THE CROWN TRIVIA
Trivia
The farewell year included four shows in Japan. SWD Japan, the promoter, put the tour on its poster as No Tomorrow-Farewell 2026 / Last Roar in the East: SPACE ODD in Daikanyama, Tokyo, on 20 and 21 October, 3STAR Imaike in Nagoya on the 22nd and SOCORE FACTORY in Osaka on the 23rd. Its ticket page sold each show as a normal ticket, a ticket with a signed poster and a meet-and-greet ticket, plus a pass for both Tokyo nights.
The Crown first came to Japan in 2013. That February the band announced they were three months away from their first visit and filmed a short jingle for their Japanese fans, and drummer Janne Saarenpää later recalled, in his farewell letter, a talk about the next album in a hotel room after a show in Japan that summer. The second visit came in 2015, when they headlined Extreme Death Feast 2015 in Osaka and Tokyo. Interviewed over coffee in Shibuya that year, guitarist Marko Tervonen praised the dedication of Japanese fans and said the band had treated the 2013 tour as an investment that was now paying off, with people coming to the shows from all over the country; someone was filming the whole tour to gather material for the band's 25th anniversary. The third visit was The Crown Japan Tour 2018 in September 2018, which ALIVE brought to Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo with Origin from the United States and the Australian bands Descent and Primitive.
The Crown began at school in 1990. In the farewell letter he posted on the band's site in 2014, drummer Janne Saarenpää wrote that the band had been his idea, and that it started when he approached a cool-looking schoolmate, Magnus Olsfelt. The band's own biography describes the first version as a primitive garage act. A compilation appearance in 1992 was followed by two demos, Forever Heaven Gone in 1993 and Forget the Light in 1994, and then a deal with Black Sun Records, home of Grotesque, Nifelheim and Ceremonial Oath. The debut album Black Sun released in 1995, The Burning, includes songs with the same titles as the two demos: "Forever Heaven Gone" and "Forget the Light".
Eternal Death, the second album, recorded as Crown of Thorns in 1996, has songs with a history. According to the band's biography, the eight-minute "The Black Heart" is dedicated to Dead of Mayhem, while "Kill (The Priest)" is a reworking of a song written in 1991, before the band's first demo, and it was still part of their live set in 2014.
For their first years The Crown were called Crown of Thorns. The band's biography says that in July 1997 a Christian glam-pop act already using that name forced them to give it up, and they shortened it to The Crown. The first music released under the new name was "The Poison", on the Wicked World Records compilation Statements of Intent; the song later became the opening track of Hell Is Here. Metal Blade's biography counts the band's 30th anniversary in 2020 with the first eight years as Crown of Thorns included, and in 2024 guitarist Marko Tervonen was still recalling that they had been Crown of Thorns for a few years before they had to shorten the name.
The Crown left a trail of cover versions. According to the band's biography, as Crown of Thorns they gave Slayer's "Mandatory Suicide" to the tribute album Slatanic Slaughter, which helped spread their name, and after becoming The Crown they recorded Sepultura's "Arise" for the tribute Sepultural Feast. Death Is Not Dead has Paradise Lost's "Eternal" in its running order and Sodom's "Agent Orange" on the bonus disc of the limited digipak. Answering a questionnaire on the band's site in 2016, bassist Magnus Olsfelt singled out "Eternal" as the best cover they had ever done.
It was a tour that tied The Crown to Metal Blade Records. The band's biography relates that in January and February 1998 they toured with a band fronted by ex-At the Gates singer Tomas Lindberg and won over the people from Metal Blade, even though one of them took a beer in the face, kicked there by singer Johan Lindstrand. Hell Is Here came out on Metal Blade, and the band went on to play as many shows as they could, touring with Morbid Angel, Emperor and Impaled Nazarene and appearing at Wacken Open Air.
Deathrace King (2000) has two guest singers. The band's discography credits Tomas Lindberg on "Devil Gate Ride" and Mika Luttinen on "Total Satan". Lindberg had already toured with The Crown in 1998, and when Johan Lindstrand left in 2001 it was Lindberg who went on to sing the next album, Crowned in Terror. After Deathrace King the band toured Europe and America with Cannibal Corpse, Nile, Krisiun, Enslaved and Vomitory.
When Johan Lindstrand left in 2001, Tomas Lindberg took his place. The band's biography says Lindberg sang on Crowned in Terror and left again in 2002, the year it came out, over personal differences. Talking to the Swedish magazine Close-Up in 2003, bassist Magnus Olsfelt put it down mainly to personal chemistry: after eleven years with one line-up, it was hard to find someone who suited everyone. Drummer Janne Saarenpää added that year that Lindberg had been the band's only option when Lindstrand left, that the shows themselves had gone very well, and that they had all failed at working together. Lindberg replied in the same issue that he had no unsettled business with the band, and in a 2004 interview with the Dutch magazine Lords of Metal he said they saw life in a completely different way from him. Lindstrand formally rejoined in October 2002.
Crowned Unholy is Crowned in Terror, the album Tomas Lindberg sang, redone with Johan Lindstrand's voice. The band's biography says the work ran from October 2003 to February 2004, and that by the time the record came out the band had already split. When the project was announced in September 2003 the plan was new bass lines and new vocals, with the duet between Lindstrand and Lindberg in "Death Metal Holocaust" left untouched; Lindstrand had been a guest on that song on the original. The band's discography notes that Crowned Unholy came with a bonus DVD.
On Death Is Not Dead the drums are played by guitarist Marko Tervonen. In a letter written in July 2014, drummer Janne Saarenpää recalled first suggesting it in a hotel room after a show in Japan in the summer of 2013, at a time when a job offer had put his own future in doubt. Late that summer he went to Tervonen's house and repeated his case: a session drummer could deliver a fine record, but only Tervonen could make it sound like The Crown. In September 2014 the band announced that Saarenpää was stepping away to concentrate on other things with no end date set, and that the door would stay open for him. A 2015 article reported that Saarenpää had moved to California for work; Tervonen admitted he had been scared, having never played drums that fast, and had kept it from the record company for a long time in case it made the band look less than serious. The band's discography credits Tervonen with guitar and drums, and new drummer Henrik Axelsson only with the two covers, of Paradise Lost and Sodom.
Marko Tervonen, who engineered and produced Death Is Not Dead as well as playing on it, described the gear he used in a 2016 questionnaire on the band's site. The key piece was a Boss HM-2 distortion pedal, the classic box behind the familiar Entombed guitar tone; because on its own it muddied chugging riffs, he mixed just enough of it into a second sound, playing his favourite BC Rich Mockingbirds. Bassist Magnus Olsfelt used a Frankenstein Fender Precision with a Jazz neck and a Lundgren pickup, and a custom bass, his "Rickenbastard", built on an original 1977 Ibanez 2388.
In a 2016 questionnaire on the band's site, three members were asked for their favourite Crown sleeve, and each gave a different answer. Singer Johan Lindstrand chose Hell Is Here, and Slayer's South of Heaven from other bands. Guitarist Marko Tervonen chose Possessed 13 for the whole package and its different formats and materials. Bassist Magnus Olsfelt called all their covers classics, naming Hell Is Here, Possessed 13, Deathrace King and The Burning, but put Doomsday King first at that moment, and Entombed's Left Hand Path first among other bands' sleeves.
The cover of Cobra Speed Venom is the work of Christian Sloan Hall. On 15 April 2019 the band reported on their site that the artwork had been chosen for the book Masterpieces 2018, calling it one of the coolest covers they had ever had and thanking Hall for it.
Royal Destroyer was recorded in about a week. Metal Blade's biography says the band got down to the songs once the 2019 touring and festival season was over and spent a whole year writing and rehearsing them. Recording had been planned for May 2020; the Covid-19 pandemic pushed it back five months, and in October the band recorded with Fredrik Nordström at Studio Fredman in Gothenburg. Bassist Magnus Olsfelt remembers the sessions running fast and without trouble: the whole record was captured in roughly a week, and he laid down every bass part in a couple of hours, nearly all of them first takes. On 8 October 2020 the band announced on their site that the album was finished, recorded in seven days. The starting idea was a sequel to Cobra Speed Venom with more of everything, and it runs from a song of about a minute to a ballad.
The songs on Royal Destroyer each have a source. Bassist Magnus Olsfelt explained in Metal Blade's biography that "Let the Hammering Begin!" is a tribute to Slayer's late guitarist Jeff Hanneman, and that "Scandinavian Satan" was written as barbaric rock 'n' roll in the manner of first-generation black metal bands such as Venom, Bathory and Hellhammer, with lyrics taken mostly from the Völuspa, the Norse myth of the end of the world. "Ultra Faust" deals with the Faustian restlessness that keeps humanity reaching for new territory to explore and take, whether in the past or the future, in the mind or in the material world. As for the title, Olsfelt would rather fans read it their own way, though he allowed that one could say The Crown is a Royal Destroyer. He counted it as the band's tenth album, the one that put them in the big boys' club.
The Crown have placed two albums on the official German albums chart. According to Offizielle Deutsche Charts, Cobra Speed Venom entered at number 34 on the chart of 23 March 2018 and Royal Destroyer at number 17 on the chart of 19 March 2021, each for a single week. After the second, the band thanked the "Viking Punks" in Germany on their site on 23 March 2021.
2022 reshaped The Crown. Founding bassist Magnus Olsfelt left that year, and drummer Mikael Norén and bassist Mattias Rasmussen joined the long-serving pair of guitarist Marko Tervonen and singer Johan Lindstrand; on Crown of Thorns, lead guitarist Marcus Sunesson was back as well. Tervonen says Norén brought back some of the wild feel Janne Saarenpää used to give the drums, while Rasmussen, who comes from punk and crust, wrote "I Hunt with the Devil" and "Mind Collapse" for the album.
Crown of Thorns began with its cover. Guitarist Marko Tervonen wanted to work backwards for once and pushed for the artwork to be made very early in the process. The band wanted the cover to show Strömkarlsbron, a bridge in their hometown of Trollhättan with a statue of the water spirit Strömkarlen on it, since it felt right to bring the story home to the town where it all began. Once Giannis Nakos had delivered the finished art, the question became what kind of music it called for, and the answer, Tervonen says, was something fast, melodic, heavy, epic and punky.
The title of the 2024 album, Crown of Thorns, is the name the band went by in their first years. Guitarist Marko Tervonen reckons every band gets round to a self-titled record sooner or later, and this was The Crown's, made on their own terms; in the same account he recalled the few years they spent as Crown of Thorns before the name had to be cut down. The Japanese label's notes likewise present it as a true self-titled album bearing the band's early name.
On Crown of Thorns, "Gone to Hell" is the first song guitarist Marko Tervonen and bassist Magnus Olsfelt truly wrote together. Plenty of songs on the older albums carry both their names, Tervonen explains, but that never meant they had written them side by side. This time Olsfelt showed him the basic riffs on bass, they recorded them to a metronome and Tervonen took it from there; it is the only song the two made together before Olsfelt left in 2022, a mid-tempo piece with something close to post-punk in it. The single "Churchburner" opens with a nod to Slayer's "Postmortem" before turning into a different beast built mostly on triplets, a feel the band seldom uses, and "Where Nightmares Belong" ends with singer Johan Lindstrand screaming the chorus unaccompanied before a soft, lullaby-like female voice closes it.
Crown of Thorns brought a change of tuning. Guitarist Marko Tervonen says they played in standard E on their first four albums, slowly moved down to D, and from Possessed 13 onward tuned down to C; this time they went back up to D, on a slow climb back towards E, because the lighter tuning gave them chugs and tones they had been missing. Tervonen recorded the album himself at Studio-MT, and the mixing and mastering went to Jonas Kjellgren of Black Lounge Studios, a longtime fan of the band. For the lyrics, Tervonen followed an idea Tomas Lindberg of At the Gates once voiced, that the words already exist and only have to be found.
Crowned in Terror reached number one on American college radio's metal chart. In the issue of CMJ New Music Report dated 27 May 2002 it topped the Loud Rock chart, compiled from the airplay reports of college and non-commercial stations, ahead of Killswitch Engage and Soilwork. It had been second behind Soilwork in the previous issue and was second behind Killswitch Engage in the next, so this was its single week at the top.
Andreas Bergh, Whiplasher Bernadotte of Deathstars, has closer ties to The Crown than most people realise. Guitarist Marko Tervonen revealed in 2008 that Bergh wrote the lyrics to "Deliverance" on Possessed 13, which hardly anyone had noticed. In 2002, when the band had no singer, Bergh was meant to stand in on a US tour with Kreator and Destruction, but the practical side could not be made to work and the tour was cancelled. In August 2008 he was announced as the singer of Dobermann, the new band of four former members of The Crown, but the two sides parted in 2009.
Possessed 13 (2003) was produced by the band themselves and recorded at Studio Fredman in Gothenburg in May and June 2003. A limited two-disc digipak added a bonus CD with the 1993 demo Forever Heaven Gone, the 1994 demo Forget the Light, a cover of Bathory's "Burnin' Leather" and a demo version of "Rebel Angel" from Deathrace King. The video for the first single, "Face of Destruction - Deep Hit of Death", was shot in Germany in August 2003.
The Crown split up in 2004. A statement drummer Janne Saarenpää released in March 2004 blamed too many tours that had gone wrong through unprofessional arrangements: the band came home from them broke, with failing equipment and bills waiting, and loving the stage was no help when nobody knew much about the business. Looking back in 2015, guitarist Marko Tervonen said the hunger had gone and Magnus Olsfelt was about to become a father; having said yes to every gig for years, they felt the band had cost them too much, and they chose to settle down and raise families. There had been a hint. In September 2003, ahead of Possessed 13, Olsfelt said the album felt as if it might be their last, a full stop of sorts.
The reunion started out as another band. As Marko Tervonen told it in 2015, once the members' children had begun to grow up, bassist Magnus Olsfelt got in touch with his old bandmates to say he had written a whole new album, and by 2008 four former members were recording it as Dobermann. Johan Lindstrand was asked to join, Tervonen said, but he was busy with his band One Man Army, and he asked them why they did not simply use the name The Crown. They hesitated: first they wanted a completely different name, then something taken from a Crown song or album title, but the songs taking shape sounded so much like The Crown that calling them anything else made no sense. On 1 December 2009 it was announced that Dobermann had officially become The Crown, with Jonas Stålhammar of God Macabre on vocals, and in June 2010 the band signed a worldwide deal with Century Media Records.
In September 2011 Johan Lindstrand came back to The Crown. Jonas Stålhammar, who had sung Doomsday King, bowed out graciously, saying the band's real voice was coming home, and Lindstrand paid tribute to his work on that album, which remained the only one Stålhammar made with the band. Lindstrand was glad to be back with his oldest friends and promised to do the original line-up justice. His first show back was on 5 May 2012 at Sticky Fingers in Gothenburg, the band's first appearance in the city in twelve years and their only show in Sweden that year.
In February 2013 The Crown announced a new lead guitarist, Robin Sörqvist, known from Impious; the band's biography says he replaced Marcus Sunesson. Impious has a link with the singer too. Answering a questionnaire on the band's site in 2016, Johan Lindstrand said he had played some drums in the mid-1990s and was proud to have drummed on Impious' first demo. The announcement came in the middle of the recording sessions, and the band added that they had also filmed a short jingle for their Japanese fans that day.
"Headhunter", released in October 2014, was The Crown's first ever seven-inch single. The announcement that September put it at 1,000 copies, with the band's version of Napalm Death's "Unfit Earth" on the B-side, and the song came out ahead of the album Death Is Not Dead. The band's videos go back much further: according to the band's biography, in the Crown of Thorns days they made videos for "Of Good and Evil" from The Burning and "Angels Die" from Eternal Death.
In November 2017 The Crown returned to Metal Blade Records on a multi-album deal, with the new album already recorded at Studio Fredman. The band called it an honour to rejoin the label behind so many of their records, crediting Metal Blade with the biggest moves of their career. The first single, "Iron Crown", followed on 12 January 2018 as a limited seven-inch in three colours: 300 copies on black vinyl, 200 on silver and 100 on transparent red.
Cobra Speed Venom took up most of 2017. According to the album's announcement in January 2018, the band spent the bulk of that year rehearsing 13 new songs before going into Studio Fredman to record with Fredrik Nordström. This time, the band said, the conditions were right at last: the songs were written, rehearsed and recorded by all of them together, the way they had wanted to make an album, and that would let them show what they could really do. The album proper has ten songs, with "Nemesis Diamond" and "The Great Dying" added as bonus tracks.
When Tomas Lindberg died on 16 September 2025, The Crown were among the friends who gathered in his memory. An announcement of 18 November 2025 set a night in his honour for 6 December at Monument 031 in Gothenburg, with Dark Tranquillity, The Crown and The Halo Effect performing, and explained that the bands would not play full sets: the evening was meant to celebrate what he left behind. All ticket sales were to go to Cancerfonden and the Gardens of Grief fund set up there. Four days earlier, on 14 November, At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul, the album Lindberg sang, had turned 30. Lindberg had also been The Crown's singer in 2001 and 2002.
On 1 December 2025 The Crown announced that 2026 would be their last year. The statement said it was time to close the book after 35 years: the shows of 2026 would be the last, and the band itself would end with them, on a schedule of the members' own choosing and as a thank-you first of all to the fans. The tour was named NO TOMORROW - FAREWELL 2026, and the dates announced that day ran from Mangualde Hard Metal Fest in Portugal on 10 January to a final show in Gothenburg on 19 December. The words were not new to the band: "No Tomorrow" is the opening track of Possessed 13 (2003), and the phrase also appears in the title of the DVD 14 Years of No Tomorrow.