Interview with PICTURE at Sweden Rock Festival 2017 – (Video Interview)

At Sweden Rock Festival 2017 three geeks, Shawn “Animalize” Irwin, Rich “The Meister” Dillon and yours truly, Mikael Svensson, had the opportunity to speak to Dutch metal legends Picture. The band were sort of pioneers on the metal scene in Europe in general. The Netherlands in particular where things started to stir in the late 1970’s. There wasn’t really a Dutch metal scene at the time but things were happening across the English channel where bands like Saxon, Iron Maiden and Angel Witch were spearheading a new fresh movement later christened The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Picture were, of course, not British but came from the same mother and sounded very much like their English contemporaries. Perhaps sort of unknown on the other side of the Atlantic things have been happening the last couple of years. Especially thanks to Divebomb Records in the US taking on the monumental task of reissuing the entire back catalog in North America. This task sees completion with the release of Every Story Needs Another Picture (1986) and Marathon (1987) as a two on one CD coming later this year.

After two reunion albums and several tours there were big changes in the Picture camp nearly two years ago. The original band was suddenly back together and touring again. One of the stops during 2017 was Sweden Rock Festival. Hopefully, this interview will shed some light on the band’s past and introduce you to the world of a Dutch metal band that were way ahead of their time. You can read my review of their gig at Sweden Rock Festival here!