Doomsday King by The Crown

THE CROWN [formerly known as Crown Of Thorns (1990-1997)] joined forces in 1990 as a primitive garage act. After a first, quick appearance on a local compilation CD in 1992 the band recorded their infamous “Forever Heaven Gone” demo in 1993. It only took them another demo, “Forget The Light”, until they finally stirred up some dust in the underground scene with their unique mix of brutal, intense and utterly evil death metal that comes with a hint of feeling and melody. Hence, various zines hailed them as the perfect mix of American and Scandinavian death metal.

Songs from both demos were compiled for their debut-album “The Burning” that was released in 1995 and is still praised as a milestone in death metal 15 years after its release. After a volatile ride that saw them changing their name from Crown Of Thorns to THE CROWN, releasing four consecutive albums, lots of touring, losing their singer, finding Tomas Lindberg (ex-At The Gates as a new frontman and breaking up with him again in 2002 finally saw them reunited with their original singer, Johan Lindstrand.

While rehearsing new material THE CROWN toured all over Europe. In May 2003 it was finally time to record a new album at Studio Fredman, Sweden. As it marked the 13th anniversary of the band and featured 13 songs the album was ominously entitled “Possessed 13”.

More relentless touring was taking its toll on the band until a painful decision was made. In March 2004 Drummer Janne Saarenpää announced via the band's website: "We give up. Today, the 7t of March 2004, we, the dudes of THE CROWN, have decided to call it quits." Thus, after 14 years and six albums THE CROWN went into hibernation…

Still, the individual members couldn’t ignore their passionate love for uncompromising death metal, so a little while after THE CROWN broke up Magnus Olsfeld (bass) started writing songs again. “After checking around for band members in order to record the new songs we found ourselves reunited as THE CROWN with a new singer”, recalls Marko Tervonen. “One evening we gathered in my living room and started writing down names of singers we liked. It didn’t take long until we figured that the singer of the old band Utumno kicked ass. I contacted Jonas and he was immediately into it. One audition later we decided that Jonas was the man. We were all determined to call the band Dobermann at first. Still, during the whole recording process it became obvious that this sounded like THE CROWN. Even Jonas’ voice is pretty close to Johan’s. At some point someone just said: ‘Fuck it, this sounds 100% THE CROWN - we should do this as THE CROWN’.” Jonas (formerly of the Swedish cult bands Utumno and God Macabre) finalizing THE CROWN’s line-up might have been somewhat of a coincidence, but something that just ‘had to’ happen, especially looking back many, many moons. “When THE CROWN was starting out, we used to listen to the Utumno ‘Light Of Day’-7" a lot and always told Johan that ‘this is how you need to sound’. So we actually got Johan’s ‘blueprint’ singing for us now.”

“Doomsday King” was recorded and mixed at Tervonen’s very own Studio-MT: “I’ve had the studio for about five years and I’ve recorded a lot of bands there as well as my own projects of course. I really enjoy producing bands – this can be anything from brutal death metal to folk rock like the band Fejd. I’m a total sound and gear geek!”

The luxury of calling a studio their own allowed THE CROWN to give the album as much time as it needed. “We took month long breaks from time to time - simply because we could afford doing it this way.” Let the music do the talking in order to decide if THE CROWN and “Doomsday King” are really just one of those random reunions…