before (What, the fishcakes? – Ed.) but I reckon their vast knowledge of life in general coupled with their equal measures of sardonic wit should make for interesting conversation. As long as no one chokes on a fishbone.

No other news for now. Oh, except that the highlight of the week so far was when I took my puppy for a walk and he left the biggest poo on Neil Kinnock’s doorstep. And then peed profusely on his gate on the way back home. No political message intended – my dog is strictly a Guardian reader.

Inspiration Track of The Week:
Lovin’ Spoonful Summer In The City

www.annaphoebe.com