METALITE BIOGRAPHY

METALITE
Biography

Overview

Metalite are a melodic metal band formed in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2015 around guitarist and songwriter Edwin Premberg. What they built is a style in which synthesiser-driven, futuristic soundscapes meet choruses that stay with you and guitars with an edge. The band's own word for it is modern power metal.

Their distinguishing habit is to use synthesisers as structure rather than decoration. Programmed rhythm and synthesised sound hold up the songs, with twin guitars and a female lead vocal over the top. The subject matter drifted towards science fiction as the records went on, and from the fourth album the band have been telling one story per album.

Japan has carried them from the start. Rubicon Music issued the debut, Marquee / Avalon the next three and Ward Records the fifth, and each of the first three Japanese editions adds a Japan-only bonus track that the international pressing does not have.

This site carries six records: the five studio albums and the live EP drawn from their 2022 Sweden Rock Festival set. Those six are exactly the entries the band's own release list labels ALBUM and LIVE EP.

2015 to 2017: starting out in Stockholm

The band began in Stockholm in 2015, started by guitarist Edwin Premberg and vocalist Emma Bensing. Premberg wrote the music and the words and took charge of how the records were made, and that has not changed since.

Premberg explained the name in a 2019 interview: it puts "metal" together with "l33t", the internet spelling of "elite". The word was meant to sound contemporary.

The first single, "Afterlife", appeared on 11 September 2017 with an official music video. "Nightmare" followed on 6 October with a lyric video, and the debut album Heroes in Time came out on 27 October through Inner Wound Recordings. The Danish engineer Jacob Hansen (Volbeat, Evergrey, Amaranthe) produced, mixed and mastered it, with guest contributions from Fraser Edwards of Ascension and Jakob Svensson of Wigelius.

Rubicon Music released the Japanese edition on 20 December the same year as RBNCD-1245, adding a piano version of "In the Middle of the Night" at track twelve as a Japan-only bonus.

2019: a new singer and a new label

A large change came after the debut. Emma Bensing became a mother in 2018 and decided she wanted her time for things other than Metalite. By the band's account she played exactly one show with this line-up, their release gig.

Finding a replacement was hard. Several singers were tried without success until Premberg saw Erica Ohlsson performing at a rock show in Stockholm. He asked her to record a few songs in the studio, found she had everything they had been looking for, and offered her the job on the spot; she took it. Erica had barely listened to heavy metal before.

The label changed at the same time, and the second album, Biomechanicals, came out on AFM Records in Germany on 25 October 2019. It pushes electronic texture and programmed rhythm a step forward, and "Far from the Sanctuary", "Apocalypse" and "Social Butterflies" went out ahead of it. Marquee released the Japanese edition on 20 November as MICP-11522, with "Riders of the Storm" added as a Japan-only bonus track.

The line-up around Premberg and Ohlsson at this point was Robert Örnesved on guitar, Robert Majd on bass and Lea Larsson on drums. Örnesved had played in a covers band with Premberg fifteen years earlier and had been in Castillion; Majd also fronts Captain Black Beard; Larsson came from Imber.

2020 to 2022: two covers and a live EP

The third album, A Virtual World, arrived on AFM on 26 March 2021. From the title track's virtual world outward, its eleven songs all face the near future. The singles began with "We Bring You the Stars" on 2 October 2020 — which never reached the album and remains a standalone single — then "Peacekeepers" on 27 November, the title track on 15 January 2021 and "Cloud Connected" on 26 February. Marquee released the Japanese edition two days ahead of the rest of the world, on 24 March, as MICP-11616, with "Aftermath" added as a Japan-only bonus.

They also took on two songs by their Nordic elders in this stretch: Stratovarius's "Hunting High and Low" on 8 April 2020 and Sonata Arctica's "Full Moon" on 18 March 2022, each released as a standalone single with an official music video, and neither of them on an album.

Live, 2022 was the turning point. On 9 June they played Sweden Rock Festival in Solvesborg, in the south-east of their own country. AFM took four songs from that recording, put out an official live video for one at a time through September and October, and gathered them on 28 October as the digital EP Live At Sweden Rock Festival 2022. No CD was manufactured and there is no Japanese edition. That same summer they also played Sabaton Open Air.

2024: the story of Expedition One

The fourth album, Expedition One, came out on AFM on 19 January 2024 and is the first record the band built as one story. It is set in 2055, in a world where the "transparent citizen" has become real and physical and mental health increasingly decide how a life goes. A renegade team of former intelligence and military personnel and breakaway tech executives, led by five commanders, plans an escape to distant planets; the mission is to carry humanity off a dying Earth.

Premberg has said where the idea came from: people kept telling the band their songs sounded cinematic, so he set out to write something that would arch back over Heroes In Time, Biomechanicals and A Virtual World and tie all three together. He says it was awkward at first and that once the shape of the story was settled they were happy with it. In the same announcement he notes that the band's sound had moved a long way in four or five years, the production quality above all.

The sixteen songs hold both halves of the band: the tight, familiar "Blazing Skies", "Aurora" and "Free" alongside "Sanctum Of Light", "Outer Worlds" and "Paradise", which were meant to surprise. Track fourteen, "Utopia", is the first instrumental they have ever recorded. Jacob Hansen mixed and mastered again. Marquee Inc. released the Japanese edition two days ahead of the international one, on 17 January, as MICP-11842.

Erik Junttila Johansson joined on drums during 2024. His first show with the band was at Hell Yeah Rock Club in Linköping at the very start of 2025. From there the band supported Pain on their Scandinavian tour, played with Leaves' Eyes, and joined The Night Flight Orchestra's European tour in February 2025, alongside festival appearances including Sweden Rock Festival and Masters of Rock.

2026: Discovery, and a third label

The fifth album, Discovery, was released worldwide on 25 September 2026 by Perception, a division of Reigning Phoenix Music — the band's third label after Inner Wound Recordings and AFM.

The story picks up where the last one left off. It is set in 2058, three years after the departure from Earth that Expedition One described in 2055, and follows what became of the people who left. Its twelve songs work through human evolution, dependence on technology, survival, liberation and hope. The band's own announcement puts "Starchild" at the centre and describes it as a song about renewal and healing, and as the arrival of a mysterious figure who brings hope to broken worlds. Jacob Hansen mixed and mastered, as he has on all five albums.

Five songs went out ahead of it: "Our Time Has Come" on 26 February 2026, "Starchild" on 24 April, "In Case Of Emergency" on 29 May, "Echoes Of You" on 24 July and "The Metal Elite" on 4 September, three weeks before release. Ward Records issues the Japanese edition the same day as GQCS-91784, with a Japanese booklet and translated lyrics, and its running order is the international twelve.

Away from the albums, a standalone single called "We Stand Tall" appeared on 2 May 2025 with an official music video. It is on no album either.

Current line-up

Member	Role
Erica Ohlsson	Vocals
Edwin Premberg	Guitar
Robert Örnesved	Guitar
Robert Majd	Bass
Erik Junttila Johansson	Drums

A note on sources

This article was written from the band's own site, metalite.se — its press text, its release list, its show list, and its news items of 3 July 2023 and 25 June 2026, both of which carry a label press release in full; Ward Records' product page for Discovery; RAMzine's interview with Edwin Premberg, published 7 December 2019; Blabbermouth.net's announcement of Discovery on 30 May 2026; the Tower Records Online product pages for each Japanese edition; the release data MusicBrainz holds for artist 18231ca5-d244-436b-9642-b2d4442c14b9; and the iTunes Store Japan catalogue. Release dates, labels, catalogue numbers and prices for the Japanese editions come from the Tower Records product information and the international ones from the MusicBrainz release rows, with running orders checked against those rows and the band's own release list. Every video was verified by its uploading channel, and no fan re-upload is included.