Astral Doors - History

History

Nils Patrik Johansson, Joachim Nordlund and Martin Haglund all inhabited the Swedish town of Borlänge, where they all practiced with their respective bands at a club called the Rock House. Nordlund and Johansson barely knew each other, and neither were aware of Martin Haglund. Johansson's melodic metal band, Staircase, lost its drummer in 1991, and their search for a replacement led them to Johan Lindstedt, who was a drummer for a techno thrash metal band. Lindsedt played briefly for Staircase before moving on to a rap metal group, Buckshot OD.

In 1998, Johansson and Lindsedt were in another band together: Barfly. Influenced by Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, the band went on until 2002, when it broke up following a musical decline during their fourth demo recording. The engineer for the demo recording was another Rock House regular, Nordlund, frontman for the band Erina. A lot of Johansson's trademark Dio-esque sound was developed during this time.

Soon after, Nordlund and Lindstedt began writing together, and they contacted Johansson. The songs that came out of their collaboration dealt with "dark, cosmic" material, the best example of this was "Far Beyond the Astral Doors". They named themselves "Astral Doors" shortly after writing the song. They hired Joakim Roberg, whom they had collaborated with on some of the songs, and Martin Haglund of the band earflog, as members, and began the project.

The band reached a temporary climax when they were a support act on Blind Guardian's 2006 tour for the album A Twist in the Myth.