My Headbangers please welcome from Helsingborg, Sweden the the Melodic Death Metal Band:
SOILWORK
“Övergivenheten”
“Dreams Of Nowhere”
My HeadBangers everyone knows Melodic Death Metal is one of my top 5 favs, and this band is from Sweden kicks major ass, what can I say I have a weakness for my northern bands. Let’s check out some bio on these guys:
Formed in late 1995 by Björn Strid and Peter Wichers, originally under the name Inferior Breed, the band changed their name in late 1996 to Soilwork (meaning “working from the ground up”). You know I love to hear why bands pick the names they do, love this.
Upon changing their band name in late 1996 to Soilwork, they began to make more melodic music. Soilwork began work on a demo entitled “In Dreams We Fall into the Eternal Lake”. Before the recording ever took place, bassist Carl-Gustav Döös left the group, leaving guitarist Peter Wichers to handle the bass tracks on the demo. In a chance encounter, Soilwork met Michael Amott of Arch Enemy, who owned a record store in Helsingborg, and gave him a copy of their demo. This ultimately led to the band signing with Listenable Records.
In 1998, Soilwork added keyboardist Carlos Holmberg and bassist Ola Flink. The band recorded and released their debut album “Steelbath Suicide” in May of that year. Soon after, guitarist Ludvig Svartz and drummer Jimmy Persson left, citing “different musical opinions”. Persson (now guitar and vocals in Faithful Darkness) was replaced by Henry Ranta, while Svartz was replaced by Peter Wichers’ uncle, Ola Frenning. The band toured throughout Europe in support of the album with bands such as Darkane, Naglfar, and Krisiun.
We all know that bands have changes in their lineup, especially when a band has been around a long time. Soilwork has so much history, there’s no way I could put all of it on the blog. I’m going to jump ahead a few years so here we go.
On July 15, 2016, it was announced that long time drummer Dirk Verbeuren had left the band to join Megadeth. On 19 August 2016, Soilwork released a compilation album, Death Resonance, which featured a number of B-sides and rarities from five of their previous albums in addition to two new songs.
On 11 January 2019, Soilwork released “Verkligheten”, their first album with new drummer Bastian Thusgaard, and their first album in nearly four years. On June 14, 2019, the band officially released the Underworld EP, which consists of bonus tracks originally previously only available on physical editions of the band’s recent “Verkligheten” album.
On December 4, 2020, Soilwork released an EP “A Whisp of the Atlantic”, which is composed of songs the band recorded and released from late 2019 to mid 2020, along with the ambitious 16-minute title-piece that opens the EP. Soilwork announced in early 2022 that bassist Rasmus Ehrnborn had joined the band officially and contributed to the band’s twelfth studio album, “Övergivenheten”, which was released on August 19, 2022. “Övergivenheten” can be translated to The Abandonment, which describes the overall album theme. To be surrounded by the thought of being abandoned or even abandoning others. The album deals with darker thoughts that have shaped the band itself and affected the development process of the album. The personal struggles align with social difficulties outside of the band. On September 14, 2022, it was announced that guitarist and songwriter David Andersson, who had been in the band for 10 years, died at the age of 47. Touring guitarist Simon Johansson who had been touring with the band since 2019 was made a permanent member on March 13, 2023.
Let’s meet the band:
Björn “Speed” Strid – Vocals (1995-present)
Sven Karlsson – Keyboards (2001-present)
Sylvain Coudret – Guitars (2008-present)
Bastian Thusgaard – Drums (2016-present)
Rasmus Ehrnborn – Bass (2022-present, touring 2019-2022)
Simon Johansson – Guitars (2023-present, touring 2019-2023)
My Thoughts:
Well my HeadBangers what do you think? This band has been around a long time and has been through many changes, as most bands do. The lineup they have right now, I love it, it all fits together. I just love the sound of their Melodic Death Metal and the video for Övergivenheten”, is so killer, I have watched it so many times. The sound of the music, the vocals, they are right on it but, it is their 12 Album so you know they are doing something right. Check the band out, they’re on FB, X formerly known as Twitter, and will always be Twitter to me. Listen to their music, really listen and you’ll hear what I hear, at least I hope you do.
That’s it for this week my Headbangers. Join me Wednesday for Hump Day and next Saturday for the weekly band. Until then don’t stand to close to the fire if you can’t handle the burn…
Please feel free to leave me a comment or question, I appreciate it HeadBangers: