“We all wanted to be a part of the process of writing songs” – Introducing: Chugger

Chugger is a groove death metal band from Gothenburg, Sweden, successfully fusing the signature Gothenburg metal sound with the groove of American southern metal. The band was formed in 2012 with Robert Bjärmyr as the group leader. After several members coming and going the form was cemented around 2017 with David Dahl (vocals), Robin Lagerborg (guitar), Eric Skjuttorp (drums), and Robert Bjärmyr (lead guitar). Lars Skjuttorp (bass) is the newest member, who officially joined in late 2018. Here’s our interview with the band’s drummer, Eric!

Behind the name:

The name ”Chugger” originates from the word ”Chug” as in a guitar chugging or a freight train chugging relentlessly. Our music is also perfect for chugging a beer too!

Inspiration:

Musically we all have very different inspirations, but what unites us is the Southern groove of bands such as ”Lamb Of God” and ”Pantera” and the classical ”Gothenburg sound” melo-death. Aesthetically we find our inspiration in post-apocalyptical themes like ”Mad Max” and gorier, splatter movies like ”Chainsaw Massacre”.
I think that the driving force behind ”Of Man And Machine” is that we all wanted to be a part of the process of writing songs. Robert did all the writing before the current setup so we contributed with new influences and comfort zone-breaking ideas without losing the original sound that is Chugger. We have some leftover ideas that didn’t make the cut to ”Of Man And Machine”, and we all write music so it’s comes down to a matter of time, compromising, and re-writing.

We were in the Czech Republic and Robin and I wanted to grab some food before the gig. The only place we found only accepted cash and didn’t speak English so we searched on google maps after an ATM. We wandered into some creepy looking industrial site with what seemed to be abandoned houses. The ATM was behind a big fenced gate and we quickly discovered that we were outside a brothel! David being forced to crowd surf on two drunk guys is also a fond memory. Arriving at a venue that didn’t know we were going to play there was exciting too, considering they didn’t even have a stage!
FUN FACTS

COVID-19:

Well ”Of Man And Machine” dropped internationally on the 24th of April so it was at the first peak of Covid-19 so, unfortunately, we couldn’t (and haven’t still) made an ”Of Man And Machine”-tour…
Our focus during Covid-19 has and will be (for now) digital platforms and merch, and of course, being active on social media. We’ve done two music videos and two playthrough videos and some more material will be released shortly so we try to be as active as we can digitally.