Hailing from Sweden, Unleashed are one of the most respected death metal acts out there. Uncompromising, their music has a staunch ideal that they stay hold fast to both their beliefs and stylistic senses. With this now their twelfth album about to be released, it’s apparent more than ever that the band stick to their guns. In this day and age where countless bands are sprouting creating music that is pristine and pitch perfect, sometimes you need a bit of the old school soul to truly set you among the elite. We we’re very luckily able to catch up with Johnny Hedlund the voice behind the hulking band about the new record, the fact that he is indeed writing his own book, how the band came up with their name and whether or not there would be any synthesizers on the new record…
The Metalist : With your new album Dawn Of The Nine. What will be seeing, are there new themes going on? Is the instrumentation different to previous albums?
Johnny : In terms of music, what differs from the previous albums we’ve done in the past, ten, twelve years,is really not a whole lot. We had aimed to try and inflate some more dynamics to the music and I mean in the details now. Of course also in the end production, I think death metal is such an intense form of music.We have talked about this for many years, specifically on this album we said that we wanted to go in and start recording this album to think about the dynamics and also in the end production.
But really the only thing that differs are far as the process goes, we have used a different mastering studio than the previous album. Just to get a new set of ears you know, and to look things over, specifically thinking about the dynamics of the album and of the music, the way that we play. We’ve been doing this for 26 years now so we’re really working on the smaller details now. Trying to improve all the time, get better at what we do. I would say that’s it for the music.
As for the lyrics, we’ve started on the previous album on the storyline, on a book that I have been writing for ages now. The storyline is about the world of Odalheim and we’re trying to continue that on this album. So that’s pretty much it.
That was actually going to be next question! Following on from As Yggdrasil Trembles and then Odalheim, the new album is chronological then?
Yeah exactly. It takes over exactly where the previous one left off. The last song on the Odalheim album was “The Great Battle Of Odalheim” so, this one is kind of the aftermath. I mean that in the first song that is so it just takes over exactly where it left off.
You said that its based upon a book that you’ve been reading or writing?
Writing. Unfortunately I have been writing it for about seven years or so now, most of the time that I have off to write the book it seems that I have been working with Unleashed. Because they are not the exact same thing, the book is a lot bigger of course, wider. The storyline of the book of Odalheim is a lot wider than the small adventures of every song that comes on a new Unleashed album. I would say that its nice to have, the future of Odalheim is obviously a future story.
The storyline I can pick and choose some of the things that I think fit with Unleashed. Also for anyone who would read the book later on, it’s going to be pretty obvious that the Unleashed storyline is much smaller than the actual storyline of the book and its not the exact same. Anyone would understand that “ok this and this is actually from those chapters and oh now I get that”. When you read the book later on you would see that this and that was never mentioned in the Unleashed albums, because that’s how it is.
It’s almost like Game Of Thrones sort of thing?
I guess, writing like that is a challenge because I can’t do everything that I do in the book i cant really ut that into Unleashed.
Are you close to finishing the book?
Oh unfortunately not! I’m not writing it myself, Its me and I have a co-writer who is a friend of mine, we do pretty much 50% each. Well he has a little more time than I do, my problem is that I have Unleashed. To me Unleashed thats not really a problem! I wake up every Monday and look at a new week and I say well “It’s work and its family this and that and of course time for Unleashed” I guess the second I put the book before Unleashed somebody in the band would say “hey Johnny, what the hell is going on with this?? Why aren’t you answering your fuckin’ emails? Haha”
We realised that we’re too full of so many other things that we cant put a time schedule saying “Well it has to be done by the year 2016”. We don’t know that and the minute that I start doing that then I will have to push other things aside and its hard to push family aside when you have a four year old! Bottom line is that we abandoned the time schedule and we just go as we go along. If it takes five more years fine, then that’s what it is. I would love to take a year off and just finish the book. We’ll see, we’ll see if i can do that, i mean I would have to find a replacement at work and I don’t know if I can do that, but that’s just how it is.
Well perhaps it’s something for the future in the pipeline then?
Oh for sure it is, we’re dedicated to finish it, but like I said I look at the time schedule on Monday and say well how much time can I dedicate to Unleashed. That is always my priority. I need to put the time that I have will always go to Unleashed and we kind of release an album like every other year. It’s been such a big part of my life now so unless I want to release an album every fourth year ,then I need to keep some kind schedule. It takes a while to complete, and on the other hand the lyrics on Unleashed because we’re working on the story line they kind of fit together, but its not that bad haha!
As you’ve said you’re working on the book is it loosely related to Norse mythology or is a completely different world altogether?
Well it sprang from that, Unleashed has never been a religious band and the way that I look at this whole Norse mythology, or the viking tradition way. I don’t look at that as a religion. I know that some people do, but I never did and I will never do. I look at it as viking traditions and values and those are the ones that we promote and always did. Obviously we had influences from our forefathers tales, are obviously there all the time, it sprang from that.
So a lot of what we have to defend today, and some of the traditions and values that we practice today or that we live today is also going to be very important in the future. I think that’s how things are, I think thats the reason that the Viking religion never really had a bible to describe all these things. They are meant to be reinvented, well not really reinvented but they are meant to kind of continue into the future. You can change them and you can have traditions almost the same but they can change along the road. Society gets different, we are civilised people today and I wouldn’t say that was the case a thousand years ago.
If you compare it to books like the Bible and the Quran a lot of people say “Wait you don’t have to interpret them, just read them” thats what it is. If you do that they become pretty horrible and thats the huge difference between being somebody that would read from a book that is written a very long time ago. Or somebody that would practice traditions or values that can actually change along the road. These are the things that I promote with the viking tradition. It also means that it doesn’t cover religion we have the gods and the symbolic things that we use, the names of the gods are symbolic.
They are not physical gods as opposed to Christ or Allah or Buddha or anybody else. They are symbolic meaning and therefore they can never become religion, they can become tradition and values but they will never become religion. I guess if you ask somebody else, they would have a different explanation of the Viking mythology haha! They would say the Norse mythology but they will absolutely transcend into the future, they will change along the but remain the same inspiration.
Now that we’ve talked about the overall background of Dawn Of The Nine, how was the recording process? You mentioned a new mastering studio?
We pretty much did what we always did really! The creation process is normally one and a half years. Then it takes a number of months when we’re ready with the actual lyrics and music everything put together done the pre productions you know, criticised each other for whatever needs be! We go into the studio and we start recording. So after about two years, that’s the normal length, two years and three months give or take! We’re in the studio for six months,a normal time frame, that doesn’t mean that we’re in there every day for six months! We spend maybe a day, then wait a few weeks,then spend another two days and wait a few weeks and that’s how it is in the studio.
Fredrik, our guitar player has his own studio, so its very easy to work with. We never have to get in there like we did in the early nineties and Fredrik has been doing a better and better job all the time ever since he started. The only thing that we changed now is really the mastering studio, we just wanted a new set of ears to try and see if we could get some new questions on the final thing. You know, somebody to say ok well that did you think about this or that?
I guess that’s the only reason why we changed mastering studios, we weren’t unhappy with the mastering on the previous album but we just wanted change something. I think we got to where we said we would get, not only the recording process but the mastering and the mixing, we wanted to add a little more dynamics. To the whole, it got us to where we said we would get anyway. The two year process got to an end that we are happy with.
Fredrik the guitarist as you said, has his own studio. Is that one of the main reasons that since 2002 Hell’s Unleashed that you have been recording with him. Not that it makes it easy, but you can go by your own schedule?
Right, right. That’s how it started anyway, we wanted to have our own schedule everything under control and above all we didn’t want to pay by the hour. Back in the nineties when we got into the studio, we had to pay by the hour or by the day and even if you wanted to change something, you have to question yourself “do you really have to go in and change that little thing?” That’s a fucking dumbass thing to do! You shouldn’t even think of that, its ridiculous, for a person that has worked on music and lyrics for two damn years.
And all of a sudden your panicking to record the damn thing, people ask me “did you like it before in the early days?” No I did not! it was not better before for very obvious reason and I think that a lot of musicians will agree that. I mean thats the Holy Grail of being a musician, to create the album. You finalise two years of work and why in the hell would you want to be panicking around that! It’s all because of money I’m guessing. I remember the invoices we paid were on the first couple of albums and the number of hours we had in there, but I do definitely think that (having our own studio) is something that has helped us along the road to get better.
As the album will be released at the end of April, what are you touring plans going to be for the rest of year?
Right, we haven’t really made any touring plans yet, I think we play London, the first booked festival on the 9th of May or so and from that we’re doing the other festivals. Most of them are booked I think there will be a few more coming in. Normally we would plan a tour around that but we haven’t quite done that yet, I cant really tell you anything more on that haha. We will see what happens, probably in the end of the year as we’re already doing all of the summer festivals.
Is that just European summer festivals?
Yeah, mostly. Only Europe so far!
Going back to the new record, in terms of writing it is it more kind of process or is there one person that has more kind of input than other people? What’s the process there?
First of all we have always a very democratic band. Everybody has to say their share, even if they don’t say anything the rest of them will force them to say something. Fredrik makes all the music and I make all the lyrics right now, it just became that, it developed into that because Anders and Thomas are not really that creative. They made music in the past, but they somehow they kind of abandoned that. We try and encourage them to do stuff but as we went along they just didn’t want to do it anymore.
I created most of the albums up to 1997 and when we got Fredrik in the band, I mean I liked his music more than my own! There is no reason in hell, for me these days to sit down and make five songs and before I would even send them to him, I would like his music more. There’s some kind of sound competition. We have to be honest with what we create you know? I have to be honest with myself as well, I could force in a number of songs just because I want to do my share but there is no point in that, the albums would not be as good.
I think that has been the same with Anders and Thomas, Fredrik creates fifteen or twenty songs on any albums and they are all better than the ones I do, so I concentrate on the lyrics. We send stuff back and forth all the time, sometimes we wanna take stuff away because its not good enough, sometimes we want to have one more chorus… We change a lot of things in this one and a half year creative period, so to speak.
Same with the lyrics, when I’m done with a song I send it out to the guys in the band and they say well this is great, or what do you mean by this? It’s a very creative process during these one and a half years and there’s a full democracy in the band. There’s no one thinking well I could do more haha. Which is normal when bands start up, when bands form in the first five years ! We’ve done this for so many years, we don’t have any situations like that, everyone is happy with what we do. So it’s good!
So we have had a taster of the new album with first single “Where Is Your God Now?”, which I think rocks! I was wondering what made you choose it as the first single for the album. Does it set the overall tone of Dawn Of The Nine?
I honestly don’t really know what to answer. I think the record company sent us a question, which one do you want to have? Maybe they even suggested a couple of songs. I think I just had that mail forwarded to the band and they thought “let’s pick this song, oh no lets put this song” I said “dude there’s too many songs now, lets just fuckin’ focus” we have to pick two. There’s one song now and I think there was going to be another one in a week or so, I’m not sure. So we decided on those songs, I think my suggestion was another song actually, I think mine was the first song on the album, so I got voted down haha!
I don’t think that we thought too much about it really, it was just the one song that had the most votes in the band! It’s a fast song too, its nice to have a fast song out. Just to show some energy, instead of setting out the slowest song on the album, but nobody suggested that!
You wouldn’t exactly put a ballad out as a single would you!
We don’t really create that many, but we do have a really slow song on this album which is the title track.
Me being a long time fan, I was wondering what exactly is meant by the name Unleashed, how did you come up with it?
Well way back then, I was in a band called Nihilist, I guess you know that by now. Between 87 and 89, when i was out of Nihilist i formed Unleashed like within a week or month or so. In 1989, we were just a couple of friends that said let’s play the most brutal shit you can ever do and be the crazy live acts. Obviously we loved the music that our friends played at the time, Dismember, Grave, Nihilist we love that kind of music. So that was the kind of music we would play, we discussed other stuff as well as lyrics and such, then we got to band name.
What to be called? We had some suggestions that I honestly don’t recall! We had talked about the most important thing for the band, at that time in 1989 the most important thing was to get out there and get a damn live show. It might be hilarious because today I say no thank you to more shows than I say yes thank you haha! It’s not really a problem to play a show today, but at that time it was really a problem. You know in 89 we didn’t know if we were about to play live, we weren’t sure if people would like our music!
I guess what happened was, the most important thing is the live show and we wanna do something that is pretty much the opposite of christianity which had a huge impact on Sweden at the time. So what is the better thing to do, instead of pushing down your feelings then to unleash them. That’s what we wanted to do, so we started looking at each other and thought “Hey, Unleashed!” Why not? I think that’s pretty much how it went, thats how we reasoned, then we had a vote and everyone voted for that. It was really about the live show though that was the main discussion, it would be about unleashing hatred and aggression.
Everything that death metal is! With this being the twelfth album in your career how do you maintain interesting ideas?
There are three things that come to mind, we agreed on the same vision of the band. To be a good live act and never to go elsewhere when it comes to the musical style, we will always be a death metal band. The second thing is we need to help each other out. There are so many things that band member needs to do in a band. You need to enjoy what you do, you can’t just be in a band, you have to contribute. So that’s important that everyone agreed on that all those twenty six years. Third is passion, passion comes with the idea of creating stuff. If you don’t have the passion for playing live or making new song or lyrics then you just don’t have any more ideas, then you don’t really love this.
Unleashed, it honestly didn’t really start as a band. It started more as a way of life. Even before I was in a band, that was my way of life. I think its probably the same for metal fans that aren’t in a band, they wake up everyday and probably listen to metal at some point, the next party they would have would be with metal friends. It’s the same today, there’s no passion in it if you all of a sudden wake up and think “ahhh I’m not into metal anymore”. That’s the passion that is burning for the creation and the next live show. These are three things that struck me as the core values that I always come back to. They are as important as they were twenty five years ago.
The ten commandments of metal! Will there be any guest appearances on the album, have you used any new instruments, techniques at all?
I think that we have done the same as always. Yeah, I wouldn’t say that we added any musical instruments at all, it’s probably been the same all of our lives haha! Fredrik tried a few more effects I guess, I don’t even know how he makes them, some strange things happen that sound really cool between the songs but these are just things he’s done. I’ll ask him about it one day!
Unleashed has always been a pretty old school death metal sound so I’m not surprised!
You won’t find an Unleashed album with a lot of synthesizers haha!
Having now been with Nuclear Blast for quite a long time has it taken you a lot further than the years of Steamhammer? More live appearances, is it a drastic difference?
Well I think that Nuclear Blast have brought a lot of professionalism to what we do. Generally they handle things a lot more professionally. Not just interviews and such, promotions things on the web. Everything that we have had from them has been more professional than what we have experienced in the past from Century Media and such, it’s just a lot better!
As you’ve been around for twenty six years now, how does it feel to be so fiercely respected in metal. Especially with the fierce Swedish competition!
Well, I don’t really think about it too much but it feels good. We’ve been doing it for twenty six years and everybody knows that these days. It was a different story in 98, people weren’t sure what who was there in the beginning and what was what. Yeah, it’s a good feeling you know? It’s our history. Where we came from, it’s nice to hear once in a while respect what we did in the past! Most people I talk to enjoy the later records that we have now,more than the older ones and I am really happy about that. As opposed to liking just the first two albums.
The classic metal head thing saying nothing is as good as their older material!
It depends on what band it is really! There are bands that did really well in the eighties but haven’t released anything for years haha!
So to finish up what albums have you been digging recently over the past year?
I have the new Grand Magus, last album has been my favourite album, that’s one of my favourite bands by the way. I also really dig the new Obscurity album! I’ve been listening to that for some time now. I could probably go on for another two hours haha , oh the new Motorhead for example I mean its just never a band record from that band. You don;t even need to look you can just go out and buy it! That’s quality right there!
After speaking to the frontman, through his charming sense of humour its clear that there is still much work to be done. Both for Unleashed and for the singer himself. Creating his own world in the new book, as I listen to Dawn Of The Nine the next chapter in his imaginative story is just as devastating as its precursors, it’s safe to say that Unleashed should not be changing their approach whatsoever. A fantastic insight to one of death metal’s most modest and intriguing minds!
