Name: Johan Darius | Born: 10 April 1977 | Family: wife and II cats | Main instrument: guitar | Others: drums, bass, some piano and percussion, PC | Musical inspirations: Pugh, November, Black Sabbath, Slayer, AC/DC, Pentagram, KISS, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Omega and anything else between 1963-2006 (this list could be forever...) | Favourite guitarists: Tony Iommi, Ace Frehley, Angus Young, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page | Other favourite artists: Eric Singer (drums), Paul Stanley and Ian Gillan (vocals), Clint Eastwood (for Harry and all his others), Claes Eriksson | Best concerts: AC/DC at the Globe Arena, Stockholm Feb 20 2009, KISS in Hartford N.Y. USA 2000, Pugh Rogefeldt unplugged in Lundsbrunn 2007, November at Sweden Rock Festival 2007, Heaven 'n' Hell at Sweden Rock Festival 2007 | Favourite movie: Clint Eastwood's 'Grand Torrino' | Favourite authors: Dean R Koontz, Michael Connelly, Stephen King, John Ajvide Lindqvist | Favourite food: anything if it's meat

... and the story begins:

Born and raised in Falköing, southwest of Sweden, I 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 me face the fact what I most of all wanted to do in my life.

I achieved my first guitar at the age of fourteen and by the help of some chords- and tab-books I learned a lot of Beatles and Stones songs and a lot of other tunes of the sixties. Then Kiss, Twisted Sister, Mötley Crüe and the music of the 70’s came to be the foundation and inspiration that fed the interest in writing my own music.

During the days in school in the beginning of the 90’s I 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 were made in the schools audiotorium.

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 I went at the upper secondary school/high school I wrote my first lyrics, and it turned out to be some melancholic ballads. Then I 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 named the band Beneath and kept on playing for about ten years.

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.

It was by this time I started to listening to the earlier music of the heavier bands like Black Sabbath with Ozzy and Dio, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and younger bands as Slayer and Machine Head.

At this time, 1997-1999, I did a couple of gigs with my own material, just me and my guitar and my voice. The first performance with something of my own material 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.

2001 I wrote a number of songs that were recorded in November/December and turned out to be the turning point and it felt more tempted to continue to work on my own. All instruments except drums, (our Beneath drummer did an awesome job there), were played by me, and the result became rough and melancholic rock’n’roll with a touch of insanity.

One day I listened to the Swedish group November, and before that I didn’t had a single thought about singing in Swedish, especially not to hard rock music, but after some time it all changed and I found new inspiration for writing some songs with swedish lyrics and I felt it brought my music forward.

By this inspiration I 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, and it later turned out into the "Håll Mig Hårt" demo album, that can be found in the music-page.

Today I'm writing some new material for a new full-length album, while I'm doing some gigs around together with my friend Johan Gustavsson, that also contributes with great guitarskills to my work from time to time. We have written some tunes together and we're hoping for some more great collaboration in the near future. And the story continues at www.JohanDarius.com - be sure to check it out from time to time!