Songwriters from Sweden

"Roughneck and rudeness, We should be using, On the ones who practice wicked charms, For the sword and the stone, Bad to the bone, Battle’s not over, Even when it's won, And when a child is born into this world, It has no concept, Of the tone the skin is living in."

"I miss those days when people believed in science and common sense as in the Fifties and Sixties. Now fundamentalism and contempt for science seems to be spreading. I believe that religion should be totally separated from the state. That’s not the way it is today, not even in Sweden. For hundreds of years we have struggled to achieve a secular society, and now we seem to be going backwards."

"Contempt for science could perhaps depend on the fact that, science hasn’t been able to solve any of our basic problems, for example the environmental pollution or the problems with HIV and AIDS. This is the worst disease of our time, and scientists are lost. I believe that many people are disappointed with science when the answers we need are not delivered."

"The story of Jesus is very fascinating. It still has such a tremendous power, even after 2,000 years! We don't really know if he existed as a historical figure."

"We will never appear on stage again. There is simply no motivation to re-group. Money is not a factor and we would like people to remember us as we were. Young, exuburent, full of energy and ambition."

"Touring we thought was a waste of time. It was much more productive and much more creative to write and record. I am glad today that we didn't tour. We knew it begins and ends with a song. Back then the entire business revolved around the song."

"I'm not the person who looks back or looks forward. I try to live in what is now."

"That means a lot, it goes from generation to generation, and you can't wonder why, and I think it's because it's such a good energy in it, and I think the girls and boys, they want to dress like us, and they want to sing along."

"I think I was more like the black sheep, maybe, that, I was someone that you could blame on, but we were actually agreed on, that we had to stop now, because we came to a point, when it doesn't feel good anymore."

"Why should we do it? We have done so many songs, during such a long time. The fact that we had two divorces, and there was no meaning, I think, with getting together, again."

"I have been described as a very mysterious human being and that hurts a little bit, because it's not like that at all."

"I think to look in the future, to plan another one, it's not realistic right now. But I don't close any doors. I'm very open for what comes up. At the moment, we are so happy with this one. I really hope people will like it as much as we do."

"Om man hade nyckeln till hur en psykisk sjukdom kan uppkomma och hur man ska ta hand om den hade vi väl klarat oss bättre här i världen."

"Jag vill inte att minnet av Ted [Gärdestad] förknippas för mycket med hans sjukdom utan också hur positiv han var. Han kunde ju göra det här trots rösterna han hörde. Han sade ibland att han skulle ställa rösterna inför rätta, de skulle stå till svars för grejerna de gjorde mot honom."

"...ar det ju viktigt att låtarna inte innehöll för många ord på “p”, eftersom det gav ett poppande ljud. “K” var inte heller så poppis. Däremot var “u” en bra bokstav och så gärna mycket vokaler i texterna..."

"I min värld vill jag ju ta upp så mycket positiva vibrationer som finns. Samma gäller vår musik. Jag känner ju att det finns så stort genomslag."

"Jag vill ha en egen måne, jag kan åka till Där jag kan glömma att du lämnat mig Jag kan sitta på min måne och göra vad jag vill Där stannar jag tills allting ordnat sig."

"Sol, vind och vatten är Det bästa som jag vet Men det är på dig jag Tänker I hemlighet Sol, vind och vatten Höga berg och djupa hav Det, är mina drömmar vävda av"

"I, I've got no fear of flyin' high 'Cause high above the rainbow, my sun's gonna shine And nothing can happen as long as you're mine So I'll make my landing alive"

"Kenneth Gärdestad var en bra kille, en bra människa och en textförfattare som jag verkligen såg upp till."

"Before we began to play there was a crowd of about 300 in there, but in the second song 'Necrolust' we began to throw around those pig heads. Only 50 were left. [...] If someone doesn't like blood and rotten flesh thrown in their face they can FUCK OFF, and that's exactly what they do."

"Excuse the blood, but I have slit my wrists and neck. It was the intention that I would die in the woods so that it would take a few days before I was possibly found. I belong in the woods and have always done so. No one will understand the reason for this anyway. To give some semblance of an explanation I'm not a human, this is just a dream and soon I will wake. It was too cold and the blood kept clotting, plus the new knife is too dull. If I don't succeed dying to the knife I will blow all the shit out of my skull. Yet I do not know. I left all my lyrics by "Let the good times roll"—plus the rest of the money. Whoever finds it gets the fucking thing. As a last salutation may I present "Life Eternal". Do whatever you want with it. / Pelle. I didn't come up with this now, but seventeen years ago."

"Chainsaw in my bleeding hands As I start to cut you in two Your guts are steaming out And I just love the sight Maggots crawling in her cunt I just love to lick that shit Bury you in a slimy grave You will rot forever there"

"When it’s cold! And when it’s dark! The Freezing Moon can obsess you [...] Diabolic shapes float by Out from the dark I remember it was here I died By following the freezing moon"

"It wasn't anything to do with the way Kiss and Alice Cooper used makeup. Dead actually wanted to look like a corpse. He didn't do it to look cool."

"Before the shows, Dead used to bury his clothes into the ground so that they could start to rot and get that grave scent. He was a corpse on a stage. Once he even asked us to bury him in the ground — he wanted his skin to become pale."

"I honestly think Dead is mentally insane. Which other way can you describe a guy who does not eat, in order to get starving wounds? Or who has a T-shirt with funeral announcements on it?"

"[Dead] wasn't a guy you could know very well. I think even the other guys in Mayhem didn't know him very well. He was hard to get close to. I met him two weeks before he died. I'd met him maybe six to eight times, in all. He had lots of weird ideas. I remember Aarseth was talking about him and said he did not have any humor. He did, but it was very obscure. Honestly, I don't think he was enjoying living in this world, which of course resulted in the suicide."

"[Dead] didn't see himself as human; he saw himself as a creature from another world. He said he had many visions that his blood has frozen in his veins, that he was dead. That is the reason he took that name. He knew he would die."

"He started to cut himself. With a knife. We were so used to it, we put him in handcuffs, and left him lying in the corner. He didn’t stop drinking. Later, we drove into town and left him in front of the police station, just to make sure that he didn’t do more stupid stuff to himself, and went on partying."

"It isn’t every day that you get to see a corpse, so you have to make the most out of it."

"Before the suicide, everything was playful. After, everything became darker. How could it not? Euronymous was so close to Pelle"

"The lyrics that he wrote for us were so deep and so personal and so heartbreaking and everything at the same time. [...] Beautiful, dark, great, all the emotions are in there. He was a true genius, that guy."

"I might punch you in the face if you wear [the photo of Dead's corpse] on a T-shirt."

""Freezing Moon" is possibly the greatest black metal song ever written."

"I first got into extreme metal through trading tapes and reading fanzines. When I was fourteen, I went with one of my neighbours, Shamaatae, to sit in on a rehearsal with his new band. That band was Grotesque and seeing them rehearse was incredibly cool. The intensity and speed of the music being played at maximum volume impressed me like very little had up until that point. My favourite song quickly became 'Blood Runs From The Altar', from their second demo The Black Gate Is Closed. I was already a huge J.R.R. Tolkien fan, so this was just perfection to me."

"I was very influenced by mid-‘70s music. I loved Uriah Heap and Status Quo. Those were the reasons that I picked up the guitar. I was very inspired by the guitar playing within glam rock like Sweet, Slade, and T. Rex, Later there was Michael Schenker, who has such amazing melodic sense, along with Randy Rhoads and Steve Vai."

"When I first heard the music, I thought it was great because I had always been interested in darker, dramatic music with horror elements. I liked and was inspired by that neoclassical style, so I thought, ‘Oh, wow, this seems like a perfect combination of all those things."

"I’ve always been a Marshall guy. Back then, I needed a bit of a boost, and I generally leaned on my Ibanez Tube Screamer [TS808], which I still think is one of the best pedals ever made. So, the Tube Screamer and the Marshall amps were just a great combination. And then, of course, you had to have good-sounding speakers, which I used a bunch of. I was always looking for a good lead tone; I wanted that warm feeling that could still cut through but had a lot of sustain, which is important when you play a lot of melodies."

"Given his ability to kick your teeth in and leave you smiling, it’s easy to lump LaRocque in with other ‘80s shredders. But his drenched-in-melodicism licks were outliers, and hinged on tone above all else. LaRocque could shred with the best, but he came from a different place, eschewing theory and relying purely on instinct."