Added: 23 November 2012

Detest (Swe)

Detest (Swe)
Band Info
Artist
Detest
Country
Sweden (

Skövde

)
Genre
Epic / Heavy / Power / Thrash Metal
Active
1988 - 1991
Media
Photos
Links
Official Website
Members
Micke Därth - Vocals, Guitar, Synthesizer (1988 - 1991) (Breakin' Wind, Coma, Hellrats, Nocturnal Alliance, Twilight / Beyond Twilight (Dnk))
Janne Johansson/Ström (1990-1991) - Guitar (Slug)
Jörgen Svahn - Bass (1988 - 1991) (Coma)
Niclas "Nicke" Landin - Drums, Synthesizer (1988, 1990 - 1991) (Twilight (Dnk))

Special Guests / Past Members
Ermin Mujnovic (1988-1989) - Guitars (Coma)
Yngve Frank (1988, 1989) - Guitars (Akt, Zanity, Mean Streak, Master Massive)
Tomas G:Son (1989) - Guitars
Jocke Därth (1989) - Guitars (Breakin' Wind, Nocturnal Alliance, Trace)
Henrik Johansson (1989) - Drums (Coma, Nocturnal Alliance)
Fredrik Sköld (1989) - Drums (Akt)
Kenneth Andersson (1990) - Chainsaw
Kim Mikkelsen (1991) - Bass (Twilight (Dnk))
Stefan Johansson - Keyboards, Backing Vocals
DETEST was formed in 1988 with members sprung out of band COMA. DETEST was mainly a garageband and only played live once in 1990 at Skövde Stadsteater, and between rehearsals went in and out of the studio to record the progress.

First line-up: Micke Därth (guitar/vocals), Ermin Mujnovic (leadguitar), Jörgen Svahn (bass), Niclas Landin (drums).

DETEST recorded a self-produced EP, 'Thundersteel' in 1990, co-produced by Stefan Johansson, and recorded at Studio Hönshuset. Before released the EP DETEST recorded four demos at Hönshuset, and one more demo after the EP. The EP 'Thundersteel' was printed at Audiodisc, and mastered at The Cutting Room, and only 300 copies saw the light of day. In latter years this EP has been highly asked for.

In the summer of 1991 Micke Därth met with Finn Zierler and TWILIGHT was born. Zierler had heard the EP from mutual friend Niclas Landin who put the two together. Soon after, the members of DETEST was included in the first TWILIGHT rehearsals going on recording TWILIGHT'S first demo 'The Edge'. TWILIGHT became BEYOND TWILIGHT in 1998 and the band released highly acclaimed albums.

In 2004 Micke Därth and former COMA-member Henrik Johansson started a new project under the name of NOCTURNAL ALLIANCE, and NA have released three self-produced albums. Much of their music has it's roots in what DETEST was all about with an added harmonic twist and some prog-elements. They have even re-recorded some tracks from the DETEST period, giving them new life and sound, carrying the legacy of DETEST into the 21th century with respect and pride. - Written by Micke Därt.

DETEST had tons of line-up changes with members switching places all the time. They only had a complete line-up for a couple of months, this made it hard for them to complete the demos and they never reached the public.

Early 1988:
DETEST are formed by Ermin Mujnovic, Jörgen Svahn, Niclas Landin and Micke Därth. Ermin leaves the band shortly after the recording of their 1st demo.

Middle 1988:
Recording of their 2nd demo. Niclas leaves the band shortly after.

Late 1988:
Ermin joins the line-up again for the recording of their 3rd demo then leaves again.

1989:
DETEST only consist of vocalist Micke Därth and Jörgen Svahn.

1990:
Niclas joins again together with the new member Janne Johansson. DETEST went into the studio for the recording session of their MLP 'Thundersteel'.

Late 1990:
Jörgen leaves the band and are replaced with Kim Mikkelsen.

1991:
Records their last demo. Later in the summer the remaining members of DETEST forms TWILIGHT (DNK) together with Jörgen Finn Zierler.

Micke Därth are today active in the band NOCTURNAL ALLIANCE (together with additional Detest/Twilight members).

Mickes Notes about some of the recorded songs:

Thundersteel
Basically, I had this one riff that kicks the start of the track, and me and my friend Tobias Widman sat one afternoon and threw lines at eachother about the Christian hordes slaughtering in God's name, the Christian hordes being unaware of that their crime was bigger than the pile of dead heathens left behind. I got the ideas for the rest of the track while the lyrics came down on paper, sort of wrote itself, while Tobias went deep into a comic magazine.

Crossfire '88 Version
One of my babies. Crossfire was written for the band COMA, and Henrik Johansson is the one who should be credited for the explicit drum-pattern on this one which we ofcourse kept for Niclas to do. I had just bought FATES WARNING's 'Awaken The Guardian', and loved the way they harmonized the rhythm guitars, so I made this one to do the same. I love the energy, not so much the off-pitch vocals. Strange idea to let the first double-verse be spoken, but hey, it sounded cool at the time.

Chains of Hell
When Janne Ström joined the band (his family name being Johansson back then), we got new energy to the band. Alongside his sensitive solos, I so much enjoyed playing rhythms with him, steady as a rock, and when we meet up today he still says we're the tightes guitarists ever. Well, maybe we were not, but humility have never been the rockstar's hallmark. He produced some very good riffs to the band however, and the main verse riffs of "Chains of Hell" is Ström power, the rest we worked out together. (Ström means power in Swedish, by the way. I can see why he changed his name).

One Too Many
Another track from the COMA days, I've always liked Irish folkmusic, and you can find a touch of that in this one, combined with some Swedish folkmusic I guess. Made into metal it sounds pretty cool. Björn Andersson from COMA is the daddy behind the "One... Many" sung by the choirs, brilliant idea if you ask me. As always it is just a dream to listen to Jörgen's sweeping bass-playing. I think he always played 250 more notes per track than the rest of us, but man, sometimes it was just to let him do it.

Steinhurst's Chainsaws
Steinhurst's Chainsaws. How the fuck do you come up with that title? Well, don't ask me. I just have the most weird humour, and this is ment to be humorous. Unforunately some of the sung parts are not too serious neither which makes me having trouble listening to it today, but the basic riff which me and Janne made one day in the rehearsal room is brutal. Love it. By the way, Kenneth had no business in the studio that day, but Stefan called him cause he knew he had a chainsaw, so Kenneth drove a couple of miles back and forth to the studio with his chainsaw, and the recording is actually a first take - which he was pretty proud of at the time. He managed to stop it exactly where he was supposed to, even though he'd never heard the song before. Great memory! Niclas did the screams and laughter at the end.

The Meaning of Pain
Fuck I like this riff. So much energy and so basic. The singing is a bit off here and there, but I like the rawness in the vocals. One of the longest guitar-solo-parts I've ever written too and Yngve kept bending and bending the strings hoping it would be over soon, he he. You can almost hear his guitar sighing of relief when it's over and my coca-cocla burp comes. Another bad joke on my part. "The Meaning of Pain" was re-arranged and re-recorded 2009 by NOCTURNAL ALLIANCE.

Under the Shadow of Love
Written at the same time as "The Meaning of Pain", and I like the energy my riffs had at the time. "Under the Shadow of Love" is probably one of my better lyrics also from these days. Not all blood-slaughtered-kill-rape-hell-satan-lyrics, which makes me sleep better nowadays. I'm not all evil

As the Game Commences
Janne made the main-riff, and we just jammed it during rehearsals. Didn't really turn out to be a full-blown track at any point, but we recorded it anyway to see if we would get a feel for it later. We never picked it up again to make something else with it, but it was the started of our only live-show we made back in 1990.

Zone of Nowhere
I only did vocals in COMA, and you can hear that on songs like "Crossfire", "One Too Many" and this one, "Zone of Nowhere" which are all from the COMA-days. I wrote the tracks to suite my voice and I like the melody on this one.

Cold Steel Tears Your Flesh
Another dark joke from the evil one lurking in my body. This is pure fucking-pubertal-idiotic-stupid-lyrics, and I even got the guys to do a football-choir at the end. I enjoy Jannes main-and chorus-riff a lot though. Sadly I didn't write a better melody - and lyrics - to it. "I gotta clean up this mess before someone trips on a kidney". How likely is that to happen?!

Ride
Oh my god, this almost didn't make this album because of the lyrics. I just had to have Lucifer mentioned in the lyrics... (shaking my head), so obviously the lyrics should say: "I met Lucifer". Fuckin' brilliant. How the hell did I come up with that Pulitzer-Nobel Prize-winner-line... Nice atmosphere, though, despite the lyrics I must say.

Die By My Hand
Jörgen wrote the main- and chorus-riffs for this one. Jörgen was a great fan of Canadian act TROUBLE and that sometimes could be heard in his doomish, often technical riffs. I wrote the verse-riff to get somewhere to sing properly, which was always a challenge to Jörgens distinctive style of writing. I love Jannes solo on this one, very melodic and wirth great feeling. Even I couldn't mess that up by joining in on the theme with second voice on lead guitar.

Angel of Mine
Not the first ballad I wrote, but this one seems to be the first ballad worth mentioning. I think it's sweet and Stefan's keyboard playing adds nice harmonies to it. I borrowed a 12-string acoustic guitar for the choruses and it haunts me today I didn't buy it. Wonderful guitar (Cort, of course).

Armageddon
This one is from our first demo. We were in all seriousness not prepared enough to enter the studio this time, we hadn't really rehearsed the tracks so much, but this one stands the tests of times. Not least because of Ermin's riff that kicks off the track.

The Shambles of Styx
Great track which NOCTURNAL ALLIANCE have polished up and made some new parts to and re-recorded, but we've carefully kept the spirit of this version in the 2012 version. Even TWILIGHT picked up this track in a very different version ("The River Styx") on the 'Eye For An Eye' album, where I re-wrote it into a power-ballad, keeping just a few parts. Niclas had the basic idea for the beginning of the solopart. The last track we ever recorded with DETEST.

Shadow of a Man
Sorry 'bout the programmed drums from the demo 'Death Dance', but in truth we had no other option in '89. The band had boiled down to myself and the bassplayer Jörgen, and we still wrote a lot of music, so to get a feel of the material we decided to spli the cost between us to record the stuff. This track however was not written in '89, rather back in '86 for the band HELLRATS, which was my first band. On this demo we again invited Yngve Frank to produce some of the solos for us, however this time I managed all the rhythm guitars. Along with Yngve we invited Tomas G:son - G:son being a well renowned songwrited for the Swedish pop scene and for the Eurovision Song Contest these days - and my brother and the latter two played the solos on "Shadow of a Man". Notice my brothers' major-note at the end of his solo. Weird.

Fire in You
A nice kick in the butt - real intelligent lyrics as always - and you just gotta love the way Jörgen slaps the bass in this one. One of Jörgen's examples of more straight writing. Fun to play.

Do or Die
Pretty basic rock-song with a solid melody. Decent work. Maybe we didn't really work it through wit hall the breaks, but I can remember the feel I was loking for and you can't kick someone's teeth in for trying.

Death Dance
Tomas G:son's solowork on this track fills up the holes for lack of the rest on this track. Not a track I'm particularly fond of myself, but I think it has a place on this anthology mainly because of G:son's contributions. The lyrics... Oh, my god, seems like I've looked for words to rhyme on die or something. Very important notes for the afterworld. And if you are faster than the tide, then you're really fast... Right?

Final Hour
Doomish track from Jörgen. Most of his material sounded like this, many flips and turns between different parts. It was quite a challenge to find a melody on his material, I remember. However, this track is one of his absolute best one's and I really wanted to make it justice and worked pretty hard to find a decent melody on top of his riffs. I think I did ok, and for once not only pubertal death-stuff everywhere in the lyrics. Good work, Jörgen. This is a re-recording (we polished it up a bit) from the 'Killer on Halloween' demo, a demo we had just too little studiotime left during mixing, so that production really sucks. That's why no tracks is represented from that demo on this Anthology, but some of the tracks that appeared on it is from latter recordings. This is one of them.

Killer On Halloween
One of my favorite tracks from this period of DETEST. We have re-written it for NOCTURNAL ALLIANCE ('6th Sense'), but in this '89 version it's presented as it was originally written. I like the atmosphere.

LDD
Jannes track which I wrote the solo-part for. Sad to say I wrote the lyrics as well. I must have been pretty angry in those days, or something. Ah, what the hell, a decent track anyway.

Wasteland
This track was first though-of to appear on the EP 'Thundersteel', but the length of it eventually put it aside. You mich call it an odyssey in riffs, very much inspired by METALLICA's 'And Justice For All' album, or you mich just call it DETEST.

Crossfire '90 Version
Re-recorded for the purpose to maybe be part of the EP 'Thundersteel'. That didn't happen, but I like this version as well as the more energetic '88 Version because my vocals are better on this one. And Niclas is a little bit tighter on the drums.

The Avenger
Since we first recorded the track on the first demo 'Masterpiece', I worked a little bit on it every now and then and as we went into the studio for 'Thundersteel' I had a third version finished. The original title being "The Masterpiece Part II: The Avenger". So we recorded it for a shot at a place on the EP. Recorded for the third time since it also appeared on the demo 'Death Dance'.

About to Break
Don't know what this is, actually. It is not anything like the other thrash-tracks we wrote and recorded with DETEST, and to me it seems a mystery that I've written it because it is so far from the other stuff. For that reasion alone it's kind of fun to let it be a part of this anthology. I think it has something to do with Niclas played so much MSG, TALISMAN and Yngwie Malmsteen back at this place... It feels a bit soft to be a real DETEST-killer.

Betrayed
Niclas had this couple of riffs (1st and 2nd on the track) he wanted me and the band to do something with. At the time of recording "Thundersteel" we had not really made any finished track out of it, but recorded it anyway for future purposes. I think I remember the lyrics was written in the studio during recording. You can tell it's not a finished track yet, and Niclas' riffs later appeared on recordings made by TWILIGHT. A small tribute to ACCEPT also appears for some reason...

Bedlam
"Bedlam" was written as me and Jörgen was looking for new bandmembers. For a while during 1989 we practiced with drummer Fredrik Sköld, and I tossed this riff at him to play to when we were checking eachother out, and this track came out of that riff. Much of what Fredrik put to the track drumwise was picked up by Niclas for the final version even though Fredrik never actually joined DETEST.
Who Was Steinhurst?
Micke: I haven't got a clue. I just came up with the idea to write about a chainsaw-murderer and Steinhurst's Chainsaws was actually the shop where the killer got his tool. I think the name Steinhurst might have appeared quite intuitive to the phrase "stainless steel". When I write lyrics I don't always write from A to B, sometimes I find the chorus first, verse second or whatever, and sometimes a single line comes along where I just try to put in where it fits, or write my way around it. So it remains a mystery, as well as the killer's name.

How did the band's music end up being so diverse?
Micke: Why not? Music is everything and anything in between! I can't put myself at a piano, with a guitar, behind the drums and decide beforehand what k-i-n-d of music I want to write. Music is based on emotions, and if it doesn't, it simply won't stand the test of time. It amazes me that people still think of music as something you have to arrange somehow before digesting. To hell with that, mix a tape with the music you like and don't think about what particular genre it is, if it stirs your emotions and talks to you it won't matter if it is a jazz-track, blues-track, ballad or a thrash metal track, you will make it your own genre instead. I particularyly like to listen to a wide range of music and find inspiration in almost any named genre, and I think no one should limit themselves while listening to music, nor expect that a single band only exists becouse of one genre, or one style. There are exceptions, of course, but those bands don't stir my emotions. Needless to say, perhaps, but my absolute favorites are FATES WARNING and everything Jim Matheos has ever written alongside OPETH. These bands are unpredictable, and I wouldn't put DESTEST even near their quality or standars, but that's what I'm talking about. They're searching to make their music stir your emotions, and their own emotions while playing, and that is something to hail, not to question, I think.

Who were your inspirations, what kind of band you were trying to be, have you played live and if yes with whom, how did you come up with Thundersteel cover artwork.. the whole lot really.
Micke: Well, we all really enjoyed METALLICA, ANTHRAX, MEGADETH, and the thrash-scene that emerged in the early 80's, but there was a local band called ZANITY which inspired us a lot as well. One of the guitarists in that band was Yngve Frank, by the way, who we had as a guest on two of our demo's. The other guitarist was Janne Strandh, whom I later worked with in TWILIGHT. Then there were inspirations from all kinds of bands. Jörgen liked TROUBLE a lot, and CANDLEMASS. I listened, and still listen a lot to MANOWAR because of their sense of making the easy riffs sound great and bombastic (a big influence in the writing of the track "Thundersteel"), and on top of that finding that warm and still heavy melodic line over it. It is so difficult, and they do it in style to this day. I can't really speak of Niclas, what he was inspired by, but drummers are unpredictable in that sense. But he enjoyed melodic metal a lot.

I'd like to know if they had a story figured out for the cover art, what that thing was actually doing, what was at the bottom of that mountain, what other ideas did they have for the cover, what next?
Micke: I asked my friend, Ola Johansson, to draw the cover for us. I asked him to picture an ancient warrior who had just been through the crusades, in his dying hour, sitting with two options on top of a mountain. Go back down the stairs to hell, or to wait for some divinity picking him up. Sort of having climbed halfway the stairway to heaven. I didn't give him much input, really, and he just drew of that he knew and got inspired by. So the drawing is inspired by the lyrics of "Thundersteel". No other ideas were though of for the cover.

Why only 300 copies of the MLP?
Micke: We had no money for more...

I would really like to know if it was their intention to switch their style from song to song (regarding th EP): at first an epic tune, then a little thrashing, afterwards a bit doomy etc. Or did this happen just by accident?
Micke: We didn't think of our tracks as it was any prticular style or genre. We were playing DETEST-tracks. The order was discussed, and I think we all agreed on the final choice of tracks that became the EP. No intention, but no accident either.

Did DETEST get any media coverage anywhere?
Micke: Some. When we released the album a local newspaper did a think with us, but we didn't really seek media coverage. We worked hard on getting a set of tracks together, so we could start working on live gigs. We did however only get to play live once with DETEST, because Finn Zierler and TWILIGHT came in between while DETEST was resting after the last demo in '91.

Did Micke form (along with Nclas) TWILIGHT after the split of DETEST or did TWILIGHT evolved from DETEST?
Micke: No, TWILIGHT was Finn Zierler's dream and ambition, and when we met up in '81 it was on advice from Niclas. Niclas who then was living in Gothenburg played melodic metal with a band there, and one of the members - Niels Daugaard - was a friend with Finn Zierler. So when Finn joined Niels on a trip to Gothenburg where Finn hoped to find musicians for his TWILIGHT-project, Niclas started talking about DETEST, playing the EP to him, and Finn got interested. The day after he was on a train to Skövde - where I live - and we really clicked from day one. A month later we had written and recorded four tracks in Denmark in Niels studio, one of the mwas "Far Beyound the Edge of Sanity". So the answer to the question is, Finn formed the idea of TWILIGHT and I helped him bringing it to life. Janne, Niclas, and Jörgen dropped out before we went into writing-sessions for the demo 'The Edge'.

Was the 'Thundersteel' MLP named in homage of the same-titled album by the band RIOT? Did DETEST even know of the RIOT album?
Micke: I am a big fan of Mark Reale (R.I.P.), and subconsciously it might have palyed a part that I had the 'Thundersteel' album along with two other albums with RIOT. Who Knows.

Andy why DETEST?
Micke: Slayer was taken.
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