Without Grief
Only Darkness Lies Ahead

24.04.2015

This band reaches a long way back, and its name now belongs to history. At the same time, they are one of the most striking representatives of the second wave of Swedish melodic death metal. Unfortunately, over their short period of existence, Without Grief only recorded a couple of albums, one coming out two years after the other. But their musical qualities outreach enormously the minor success the band had during its lifetime. Even now, nearly 20 years after the release of their debut album “Deflower”, Without Grief sounds like a revelation if compared to what is presented as melodic death metal at the moment. We reached out to singer Jonas Granvik to ask him a few questions about this long gone, but not forgotten band.

How are you, Jonas, what are you doing? Are you interested in what is happening on the metal scene?

Hi Magomed! I’m watching a Swedish TV-show about photography. The metal scene in Sweden is good as always. But maybe there are not as many hot newcomers. The ones like Morbus Chron and Tribulation have been around for quite some time now. But I’m sure it’s just me being old and grey.

When and how were Without Grief established? Who were the founders?

I think it was drummer Patrick Johansson and the both guitarists Tobias Ols and Nicklas Lindh who started the band in 1995. Me, Tobias and Nicklas had a gangsta rap metal band called Bodybag the year before and I was asked to provide vocals for this new band as well. I came up with some different band names, and Without Grief won over Shadow Zone cause Without Grief sounded like an At The Gates title, and Shadow Zone sounded like a bad computer game.

Were there any musicians/bands that inspired you most when you started?

We were very influenced by band like In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and that kind of Swedish melodic death metal bands. Also, another big influence was Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy was located just one-hour drive from Falun where we lived (I moved to Stockholm 10 years ago). Hypocrisy mixes heaviness with melodies in the most amazing way.
In 1995 me and guitarist Nicklas saw an ad in the local paper. Somebody sold a 16 track tape recorder. We called the guy at once and drove south. When we came to the location, Pärlby in Dalarna, Peter Tägtgren from Hypocrisy welcomed us. He was the one selling the tape recorder he had been using in his Abyss Studio. I got so nervous I said, ”Hi Peter! I really like Hypocrisy”. We went down in the studio, which was located in an old military safety room. Lots of beer cans everywhere. We bought the 16 channel tape recorder for 13,000 SEK (1,500 euro), which had recorded classics like the Hypocrisy albums and Naglfar’s “Vittra”. We got a bunch of 16 channel tapes with Abyss recordings and we recorded over all of it. Some stuff we even used as background in our own songs. We had a pop band called Pipe and we used a melody from the tapes that I think was from Death Organ.
I forgot to mention Edge Of Sanity. It was a dream come true when Dan Swanö invited me to sing on “Crimson II”. Unfortunately I had lost my technique so my throat went sour rather quick, and I did not do much vocals in the end.

What metal band from Sweden is the best in your opinion?

Entombed or Dismember.

In the book “Swedish Death Metal” by Daniel Ekeroth your discography includes, in addition to the "Forever Closed" demo, a promo demo dated 1996. What songs did it contain? How many copies were produced and to what labels did you send it?

I think the promo has songs like “Deflower” and “The Failure’s Crown” (they were both later included in the debut album – ed.) and was made in maybe 20 copies. It was sent to labels like Nuclear Blast, Metal Blade, Century Media, Regain, Roadrunner, No Fashion, Listenable, Season Of Mist, Mighty Music, Serious Entertainment and Pulverised.

Do you have any unreleased stuff left after Without Grief?

One song that Nicklas and Tobbe did that really sucked never got recorded with vocals. So it never got a title. They had worked with it all day in the studio and me and a friend dropped by and listened to it. It was really hard to tell them the song sucked when they had put so much energy and time into it. We had a bit of a crisis there. I still have it on tape and it still sucks. We also have some live stuff that never has been released. I’m planning on releasing both our albums, “Deflower” (1997) and “Absorbing The Ahses” (1999), on vinyl. Maybe some live stuff will be added as a bonus.

Both Without Grief albums are decorated with skulls and bones. Is there something behind it, is this subject close to you somehow, or is it just accidental?

The artist is P Grön, who made lots of album covers for bands like Therion, Hypocrisy and Dimmu Borgir. He lived just a 20-minute-drive from where we lived in Falun, so we went to his place. He talked for two hours and showed us some bones he had collected on his walks in the forest. It was from foxes and ferrets and animals like that. He used that stuff for the album covers.

Both albums were recorded in Denmark by Jacob Hansen, even though there are enough studios and producers in your home country. What was the reason?

We had some other offers from labels like Pulverised, but they demanded us to record in Sunlight. And we thought Sunlight had turned sour. Jacob showed us some really great productions he had done, like Mercenary’s debut album “First Breath”. Also, Jacob was in the classic thrash metal band Invocator, so he had an advantage there. We were tired of the Swedish sound like Abyss, Sunlight, Unisound and Fredman. We wanted to try something else. Jacob nowadays is famous for his work with Volbeat. He was a great producer and I’m very happy with the sound he gave the two albums. He also ran the label we where on, Serious Entertainment. But we called it Unserious Entertainment. Not much happened. Jacob seemed more interested in being a producer. And in Sweden the label had an unpaid debt to the biggest metal magazine Close-Up, so they did not even reviewed our second album. Things went downhill from there. (Jacob Hansen's label also released albums by Mercenary, Gorguts, Panzerchrist, Illdisposed and Pyrexia – ed.).

And why did you choose Serious Entertainment, first of all? Did they make the best offer, or were there any other reasons?

We chose Serious Entertainment, cause Jacob Hansen knew of a really good bakery. (When we asked for clarification, Jonas explained that he has the tradition of making one bad joke in each of his interviews. On our case, that was it - ed.)

"Deflower" contains a composition by Russian composer and virtuoso pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff, "Vocalise". How did it end up on the album?

We met two young guys who could play that song. We asked if they could play it on our album. They said yes and did it very well. (David Gammelgard (cello) and Johan Andreasson (piano) were asked to play something short for the outro, and they chose Rachmaninoff. The band liked the result, and it was included in the album. The guys were 15 and 14 at the time of recording – ed.)

What was the reason why bassist Ola Berg and guitarist Nicklas Lindh left the band after the first album?

Ola left cause he was not as fanatic as the rest of us, contributing to the band. Nicklas was fired on a party where me and Tobbe where very drunk. We had had some trouble in the band and we thought the best thing to do was to fire Nicklas and nobody had the guts to do it sober, so it had to be dirty. Nicklas was my best friend and we hung out every day, so to do it that way was not good at all.

The Japanese edition of the second album carries a cover version of Motorhead’s "Iron Fist". Was it the only option, or did you consider any alternatives? Did you perform any other covers?

We also did “Season In The Abyss” by Slayer and “I Wanna Be Somebody” by WASP, but we never recorded those in a studio.

How often did Without Grief play live? Did the band have any tours or gigs abroad? What bands did you play with, what were the most memorable concerts?

We did only one concert outside of Sweden. It was in Denmark in 1999. It was some festival sponsored by Pepsi and everything looked really professional on paper. When we arrived the guarding dogs where 3 months old (very cute) puppies and everything was a mess. But we got beer and enjoyed the festival although there were not many people there. At night we got the message we could not play cause some neighbors had complained. We got a bit pissed off since the drive was 15 hours or so, and we got to play on a very small stage in front of 20 people in the middle of the night.

Each of your albums has a different sound. On “Absorbing The Ashes” it is more powerful and brutal, with elements of groove metal, while “Deflower” is more conventional for melodic death. What caused these changes?

After ”Deflower” we felt that the melodic death metal scene had grown so much it started to get boring. We got back to our roots and did more straight to the point songs. Myself, I was very much into old school death metal at this time. Me and guitarist Tobbe even had an old school death metal project with Johan Jansson (Interment, Uncanny, ex-Centinex, Hatred and 1,000 more bands) called Eternal Blasphemy. We only did a rehearsal demo, I think this was 1998. Well, we had this old school death metal thinking while we did album number two, but we also still enjoyed the melodic stuff so it became a good mix.

What can you say about the lyrical content of your songs?

I wrote about my feelings towards religion and also my dark thoughts upon the world and the human race.

What happened to Without Grief after the second album, and when/why did the band break up?

I really don’t know… The drummer Patrick started to play with Stormwind from Stockholm and then he joined Yngwie Malmsteen with whom he played for 15 years or so. Patrick just quit playing with Yngwie and I don’t think that it has been official yet, so there you get some news. I was more into my fanzine Metalwire, and Without Grief just faded away. In 2005 I put together a band with me and Patrick on drums. We did a demo as Dead End World. Here’s one of the songs.

What were the brightest moments in the history of Without Grief?

It’s the two albums we did. And I also remember the friendship we had in the band. Especially the first two years when we did the demo “Forever Closed” and the debut album “Deflower”. We traveled down to the south of Denmark in an old car and slept on floors just to record our album. When we where approaching the studio we phoned Jacob the producer, and the phone call was like this:
Patrick: “Hello, we are here – a big red car is following us!” (a fire truck)
Jacob: “…okey, you can’t smoke pot inside.”

Thank you for this interview, Jonas! What are your final words to round it up?

Thanks for showing interest in Without Grief after so many years. It feels great that our music is not forgotten.

Without Grief on MySpace: https://myspace.com/withoutgrief

Special thanks to Vitaly Savisko (GS Productions) for arranging this interview

Magomed Gadzhiev
March 27, 2015
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