CRASHDIET Trivia — 126 Entries
126 sourced facts about CRASHDIET.
Trivia
The Japanese edition of Generation Wild came out on 26 June 2010 through King Records, with the bonus track "Sick mind" added.
Their first Japanese shows were on 10 and 11 January 2015 at Club Citta in Kawasaki, as part of "Kawasaki Rock City Vol.3 2015", on a bill of three Swedish bands alongside Europe and Treat. They played only that event, and not the Namba Rock City date held in the same run.
The deal began with a single gig: a bar on the outskirts of Stockholm in June 2004, where people from Stockholm Records and Ten Management happened to be watching. The band had by then rebuilt around Martin Sweet and Eric Young and had been playing steadily.
The ten songs that made the album were chosen from more than fifty. The band said as much themselves: they were extremely satisfied with the record, having written over fifty songs and picked the finest ten.
On 7 September 2010 they opened for Ozzy Osbourne at the Globe Arena in Stockholm. Doors were at 18:15 and they went on at 19:20.
In December 2011 Eric Young fractured his hand and could not play the shows in Rome, Milan and Lichtenfels. The man who filled in was Michael Sweet, Martin Sweet's younger brother. He would not become a full member for another twelve years.
The pre-order campaign for the fourth album was not a normal one. The same CD was offered at four prices and the buyer chose according to their wallet: the band's idea of a fair price, a supporter's price, a price that got your name printed in the booklet, and — top of the list, labelled "Overkill" — a price that got your name tattooed on Peter London's backside.
In April 2013 the band's manager Michael Sundén died suddenly while they were on the road. They learned of it mid-tour. He had taken the band to heights that would not have been possible without him, the four of them wrote.
Michael Sundén had handled the tour's finances alone, and his death left the band in a desperate position. They borrowed from wherever they could in order to set off as planned, and wrote openly that they expected to be in debt for years. An eleven-day crowdfunding campaign followed. They had decided to carry on with the European leg because they believed it was what he would have wanted — and five days later they announced the campaign had worked and the tour was back on.
In August 2016 the band started their own label, Dïet Records, as a way to put out rare Crashdïet-related music and their own side projects. The first release was the debut album by Martin Sweet's new band Sweet Creature; also listed as forthcoming were a live album from 2005, a second volume of rarities, and a vinyl edition of The Unattractive Revolution.
In 2017 the band announced Live in Sleaze, a 2005 concert recording with Dave Lepard singing. Very few live recordings survive from that period, they wrote: they were four hungry men in their twenties playing every small venue in Sweden, and only months later Lepard would be gone. Chris Laney, who produced Rest in Sleaze, mixed and mastered it; the artwork was by Christel Mentges.
The first single of the new era, "We are the legion", was produced by Eric Bazilian of the Hooters — a man whose credits run through Robbie Williams, Bon Jovi, Cyndi Lauper and the Scorpions. He also plays the acoustic guitar heard in the song's intro. Chris Laney, who had worked on Rest in Sleaze, mixed it; Classe Persson mastered it; Björn Samuelsson recorded the drums.
In April 2022 Eric Young announced himself that he was stepping aside from his duties as the band's live drummer. For how long, he wrote, only time would tell; his reasons were personal, and he needed to look after his own well-being for a while. Lacu — Kari Lahtinen, formerly of Hanoi Rocks — took over, and appeared in the video for the next single, "Powerline".
On 20 February 2024 the band announced two changes at once. Gabriel Keyes had decided to leave in order to focus on other things in life, and John Elliot of Confess was taking over the vocals. At the same time Michael Sweet, Martin's brother, became the permanent drummer — a natural fit, the band wrote, having stood in for Eric on countless shows since 2011. With Peter London back as well, they set out the 2024 lineup by name.
In June 2025 the band signed with Ninetone, and the same announcement revealed that they were back in the studio with Patrik Frisk, the producer of their second album, The Unattractive Revolution. Their paths had crossed many times over the years and they had often talked about working together again, Martin Sweet said; eighteen years on, it was finally happening. Jesper Lindgren came in as manager.
The name came from Dave Lepard, back in 2000. Where he found it, however, is something Martin Sweet says nobody really knows. The band has gone on using a name whose origin was never explained by the man who chose it.
One of the guitarists present when the band came together in 2000 was Tobias Forge, later the man behind Ghost. He used the stage name Mary Goore, which he had originally invented for his own death metal band, Repugnant.
Martin Sweet first met Dave Lepard on Christmas Day 2002, taken to Lepard's place by Peter London. He remembers being nervous because he badly wanted the job. Lepard, he says, was musically brilliant and carried something like a rock-star aura about him.
The most memorable pre-contract disaster Martin Sweet tells is a Swedish festival called Rookie. A four-hour drive got them there, then they waited another eight hours to play, so they started drinking in the morning and took the stage — on a live webcast — completely drunk. Lepard was playing in the wrong key, so Sweet pulled the lead out of his guitar; Lepard threw the guitar into the audience, hitting someone, then headbanged himself off the front of the stage. Less than a year later they were signed to Universal.
At the time of their debut they were reported to be the first "sleaze rock" band in over ten years to sign directly to a major company — Universal Music.
On the morning of 20 January 2006, Dave Lepard — David Hellman — was found dead at his apartment in Uppsala, north of Stockholm. He was 25. The band's debut album was less than a year old.
That same day Martin Sweet, Peter London and Eric Young issued a joint statement. Crashdïet would definitely not continue as a band, they said: Crashdïet had consisted of four people, and one of them had now left them.
On why they went back on the announcement, Martin Sweet explained in the autumn of 2006 that the statement had been made in shock. They had since talked it through with a great many people, including some of the Lepard family, who were positive about the band keeping the name. Holding on to it, they felt, was a way of keeping what Dave left behind alive.
Eric Young described the Dave Lepard charity in 2011: it is run by Lepard's mother, and it exists mainly to help young bands who cannot afford gear or cannot get shows booked. She puts on a festival each year called Rest In Sleaze, chooses the bands she thinks deserve to play it, and gives an award to the one she judges most deserving — money the winners can put towards equipment.
The second album, The Unattractive Revolution, carries a guest appearance by Mötley Crüe's Mick Mars on two tracks. He flew into Stockholm in June 2007 to help write some of the material.
Eric Young told the Mick Mars story second-hand: the man in the room was Martin Sweet, who was beside himself at meeting one of his idols. Over a full day together, Young said, that levelled out and they got on like people who knew each other. Mars sat down, got his guitar out and started riffing the moment he had put his things down — a riff machine, in Young's phrase — and two or three songs were built around what came out.
The third singer put himself forward. Simon Cruz heard they were looking, rang Martin Sweet and suggested they try something out. The first song he sang with them at the audition was "Riot in Everyone"; afterwards they went out drinking — everything, as he put it, that you need to do to be sure it works. They took a long time before deciding anything.
Generation Wild entered the official Swedish chart at number 3. It had gone on sale in Sweden on 14 April 2010 through Gain / Sony Music.
Martin Sweet has been openly unhappy with how The Savage Playground sounds. Speaking in 2024, he said "Cocaine Cowboys" was the first track mixed and it came out well; but as they went on they were under pressure and having to make quick decisions, and at a certain point there was no turning back. The rest of the album never matched that first song, and in hindsight, he said, the mix makes it sound like a cheap record. Remixing it has been discussed but is not a priority.
Simon Cruz left in the middle of those Japanese dates. According to Martin Sweet, they had two shows on consecutive days; after the first one Cruz went home to Sweden the next morning without telling anybody. He had been behaving strangely for some time before that. He had changed after their manager Michael Sundén died and seemed to have a lot going on personally, so the band had actually wanted to call the Japanese trip off — but he was stubborn and went to Tokyo anyway. The show itself, Sweet said, was a full hour-long set and it was fine.
Automaton opens with Dave Lepard's voice, and it was not the band who put it there. The album's producer, who was closely involved in the writing, built the intro and dropped Lepard's voice into it to see how they would react. Everybody liked it, Martin Sweet said, so it stayed.
Steel Panther's Michael Starr sings on "Powerline". It was the first featured guest appearance ever credited on a Crashdïet album, and it takes the form of a duet with Gabriel Keyes.
The title Automaton, Martin Sweet explained, means a human machine that never stops. They chose it because they could see themselves in it: whatever the setbacks, they have always kept going.
With Peter London stepping away, Martin Sweet became the only active member left from the Rest in Sleaze era. Eric Young had stepped down indefinitely from live duties in April 2022 and his permanent replacement was announced in February 2024, while London had been in and out since 2023.
Japan was on that list of things that did not happen. Asked in 2006 about the plans that had been in place, Martin Sweet said they were supposed to go to Japan. It would be another nine years before they actually did.
The 2015 visit was in fact the second attempt. Young Guitar noted that a Japanese trip had originally been planned for 2013 and had been cancelled.
They were an anomaly on that bill. Every band that had appeared at Kawasaki Rock City until then had had its heyday in the 1980s, Young Guitar observed; bringing in a group that debuted in the 2000s widened what the event could be.
The Japanese edition of Art of Chaos carries the catalogue number MICP-12024 and adds an eleventh track, the bonus cut "SCREAM". The international edition has ten.
The biography published by the band's Japanese label, Universal Music, is unusually blunt about the early years. Formed on the outskirts of Stockholm at the start of 2000 around Dave Lepard and Peter London, the group fell apart in the rehearsal room — the text describes fights that drew blood — and by 2002 half the lineup was gone.
The debut single "Riot in Everyone" was recorded in October 2004, and its promotional video was shot at the end of November in a studio in Uppsala — the same place Dave Lepard had lived in until he was thrown out.
Issued first as a seven-inch on 25 October, "Riot in Everyone" became a fixture in Stockholm's classic-rock clubs. The Swedish channel ZTV aired the video on 10 January 2005, and when the single proper arrived on 18 February, shops began selling out of it.
When Sweden Rock Magazine drew up a list of the fifty best albums since 2001, two Crashdïet records made it. Rest in Sleaze placed at number 21.
A photograph the band posted in 2012, taken around April 2005, carries the note that they were opening for Eric Singer at the time. In the year of their debut album, in other words, they were still the opening act.
In 2010 the band brought back two early T-shirt designs that had not been available since 2004 and 2005. Twenty per cent of what they took went to the Dave Lepard Memorial Fund.
The Dave Lepard tribute album Reborn In Sleaze was announced by the band in December 2010, to be released by Street Symphonies Records the following year. It was not their project: Eric Young and Peter London said in December 2011 that an Italian had put it together and that they largely heard it once it was finished.
When the band relaunched their website in June 2009 they gave registered members a free download of a brand-new demo. Who was singing on it was withheld: the announcement said only that it featured the new lineup, "yet to be announced".
The official announcement came on 14 July 2009. The band had chosen to give the first interview with the new lineup exclusively to Sweden Rock Magazine, the country's biggest rock title, and revealed the name on the day issue 63 hit the shops.
The first show with Simon Cruz took place on 8 October 2009 on the Sweden Rock Boat — a cruise ship.
In November 2009 the band pulled out of a Finnish tour supporting Hardcore Superstar. They gave the reason plainly: work on the next album had fallen far behind schedule, and cancelling was the only way to avoid pushing the release back.
Recording for the third album began on 12 November 2009. The band billed it as an intense ten-day session and said the whole process could be followed day by day on Twitter.
The "Generation Wild" single did not go on sale by itself. At the end of February 2010 it was issued exclusively with issue 69 of Sweden Rock Magazine, and its two bonus tracks — "One of a Kind" and "Fear Control" — were available nowhere else.
The "Generation Wild" single was certified gold in Sweden in April 2010, for ten thousand copies sold.
The "Generation Wild" video was produced from an original idea by Marcus CF Tinnerholm and written and directed by Rob f. Blom. The credits the band published list the cast as well: "Victim 1", the one being tortured, is Simon Cruz himself.
Generation Wild did not reach the United States until 7 June 2011, when Frontiers Records issued it there — more than a year after the Swedish release.
The vinyl edition of Generation Wild carried a bonus track absent from the CD: "Hollywood Teaze".
In December 2011 the band announced they would open for Mötley Crüe in Helsinki on 7 June 2012 — the band whose guitarist had written songs on their own album five years earlier.
The Savage Playground was recorded over the summer and autumn of 2012 at Kingside Studios outside Stockholm with producer Otto Wellton. The cover artwork was by C.A. Beckston.
In November 2012 the band unveiled a live-and-behind-the-scenes DVD called Shattered Glass And Broken Bones – Three Years Of Generation Wild. It had taken about two years to put together with Bear Productions and ran to three hours and twenty minutes.
In February 2014 the band reissued their 2003 EP — a record from just after Dave Lepard rebuilt the lineup around Martin Sweet and Eric Young, and the year before they signed to Universal.
The band made it public on 26 February 2015, over a month later. Signed by Martin, Peter and Eric, the announcement explained their silence and stated that Simon had decided to leave in the midst of their mini tour in Japan, with no notice whatsoever; the past months, they wrote, had been confusing to say the least. Recording of the new album, they added, would proceed as planned.
The 2016 Rest In Sleaze festival was the last one. With no singer, the band appeared as a trio with guests, and Peter London and Martin Sweet also played sets with their side projects Alter Egon and Sweet Creature. The announcement names Dave's mother Lisbeth as the person who put the festival on.
The fourth singer, Gabriel Keyes, was announced on 6 December 2017. He came from Stockholm; the band said his voice had blown their minds when they first heard it, and that after spending time together and writing music the chemistry was obvious. The announcement opens by thanking the fans for their patience through several near-silent years.
"We are the legion" was written as late as November 2017 and recorded in December — that is, written at almost the same moment the new singer was announced and cut within the month. The seven-inch was limited to three hundred hand-numbered copies, with artwork by Christel Mentges.
"We are the legion" premiered on YouTube on New Year's Eve 2017 and was given away free to newsletter subscribers on the same day. It did not reach Spotify, Apple Music and the other streaming services until 8 January 2018.
The first show with Gabriel Keyes was announced for 30 March 2018 at Kägelbanan in Stockholm — nearly four months after he was introduced. It went ahead on that date.
In 2019 the band were booked to support Skid Row in the United Kingdom — one of the bands their own official biography names as a source of their sound.
In September 2021 the band signed a worldwide deal with Crusader Records / Golden Robot Records, with a new studio album promised for early 2022.
In December 2025 the band announced that Peter London would take a break for the next album cycle, to focus on his personal well-being and his family; the past few years, they wrote, had made it increasingly hard for him to balance those commitments with the band. They said they looked forward to welcoming him back.
The bassist who replaced him is Chris Young, of Midnight Danger and formerly of Lipz. He had saved them at short notice for the previous three shows and blended straight in, the band wrote, and would be part of everything Crashdïet did from then on — recordings, live shows and videos alike.
The seventh album, Art of Chaos, came out on 8 May 2026 through Ninetone Records. The band described it as the ten sleaziest tracks they had written in ages.
The band build their own website. The footer credits it to Peter London and Martin Sweet, developed in house. The 2011 redesign was Martin Sweet's doing, as the announcement of the time records.
Forge was not the only one to walk out in 2002. Bassist Mace Kelly and drummer Tom Bones left at the same moment, leaving Dave Lepard to rebuild the band around a new lineup. Metal Hammer suggests Forge may have gone in order to concentrate on the Repugnant debut he recorded that same year.
Martin Sweet started digging into eighties hard rock in his mid-teens, around 1998 or 1999, buying up Ratt, Cinderella and Dokken records because second-hand shops were almost giving them away. He kept quiet about it at the time and listened in secret: carrying a copy of Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood in his bag in the mid-nineties, he says, got him laughed at.
Asked about being one of the bands that set off the 2000s sleaze revival, Martin Sweet recalled how little was happening when they started: about the only thing going on, he said, was that Mötley Crüe had just reunited.
The band has never tried to shake the word "sleaze" off. Martin Sweet says it is still a good word and it has stuck, so they may as well keep using it — while adding that what they actually play is, in the end, hard rock and rock and roll.
Peter London traces his decision to a childhood encounter with Guns N' Roses — as far back as his memory goes. From that point on, he says, he never had a Plan B.
The first record Martin Sweet ever bought was Europe's The Final Countdown, at about seven years old; next came Kiss's "Crazy, Crazy Nights". His first concert was Europe too, on the Prisoners in Paradise tour, and he went with his mother.
Asked when the band's anniversary falls, Martin Sweet was clear about where they start counting: there were other lineups before it, he said, but Rest in Sleaze is the point they usually date themselves from.
The debut album Rest in Sleaze entered the Swedish national album chart at number 12.
Of Chris Laney, who produced Rest in Sleaze, Martin Sweet had nothing but warmth: a great man to work with, and both of them huge Kiss and W.A.S.P. fans, which he reckoned made it better still.
"Breakin' the Chainz" nearly did not happen. Martin Sweet recorded it with no vocals and no lyrics and sent it over, and Dave Lepard hated it — Sweet had to work hard to talk him into writing a vocal for it at all.
There was a calendar waiting to be played. Their American debut was booked for March at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and their next show was set for 28 January at Storan in Gothenburg.
The band shut down their own web forum on the day Lepard died, out of respect for his family and to keep the speculation off it. They later opened a separate forum dedicated to him, where people could say what they wanted to say.
When the band ran a competition to redesign their logo, Dave's mother Lisbeth Hellman was not pleased at first: if they were changing the logo, she thought, they ought to change the name too — a point that was argued over in Sweden at the time. She came round to it, deciding that they could call themselves whatever they liked, because as long as the name Crashdïet remained, people would remember David.
The last time Lisbeth Hellman saw her son play was at Klubben in Stockholm on 9 December 2005. He came to her after the show and put his arms around her, proud that she and his two sisters had been there to hear him. She counts it among the best gigs the band ever did.
Each year's Rest In Sleaze festival has its own memorial T-shirt carrying a picture of David. Lisbeth Hellman only makes seventy-five of them, and says requests to buy one reach her from Singapore, Canada, the United States and all over Europe.
Peter London has turned up at every Rest In Sleaze festival, playing each year in a different lineup. It is his destiny to play all of them, Lisbeth Hellman remembers him joking.
Eric Young found the first shows without Lepard oddly natural: they had met the new singer, H. Olliver Twisted, the previous November and had been spending time with him. What struck him afterwards was the reaction of Lepard's family and of the fans, for whom seeing the band on stage with someone else was strange. The night in question was the Rest in Sleaze festival, and the point of it, he said, was not to mourn but to celebrate Lepard's memory.
How the Mars collaboration started has come down in two versions, both from Eric Young. In June 2007 he said the idea came from the record company: the label and Mars's management had met when Mötley Crüe were in Sweden, and Mars offered to come back for a writing session. In December 2011 he put it the other way round — Mars wanted to write with people outside Mötley Crüe, and his management approached the band's management. Both accounts agree that Martin Sweet spent the day working with him.
The Unattractive Revolution was mixed in the United States by Kevin Churko.
The Unattractive Revolution entered the Swedish chart at number 11 in October 2007.
The album's title was still open late in the sessions. In June 2007 Eric Young said they had around fifty options on the table and had settled on none of them; the title, he felt, had to sum up where the band now stood, and that depended on how everything around the record — the photo shoots included — turned out.
The band parted with H. Olliver Twisted in July 2008. Their explanation at the time was that they needed a singer who could commit fully and he could not; he had another band in Finland, and they were not prepared to share his time.
At HRH Sleaze III in Sheffield on 31 August 2019, Olli Herman came up to sing "In The Raw". The song was not in the set, Gabriel Keyes said: they knew Reckless Love would be there but not when they were arriving or staying, and the whole thing came together on the spot. Both singers had the lyrics in front of them.
Generation Wild was helmed by RamPac — the production and songwriting team of Johan Ramström and Patrik Magnusson — in Gröndal, Sweden, and mixed by Tobias Lindell.
Europe was handled separately: Frontiers Records took the continental release of Generation Wild, everywhere except Scandinavia, where Gain / Sony Music kept it.
The clip is reported to have been kept off MTV in Sweden. Blabbermouth wrote on 8 April 2010 that it had reportedly been banned, pointing to a video report on the alleged ban from Aftonbladet TV. The band posted about it the same day under the headline "Generation wild banned on MTV!".
There was a reason the band kept adding acoustic sets when they travelled. Most of their shows, Eric Young explained, were restricted to over-18s, so whenever there was time and somebody willing to host it they arranged an acoustic performance — particularly overseas, in places like New Zealand, so younger fans could get in.
Simon Cruz was asked how he got his mohawk to stand up. His method: a powder called Osis dusted into the roots first, then hairspray, then backcombing. The spray was Swedish, he said, and very strong indeed.
The Savage Playground was made largely live. Martin Sweet said the four of them played at the same time with few overdubs, wanting to keep it edgier than the record before it. They had been working as this lineup for about three years by then, and he felt they had the confidence to let loose and do whatever they liked.
The title "Circus" is not a description of the song. Martin Sweet said its lyrics question people's religions and ask the listener to be aware of what is going on around them — and that it does not have much to do with a circus at all.
"Drinkin' Without You" was written and recorded during the Generation Wild sessions, but the demo was never finished. They got it right the second time, Martin Sweet said, and that is why it finally made an album.
The Savage Playground entered the official Swedish chart at number 2. It was released in January 2013 through Frontiers.
For Australia the band signed with the local label 3Wise Records. Martin Sweet said they found a manager in order to get that deal done.
When Cruz walked out, the follow-up to The Savage Playground was already under way: there were plans for the next album and demos were being made, Martin Sweet said. After Cruz left, he added, they lost the spirit for a while. The album that eventually followed did not appear until 2019.
Asked repeatedly during the quiet years whether Crashdïet was finished, Martin Sweet answered flatly in May 2016 that it was not: Crashdïet was his main band, and when the time was right they would start looking for a singer. They were not actively searching then, though. He said they listened to every singer who wrote in offering their services, but that the band was mostly trying to regroup and get their lives back together.
The news broke in the pages of Sweden Rock Magazine. Sleaze Roxx noted at the time that Keyes was the band's fourth official lead vocalist, after Dave Lepard, H. Olliver Twisted and Simon Cruz, and that he is the brother of Highride bassist Kriss Keyes.
The album took its name from a song. Gabriel Keyes said that when he and Martin Sweet wrote the track "Rust", they realised it was the right title for the record. There was no deep meaning in the word itself: they wanted a post-apocalyptic feel for the new image and theme, and rust was a word that pointed that way.
Rust was written by Gabriel Keyes and Martin Sweet, and the division was clean: Keyes did the melodies and the lyrics, Sweet wrote the music. Eric Young and Peter London, Keyes said, did not write on it. The writing took about a year — they wanted to do it themselves and not rush it, so that it would be theirs.
Two songs on Rust had other hands on them. "We Are The Legion" was co-written with Eric Bazilian of the Hooters, and "Stop Weirding Me Out" came from Conny Bloom of the Electric Boys together with Bazilian and Martin Sweet, according to Gabriel Keyes.
The three-part video series "The New Kid", made to introduce the new singer, was Martin Sweet's idea. Keyes had no objection to being the one out front: the others had been doing interviews for years, he said, so the new kid could do them.
In October 2019, midway through the European Idiots On Tour run, Eric Young dropped out and Michael Sweet stepped in again — the second time he had covered for him, after 2011.
Automaton was a product of lockdown. When everything started shutting down and it became clear they would not tour for a long time, Martin Sweet said, they simply started writing. Having the time was not an unmixed blessing: the work spread out over a long period, and both he and Peter London reckoned the songwriting was less effective for having too much of it.
They always write a pile of songs and then fight over the best ten, Martin Sweet said. Automaton ended up with eleven because they could not settle on ten.
The ballad "I Can't Move on" had been sitting around for some fifteen years. Martin Sweet wrote it in 2007, or possibly 2006; there had been an idea of putting it on Generation Wild that never happened. He would pick it up now and then and wonder about it, and this time, he said, it all fell into place.
Automaton was issued on CD, vinyl and cassette — and on MiniDisc. Peter London defended the format on the grounds that it is so portable, while Martin Sweet joked that you can shake it far harder than you can shake a CD.
Getting Michael Starr took very little. The two bands had met at a festival about ten years earlier and knew each other, Martin Sweet said; when the idea of a guest came up, Gabriel Keyes simply texted Starr and asked, and Starr said yes. He recorded his vocal remotely.
What John Elliot had to weigh before joining was that it meant splitting himself between two bands. He had to speak to the Confess members first, he said, and then to his wife. Juggling two bands, a family and children takes a good deal of planning, and he thought it through more than once.
John Elliot's real debut was not the Monsters of Rock Cruise, as is often said. There had been a small show in Stockholm the week before, he explained — an unannounced warm-up — and that, to him, was his proper first gig with the band.
The arrival of a new singer shook the setlist loose. In rehearsal they got talking about songs the band had not played in years, and — as Michael Sweet put it — "Native Nature" and "Knokk 'Em Down" came back.
Singing material written for four different voices is, for John Elliot, a technical problem. Every singer left the songs in different keys, so at each rehearsal they had to decide whether to tune the guitars up, down, or leave them alone. Some songs sit too high for him and some too low, and he does not think any one predecessor is easier across the board — though he says Generation Wild has a lot of songs he enjoys singing.
Asked where the band find the drive to start over again and again, Martin Sweet pointed at the audience. There have been many times, he said, when a singer left or something else went south and they were on the point of packing it in — and each time they were reminded by the fans, and by the people who wanted to book them, that there was still a demand for the band.
Peter London had been in and out of the lineup since early 2023, and the band pulled out of Kissin' Dynamite's German dates in November and December 2025 because he was still recovering from a severe herniated disc.
The cover of Art of Chaos was done by Patrik Norman. It is also the first Crashdïet album with John Elliot singing.
Asked twice, nine years apart, which album he would want to have witnessed being made, Martin Sweet gave the same answer both times: Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction. In 2013 he said he wondered whether they really nailed it themselves or whether other musicians came in to play ghost parts, and that there is almost nothing to read about that period.
Asked which lesser-known bands of that era deserve more credit, Martin Sweet named Madam X, citing High in High School. Peter London agreed it was a good call.