Metal Covenant sat down with Zinny Zan, frontman of recently started constellation Zan/Cody, to talk about the duo’s first album, Beautiful ‘N Damned.

How did you first come up with this idea to go back to working with Harry Cody again, and start a new thing called Zan/Cody?

Well, we’ve been back and forth for a couple of years, checking each other out. You know, “How are you doing? Merry Christmas. Happy Birthday.”. Stuff like that. So we’ve been in talks just to see how we are. We did a cool thing many years back, and that stays with you because there weren’t so many bands doing the things that we did back then. I think Europe, Roxette, and us were the three bands that really hit America at that time. We hit the Billboard charts, and so on and so forth. Harry complimented on something I did with the Zinny Zan album (Lullabies For The Masses) that I did with Stefan Bergström from Skintrade. He said, “Well, you’re not screaming that much anymore. It’s a mature voice.”. It was nicely put. And then I said something like, “If you ever wanna come by and do some guitar stuff…”, and he said, “I’m open to that.”, and that made me think, and I go like, “If Harry is open to that…”. I would never invite him to do a thing with me, a Zinny Zan thing. Hey, we had a band together, equal grounds, so I said, “Harry. I will not do this that way, but how would you feel about if we just threw some ideas back and forth, and if it sticks, we do like Zan/Cody, whatever?”. And that’s what it ended up being. So that’s what we did. He threw one or two songs at me, and I did the same, and then he reworked a little bit of mine, put his things into it, and I did the same with his things. And then we said, “We already have a four-track mini thing here, so should we aim for an album?”. And then it became six tracks, and on and on it went, and then we were like, “We got an album.”, and then he goes, “Zinny. Do you know people?”. ‘Cause America is dead when it comes to hard rock, you know. So I said, “Well, let me take this a spin around Europe and the record companies.”. And that’s what I did, and in the end we ended up with Frontiers. So that’s how we started it. At first it was like, “Is the spark that we used to have still there?”. And it absolutely was. And it was easy, because we both felt like, “Wow! It’s so easy to write this music together.”. And we absolutely understood and had respect for each other. He’d go like, “I understand if you don’t want to sing it like that.”. So there was no plan at all, and just seeing like, “Can we write together? What comes out? Is it good enough?”. And we loved it. So there was no plan like, “Okay, let’s do an album like this.”. So we threw in pretty much everything but the kitchen sink. You know, some songs are a little heavier, some are a little softer, and so on. And that’s just what came out of our hearts when we started playing together again. So no master plan, and no strategic thing here or there, or, “Let’s sound a little bit like Shotgun Messiah.”. Well, that’s inevitable, of course. We both played in that band, and Harry is a very specific guitar player, so he has his signature all over it. And same with my voice. You know, I’m not a traditional hard rock singer. I don’t have that voice. I can’t sing pretty and fantastically like Sebastian Bach or other people. I have more like an attitude in my voice, so, you know, that’s what you get.

And I understand, of course, that you have the integrity too as experienced musicians to come up with something that’s good enough to put down on an album because you don’t wanna be ashamed of yourselves.

No, no. And I’ve seen it. You know, there’s always people. You can never please everyone. And I’ve seen that some people are saying, “Oh, pathetic cash grab.”, and I go like, “Well, if it was a cash grab, we probably would have played the first album on tour and trying to make as much money as possible.”. We put a lot of effort into this one. And we don’t know if people want Zan/Cody. People probably will say, “Oh, it isn’t Shotgun Messiah.”, and, “Well, you’re right. It isn’t. It’s just two of the four people there.”. But you know, you can never please everyone. We threw something at the wall and, “Let’s see what sticks.”, you know.

If you guys would have tried to really copy the first Shotgun Messiah record today, would you have really pulled that thing off with good songs, or would it just have been impossible?

Harry might disagree, but I would say that that would have been impossible, because let’s not forget that what we did back then, what we had inside us, was what made it a nerve. What we have inside us today, we show on this album. We don’t have exactly that, and to copy something that doesn’t really come from the heart, and you just start feel like, “We should do what we did before.”, never comes out good. Can we sing those songs? Yeah, I can still scream and do those songs, but that’s not where I am today, really. Recently we did a festival, Sweden Rock Festival, and you have this amount of time, but when we go out playing later in the fall, we will do some clubs in Sweden around the biggest cities, we will probably play more Shotgun Messiah songs as well, and put them in there, and do the things that people wanna hear as well. And that was never in our interest either, not from Harry or me. Of course you wanna see what’s in you today, and what we can achieve today, and not go back and see, like, “Oh, what did we do?”. Both Harry and I, we’re not that nostalgic. Of course we’re proud of our heritage. We know what we did, and we thought that was good back then, but let’s see what we can do now. So going back was never a thought.

Did you at some point think that this thing was kind of a now-or-never situation to you?

I would say yes. Especially when it comes to me and Harry, yes. Because, maybe 10 years back, there were talks about a Shotgun Messiah reunion with the original, with me on vocals and also with Tim (Skold) on vocals. So it would have been both because Shotgun Messiah, you know, has done two fine albums without me. But if it was gonna be a reunion, it would have been like, you know, start with me and then end up with Tim on vocals during the concert. There were talks, but it didn’t go through for different reasons. And since that passed… Hey, I’m 62, you know. You never know. You might drop dead tomorrow, or get run over by a truck, and Harry lives in the US and I live in Sweden. So I would say that this was probably the final thing, and go like, “Either we do it or we don’t.”. And we just signed up for a three-album deal, so this is not a one-off album just like, “Hey, buddy. Let’s do a rock album together.”. It’s nothing like that. We’re very serious about it, absolutely.

Before you just said a three-album deal, I was really thinking about, “Convince me now, Zinny, that this is not a one-thing shot.”.

There you go. You just got it. (Laughs) And honestly, I think that’s a signum for both me and Harry. Well, I hadn’t seen Harry in many, many years. He has been very determined with Shotgun Messiah. He still has Shotgun Messiah with Tim. They have an album that they have written. It’s not out because Tim is now back with Marilyn Manson again, earning some Marilyn money, and rightfully so. So Harry sticks to his guns. I kind of do as well. I had my time when I did some Swedish albums because I needed to get that out of my chest, and I thought, “Why haven’t I even tried?”. And I love trying. I’m never afraid of things. I know that the record company back then was like, “Hey. You’re singing in Swedish, it’s not hard rock, and you’re changing your name to your real name, Stagman. What the hell else can you do for not making this easy for us to sell?”, and I thought, “Well, it’s my artistic integrity. I would love to try to do this, and if you let me, I will show you that I can do this shit as well.”. So whenever I do a project, I’m absolutely all in. I never fool around. It’s very seldom. And same here. I never go out and do a lot of cover things, or cover gigs, or anything. I go every year with King’s Call because I’m a huge (Thin) Lizzy fan. I always go there. Pro bono, no money, nothing. I pay for it all myself going there. Just having a great time. You know, it’s more like a class reunion of rockers. (Laughs) It’s quite fun.

Could you in any way compare Beautiful ‘N Damned to anything you’ve done before, really?

No, I wouldn’t say. You know, you have a special thing with the people you write with. Back in the Shotgun Messiah days, there were a lot of Tim and Harry, and I came in at the last minute, and we changed some things to suit me. So it’s always a chemistry of things that you do. And that was the fun part with me and Harry now, because we wrote back then, and now when we wrote, “This is something new and different.”, but still we looked at each other and were like, “Hey, we do understand each other.”. And, at least for us, I don’t know if the listener might have another view of it, but we still think that we have a nerve to it. We have something interesting. It’s not a sandcastle. It is something there. And neither of us can say what it is, but it happens. So, I would say that I’ve never done an album like this before, no.

Tell me about the artwork of the album with a clock, a dagger, and a rose.

I’m always throwing things up here and there to find titles and stuff like that, and Harry was like, “Ah, mm, ah, maybe, maybe not.”, and then he goes, “Hey, Zinny. With all the effort you’re making into it, look and see if any of the song titles could work.”, and I wrote Beautiful ‘N Damned, and I go, “Well, Beautiful ‘N Damned.” – “Well, use that then.”, he said. He was all cool about it. I said like, “We have a couple of titles, and Beautiful ‘N Damned is very good.”. It’s a little dramatic, and, you know, it paints you a picture. It’s a deeper thing. The clock, of course, it’s the time. And the time is not always on your side when you’re 62 years old. (Laughs) And as you see, it’s like 2 to 12. So it’s a lot of thoughts that I had there. And then, of course, life can throw you roses and some knives. It was my artistic side that made that one.

I’m thinking about Bad Bad Man and She Walks With Violence. Those two songs are kind of different from the rest of the songs, and I would say that those two songs stick out the most. What purpose do they have on this album?

Just to broaden the album, I would say. The Bad Bad Man thing: Harry and I wrote a song called Shoot The World Away or Shot The World Away back in ‘89 while we were remixing the first Shotgun Messiah album. And it was in the vein of Bad Bad Man, and everyone at the record company was like, “Hey. Let’s not put that on here. We got a perfectly fine album.”. So we have always been flirting with that thing. And the blues thing, you know, sell your soul to the devil, whatever. And we thought like, “We need something that is a little more…”. Otherwise, it would be the same, the riff and this and that. She Walks With Violence is something that Harry had from the start, and showed me, and it was so wildly out there in my box of music, and I thought like, “Wow! All right. How do we approach this one?”. And Harry told me about it a little bit. Harry loves movies. He’s very cinemalistic like that. He loves cinema, loves the feelings, and so on and so forth. He had that thing, like a movie thing with this woman that you shouldn’t really go near, but she’s so darn beautiful that you have to anyway. And you know you’re heading for disaster, but it doesn’t matter. And I thought, “All right. Here we go.”. So that was a Harry thing that he came in with. Yeah, both really stand out, and in very different ways as well. Of course we had talks, like it’s the two of us, “It’s us. This is what we are.”. And we like it, so. There were other songs where people said like, ”That’s a more red thread. You should have that song instead.”, and we said, “Well, let’s save it for album number two then.”.

And you have thrown in a little ballad there too, Suffer City. Perhaps it could have been a hit back in the day.

It’s funny that you say that because that was the first song I sent to Harry. It was way back. When we started talking about it, he said like, “Okay, what do you have?”. I lost the woman (Karen) of my two children in 2023. She decided to take her own life. I never had that thought, ever. And going through that was extremely hard, and especially when you have to take care of two kids at the same time, and you don’t have your own time to grieve, or be angry or sad, or whatever, and you just try to make days go, and, you know, everything. The world keeps going and rolling, and you need to see, “Are your kids okay? How are we handling this?”. So that was a mad, sad, and extremely honest song about how I felt. Harry liked it, and I was in that zone when we spoke, and I said like, “How about this?”, and I knew that he has had ballads before that I refused to do with Shotgun Messiah, ‘cause I was the one back then saying, “No ballad on this album.”. And that was probably the worst decision in my life because ballads were the ones that were making it. So that’s me to blame. So, “Okay, let’s see what he can do with this.”, and he came out with this beautiful solo and the things around it. That was the first song I threw to him, I believe. The first or the second. And it came out so damn good. Harry says the same. “It’s one of my favorites on the album.”, he says. And I love to hear that. It’s nothing that anyone heard us do before. They never heard a ballad with me and Harry. I’ve read some stuff from people who have heard the album, that they love that song in many ways, and some people said that they liked it very much when we did it at Sweden Rock as well. Emotional and so on. And of course it is, because it’s extremely close to your feelings and your heart, and it’s written in a lovely and in an angry way at the same time.

In the second song, I Am The Shit, you sing Shotgun Messiah. Is that like a must, or is it really serious, or is it just a fun thing to do?

I listen to criticism, of course, but most of the time, I ain’t got nothing to prove. So I don’t fucking care. I can do whatever I want. You know, I’ve got nothing left to prove. I’m just having fun. That’s where I am in life now. Same with other things that happen in life. And I take it quite easily. It won’t kill you. There’s nothing that can’t be fucking fixed. It can be fixed. Take it easy, calm down, don’t be upset. And that’s the kind of life I’m trying to live. And, of course, things are put in perspective when someone close to you for 23 years disappears and so on, and in the middle of all that fucking chaos, later on, another woman walks into my life and I go, “No, this is way too early.”, but you can’t stop it because it’s love. And sometimes you go, “Oh, what is happening?, and all that. I Am The Shit is like that. I am the shit, it’s my life, I do what I want, I fucking love Shotgun Messiah, and it was great to have Harry back and so on. I like Shotgun Messiah with me in it, and I love Shotgun Messiah without me in it. You know, I have my companion Harry on my side whatever I’m singing there, and it’s just, let’s say, an easy reflection on my life, a little bit.

Did you and Harry at some point drop an idea that the band name was gonna be closer to something with Shotgun Messiah than Zan/Cody is? Obviously, like you said, Tim and Harry still have Shotgun Messiah, but you and Harry could be Shotgun Messiah as well. It’s two members either way.

Yeah, we absolutely could be. No, we both were very keen about these things, and I said, since Harry and Tim still have Shotgun Messiah, “Let’s not even go near it.”. Of course, we have the songs on the first album that I was on, and we will play them live, but other than that, don’t have too many assumptions or things around the Shotgun Messiah name as such because it still does exist. But at the same time, we’re saluting our past. I believe it’s Damn, the first single, a part of the solo there is a part from Nervous on the first album that he just redoes for homage and for the fans to see, like, “Oh shit, they still do that shit.”. You know, just a blink. No, we would never think that we’re gonna try to cash in on the Shotgun Messiah name in any way because that’s what he and Tim still work with.

When you and Harry talk about the debut album from Shotgun Messiah, do you look at the Shotgun Messiah version, or do you look at the Kingpin version sometimes?

Since it has been so broadly with Shotgun Messiah, we always talk about the Shotgun Messiah album. I can honestly say I haven’t heard the album for an extremely long time, but from what I recall, I like the Kingpin mix better than the Shotgun Messiah mix. I used to anyway. I can’t say today because it’s been many years since I heard it. But I know that I used to like the Kingpin version better. Not particularly the cover (Laughs), ‘cause that was quite hard to get away from. But the mixing and everything, that’s done by Tim, Harry, and Mats Olausson, that used to play with Yngwie (Malmsteen) and who produced it, I think I like that one a little bit better than the American version.

And a friend of yours, Chris Laney, is also part of this album. To what extent did he contribute to the songwriting and stuff like that?

To the songwriting, nothing at all. Arrangements, a few things, yes. He came in very late, my bad. Chris Laney and I have been friends for 25 years or something like that. We have had a band, Zan Clan, together. We wrote the music together and so on. I also know that he’s probably one of the biggest Shotgun Messiah fans ever. So when this came along, first of all, we were very hush-hush, Harry and I. So Harry and I knew about it, and my drummer Björn Höglund, who played a little bit with Easy Action, and played on the Stagman albums, and produced it with me, and co-wrote some stuff with me as well. There were the three of us, and then every now and then we threw in Nalle Påhlsson, who plays the bass on this, and he was like, “What’s going on here?”, and then I had to tell him, and I said, “Don’t say anything.”. And of course Chris Laney heard about it, and he goes like, “Zinny. For God’s sake, who’s gonna produce this?”, and I said, “Well, I’m gonna produce it with Harry.”, and, “Well, who’s gonna mix it then?”, and I said, “Well, we don’t know yet, ‘cause it’s very hush-hush.”, and he goes, “I want it.”, and I said, “Chris, no.”, and he goes like, “Why? Come on now. You know I’m the biggest fan.”, and I said, “Yeah, and that is exactly why you will not get that job.”. He couldn’t believe it, and he goes like, “What have I done?”, and I said, “You know I like you, you’re my dear friend, I admire your work. Some work I think pretty much sound the same, and it has become a Laney sound, and I don’t want to have a Laney sound as such. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I want Zan/Cody to stand out somewhat.”, and he said, “You have to give me one fucking shot at this, so you can say, ‘fuck off’, or whatever. But you have to give me a shot.”, and I said, “All right. Two songs, but don’t go down that memory lane to Shotgun Messiah, whatever you do, ‘cause that will not give you this job.”. It came back, and Harry’s like, “This is fucking amazing. Who’s this?”, and I go, “It’s Chris Laney.”, and he’s like, “I thought so, but you didn’t say anything.”, and I said, “No, I didn’t want anyone to have any prejudice.”, because I was too prejudiced myself anyway. And then I said, “Well, Chris, you improved yourself. You were right, I was wrong. You’re in.”. And he did an amazing job with this. Really good. Like I said, he did nothing in the songwriting, but he was in there with some of the arrangements here and there, and very good to have on board. You know, I love the guy. He’s like this little brother to me, and full of ideas, full of energy, always brings something to the table. Yeah, he’s a trooper.

As you said, you guys played your first gig at Sweden Rock in June. Tell me about that thing.

Amazing to do Sweden Rock. Thanks to Sweden Rock for having us on the bill, even though we didn’t have a new album out, or anything like that. Very nice of them. Very cool to see the supporters liking what we were doing. We had a talk within the band, and Harry was cool about it, and I had a thought like, “I don’t wanna go down memory lane.”. Everyone knows what we’ve done. No one knows what Harry and I have done these last 36 years, “Here we are with a new album.”. I wanna give the audience the opportunity to hear some of the songs on the album before it comes out, and then give them some nice pearls from the early days. I don’t wanna come out like, “Hey, here’s our back catalog.”, and do that thing. Nostalgia, that’s nothing. That has never been a Shotgun Messiah thinking. It’s never been a Harry or Zinny thinking at all. So I want to show people, “This is what we are today.”. Did it backfire? No, I don’t think so. But of course, when people hear Squeezin’ Teazin’, Nervous, Nowhere Fast, and Don’t Care ‘Bout Nothin’, the cheers will be bigger than for the new ones. But we were cocky enough to go out and start with three new songs before the first Shotgun Messiah song. But it was to promote the album, and to promote, “This is where we are now.”. If they haven’t seen Harry play for 35 some years, well, then they should see him in his prime, what he’s doing now, and then, of course, we will throw back some good memories for them as well. And that’s what we did. And I think that the audience took it very well. I think some journalists didn’t. (Laughs) But then again, you can’t win them all, and if you don’t know me or Harry, then you probably would have expected that we should do the whole safe thing and be nostalgic. And that’s not what we are about at all. We praise and love our past, but hey, we’re in the here and now. But it was great to see the supporters. The supporters are still there. And some are just as old as me. Some are younger than the first Shotgun Messiah album, which is kind of surprising. (Laughs) Maybe that album has aged with style. I don’t know. But it’s good to see the whole span of people from 20-year-olds up to people in their 60s like myself. It was a great gig. Sweden Rock Festival, I haven’t played there for many years now, and it’s always nice to come back. Very cool.

And you also celebrated the first Shotgun Messiah album as Shotgun several years ago. It must have been like 12 years ago or something. So I would say that you’ve already done that, and with one of these musicians as well.

As well, yeah. Chris Laney was there. It was the 25th anniversary of that album. And the reason was that when the real Shotgun Messiah reunion didn’t happen, it had already sparked a fire in me. When we did that album, and when we toured America, and lived in America, it was do or die for us. You know, we were competing with bands like Skid Row, Mötley Crüe, Whitesnake, Ratt, Poison, and all those. It was do or die. And I thought, “What would it be like to go out there and just fucking enjoy the songs?”. So that’s what we did back then. And of course, I enjoy them even more now when I play with Harry. It’s a fantastic thing to do, absolutely. But just like you say, the nostalgia thing we already did once, because when I saw that the original Shotgun Messiah thing fell apart, then I thought like, “Well, they should be able to hear the songs.”. And so then we brought in Stixx, who was the original drummer for Shotgun Messiah, and then we found a guitar player that could be close to Harry because Rob Marcello is a fantastic guitar player. And Harry would say the same thing. Harry advised Rob Marcello to do the work that Harry did for Shotgun Messiah because he knows how hard it is to pull off some shit that he’s doing, and he said that Rob really did a good job. Kudos to Marcello, and kudos to Harry for saying that as well. But yeah, the nostalgia thing I’ve already done.

When you were on stage, what was is like for you personally to sing the four old tracks in comparison to singing the new tracks? You obviously told me about the crowd’s reaction, but inside of you, like deep in your heart?

Well, of course the new ones hit me harder, because that’s where I am at today, so to speak. The old ones, they’re good and I understand them, and, you know, that kid isn’t dead inside. I still know that kid. You know, he’s far behind somewhere. But of course the new ones are the ones that you really want to be good. The other part is that with the Shotgun Messiah stuff, I know exactly what to do because I have it in my backbone. When we opened up with Sever, like we did, that was probably the first time I was nervous in years upon the stage. I’m too stupid to be nervous. I just love to go out there and do my shit. I’m like Pluto, the dog. You know, “Get me out there. I love it.”. And people go like, “You’re never nervous?”, and I say, “Why should I be?”. But I was a little bit nervous because it meant so much to me. And I had never played it live, and then you go out, and the first gig you have is Sweden Rock Festival so it’s like, “You better not fuck up now.”. (Laughs)

And the musicians you bring with you, was it easy to get them to be in the band live as well?

It was. And that’s because they’re all friends of mine, and that we respect each other musically. I think Nalle is probably one of the best bass players there is on this planet. He’s absolutely fantastic. I absolutely love to play with Chris Laney as well. He’s a good friend, he’s a good pal, he is a professional, and he’s fun to be around. Björn: he has that groove. It was easy, and they know how to work with me. Chris Laney and I have done albums together. Björn and I did this trilogy for, like, three years. You know, like one album a year. Writing, producing, mixing, and all that. It was very intense. So he knows how it is. And Nalle was on that road with us as well because he played bass on all those three Stagman things, and he also played bass with Zan Clan for a while. So we all know each other. And Harry really liked that as well. Because he didn’t know what he walked into. You know, he hadn’t seen me for 36 years. And the Shotgun Messiah thing, that didn’t end well. We weren’t buddies when we left. We really weren’t. So, “How is it now to see each other?”. You know, we’ve been friends on the phone. And of course we wrote music together and so on, but that’s been files back and forth, and phone calls. You know, “What do you say if I do this?”, and, “Listen to this.”, or whatever. And along the way on the album, he said the same thing, that, “These guys you have picked here, Zinny, are fantastic.”. And I didn’t pick them; I presented them to him. He heard it, and he loved it. Just as much as I love Björn, and Nalle, and Chris Laney, he feels the same thing. So it really worked out well, and they were really into doing this thing with us, which is very nice.

And besides a few shows in Sweden this fall, what else can we expect from Zan/Cody in terms of live performances?

Live performances, just as you said, we have this fall thing here, October and onwards. We haven’t seen a stop to it. It’s still bookings coming in. But that’s mainly right now Sweden. It might be some Finland as well. Then, of course, we want to be on as many festivals as possible for 2027, and that’s probably gonna be set sometimes in August, September, or something like that. We are in talks in the US, which is very fun, very great to hear. And I was very surprised, to be honest, because one dropped in first, and then I thought, “Wow! How is that gonna be?”. You know, you can’t go over for one gig. And it keeps dropping in. And now we’re gonna see how we can manage to do that in a good way. We would absolutely love to. And honestly, America was our turf. We only did one gig in Sweden, ever, with Kingpin, with me as the original vocalist, so America was the place for us. Of course, we’d love to be here in Europe, and, you know, I ain’t moving to the US even if I have an American girlfriend. I kind of like it here, especially now. (Laughs)

If it wouldn’t have been for the weather, Sweden would be, I think, one of the greatest countries on earth.

I absolutely agree with you. I’ve been lucky enough to visit, I think, 46 countries in the world. I lived in Brazil, I lived in Panama, I lived in London, I lived in Los Angeles, and New York, and so on, and spent a lot of time in Italy, and I’m gonna buy a place there for winter around Lake Garda. So we’re looking at that right now. Carol is from Florida, and she said that Sweden is the most beautiful place in the summer. We will not go anywhere during the summer. But, you know, October, November… Well, now I’m gonna be in Sweden in October ‘cause I’m gonna be touring, but November, December, and all that, aah, I can be without it. I love go skiing for a week, but that’s about it. (Laughs)

About Florida, and touring, or playing live shows. There are some rock cruises that depart from Florida every year. Would that be of great interest to you to go on a cruise like that?

Yes. We are in talks with one of the cruise things right now.

I would say Monsters Of Rock, but you don’t have to name it.

But that is absolutely correct. We are in talks with them. I’ve never been on the Monsters Of Rock Cruise, but I’ve been on two Kiss cruises. It’s absolutely fantastic. I love it. I reached out. I said, “Hey, come on now.”, you know. The man in charge said, “Good, very nice. Let me see what I can do with this.”, and I said, “Yeah, I’m waiting.”. So we will see. I know that pretty much everything is set already. I know that. He seems like he’s keen to do it as well.

Could they try to force you into doing two different kinds of sets? One more like an old Shotgun Messiah. What do those people say to you regarding sets?

Regarding sets, they have said nothing so far. But we understand that as well, and we’ve seen that also at Sweden Rock, of course. And we, of course, would play Shotgun Messiah songs. Whatever they come up with, of course we will listen. If they say, “Can you do more Shotgun Messiah songs?”, I guess we could, yeah.

Now when you’ve done one album, and let’s say the Shotgun Messiah album too, then you have two albums to play from. So when you put out album number two and album number three, will you have to ditch the Shotgun Messiah songs then?

No. You know, it’s in our DNA, and it’s where it all began, so a few will still be there, I would say. Now I picked these four songs that we did this time together with Harry. Those four will probably always still be there. I know that people said, “Why didn’t you do Shout It Out?”. No, but that was a typical rap thing that was done, and Tim has a big part in that, and I don’t want to step on Tim’s toes. That was a Tim and Harry thing more than it was me. I was only in the choruses. And that’s the reason we don’t play Shout It Out. Will we do it in the future? I don’t know. But I would say even if we do three albums now with Zan/Cody, there will always be a place for Shotgun Messiah songs. It will, because that’s where it all started. So we would be pretty stupid if we don’t play Don’t Care ‘Bout Nothin’, or Nervous, or even Bop City, or whatever.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. Look at my old heroes, like Ronnie James Dio and Ozzy Osbourne. They always played songs from the ‘70s, from their past bands.

That’s where you started, and that’s where your audience first found you. Without the supporters, you’re nothing. You have to understand that. It doesn’t matter how fucking great songs you think you write, or whatever, and how good you think you are, or the songs are, or the band is, and so on and so forth, if people out there don’t like it, they just don’t fucking like it, and if the supporters wanna hear Don’t Care ‘Bout Nothin’ of course they should, you know. And it’s the reason why we’re here. You know, if that first album wouldn’t have been, a lot of people like you wouldn’t even have talked to me. So that’s why we’re here. So yeah, we will absolutely always play some Shotgun Messiah songs.

What besides Zan/Cody are you up to nowadays?

I’m constantly writing music. I have a whole solo album ready. I thought like, “All right. When should I put that one out?”. But I came to the conclusion that I will not do anything to disturb the Zan/Cody thing. So, if that takes four or five years, then I probably will reconsider a few songs, most likely. (Laughs) But I’m continuously writing, and some of these songs might even end up on the next Zan/Cody album, with a few twitches here and there, and Harry doing his shit. So constantly writing music. Other than that, I’m just trying to enjoy life, to be honest.

About a few twitches here and there. Just look at Bad Bad Man. What else could end up on the album? It’s like whatever song is possible.

Yes. Whatever we feel like, whatever state of mind you’re in in that moment, and what you feel about it. And again, when you’re 62 you know. I’m privileged to have a three-album deal at 62 years old. Not too many people get that, and I’m very privileged with that. And, you know, why be like, “Oh, we should do this. They expect this from us. Let’s do this formula.”? Fuck no. You know, like I said, I don’t care anymore. So it’s like show what’s inside you, what you got there, and it could be Bad Bad Man, could be She Walks With Violence, could be I Am The Shit, or whatever. Whatever comes out, comes out, and if you think that it has the nerve, and it has the thing that has the sign Zan/Cody on it, we will stamp it with a Zan/Cody stamp. Absolutely, no matter what. It could be a reggae song. I doubt it, but you should never say never. (Laughs)

By Tobbe – Published July 23rd, 2026