Profile of Dan Swanö on Famous Like Me

Dan Swanö, (born on the March 10, 1973, in Finspång, Östergötland, Sweden), is a multi-talented Swedish musician, lyricist and vocalist, somewhat influential in the underground death metal and prog rock communities, with a small but devoted cult following for his numerous works.

Music

He has fronted a huge number of bands, most notably Edge of Sanity, Nightingale, Pan.Thy.Monium, Brejn Dedd, Unicorn (Sweden), Infestdead and Route Nine. He has also been a member of Katatonia (for whom he played the drums), and he is currently a member of Bloodbath, playing drums on their first EP Breeding Death and the debut album Resurrection Through Carnage but moving to guitar for Nightmares Made Flesh during the line-up shift that occurred when Mikael Ã…kerfeldt briefly left the band.

Swanö has also contributed his vocal talents to Arjen Lucassen's Star One project. The two musicians are good friends, with Lucassen contributing guitar parts to Swanö's Nightingale project. He can also be heard on the albums Theli and A'arab Zaraq - Lucid Dreaming by the symphonic opera metal band, *Therion. He was also producer and contributing writer of the band Diabolical Masquerade, the now defunct solo avantgarde black metal band of Anders Nyström aka Blakkheim (Katatonia,Bloodbath, ex-bewitched). He also contributed some guitar solos, backing vocals, and played the drums on the album Nightwork.

Besides all these bands, Swanö has also released a solo progressive death metal album entitled Moontower, on which he showcases his multi-instrumental talent, playing all instruments (guitar, bass, drums and keyboard) and providing all the vocal work.

Swanö has a wide vocal register, encompassing many styles, including death metal roars, growls, and grunts, and various sorts of clean, much more melodic singing, associated with prog rock and goth rock.

Family and work

Despite the huge amounts of releases to his name, Dan still works as chief sales assistant in a music store near his home in Sweden, rarely doing live performances with any of his bands (it has been said that one of the main reasons for this is that he is unable to sustain the heavy growling death metal vocals used in many of his bands for any prolonged period of time). He has his own studio in his home, variously called first Gorysound then Unisound, where he records his own projects as well as the music of other notable underground bands such as Marduk, Dark Funeral, Merciless, Dissection and Katatonia. He is married, with one child, and maintains close ties to his family. His elder brother Dag Swanö was in Pan.Thy.Monium under the pseudonym Äag and is a member of Nightingale under the name of Tom Nouga. He is currently divorced

Complete list of Musical Projects Swanö has been involved with

• Altar
• Another Life
• Bloodbath
• Brejn Dedd
• Canopy
• Diabolical Masquerade
• Edge of Sanity
• Godsend
• Incision
• Infestdead
• Karaboudjan
• Katatonia
• Maceration
• Masticate
• Nightingale
• Odyssey
• Opeth
• Overflash
• Pan.Thy.Monium
• Ribspreader
• Route Nine
• Sörskogen
• Star One
• Steel (band)
• The Lucky Seven
• Therion
• Total Terror
• Ulan Bator
• Unicorn
• Wounded Knee

Solo discography

• Moontower full-length, 1998

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Dan Swanö