HammerFall has long proclaimed its desire to take the “metal crusade” worldwide, but the Swedish power-metal veterans had an eye-opening experience when they made their Indian debut at the Saarang 2010 festival in Madras this January.

“India was the strangest place I’ve ever been to,” says bassist Fredrik Larsson, calling from his Gí¶teborg home. “The crowd was really amazing. But it was just strange. We stayed on a university campus in a national park, with monkeys, deer, and other animals running loose outside the windows. Great food, but you have to be careful with your stomach. They had some really strong curries.”

Who would have guessed that Larsson would spice up HammerFall’s sonic assault again, after a prolonged absence? He quit the band just before the release of its first album, 1997’s Glory to the Brave, which is widely credited with revitalizing the power-metal genre. However, he stayed friends with guitarist Oscar Dronjak, and was invited to return in 2007 after the exit of flamboyant long-time four-stringer Magnus Rosén.

“Back in ’97, I wanted to play death-metal and thrash-metal,” explains Larsson, whose extreme-music credits include stints with Dispatched and Evergrey. “Traditional heavy metal was something I’d grown up with, and I enjoyed it, but I wanted to move on at that time. I guess I’ve matured. Nowadays, I know I can love many kinds of music.”

Finding inspiration in artists from Meshuggah to Muse, the 35-year-old delivers fat, propulsive grooves on No Sacrifice, No Victory, HammerFall’s seventh studio album. As usual, there’s no shortage of melodic, fist-pumping extravaganzas, a prime example being “Life Is Now”, where singer Joacim Cans distills HammerFall’s core philosophy into “Our life is not a fashion”. He then elaborates with: “Our life is based on passion/And we live our lives the way we want.”

Even on militant, full-bore pummellings like “Any Means Necessary”, the material feels looser than past HammerFall recordings. Larsson ascribes that shift to another new band member, lead axeman Pontus Norgren, who joined up when Stefan Elmgren left to become a commercial pilot.

“Stefan has his style, and he does it really well,” acknowledges Larsson. “He plays the same solo as on the records all the time. Now, Pontus is more of a ’70s-style of guitar player. He’s more bluesy and he can always do something different if he doesn’t like the previous night’s version. He tries to play Stefan’s solos when there’s a musical theme that must be there. Otherwise, he plays his own way.”

With a stabilized lineup, HammerFall hopes to release its next album in 2011 and attract new fans beyond traditional strongholds like Sweden and Germany. Will they perform their apocalyptic cover version of “My Sharona” on tour as a tribute to recently deceased Knack frontman Doug Fieger? “We hadn’t rehearsed it, but we could always put it in,” says Larsson. “We didn’t think we’d do it. But this puts things in a new light.”

HammerFall plays Venue on Tuesday (March 23).