1986, when I was 11 years old, I stopped playing what my piano teacher thought me and began playing Europe and Yngwie’s Rising force songs instead. When I got my first guitar in 1988 it wasn’t that fun to play piano at all and then it started to make sense to write my own music instead. I joined a band but didn’t really like the songs we played so I started a new band in 91-92 called “A Canorous Quintet”, it was then I started playing drums.

In 1998 when my band had just split up I got a call from Olli and he asked me if I wanted to take over the drums in Amon Amarth. It didn’t take long to make that decision so some days later we met up and jammed together. For a while I also played in “Guidance of Sin” but decided to leave to concentrate fully on Amon Amarth.

Even if I knew the guys since a couple of years they still tried their best to make the initial time in the band as hard as possible, not to mention that I had less than two months to learn all old songs for an upcoming tour AND learn the new songs for “The Avenger”.

The actual recording of “The Avenger” was a lot of fun; the first thing we did was going to the liquor store, took one shopping trolley each and set off to get one case of beer and a bottle with personal choice of booze per person! Like this we managed to keep down the booze-consumption to only every third day. A lot of crazy things happened, like a syrup-incident, giving booze to a couple of Christian kids (they were there on a non-alcohol-conference) and Johan S almost broke his leg in a wrestling fight…

Since I was part of the process in making the songs for “The Crusher” I am more satisfied with the drums on that recording but sound wise it didn’t turn out the way I would have wanted.

The summer of 2001 we participated in a football game together with Matti (Dominion of Dark Funeral) Kenta and Jörgen from Project hate/Entombed and some other friends, the rules was that everybody had to be drunk to be allowed to play (but I think only our team really took that seriously) and it ended up with me breaking my collar bone. This was two weeks before summer breeze festival and even how much I told myself and the rest it would work, we had to cancel. I however went there anyway and enjoyed the festival. That summer I had also promised to help out Linus from my old band ACQ to record the drums for his project “The Dead” and this was something I really wanted to do so I did it even if it was quite painful with a broken bone.

The recording of “Versus the world” was the most difficult I ever have done, recording the songs only to a click-track without any guitars at all is nothing I will do again.

After the recording of vs. the world we took a well-needed break from the band and from ourselves. I used the time to record some songs I had been working on for over a year and had finally the possibility to put them on tape. This will probably be released as a five-track demo under the name “Curriculum Mortis” some time during 2003.

I don’t idolize other drummers but having seen Pete Sandoval play made a big impression on me. I also don’t care so much about what kind of drums I play, I have a Pearl Export since ten years and it still works. For cymbals I crash whatever sounds. Foot pedals and drumsticks however are important, the latest Yamaha pedal is probably the best I ever had and I use Oak drumsticks because they’re harder and heavier than hickory or maple sticks. I use ddrum4 triggering system so I don’t have to do long boring sound checks but it still sounds good every time, and combined with a personal monitor system I can also hear myself perfectly.

Source : Amon Amarth official site