MANINNYA BLADE

NICKLAS JOHANSSON

It is almost exactly 20 years ago now, that a single with the then very young metal band Maninnya Blade, from Boden in northern Sweden, was unleashed onto the swedish market with full force. The songs were called ”The Barbarian” and ”Ripper Attack” and the youngsters had a sound that no swedish band before them had had. It was brutal, it was intense and it was heavy as shit.

That the genre was called (or was to be called) thrash metal, few in Sweden knew at the time.

- I was listening a lot to Motörhead and Venom, and I was also very early into thrash metal. I had contacts in Belgium and Holland that I traded tapes with, guitar player Nicklas ”Nick the Ripper” Johansson recalls.

The story about Sweden’s first thrash/speed outfit begins in the small town of Boden in the very early eighties. A bunch of young guys form Fair Warning, a band rooted in the hard rock of the seventies. In 1983 guitarist Nicklas Johansson joins, and the aggressive sound starts to take shape.

The quartet shows that they are in it for real, playing live whenever they get the chance. And the audience, a curious one, attends.

- The musical life in Boden was quite rich back then, but we were special. Heavy metal had gotten a revival. People were curious about us weirdos, because we really looked like weirdos, Nicklas Johansson says with a laugh.

So, in the summer of 1984, the band got the chance to put two songs on vinyl. The now semi-legendary single was recorded in Pajala, near the finnish border, with a producer used to swedish dance music (and you who are from Sweden know that it’s about as far from heavy metal as you can possibly get).

- When we recorded the vocals, he was like ”Damn, it’s distorting!”, but we said ”No, it’s supposed to sound like that”.

- He didn’t know what we were doing at all. We wanted to overrun everything. If it was possible to overrun the mix, that was a good thing. We wanted a total, compact wall of sound.

Merchants In Metal LP

The result became a real fat wall of sound indeed, kind of ahead of its time. Maninnya Blade could very well compete with contemporary bands like Anthrax or Exciter in terms of intensity and aggression. If we pick North America out (and thus the Bay area movement), only two or three bands can claim to have predated Maninnya Blade with a sound like that.

The band then consisted of Leif Eriksson on vocals, Nicklas Johansson on guitar, Jan Blomqvist on bass and Ingemar Lundberg behind the drum kit. Shortly after the single release Mikael ”Mike Wead” Wikström (famous for his work in… Mercyful Fate, King Diamond, Memento Mori, Hexenhaus, Abstrakt Algebra, Candlemass and more) joined to play guitar alongside Nicklas Johansson.

The single was well received, and the band got the opportunity to open for Motorhead on the northern dates of their swedish tour, before they decided to pack their bags and set out for Stockholm. Mikael Wikström chose to stay behind in Boden and was soon replaced by Jerry Rutström. The fivesome moved in together in a house (called ”Hellhouse” or ”Villa Maninnya”) in upper middle class area Helenelund.

The rock’n’roll lifestyle began and the neighbours were scared to death. Imagine five long haired savages from the far, far north moving in, boozing all night and playing blasphemous music all day.

- It took about a year before the neigbours started talking to us. We partied almost too much. We could keep up seven days in a row, Nicklas Johansson says.

The Barbarian / Ripper Attack 7"

However, they never skipped rehearsals and were gigging everywhere they could. In 1986 english label Killerwatt showed interest in the band and Maninnya Blade started recording the LP that, or so they hoped, was supposed to become their breakthrough. The album was recorded in Stockholm and was sent to England for mastering.

For the first time during the interview, you can trace bitterness in Nicklas Johansson’s voice:

- They destroyed everything. Sound levels on the album were completely different than on the master tape – the whole atmospere was gone!

”Merchants in Metal”, as the album was baptized (in fire), had good songs, but sounded weak to say the least. While Slayer and Kreator were competing in how brutal it was possible to make thrash metal.

- We should have made an album that was even more intense. But I still think that we would have competed with the best, hadn’t the mastering been destroyed. We were aiming for a sound like very early Anthrax.

After a lot of fighting about mastering problems, the band was dropped by the record company. Jerry Rutström left the band, and was replaced by Andreas Palm from Damien.

- He brought in a lot of fresh blood.

Live life at speed

But time was starting to run out for the thrashing pioneers from the north. Despite several demo tapes (among them the marvellous Incubus demo in 1987, the best recording Maninnya Blade ever did, in the writer’s opinion) and frequent gigging, no record deal was in sight.

And now, members started coming and leaving. In a short period of time Maninnya Blade had more drummers than Spinal Tap (among them now famous eurodisco artist Martin ”E-type” Eriksson). When Leif Eriksson eventually was out of the band, the band name was shortened to Maninnya and Nicklas Johansson took over the microphone, and soon laid down the guitar. When Mike Wead then joined the band for the second time the band name was changed again, this time to Hexenhaus.

The story about Hexenhaus is about to turn into a completely different story, but let’s stay with them for a while. It came to an album in 1988, but Nicklas Johansson was tired of the shit and left. Others followed, and soon only Mike Wead, with a bunch of new members, remained.

- What Mikael Wikström then did was quite ugly. He continued under the same name without any original members. We came up with the name Hexenhaus BEFORE he joined.

But let’s leave Hexenhaus there. Today Nicklas Johansson has the band Slowgate, that has made an album in modern Pantera style and has another one coming. But the members of Maninnya Blade have stayed in touch throghout the years, and in 2002 they actually reformed for two concerts. At about the same time the swedish independent label Stormbringer Productions released an LP, ”Demonic Mistress From the Past”, containing demo material from 1987-88.

Does Maninnya Blade exist as a band today?

- Yes. The soul is still there, and then the band exists.

Maninnya Blade in concert around 1985

Maninnya Blade never became what they could have been, but the true metal audience hasn’t forgotten who was the first thrash metal band in Sweden. Their status as a cult band is forever carved in stone.

- In some sick way, there has always been a constant interest in my old band. People call and write to me, wondering what we are up to today. Everytime I go to a festival, someone approaches saying that they started playing music thanks to us. That’s flattering. I hope that in some way we inspired a coming generation.

By/ Per-Ola Nilsson

(2004)