Millencolin Bio

Erik, Mathias and Nikola started the band in October -92 in Örebro Sweden, back then we were playing in other punkbands and singing in Swedish. Erik played guitar in Charles Hårfager. Nikola and Mathias had their band called Seigmenn.


We all started skating around -87 and we got into punkbands like Operation Ivy, Mc Rad, Descendents & Odd Man Out from skatevideos. So we decided to start a skaterock band. We got the name from the skatetrick "Melancholy" (also known as sad air), but we changed the spelling a bit so it sounds more like a name.

We recorded a ten song demotape called "Goofy" in early -93, played one show, then Larzon joined the band.
Larzon played in a band called Kung Pung at that time. We needed two guitars live and Mathias, who played the drums in Millencolin before Larzon joined us, was more of a guitarplayer.

The three bands we played in before, all released one 7" each, which we paid for ourselves.
Both Seigmenn and Kung Pung broke up early -93.

Charles HÃ¥rfager got signed to Kamel Records who put out their 7" again. Erik did one more single with Charles HÃ¥rfager before he quit the band called "korpen faller". The other guys in the band continued to play together and recorded two cd's before they split up.

Erik also ran a fanzine at that time called Jagular music & skate zine, he only put out one issue.


In the summer of 1993 we made a new ten song tape which we named "Melack"
(the songs are now spread out on different compilations).
The recording was made with Dan Swanö at Unisound Studios, where we later on recorded all our stuff up to-98.

Someone of us sent the tape to Burning Heart Records who got back to us and wanted to release a cd single with us. Burning Heart had at that time only released two cd singles.

We recorded the six song cd-single "Use your nose" in November -93, which include new versions of "Pain" from Goofy and "Melack" from Melack. The single was very well received and we started to play a lot of shows outside of Örebro.

Burning Heart were really happy with the release of "Use Your Nose" and they wanted to release an Album with us. This was crazy big for us since we we're used to pay for everything ourselves in our previous bands.

Five months later we went back to Unisound once again. This time to record the single "Skauch" which was supposed to be a pre-taste of the coming album. The six song single include two of our own songs and four cover songs.





In august we went back to Unisound for the third time that year and recorded our first full-length album called "Tiny Tunes". The recording and the mixing took us two weeks.

The Album includes 12 tracks with songs like: "Mr.Clean", "Da Strike" & "Leona".
"Da Strike became a small hit song in Sweden and we made a video and a single for it.
We played alot live 1994, over 100 shows only in Sweden.



In 1995 both Burning Heart and Unisound Studios moved to Örebro and the second album "Life On A Plate" was recorded in August that year and released in October. "Bullion", "The Story Of My Life" and "Friends Till' The End" are three of the 14 songs.

We played more live in Sweden, that summer we did 24 festivals, "Kalvöja" in Norway, "Roskilde" in Denmark and the rest in Sweden. This Album was a big hit in Sweden and the Album entered fourth place at the National charts. We made videos and singles for
"Story Of My Life" and "Move Your Car". Both songs did really good and we were on heavy rotation both in Swedish TV and radio.

September -95 was the time for our first tour outside Scandinavia. That was a ten date German tour together with Pennywise. Leaving Sweden felt really good for us since we never really liked being a hyped media band. That's why we've kept a pretty low profile in Sweden since.
A couple of weeks after that tour we went on a second European tour this time in Switzerland, France, England and Germany.

At the end of 1995 Brett from Epitaph contacted us and wanted to release "Life on a plate" and sign us for the US. They released the album in march -96.
We toured most of the time 1996. Japan, Australia, two US/Canada tours, European festivals in the summer and a South European tour. It all ended up being almost 150 shows that year.

Burning Heart got sued by Warner Bros. because of the cover and the title of "Tiny Tunes".
We were in the States at the time and Burning Heart had to change artwork right away. So Erik decided over the phone to take the artwork from the back and put it on the front and change the colors.
We changed the title to "Same old tunes" because it still contain the same songs. I don't know how much money Burning Heart had to pay in the end.

We released our third album "For Monkeys" April 21 1997. A single with three songs ("Lozin' Must" from the album, "Vixen" an unreleased song and a cover of Desmond Dekkers "Israelites") came out by the end of March.


For Monkeys were one of the last recordings made in Unisound Studios. Dan Swanö threw in the towel and sold most parts of the studio to Mathias and companion Miezsko, who already had some studio stuff together. Their studio was called The Punk Palace but they changed the name to Sound Lab Studios. That's where we recorded "Vixen".

The For Monkeys Tour started in May -97 and ended in August -98. The Tour included:
Three European trips, one trip to Australia and one to Japan, Three visits to the US/Canada and one to South America (Brazil/Argentina).
All together close to 200 shows. Nikola also moved away from Örebro to Gothenburg with his girlfriend during 97.
At this point, we had done close to 500 shows on five different continents and probably spent close to 3 of the 5 years on the road or away from family and friends. Everybody in the band felt really burned out and touring didn't feel as fun as it used to. We agreed on taking a break for a indefinite time.




During the time off we still worked a lot with the band. Wrote tons of new ideas for new songs, which we have a hard time to do on the road. That's why we had to throw "For Monkeys" together, cause we had one month off from touring before the recording. We practically wrote that album in one month.

We also released our first videotape "MILLENCOLIN & the Hi-8 Adventures". A 76 minute and 23 songs long homemade video made by Erik. Including live material, videos, tour filming and some skateboarding etc. The video took six months to edit and put together.
A limited live soundtrack cd single with six songs plus "Buzzer - long version" was included in the first 1000 European, Australian and US copies. Only 3000 copies printed.

Another thing we put together during the time off was "THE MELANCHOLY COLLECTION". Which is our first two cd-singles, the B-sides of our other singles and some songs recorded for compilations on one album! The collection contain all together 22 songs and cover the period late 1993 to early 1998.
The main reason why we put it together was because stores usually charged more for the singles than for the albums. As soon as "The Melancholy Collection" was released Burning Heart quit printing the singles. Which is starting to make them a little bit rare.

In early 1999, all the energy was back and we just found out that Brett (ex.Bad Religion and owner of Epitaph) wanted to record and produce our next album at, for us, legendary, Westbeach Studios in Hollywood, USA. This was like a long time dream come true for us since we've been looking up to Bad Religion for ages. We were stoked and rehearsing had never been that much fun.

We left for Hollywood by the end of July to record our fourth album "PENNYBRIDGE PIONEERS". The recording took six weeks and was a great experience for us. We learned that a change of atmosphere was really good for the recording of the album.

"Pennybridge[Örebro translated directly into English - Öre=Penny, Bro=Bridge] Pioneers" was released on the 21st of February 2000. We couldn't wait that long to start touring again though, we started the "Pennybridge Pioneers Worldwide Tour" on the first of February
in Wellington, New Zealand. Followed by an Australian tour. Since we were touring down there the album was released two weeks earlier in New Zealand and Australia.

We came home from down under the day before the Swedish release date and Burning Heart held our release party at the towns castle. Where we also played a show for our friends.

Then followed a busy tour schedule, 2 x USA both Punk-o-rama and the seven week long Warped tour, two European tours + festivals and a second Australian tour. It all sums up to 115 shows which meant that we'd done over 600 gigs with Millencolin this far. We also made two trips to LA and recorded two videos for "Penguins & Polarbears" and "Fox".

Soon after the Pennybridge Pioneers tour, that ended at the Livid festival in Brisbane, Australia October 2000, we started writing new songs. This time we decided to record the new album back in Sweden. We have always been huge fans of the Samiam record "Clumsy" and the guys in Samiam really recommended it's producer Lou Giordano. We contacted Lou and he was up for the job.

Before the recording, we got offered a support-tour to the Offspring in the US and some other festival stuff that we decided to do in the summer.

We picked up Lou, who arrived from New York, at Stockholm Arlanda airport September 11, 2001. His plane must have been the last one arriving in Sweden from Newark before the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York. That terrible incident really had a big affect on the whole recording.
Pre-production for the album took place at Mathias' Soundlab Studios in Örebro for a week. Then the real recoding started at Little Big Room Studios in Haninge, which is a suburb to Stockholm. The album which we decided to name Home From Home took us about a month to record. The title and the song with the same name comes from the fact that the band and the touring has become our second home over the years. Lou went back to the States, but came back a couple of weeks later for the mixing, which also took place at Little Big Room.

The tour set up for for the last album turned out really good, so we did the same thing this time. Home From Home was first released in Australia and New Zealand by the end of February 2002 and the tour started in Perth February 20. After a great Australian tour we went back to Sweden for the rest of the World-release March 11 and a release party at a club in our hometown, Örebro. After this the tour continued starting with North America, then Europe and European festivals in the summer.

October 2002 was the time for our 10 year anniversary! We celebrated that with a special show at Club 700 in Örebro and the start of a yearly skateboard contest at our park Brädcentralen called Millencolin Open. That weekend was amazing and during our show Brett Gurewitz, who with Bad Religion was a big reason why we started the band, joined us with a third guitar on our song Fox which he produced and and the Bad Religion song American Jesus.

The Home From Home tour continued in January 2003 with the Big Day Out festival tour in Australia and New Zealand, followed by a UK tour, Scandinavian tour and an American Westcoast tour. We were supposed to go back for an Eastcoast tour a couple of weeks later, but this tour had to be cancelled because of a tragic family incident. We made a couple of european festivals in the summer and then finished the Home From Home tour with the rescheduled US Eastcoast tour in November 2003.

2004 has started with a lot of rehearsing and song writing. We are aiming for a recording of a new sixth album by the end of the summer. We will also be doing a couple of European festivals this summer. See you there!

/Millencolin February, 2004