Our friends at blabbermouth.net have published an interview from Mark Carras of Rock my Monkey, with Joacim Cans, lead singer of Hammerfall. During the interview, Cans made it absolutely clear that the the rumours published in Swedish press about the band being a wildcard in Melodifestivalen 2007 are false and nothing more than tabloid talk.
Cans said that in the first place they never received an official invitation to join Melodifastivalen at all:"We never turned down the offer. We never got the offer".
Would they have considered participating had they received one though? Well, according to Mr Cans, the power metal band for one is not keen on singing “other people’s songs” and they really don’t think it would benefit them in any way at this point of their career.
Joacim's full comments relating to the Eurovision Song Contest were: "Thing is that this is something they wrote in some Swedish newspapers one or two weeks ago. They were claiming that HAMMERFALL or EUROPE would be in the Eurovision Song Contest. They got this joker, what they call the joker position, that we don't need to qualify. We will be more or less in the finals directly. And that we have been having discussions with the national television in Sweden for a couple of years, and this is not true. We have not had any discussions whatsoever in regards to this. So I sent letters to the newspaper denying everything. I said, no, this is not true. We were approached by a label guy who said, 'they, you should be in the contest'. And we said no. First of all, we do not want to perform any other person's song. And we don't see this as something that would benefit the band. Probably the other way around".
