"The Hunt for White Christ:" A Conversation with Johnny Hedlund of Unleashed

Johnny Hedlund (front) and Unleashed (photo by Jens Rydén)

Johnny Hedlund is smarter than the average bear.

As bassist/vocalist for long-running Swedish Death Metal legends Unleashed, Hedlund has consistently brought a touch of intelligence and esoterica to the genre. The band’s latest album, The Hunt For White Christ, is the fourth Unleashed release to follow The World of Odalheim, a Hedlund-authored story exploring the past, present and what he views as the future of the Viking traditions and values. It’s an intense listen and clear proof that there’s much more driving the Unleashed machine than death growls and blistering riffs.

There’s a hell of a lot to unbox with The Hunt For White Christ, but I give this task a go in the following interview with one of Death Metal’s most fascinating minds. 

The Hunt For White Christ is a fairly provocative title for those who might not be aware of its origins. For the benefit of those people who might be introduced to Unleashed for the first time through this album, please share a bit about the inspiration for this title and how it plays into the overall themes of the album and the story you’ve constructed for it.

Okay, so to literally make a long story short, then…The World of Odalheim is a book me and a friend started working on some 10 years ago but never got the time to finish. Parenthood and other things got in the way, and time really wasn’t on my side anymore. I figured it made sense to try making chapters into songs, so to speak – or at least as close as possible. And since much of the inspiration to the storyline already came from Unleashed lyrics anyway, it was only fair to give it a try.

The story line of Odalheim from the start has its origin in the days we live in now. In a very troubled time of chaos and disorder. As the Fimbulwinter closes in – okay, literally three years of cold and darkness – the worldwide kindred of the Midgard Warriors prepared for the worst. Those who did not, however, would not survive the coming of Ragnarök - the end of the world as we know it. But those who knew what would come and prepared for it came through and stood the test of time. And they could start anew as the new world began to rise from the ashes of the old. We call this new world Odalheim. The main enemy of the Midgard Warriors is White Christ. Before the collapse of the old world, various religious believers banded together –  such as the Judeo-Christian believers, but also others. They are now the armies of White Christ. It is said in the Viking doctrines that 'White' in this context mean something like ‘cowardly’ as opposed to 'red Thor,' which would mean something like 'brave Thor.'  

This album is the fourth consecutive album with the same storyline. To just give you a brief note on the events that happens on this album, then…At the end of Dawn of the Nine, our previous album, the Midgard Warriors, led by the Son of Thor, travel through Lake Mälaren after a successful quest taking back the vast part of Svithiod [today’s Sweden] and the Nordic region from White Christ rule. The Midgard Warriors are greeted by their people with hails as they return to Folkland shores. While this happens, scattered armies of White Christ gather to attack the villages in the south. Since most of the Midgard Warriors are up north, the villages consist mostly of old people, unarmed women and children. White Christ found it useful to kill, disembowel, rape and burn those left in the village. When the Midgard Warriors arrive at the scene, it is already over - this is the exact moment of the album cover artwork. The Midgard Warriors decide to avenge their dead, and so they raise the runic letter G over the village for Blot to the dead and for victory in the coming war and as a sign of the ultimate act of man – to give without expecting something in return. The Midgard Warriors stand ready to give their life for family and kin. And so, the hunt for White Christ begins.

The new album is being released by Napalm, and Unleashed have changed labels a few times over the years. What makes Napalm the right home for Unleashed and what you’re aiming to achieve with this newest release?

We decided it was time for a change - and in many ways, not just the record label side of things. We are still good friends with Nuclear Blast and their crew. I won’t go into the exact details, but it felt right in this time of our lives to move on. We now have a very good feeling at Napalm, and we feel it was the right thing to do. I expect things to move on professionally and in a good spirit with all things Unleashed.

When comparing The Hunt For White Christ to your first album, Where No Life Dwells (1991), how would you say Unleashed has evolved over the years in terms of both your musical output and what you’re conveying in your lyrics?

First off, I’d say musically it is only fair to say we have developed quite a bit in almost 30 years now since the start. And who wouldn’t? It is a long time to keep to the roots yet try to develop things within your own style, so to speak. But I think we have done what we said we’d do way back then when we formed in 1989. The techniques and engineers have improved and so have we as musicians, of course. Just looking inside our studio today compared to the one we rented on the first three-song demo way back in 1990…Oh well, day and night, right? And hopefully, it is the same with our lyrics. I know my English has improved quite a bit, so I am naturally better at doing lyrics only considering the linguistic aspect of things. You might argue there is still work to be done there…True. I am a Swede, and I learn all the time. My native tongue is Swedish, so it is only natural. 

Anyhow, I think our content has improved as well since the first album. At least I’d like to think I have improved that, too, but that is for others to judge, of course. But I am well aware of the fact that the new storyline of Odalheim has drawn influence from past albums, but it is still not something I could have done back in, let’s say, 1993 or so.

Being a recording and touring act in 2018 is not an easy task, especially for a band that performs extreme music. How has your professional experience as a finance director helped Unleash move forward in a very difficult industry?

Well, I’d say we wouldn’t be doing this without it. I think the word I am looking for here is ‘bankruptcy’ or ‘financial exhaustion.’ That is what happens if you use private money for your business and never see any returns on your investment. We experienced this in 1997, as we went home after years of touring worn out – the gear was broken down, with no money at all due to a shitty record deal. So, we took some time off to educate ourselves in finance, took day time jobs to buy new gear and got together and created a plan on how to move on. Tactical and strategical plans that would make us last. And we follow them to this day.

Sweden is similar to Birmingham, England in terms of serving as a breeding ground for a lot of great Metal over the years. What part do you think Swedish culture played in the creation of Unleashed and the other extreme music groups that grew from there in the late ’80s?

Oh, you are out on deep water here. (laughs) But I can only answer for myself and Unleashed. Okay, I could do a podcast on this topic. In fact, I have thought on doing it, really. Now, I will keep this short, but indeed there are many factors playing a role in the culture and the life we lived in Sweden at the time - well, and still do, for that matter.

Sweden, just like most countries in the West, is built upon the law and rule of the Judeo-Christian thoughts and beliefs. Now, if that religion and way of doing things had a continuing development towards the needs of man – and much else that happens in a modern world – we would likely not feel there was so much we needed to change in our society. However, this was not the case, and still isn’t. In fact, it is going in the absolute opposite direction, as I see it. Christianity never wrote the ‘modern testament’ or the like. They just kept to the roots without developing, and that is of course the same with many religions in the world today. I think there was a reason for why our ancestors, the Vikings, never wrote a holy book or the like. I think they realized that times will change – and man will, too. Even though our needs and aims in life will be the same. Society and the presuppositions for life on the planet will change by the years and decades – and well, nowadays, more rapidly than ever before, I suppose. It is still the same virtues we need to possess to be able to orient ourselves in a world of suffering. We need a set of rules or guidelines and an aim in life to be able to move forward and to stand up straight and fight back in the battle of life. We know that there will be black clouds on the horizon sooner or later. And so we have to prepare for that – and early on in life. But what is most important is to keep telling the stories of old but also to be able to change – and know what needs to be changed – so that we can adopt to the new times and new horrors that will come our way. The old religions can’t do this, and Hell knows they never even tried. Again, they keep preaching the same old, same old. And so, to make a long story short, this isn’t something the religious politicians in my country wanted you to think about way back then. In fact, they will not allow things to grow in this direction at all, even to this day. In school, for example, the Viking era is mostly made fun of. Well, that’s easy to lie to children and make fun of their ancestral culture. Well, have it your way, I say! But we will remember who was on our side and who was not at the turn of the tide.

Our way, now, in a time before the “Dawn of the Nine,” is to build these nine virtues into the Warriors of the future so that they will stand strong when the Fimbulwinter comes. Our platform in the battle of life is the Viking traditions and values - regardless of if our society agrees or not. So, the question of a ‘Swedish culture’ that potentially had an impact or played a role in our way of creating music and lyrics back then, and now, feels a bit ambivalent to say the least. That is to say we had a roof over our heads and food on the table back in the day, and we still do here in the north. But a quick look at the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, just to exemplify, you can perhaps understand we aren’t at the top as individuals after all the years of Christian rule. We are down at a level of defending personal safety again, among other things.

Unleashed will reach its 30th anniversary next year. What has been the biggest key to the band’s ability to thrive for this long?

I will say there are many things that have to work over time, of course, but we always had a good, solid plan for how to do things. Well, perhaps not always, but we kept to the roots and kept developing. We also agreed on helping out within the band so that all members share responsibility for the band. And what is of course key is to be passionate about the music and lyrics and also the live show. Death Metal is live music, and you need to really enjoy this or you should stay at home. Having a really good friendship among the band member is also really helpful, or it will become too much of a job. And in the music industry, you can’t really sit around and count your dollars all the time. It will kill you for sure.

*Portions of the above interview were edited for clarity. 


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Another Death Ride: Exhuming Würm with Chuck Dukowski

Chuck Dukowski (far left) with Würm (Photo by Spot; courtesy of XO Publicity)

Although Chuck Dukowski is best known for his time in the legendary Black Flag, his sonic explorations began long before that band and their label, SST Records, changed the world of independent music.

In 1973, Dukowski formed his first band, Würm. Creating a sound that could best be described as Sludge Metal, the group wrote and rehearsed material at their Hermosa Beach practice space, “the Würmhole” – a hangout for area musicians and the place where Dukowski eventually met his future Black Flag bandmates Greg Ginn and Keith Morris. After splitting in 1977, Würm reconvened in 1982 to release a three-track EP and record a full-length album, Feast (created in ’83/’84 and posthumously released by SST in 1985).

On Black Friday, Würm will return to shops for the first time in decades with Exhumed, a limited-edition, colored-vinyl double LP comprised of Feast and bonus unreleased tracks, demos and more. Limited to 1,100 copies, this special Record Store Day release is set to include never-before-seen photos and liner notes from Dukowski himself.  

The release of Exhumed follows a period a steady musical activity for Dukowski, who has spent recent years performing live with FLAG, a band also featuring former Black Flag members Morris, Dez Cadena and Bill Stevenson along with Descendents//ALL guitarist Stephen Egerton. He has also released a handful of albums since 2006 with his own act, the Chuck Dukowski Sextet.  

Fans of Black Flag can also check out PANIC!, a new hardcover photo book comprised of shots taken of the band in 1978 when they still went by that moniker and planned to release an EP on Bomp Records. (After Bomp failed to put out the record in a timely manner, PANIC! soon changed their name to Black Flag and released it on SST as the Nervous Breakdown EP.)

On a personal note, I’m very happy to present this interview with Chuck. From 2002 to 2004, my then-band, The Sixth Chamber, had the good fortune of sharing the stage with the Chuck Dukowski Sextet at several shows in California. It was fun seeing Chuck – always calm and friendly before those gigs – go mental and utterly incinerate his bass on stage. My thanks to him for giving me the opportunity to delve into Würm and other topics in the words below.  

First off, how does it feel to be doing interviews for an upcoming Würm retrospective in 2018 – 45 years after the band started? Why was now the time to get a reissue of Feast – as well as the bonus material – out there in the world in the form of Exhumed?

It feels great for all of these Würm recordings to finally be available. It’s taken me a long time to get all the parts together. I regained the rights to my Würm music after a hellish Black Flag-related lawsuit with SST Records. It’s funny, but Würm’s co-founder, Ed Danky [guitar], and I fantasized about the eventual existence of a Würm retrospective comp called Exhumed way back in 1977. We talked about it as we were doing the Spot photo session that supplied the front cover of Exhumed. We thought it’d be a cool/fun name.

Andrew Rossiter at ORG Music gave me the final push of encouragement and logistical support to follow through on my threats of reissuing the Würm material, and we put together Exhumed for Record Store Day 2018.

What are the sources of the bonus material included in Exhumed?

The bonus material on Exhumed was recorded at the Würmhole in the summer of 1977 as a practice recording. The Würmhole was an abandoned bath house in Hermosa Beach that we lived in. I first met the other original members of Black Flag there. Würm was preparing to record an album for the now-defunct Embassy Records. The ‘’77 Demo Recordings’ capture one of Würm’s rehearsals for that planned album recording during the summer of 1977. Würm recorded most of our practices, but this practice tape made it through the travails of time to be part of this release. 

The bonus track listing for Exhumed includes two familiar song titles: “Modern Man” and “I’ve Heard It Before.” How similar are these to the Black Flag songs of the same name? What made them perfect songs to incorporate into Black Flag later on?

There is some crossover between Würm and Black Flag, mostly lyrics. The lyrics and themes I used for Würm were important to me and, I felt, contributed to Black Flag. When Keith Morris – the first Black Flag singer – quit, I used some of Würm’s themes and some actual lyrics for a couple of the songs in the already-short Black Flag set that were suddenly wanting lyrics. ‘Just Give Me A Break’ became ‘I’ve Heard It Before,’ and I wrote a new lyric to re-title the Keith-era song ‘Red Tape’ as ‘No More.’ I also created a Black Flag arrangement of ‘Padded Cell’ with its ‘MANIACS!’ chorus line.

The Würm and Black Flag versions are different. ‘Modern Man’ is a concept I felt was appropriate to a time of growing societal alienation and disassociation. People hiding in their holes, labeling those around them as ‘other’ and living in any moment but the moment they are actually in. So in 1982, I created a Black Flag ‘Modern Man.’  

Feast features a radically different version of “Padded Cell” than the one on Black Flag’s Damaged album. Which version of the song came first? Which version do you prefer?

I like ’em both quite a bit. The Würm version came first by four-five years. I wrote the seeds of this lyric in college while studying sociopaths in an abnormal psych class.  

When I listen to Feast, my ears detect shades of Sabbath with a bit of King Crimson and Captain Beefheart in spots. How accurate am I in terms of the band’s influences? How similar was the music on Feast to what the band was doing in the ’70s?

I’ve always loved King Crimson’s ‘21st Century Schizoid Man.’ I saw them at the Long Beach Auditorium in ’72 or ’73, and they blew me away. I was never a big Beefheart fan, though I did try to get into his music. Black Sabbath’s music, on the other hand, was core listening for Würm. We loved Sabbath. I would often listen to all of Black Sabbath’s records back to back when I was studying in college. Our anthem was ‘Children of the Grave.’ We also were deep into Captain Beyond, Blue Oyster Cult, The Stooges, MC5, Mott The Hoople, Alice Cooper, David Bowie and a number of other ’70s Hard Rock bands.

Much of the Feast album is music from Würm’s ’70s repertoire. I wrote the beginnings of ‘I’m Dead’ after the first jam Würm did with [singer] Simon [Smallwood] in ’77. The newer 1980s songs – ‘Where Will We Run,’ ‘Should We Be Proud,’ ‘Feast,’ ‘Death Ride,’ ‘Song For Jimmy’ and ‘Robin Doggin’’ – are the ones Simon co-wrote.

What led to Würm reforming in ’82 after being inactive for around five years at that point?

In 1982, Ed asked me to do a Würm recording and then a show here and there. He pulled the band together to record the I’m Dead EP [1982] and kept on me to do shows from time to time. He’d book a show, and then I’d read about it in the LA Weekly and feel obligated to play. It created tension in Black Flag. Black Flag was bogged down in the Unicorn Records litigation, so I had some time to do it. Right after I got kicked out of Black Flag, I booked a few shows in the San Francisco Bay Area for Würm. We played Ruthie’s in Berkeley, the Mab in San Francisco and at least one other show and came home with enough money to record the Feast album. That was a crazy little run. We did it in an old ’58 international panel truck that our drummer, Lou Hinzo, had. It had bad brakes! San Francisco? We made it through the shows okay, but while dropping me off in Silver Lake, the truck stalled near the top of a big hill and rolled all the way back down backwards with all of us still in it! Terrifying, but I lived to tell the tale.

Würm was a cool counterpoint to Black Flag for me because its music incorporated improvisational elements that Black Flag lacked. Soon after recording the instrumental tracks for Feast, I was kicked out of Black Flag and left to Europe to help my mom wind up my grandmother’s affairs after her recent death. When I got back from Europe in ’84, I did the vocal sessions and mixed the record. All of these recordings are included in Exhumed.

Considering that Feast was recorded right at the height of Hardcore, I’d imagine the sound of the album was a surprise to some people when it finally came out in ’85. What was the reception to the album like back then?

It was a peak time for Hardcore, but people were turning to a more Metal sound and we were well received. Würm had momentum, but everyone else in the band was struggling with serious drug addiction. Ed and Simon both eventually died of overdoses. I knew it was headed for disaster, so I broke up Würm and focused on writing songs for Black Flag, even though I was no longer in the band, and running the record label.  

In addition to Exhumed, another release celebrating the past recently surfaced in the form of the PANIC! book. Along the lines of my opening question to you about Exhumed, what does it mean to you to see a series of photos of a band you were a part of 40 years ago turn up in a beautifully produced book in 2018?

It’s weird to have some random photos of PANIC! – the proto-Black Flag, the larval Black Flag – be made into a fancy book. The mailman just threw a package over my fence, and my wife opened it. I didn’t even know it was coming out. Sometimes, it’s kinda strange.

One interesting element of this book is seeing images of a young Robo with hair! Until recently, I would see online images of Robo playing with you, Keith Morris and Greg Ginn labelled as “PANIC!” and assume that was an error. I had always assumed that Bryan Migdol was in Black Flag right up through the release of Nervous Breakdown, but that’s obviously inaccurate. If I finally have the timeline right, Bryan must have been out of the band almost immediately following the Bomp sessions while the band was still PANIC! How soon after Brian’s departure were these shots taken? What led to Brian leaving the band, and how did Robo end up joining PANIC!?

The Nervous Breakdown 7” was recorded in late ’77 while I was still playing in Würm – I suppose that had a little to do with Ed getting despondent and breaking up Würm. Migdol was in PANC! but never in Black Flag. Greg kicked Migdol out in early ’78 because he brought people around who were committing petty crimes, and we already had serious problems with the local police. Some of Migdol’s friends climbed into Greg’s neighbor’s yard and stole their marijuana plants. Then, they dragged the plants next door to Greg’s house, leaving a trail of dirt. Greg’s neighbors were pissed. Migdol’s friends also got the Würmhole shut down by stealing some new rolls of carpet – why? – that installers had left in front of a job site in broad daylight and dragging the stolen carpets into the Würmhole on their skateboards and running away. In both cases, these guys left us holding the bag for stuff we didn’t do and did not support.

I didn’t hear about Bryan getting kicked out until a day or two after it had had been done. I was a relatively new PANIC! band member at the time, and though I liked playing with Bryan, I didn’t weigh in on his ouster one way or the other.

We found Robo when he responded to a flyer we put up at Zed Records. Robo cut his hair real short on our first tour right before crossing the Canadian border. I think the Canadian Customs and Immigration agents really liked his new haircut, because they kept us there at the border for several hours.

Some images from PANIC! (www.beforeblackflag.com)

There seems to be mystery surrounding who actually took the photos featured in the book. Any ideas?

I know. It’s crazy. I’ve racked my brain, and I just can’t remember who took those pictures. I recall the session, but I can’t recall the photographer.

Black Flag has earned legendary status, and of course you and some of the other former members have taken this music on the road with FLAG in recent years. Clearly, this material still resonates with people, and it’s a very rare feat to create something musically that remains meaningful to people after four decades. Why do you think Black Flag’s music has endured for so long?

Black Flag’s music remains meaningful to people because it’s good. We made it stand for something, and we worked tirelessly to bring it to as many people as possible.

Going back to Würm to wrap things up, how did being a member of that band in the early ’70s most impact you as a musician? What effect did that experience have on what you later did as a member of Black Flag?

Würm was my first band. I developed the beginnings of my musical language in it. But probably the most important thing I brought from Würm to Black Flag was the experience of touring. Ed and I spent two summers traveling across the country in a van. That was the foundation for Black Flag’s relentless touring. I had some experience being on the road, and I knew it could be fun and productive.

*Portions of the above interview were edited for clarity. 

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