Stonegard Bio

Though their debut album Arrows was first released in Scandinavia in January 2005, the four guys in Stonegard have been hard at work on their music for a long time. They first met in 1997 when three of them were enrolled at "Trondertunet," a boarding school which in the last 15-20 years has been a breeding ground for many of Norway's most successful "pop musicians" of all genres.

In 2000 they came together as Stonegard and have been loved and lauded by Norwegian fans and media ever since. Their followers have really only had one problem; agreeing on a definition of the music. "Dirty testosterone rock?" "Groovy trash metal?" "Rock 'N' Roll with strong leanings to doom and black metal?" Or how about this one: "Sabbath-meets-Slayer-on-the-way-to-a-jam-session-with-Metallica-in-the-best-speed-metal-era-(around 1983)-rock?"

Well, the obvious explanation is that these guys are constantly developing. So even though they have been in the studio on several occasions during, they have avoided any public release until they were absolutely sure they could live up to their own expectations. Now the time is finally right.

Stonegard's debut album is entitled Arrows. It was created in the summer of 2004 during six weeks in the two studios that top dog metal producer Daniel Bergstrand operates in the Swedish university town of Uppsala. Bergstrand has previously worked his wonders for the Norwegian group El Caco and the Swedish bands Meshuggah and In Flames.

The result is stronger than anyone had dared to hope for. The 10 best songs from Stonegard's five years as a band have been taken apart, analyzed, fine-tuned, put together and built into a record that is nothing less than a revelation. An album that all at once manages to be mighty yet melodic, aggressive yet mature, complex yet cohesive.