UNLEASHED Frontman Talks Christianity

Matt Smith of GASPetc.com recently conducted an interview with frontman Johnny Hedlund of Swedish death metallers UNLEASHED. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

GASPetc.com: I have to say I absolutely love "Hammer Battalion", to me it's one of the best albums you guys have put out in awhile. It has some of the best playing I've heard from you guys. When I put the disc in I had it cranked and it scared the shit out of me when you scream on the beginning of "The Greatest Of All Lies".

Johnny: That's exactly the effect we wanted and we talked about that and when I buy a new record I make sure it's exactly that level of volume when it starts and it's funny you say that because it's exactly what we talked about. We said maybe we should put a slow or mid-paced song but then we said, no we want to have that effect. You know, right from the start, set the pace right there. We did battle about which song to be first because that's always a problem. Everybody thinks differently in the band but finally we came up with that song. I'm happy you guys said that because I voted for that song. (laughs)

GASPetc.com: (laughs) It was a good choice. You have a lot of anti-Christian themes on the album like "The Greatest Of All Lies" and "Long Before Winter's Call", I mean in general there seems to be a lot of nihilism within that whole wave of Swedish death metal. Is that a reaction to how you were raised? I know personally I felt that way because I was raised in a Christian family and taught that the bible was the absolute truth and when I hit like 15 or 16 I pretty much became a nihilist. Do you feel the same way?

Johnny: No, not at all. Actually, my dad and my mother don't even know what Jesus Christ is, they could care less. So my grandma and grandpa were probably the only people back home that didn't go to church because they weren't interested and they don't see the advantages of going to church. They don't have anything against Christian people, that's not the issue, but I was not raised like that at all. But the society I live in is Christian and most of the Western world is based on Christian morals and we're raised that way whether we like it or not, it's either that or something else. Our entire law book is written because of what happened long ago when Christianity took over the western world. So, in that respect, I don't have anything against Christians, that's not my task in this world, my task is to ask questions and criticize and acknowledge what they would call fact, that is more my task these days, and I'm not into throwing darts at Christianity anymore, that's not funny anymore, and I know I did that when I was younger but what I do think is funny is looking into Christianity or Islam for that matter, and take what they say is fact, what they say is correct because then we're talking about politics or science and if we take what they are preaching as science then we want to question that and see if it's correct and that is what I do with many of my lyrics these days, I want to dig into it and see if they are correct. I mean, you can put out a very, very simple question to something they call Christmas Eve and in Sweden they call it Yule's Eve because it's got nothing to do with Jesus The Winter Solstice Christ and if you look in the bible it is very hard to find any evidence at all that Jesus Christ was born even in the winter time and as a matter of fact if you DO believe in the bible you will see that if Jesus had lived he was probably born around September or October and a lot of the intellectual Christians these days would agree to that. So it is a pretty fuckin' big lie that people still celebrate Christmas Eve on December 25th and for what reason I ask? But I do know the reason that's why we call the previous album "Midvinterblot", because the Winter Solstice has always been the reason for the winter season and that is when the sun turns. All the native tribes long ago had always celebrated the sun even before the Vikings, actually, and the Vikings were people that lived in the cold climate and they needed to celebrate. Even the Mayans celebrated the sun in some fashion and that is done on the 21st or 22nd of December which is what we call the Midvinterblot or the Winter Solstice. And so two or three days after you have Christmas and that's more of like a bonus day, a commercial day as I see it, and we probably celebrate it much the same way but it IS a Pagan tradition and has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and it's funny because today a lot of the intellectual Christians would agree to that but only 20 years ago when I grew up nobody would ever agree to that and they would say "of course it's the birthday of baby Jesus and blah-blah" and it was a fact, as much as fire is warm and water is wet (laughs) and its just we're talking like 20-25 years ago and it's things like that that surprise me and it's funny that people go so far to push a lie that they almost believe in it. Because it's science, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to look into these facts. So I hope that answers your question.

GASPetc.com: Yeah it does.

Johnny: But the society I was raised in was quite Christian. I wouldn't say that now because if you came over to Sweden, and compared to America, it would seem like an atheist country because it's not very Christian in that respect. When I was kid and went to school there was nothing about Odin, Freya, and Thor, nothing, absolutely nothing for eleven years. Now we do read a lot about Buddhism and Islam and Christianity and that's on like every week, a couple hours every week. And it's funny... So I think that's pretty much it and I think we rebelled against some of the things we knew were not correct and it wasn't really rebelling against people too because that's not as interesting, but rebelling against the actual doctrines.

GASPetc.com: You're going for the intellectual approach as opposed to burning down churches.

Johnny: Yes, that's an easy thing to do but it's not going to change much.

GASPetc.com: No, it doesn't and if anything it only makes the people doing it look stupid.

Johnny: And plus I don't need to spend five years in jail, I don't have that time and it's ridiculous. It's not meaningful and I'm not going to say people are idiots for doing it but I don't have that agenda, that's not my place in the world.

GASPetc.com: I agree with you, and all of the Christian holidays are based on Pagan holidays, for example, Easter, Christmas and the reason they did that was so the Pagans could still have their holidays but they were now Christian holidays. It was their way of tricking the Pagans into Christianity.

Johnny: In a way it was a smart marketing move and let's acknowledge the fact that it WAS a marketing move — that's what it is — and they were smart in a way because we have to give them credit for the fact that they have pushed this and survived it for 2000 years. In a way it was a smart move.

GASPetc.com: They did something right.

Johnny: Yeah, and they took over with force just like any war machine would do if you want to take over something you do it with force. You may not have the right, but you take the right because you have the force. But that's my task, i want to acknowledge that fact and make them say to the world, "yes this is what we did" because we thought it was right. I can't take that away from them, they were obviously stronger at the time. That's why when people burn a church I won't say "you're an idiot" because that is exactly what they did up in Sweden. They burned down the villages and they took prisoners and they owned the places where they had an Odin temple they would burn it down and put a church on top of it. On the exact same spot, it happened many times in Swede, so I can't say that someone's an idiot to want to reverse that today, it's just not MY type of warfare.

Read the entire interview from GASPetc.com.

Fan-filmed video footage of UNLEASHED's December 7, 2008 concert at Progresja in Warsaw, Poland can be viewed below (clips uploaded by "Zwierzak26").