What's up everyone? I'm Ola Englund
And today I'm talking about the bands who changed my life
and the bands that shaped me into the person I am today
For people who follow me some of you know that I went sorta quick from listening to grunge to metal
But this video is going to be a little bit more extensive
And I'm going to list the bands that somewhat changed the course of my music-listening life.
So I'm gonna start off with the band Twisted Sister
And this might seem like a totally random thing, but...
when I was about 5 to 6 years old I listened to We're Not Gonna Take It like all the time
This is the first song, I have actually some sort of a memory listening to it back in that time
And it was just so catchy.
I mean, I guess it was like the perfect song for a five-year-old
That's actually probably the perfect description really
Twisted Sister, metal for kids... Who's that?
Anyway, I enjoy them a lot
And they also kind of brings me to the next band I listened to
which was Aerosmith
Do you see a pattern here?
Another sort of easy-listening heavy metal/rock band
To be quite honest, I don't think I had a genuine interest for music when I was young
It didn't really come to me until I was 13 years old
And both Aerosmith and Twisted Sister was before that time, so...
It was just really about easy listening I guess
They had a bunch of really cool albums
But I think my actual first CD that I ever owned was Get a Grip
And that came out when I was 13 years old, it had songs like Eat the Rich, Living on the Edge
Which has a really kick-ass video by the way
Anyway, around this time when I was 12, I started to go to rock shows
Aerosmith being the first one and...
You know, I was just getting more and more into music at that time.
So by then...
When I was like in fifth or sixth grade
The other guys in my school started to learn guitar to impress on the girls in the class
So the natural thing would be that I would also pick up the guitar and I also started skateboarding
And one of my childhood friends started growing long hair and showed me a band called Nirvana
And I remember picking up Nevermind on a sale and boom
This was where my interest for music just exploded somehow.
I became an avid fan of Nirvana
And I just listened to everything over and over
I basically crushed those albums just by listening to them over and over
I borrowed my older brothers' electric guitar and started to try and learn guitar at that time.
And this was around 1994 and just exactly when Kurt passed away
And that just sparked my interest a lot more
I started to get a hold of tab books and I tried learning Nirvana songs on guitar
I found more bands, you know like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Tad, Melvins and such
And just got more and more interested in music in general
For me, that was an amazing time. I started going to more live shows...
and scourged the live scene in Stockholm and I remember...
The absolute most epic show I went to was sort of like a mini festival in 1995.
It was a show with Soundgarden headlining...
White Zombie, Mudhoney, Pennywise, Blind Melon, Kyuss, Reef...
What an excellent lineup
It was such an incredible show and for a fourteen-year-old Ola...
You can imagine it being super insane
It really blew my mind that music could be so much more when you experienced it live
You know, I just went to shows for the sake of going to shows
And I even went to shows with bands I didn't even like that much.
I went to Green Day, I went to REM
Just to enjoy the live experience
But yeah, Nirvana was the key that would open my love for music that I have today
I mean, I went out every Saturday browsing for CDs and just bought a shit ton of music
Basically going into the store like checking out the album cover like 'Oh, this looks like a cool album'
And I bought it, that's how it worked
My dad, who worked in the music industry at the time, scored a Fender Mustang for a really good price
And that was the first guitar that I owned
At that time I started middle school
And I found a new drummer friend who moved in from another town and we started a band together
He was really into Swedish punk bands like De Lyckliga Kompisarna, Strebers, Dia Psalma
So I started listening to that and then we started to play together in a band playing those songs
And even though we listened to that, you know, Swedish punk a lot
He also got me into a board game called Warhammer 40k
which is like, you paint your own armies and you play against other people, basically like a strategy game.
And that became a hobby of mine. So, at the time I was skateboarding, playing guitar, playing Warhammer...
Now why am I telling you this?
Well, one Saturday when I was out browsing CDs
I found an album by a band called Bolt Thrower
which is a straight-up reference to Warhammer 40k, the board game I was playing at the time
And their album covers were Warhammer-related
So, you know, I bought an album called For Victory and whoa
First time I ever heard growling
And believe it or not, I was hooked. I loved it.
This album is I guess the most important album for me when it comes to metal
Because this was the entry way for me...
to start listening to my absolute favorite band ever which is Pantera
I remember in school, I had an after-school mentor who played a snippet of the song Walk
And I was like 'sShut that front door'
I had never heard anything as brutal as that and I was immediately hooked
I bought Far Beyond Driven from a friend in school for 20 crowns.
It's like two bucks and a bunch of cookies.
I remember it so well, the album had a cracked case and...
I was just playing it over and over
And that album, it was just overly brutal
Basically it had at all, it was fast, it was slow...
it was brutal, it had incredible leads, incredible singing...
And it was everything for me basically
Pantera opened up for a lot of other bands in the same type of genre
So I started listening to Sepultura, Machine Head, Slayer, Testament, Entombed
And the band I was in...
kind of shifted towards playing metal rather than Punk at that time
So we started playing covers of all those bands
And this type of bands from this time have influenced me incredibly in how I write music today
And you can probably hear that a lot in my music, if you go listen to my albums
And on my 16th birthday I bought my second ever guitar
which was a Washburn Blackjack Dimebag 333
With a Bill Lawrence 500XL pickup in it
I remember it so well, because it was on the evening
There was a store in Stockholm having an evening sale and they had it on sale. It was perfect.
And while I was listening to these bands
I bought a guitar instructional video of a long haired dude named John Petrucci
Heard that video was this shit so I went out and bought it
And I think it was because I wanted to become better at guitar quicker
And surrounding that time his band Dream Theater just released a new album called Falling into Infinity
And I remember checking it out and...
While I really dug the music, I just could not stand the vocals
I was never really into clean singing vocals and I didn't like James' voice
But since I was an avid concert goer
I went together with my friend to a Dream Theater show in Stockholm 1997
And it was an incredible show, I was blown away by the performance
By seeing, you know, John playing the Flight of the Bumblebee and I was like...
'Shit, this is like the next level guitar playing right there'
So I went out, bought the Dream Theater catalog and I started listening to their earlier albums
And I started practicing guitar for real. I would probably spend like one or two hours a day practicing guitar
I was never really about 5 or 6 hours a day. That's just way too much, that became boring really quick.
And I started listening to more guitar music, you know...
Progressive Metal like Steve Vai
Liquid Tension Experiment, Symphony X, Pain of Salvation, Evergrey and so on
And I learned to love clean vocals in those styles
And around this time. I also started to record myself more and more
and utilize computer to record guitar sounds and program MIDI drums for example
I was using Cakewalk 9
Which was really shitty, by the way, I had so much latency issues, but...
Even though I had those latency issues, I was just trying my best to record myself
Just trying to make it as tight as I could but it was a hassle when I had such a latency problem and all that
But it was still fun, it was me experimenting with recording myself at an early stage
And also my band Subside at the time, I started recording demos of original music
And I started to play more venues in the town I grew up in
Now, while I was listening to all these metal bands
I found out about a bank called Opeth and they had released an album called Blackwater Park
And now this album totally blew me away
Because it had both growling and clean vocals
That, I had never heard of before
Also, the album was just overly dark, really melodic unlike the regular death metal that I was listening to
It had a much deeper calling in it and just felt more honest in a way
And I was getting more and more into production at this time and...
I started venturing to guitar forums where I joined a forum called the Andy Sneap Recording Forum
I was also part of the John Petrucci forum
But the Andy Sneap forum was basically a forum for up-and-coming producers
Andy Sneap mixed my favorite sounding albums of all time
Testament The Gathering and Nevermore's Dead Heart in a Dead World
When I heard those albums, I just couldn't believe how incredibly awesome they sounded
The Gathering had an overly brutal sound, it sounded so violent
And full of pure raw energy
While Dead Heart in a Dead World had one of the best rhythm guitar tones I've ever heard
At this time I became almost obsessed with rhythm guitar tone
I remember trying out a lot of amplifiers that I ended up with an Engl Savage
That would become my main amplifier for 7 years
And I also played an Ibanez Universe PBH at the time.
Damn, that's a lot of talking.
Okay, Andy Sneap forum, Andy Sneap forum...
Anyway, this Andy Sneap forum was probably the best place I could ever have found at that time
And it became my go-to place to find new and amazing music
And a place where I could learn and exchange knowledge with other guys just like me
And some of the guys that were part of that forum that you might know of where Ermin Hamidovich
Glenn Fricker, Joey Sturgis, James Murphy...
A bunch of really cool talents came from there, which is awesome.
So, during this time I also revisited my love for death metal
And I found out about two Canadian bands
'Cryptopsee' or 'Cryptopsy' or whatever and Gorguts
And I listened a shit ton to these bands
And Gorguts had some amazing songwriting ideas that even today sound super modern
and it sounds like it's almost from the future
It was chaotic and technical death metal at its finest in my opinion
After this I would say that my interest to find new bands and music has been somewhat stale
Of course I've found you an amazing bands that I love
but the ones that I'm talking about in this video are probably the ones that have meant the most to me.
Mainly because it's bands who have formed me to the person I am today
It goes very much in line with me growing up as a person
You know from, being a 14 to 25 year old still trying to find himself
These bands have really helped me on the way
And it's incredible to sit down and count back the bands and how important they have been for you in the past
And as you become older, you become more nostalgic
And people were always saying, like to me when I was younger, that it was better in the past
referring to you know, 70s and 80s bands and I just didn't agree with them
But I get it now though. It's because that was the time they started getting into music.
I mean for them it was the perfect time
While for me 90s metal is the best
Because it was when I was the most receptive to music
And to this day Pantera is still my favorite band
And listening back to all these albums I mentioned
It really takes me back, I mean, it makes me feel like I'm a teenager again
Pantera in general is still the band for me
They are the band that represents me the best, I would say
But you guys already knew that
So there you go. That's my little video for you
I'm sharing a Spotify list down below if you want to check out some of the songs
I picked a couple of my favorite ones from all these bands that I mentioned
You can click down and listen to it there
And let me know in the comments section what band is your band
The band that means the most to you right now
Ok?
Thank you so much for watching this video. If you liked it, please put a thumps up and subscribe.
And see ya
Was that a brofist? Did I just steal the brofist?
No, this is my thing. Okay. See you guys.
Ola the racist freemason guy
This... this
Bye