UNLEASHED – Interview with Bassist and Vocalist Johnny Hedlund

UNLEASHED is credited as one of the inventors of the Swedish death metal sound. Along with DISMEMBER, ENTOMBED and GRAVE, UNLEASHED was part of the first generation of death metal bands from Stockholm, Sweden. Although UNLEASHED shares characteristics with the other three, they definitely have a separate, musical personality.

UNLEASHED was one of, if not the first death metal band to incorporate Viking themes into their lyrics. At the helm sounding the arrival of Ragnarok is Johnny Hedlund. Hedlund projects his voice at a higher pitch than the other above-mentioned bands, and lets loose with an unmistakable, ferocious scream to punctuate key words. Also, UNLEASHED structures their songs in an old school heavy metal manner, a technique lost among many extremes acts of today.

Before UNLEASHED, Hedlund pounded out rhythms on his bass for NIHILIST. Hedlund split with NIHILIST to form UNLEASHED, while the rest of the members formed ENTOMBED. After a series of demos and the “And the Laughter Has Died…” EP, UNLEASHED released their first full-length album, “Where No Life Dwells.” The said album is still one of the all-time classic death metal albums. The next two albums, “Shadows in the Deep” and “Across the Open Sea” continued the same sanguinary themes, catchy riffing, roaring vocals and fist-pumping anthems. “Victory” and “Warrior” were a dark period in the band, showing little of the inspiration of the first three albums.

“Hell’s Unleashed,” their next release, contained a title that indicated a triumphant return to form. “Sworn Allegiance” and “Midvinterblot” showed the group once again following the voice of Odin, using the full force of Mjollner to hammer away all naysayers. “Hammer Battalion” is the next audio battle to confront the global legions of metal warriors in early June. Bassist and war general, Johnny Hedlund spoke with Metal Centre about this tremendous release.

How do you feel about your new album, “Hammer Battalion?”

I feel absolutely great! We spent…I don’t know how many weeks, but we were in the studio January and February of this year. Having our own studio makes it pretty simple; we don’t have to book any time. We can use our own schedule. It has been amazing! We have had a relaxed recording ever since we’ve gotten our own studio, which has been really helpful. We don’t have stress with anything. We don’t have to book the studio, which is really good. I have to say that I’m very happy. We have nothing that we feel we would like to redo, so that is the perfect feeling.

The early UNLEASHED albums such as “Across the Open Sea” and “Where No Life Dwells” were recorded in the famous Sunlight Studios.

We went to Germany in the early years. We never went to Sunlight, actually. Some people think we did, but we never did. All the bands from Sweden did except for UNLEASHED. It is really strange, I’ve had that question many times, but because everyone went there, we never did. In my opinion, some of the bands had a little too much similar sounding guitars. There is nothing wrong with that because they sounded good, but we just didn’t want to be trapped with them, so we went to Germany in the early nineties. We recorded at EMI studios in Germany in the later part of the nineties.

That is what I get for assuming you guys recorded there. You have the Stockholm sound, so I just figured you had recorded there.

I know a lot of people who thought that because there were so many bands that went through that studio. There is really no question if the bands did or not, everybody did except for UNLEASHED. Because of that, we kind of got looped with those bands but that’s fine.

How does your sound on your new album compare to your older stuff?

Obviously, we don’t really change by the wind, but there is a huge difference. We would be crazy if there wasn’t. We are talking about eighteen or nineteen years of recording and producing music. It is fair to say we have stuck to our roots as far as sound and style goes, but we have developed in a way that is inevitable: the engineer has improved, the producer has improved, and the musicians have hopefully improved along the years [laughs]. We have done so, but we haven’t done any craziness like stepping over to another style. We have kept to our roots as much as possible with the production, the studio work and the sound, but we have always tried to develop. If we didn’t, we would still be back in 1991 and that would be a bit strange. I think we have done the right thing. We have tried to develop and now that we have our own studio, things are running a lot smoother. Obviously, we have more time to try out things. If you want to try a different kind of guitar sound, you can actually demand from the producer a brutal guitar sound but you want it to be clear. If you have no time to try that out, you will probably have to accept whatever comes out of the damn guitar [laughs], which was pretty much the case in the early nineties. You had eight days, and then you are out of there. You can try a million times in the practice room, but it’s not going to sound the same in the studio. We thought getting our own studio at the end of the nineties was the right thing to do, and that is where we are at now.

What is the name of your studio?

Chrome Studios. It’s actually Frederick’s studio, even though I’m paying some of it [laughs]. Frederick, our guitar player, wanted to build a studio at the end of the nineties, and we thought that was fine. We wanted to find a way to finance that. Today, he is working more and more as a producer for other bands, too. Obviously, his main priority is UNLEASHED. That was his goal, so we started doing that around the year 2000. We were pretty much done with that after two years, and then we developed, got better equipment to keep up with things. We are very, very fortunate to have our own studio.

Is Frederick the same person that played in TIERRA FIRMA?

He was actually the only member switch we have had since the first album. We had more switches in the demo days. Ever since 1991, since the first album, he is the only one we have had to replace. The TIERRA FIRMA Frederick left the band in 1996, I think. The new Frederick…

Frederick number two?

Some people call him “The New Frederick,” even though he has been with us since 1996. Even our fucking management says, “Oh, I’m talking about new Frederick.” I don’t know if he is that new anymore but that is fine, though. They actually look a little bit the same, too. They have the same style of hair, although the older Frederick is bald today. He played guitar on the first four albums. From then on, the new Frederick was in the band. We don’t call him the new Frederick, though. (Jokingly says) you don’t want to know what we call him.

The style of “Hammer Battalion” seems more geared towards thrash. Would you say this album is thrashier than some of your albums or do you think it has a good balance?

I don’t really look upon it that way. To me, it’s always been Swedish death metal. But yeah, there are riffs that sound somewhat thrashy. Some riffs sound a little bit black metal than death metal. I get to hear this all the time. It’s inevitable: we all grew up in the heavy metal/thrash metal era before death metal was born. Because of that, it is inevitable to have some thrashy riffs. When the black metal movement came, I really enjoyed some of those bands, so I became influenced by black metal. I don’t see a huge difference, anyway, between both styles. If you go chugging around on the guitar like an old SLAYER or METALLICA record, someone is going to say there is some thrash in there. To me, if the riff is more horror-like than thrash metal, I will call it death metal. I’m fine with that, though, I like all those styles.

The Gothenburg style seems to get all the credit for adding the thrashy elements to death metal, but listening to old UNLEASHED and albums like “Massive Killing Capacity” by DISMEMBER, I started hearing that thrash sound around the middle nineties, before it broke out with the Gothenburg sound. For me, when I think of thrashy death metal bands, I think of bands like yours and DISMEMBER.

Yeah, and it’s not really strange. The guys from DISMEMBER are people that I grew up with back in the eighties going to parties. Aside from the death metal demos at the time on cassette, the bigger bands you could listen to on LP were thrash metal bands. That was the shit! That was what gathered people to metal shows, so we come from the same place.

The riffing style you have is different than METALLICA or MEGADETH. Does it derive from Germanic bands like KREATOR and DESTRUCTION?

I’m not sure. I think it’s hard to point out which bands. In order to somehow collect a book of influences from the thrash metal scene, I would have to do a name dropping of twenty or thirty bands, not just from Europe. I was listening to SLAYER, TESTAMENT and bands like that, and ones like you said. There are just so many bands, it would be sad to leave some out. It would be the same with death metal bands in the start. Everything you listen to can be an influence, so it’s really hard to figure out where things come from. I would easily say, after doing this for twenty years, you have to be careful about being too influenced because you don’t want to copy anybody. The riff that we create really keeps with Swedish death metal sound, so we don’t walk to far away from that, although there will always be influences.

Tracks like the title track feature crowd-sing-along choruses. This technique harkens back bands like MANOWAR. Were you going for a traditional metal approach in your lyric writing?

It depends on if you mean the structures of the content of the lyrics. Again, I would say it is inevitable if you look at how UNLEASHED has done music and lyrics and the actual structure of a song for all those years. When I started listening to music, and Frederick—who creates most of the music today—we were into the heavy and thrash metal movement. I personally have a lot of punk rock influences, the hardcore punk that was quite popular in Sweden at the time, so that was an influence. VENOM was a huge influence, as was BLACK SABBATH and SLAYER. Heavy metal bands are probably the biggest influence, but only for the structures because, like you said, we have a lot of sing-along-type choruses. That is with a purpose; that is the kind of music I like listening to. I’m going to the Sweden Rock Festival in two or three weeks, and I’m not going to even play. It is the one festival of the year that I go to by myself that I don’t play. I’m going to be there drunk as hell, singing along to JUDAS PRIEST choruses. It’s just something we have grown up with. I realize if you look at the death metal industry, most of the bands have a riff collection and don’t have classic structures like MOTORHEAD, MANOWAR, JUDAS PRIEST or whoever you want to refer to. There are a lot of technical bands in the death metal business. I like them too; it’s just a different way of writing a song. That’s the story to why we do this; these are the kinds of structures that we personally like.

Do you write them more for yourself or for crowd participation? Those songs seems like they would be great live because everybody would be getting into them.

Let me put it this way, every tour that we have done in the last nineteen years has been like that. I was in the U.S. February of 2007, and we had sing-along crowds in every damn town! It’s not just older kids being heavy metal influenced; it’s also the younger ones. It’s not just me liking it; I think people generally like memorable songs. There are people that like more technical stuff, as well. We have NILE and MORBID ANGEL, great bands that play more technical. It’s a two-sided coin, I guess. This is what we have done for so many years and it’s my preference. If I were on a deserted island and could bring only ten records, I would bring the ones that have the best choruses. Our live show is really the one that I would like to go and see myself. It’s more of an interaction between us and the kids that go to the show, which is great. I would probably fall asleep if that didn’t happen.

I saw you play in 1993 or 1994 at the Capital in Flint, Michigan. I had never heard you, but I was impressed. Do you still drink out of the beer horn and give it to people in the crowd?

Oh yes, I still have the same horn, the very same one. I’ve had it since 1991. I got it from my father in early 1991 and brought it to the first American and European tour. That is the same horn that I drink from today. I’m scared, I don’t want to have it broke. I used to give it out to the crowd, but I don’t do that anymore. I do throw the content out after I’ve been drinking from it. It’s a traditional, of course.

You pour beer in their mouths, right?

Yes, or over anybody that is brave enough to get close to me. There is a difference, though, with the live show of way back then and now. From what I heard from people today, it is a little more intense today, and it’s a little more, what we spoke about earlier, a little more sing-along since 1993. Things have developed. If you haven’t seen us since then, hopefully we won’t make you disappointed this time around.

Who did you tour with in 2007?

We toured in February 2007 with KRISIUN and BELEPHEGOR supporting. This time we go out with OBITUARY, so they set the agenda for where to play. We are looking forward to that tour. We talk about it in the practice room, literally every week. When we went over to the U.S. in February of last year, we said we wanted to make two tours for that album, but it wasn’t really the time. So when OBITUARY called us up and asked if we wanted to go along we said, Fuck yeah, anytime!” It’s gonna be great, I’m sure.

“Hammer Battalion” is your ninth studio album. What keeps you going? Do you ever find your creativity stifled because you have written so many songs?

It’s really a question of what drives you in the morning when the clock rings. This is the peak of my life. I have been a death metal musician for as long as I can recall. This is it! I can’t think of anything better to do. I just quit my job as a finance director, which I’ve had for a good number of years. I have never been so well paid in my life, but that doesn’t make my day. It’s really nice with the pay check and all, but I can’t get up in the morning, look myself in the mirror and say I’m not death metal anymore. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and every day I get up in the morning and ask if there is something I can do for the band today. Maybe, I can work on some of the lyrics for the next album, grab a guitar and play a new song. Is there a new festival we can play? What is happening with our mail on the MySpace page. It is just an amazing thing to do! It is an amazing family. Being in a band, you have friends from all over the world. It’s fantastic! I can talk with any of the other friends that I have that do not do anything in the music business. They have friends at work, but when they leave that job, it’s done. They have to start from scratch again. I see the same people, like we just talked about, I see the same people today, when I go on a tour, as I did in ’93. It’s the largest family in the world. I wouldn’t want to do anything else. We have a lot to do, still. I don’t see myself stopping and doing something different for a very, very long time.

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