Quorthon - Career

Career

Quorthon formed Bathory in 1983 when he was 17 years old, after briefly playing in the Oi!-band Stridskuk. He recorded his early albums together with the help of his father, Börje Forsberg, the head of the Swedish record label Tyfon Grammofon, who also released most of his albums on the Tyfon imprint Black Mark. The first album was recorded in the garage of famed schlager writer Peter Himmelstrand, dubbed Studio Heavenshore.

Around this time (in the mid-late 80's) live performances by Bathory were rare. Albums from this period helped the then-burgeoning black metal sub-genre, and rare photographs of the band helped in part to define its image. Quorthon at this time claimed to have stressful experiences dealing with over-zealous fans, receiving letters written in blood and dead/mutilated animals in the post, amongst other things. This behaviour, along with Bathory's image and style of music, cemented Quorthon's unfortunate image, as he put it, as "the baby-eating, blood-drinking God of the bat-cave" in the popular imagination as well as popular metal press, much to Quorthon's disgust and anger.

Beginning in the 1990s, Quorthon took full control of Bathory, choosing to forgo performing live in order to spend time recording music with hired musicians, as well changing style from the black metal of the 80's to a slower, heavier style dubbed "Viking metal", due to its lyrics being focused on Norse mythology. From this point onwards, he also played bass guitar on almost all of his albums, and mostly used a drum machine or a session drummer. Quorthon also personally paid for the production of Bathory's only ever music video, for the song "One Rode to Asa Bay", taken from their second Viking metal album, Hammerheart. The video was shown on MTV's Headbanger's Ball, though Quorthon had not yet seen it at the time he was interviewed for the program.

In 1993 Quorthon set Bathory aside and recorded and released three albums under the name "Quorthon". The first, called Album, was released in 1994, and then in 1996 Quorthon released Blood on Ice, a Viking metal concept album which he began recording in 1989 but did not finish.Then the final two albums which came under the title of Quorthon were released which were Purity of Essence and When Our Day Is Through and both were released in 1997. The albums were more rock oriented than Bathory's black / Viking /Thrash style. While working on these albums he found new inspiration to continue composing music for Bathory. Bathory's next albums were in a retro-thrash metal style, unlike previous releases. His next albums followed in that vein, before he veered towards his Viking metal style once again especially on the Nordland saga. It was planned as a four-album set, but only two were finished.