Well, here's "The History"...
"- It was completely magnificent how men in make-up and tights could make other people become so upset and chocked, maybe it was because they screwed with our heads and made us play guitar in front of the mirror everyday we got back home from school?"
He achieved his first guitar at the age of fourteen and by the help of some chords- and tab-books he learned a lot of Beatles, Stones and other tunes of the sixties. Then Kiss, TS and the music of the 60’s - 70’s came to be the foundation and inspiration that fed the interest in writing his own music.
During the days in school in the beginning of the 90’s he frequently played both during and besides the musical lessons, and together with some schoolmates a few sporadic performances of classical Kiss-, Wasp- and Beatles’ songs.
"- Well, you can say those performances was a little bit of psychedelic, we didn’t even had all the right lyrics to the songs as we didn’t knew that much English at the time. We just sang the songs as they sounded on the albums – I think there was a lot of "swenglish" words. One performance I did together with my cousin and we called ourselves "Darius Straits", and we did a version of ‘Sultans of Swing’ that included a fifteen minute long drum solo on congas, ha ha…"
But at the time he went at the upper secondary school/high school he wrote his first lyrics, and it turned out to be some melancholic ballads by the style of singer/songwriter. Then he was asked to play the electric guitar in a band with at the time not so well known schoolmates, but they all had the same interests in hard rock and metal.
"- We got together in a rehearsal studio owned by a local "rock school" for the first time and stumbled through Diamond Heads "Am I Evil", Maidens "Prowler" and "Mother" with Danzig. Damn, it was hard."
It was by this time the listening to the earlier music of the 60’s got replaced by the more harder and heavier tunes like Black Sabbath & Ozzy, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and younger bands as Slayer and Machine Head.
The band name Beneath was chosen and during that fall 1994 they began to rehearse some songs of their own and in February, Friday the 13th 1995 they did their first performance and recorded some demos later that year. In those sessions one of Johan’s very first songs can be found; a melancholic piece based upon the Black Sabbath song "Planet Caravan" titled "…and it’s you". From there and on the band continued to develop a style with simple hard rock riffs to very filthy and complex thrash.
" – During this time I did a couple of gigs with my own material, just me and my guitar and my voice. The first performance of something of my own took place at my examination as a student in 1996, and then, I think, a year later I did a gig with a whole set of my own songs for the first time, at a local youth centre here in Falköping. I will remember it was a quite well appreciated. "
During some time off Beneath between 1998 and the millennium Johan Darius wrote a number of songs that were recorded in November December 2001 and turned out to be the turning point and it felt more tempted to continue his work on his own.
From the singer/songwriter style in composing material he now got the opportunity to arrange a song for a whole orchestra. All instruments except drums, (our Beneath drummer did an awesome job there), were played by Johan, and the result became rough modern and melancholic rock’n’roll with a smell of the 70’s.
Before the day Johan listened to the Swedish group November he didn’t have a single thought about Swedish music and singing in Swedish, but in that minute it all changed and he found new inspiration for deciding in which way to bring his music forward.
" – I got struck by the power of the expression by the Swedish words supported by the music in real Sabbath style, and I said to myself – I’ve got to try that out! "
During one evening he wrote and recorded four songs; "Håll Mig Hårt", "Skäl Att Stanna Kvar", "En Liten Bit Av Du" and a cover-version of the AC/DC song "Let Me Put My Love Into You – in swe; Låt Mig Få Älska" from the ‘Back In Black’ album.
Every piece fell in place – a production with the goal to become a début album started in December 2004 with another three new songs added and a cover of the Swedish artist Pugh Rogefeldt’s classic "Här Kommer Natten" from the album ‘Ja, Dä Ä Dä’ released in 1969, a song that Johan made in a more dark and personal way.
But after the final mixes in may 2005 the decision was made to only use those recordings as demos for promotion.
" – There’s so much of paperwork and other things around a official release of an album that made me feel hard about putting it out on my own due to financial reasons. So I decided to put all my powder in putting these songs out for promotion and then see what happens."
And after that he began to drop his focus on Beneath and no more musical contributions were made to the band so the decision was made for Johan to leave the band.
As the story ends here it continues in the manu at your left, and still he’s going for new and yet more exciting projects that you all can be aware of and read about at www.johandarius.com.
Born and raised in Falköing, southwest of Sweden, Johan early discovered music and its powerful expressions with the smash hit 'Heaven's on fire' by KISS, and the fascination over what you could achieve and bring on to others through your music made him face the fact of what he most of all wanted to do in life.
" – It was the first time for me to alone rule and decide in a studio and that was a blast. Honestly I think I work better if I’m on my own, but with a very good support in my engineer Petter Lantz (from the Swedish band Lambretta) and who also made some really good shit with Beneath earlier."