TOMAS LINDBERG Says He Had Nothing In Common With THE CROWN

In a recent interview with Holland's Lords of Metal, former AT THE GATES/current THE GREAT DECEIVER frontman Tomas Lindberg spoke very openly about his relatively brief tenure as the singer for the now-defunct Swedish thrashers THE CROWN.

"They see life in a totally different way than I do," Lindberg said. "Totally opposite [to] how I deal [with] life, music and friends. This kinda destroyed my feelings for a band that I used to love before I was in the band. No offence to the guys from THE CROWN, but when you meet a band you love for the first time — let's say if you meet SLAYER — and they proved to be really stupid or something, you could still probably say: 'Yes, they're good, but they're assholes.' For me, having such an intimate look into the life of THE CROWN makes me unable to even listen to their old records. Because I know how they think, and they think so much different than I do. But I still think it's a loss for the metal scene. They were a good band, a lot of people liked them. But I can't get really into it as I used to do before I was in that band. We had so much different outlooks of life: it was really hard for me to work with them. We shared nothing!

In the same interview, Lindberg spoke about his singing approach with he various bands he has been in over the years and his musical inspirations for THE GREAT DECEIVER's latest CD, "Terra Incognito".

"Well, I'm the first one to admit that I don't know if I can sing or not," he said. "But I cannot think that everyone can't sing more or less. I know I don't have that beautiful, high-pitched, elevated voice or something. I could never sing in a normal band. There are tons of better singers than I am. The kind of music that I was inspired by 'trying to sing' with THE GREAT DECEIVER are the weirder, alternative rock bands where you can get away with not being able to sing in one way. Bands like SONIC YOUTH: they can't sing, but they do it anyway. So I can't sing, but I do it as well. For instance the song 'Worm Of Truth' on our new album 'Terra Incognito': when I heard the song for the first time I thought it would be really stupid to try to bark over something like that. That would kinda ruin the mood. It also had a bit of an Arabic feeling with it, so I wanted to bring the atmosphere of a minaret, with chanting prayers from high towers and so, in that song. It has some kind of monotonous vibe to it."

Read Tomas Lindberg's entire interview with Lords of Metal at this location.