On the Death of Jonas Bergqvist, and Why I'll Never Judge Another Book by its Cover

This morning I read that some dude named Jonas Bergqvist died. "Big whoop," I said to myself. At first. One of the news posts I read on his death also had a youtube clip of a song from Bergqvist's band Lifelover. I checked it out and holy crap I was blown away.

Jonas Bergqvist

I've always been familiar with the above image, though I never knew who it was or even that it was the member of a band. I don't even remember where I saw the image, it's just incredibly familiar. This is Jonas Bergqvist, and about three hours ago I discovered two things: he died three days ago, and he played in a band called Lifelover.

I read Noisecreep's posting about his death, not really knowing who he was. But out of curiosity, I checked out the song "Cancertid" (which I later found out was from their 2008 album Konkurs) featured at the end of the article.

Holy crap, I was totally sucked into this song. I searched out the album on Spotify, and I've been jamming to it ever since.

Sonically, it's very much a post-rock album. It features wide open soundscapes that seem to float around weightlessly--like most post-rock bands. But it also has a very haunting vibe to it, and not in a corny way like the Misfits. It's a legitimately dark album in such a way that I've never heard before, and I'm totally hooked. It's also somewhat drone-y and doom-y, not to mention the obvious black metal overtones.

But what really separates this band from other space-y metallic bands (as far as I can tell from not even knowing them for a full day yet) is the now late vocalist Jonas Bergqvist. His shrieks and growls are rather unique, and somewhat disturbing. But in a good way. The closest thing in my vocabulary to describe these vocals would be this: imagine if Heath Ledger's interpretation of The Joker in the 2008 film The Dark Knight started a metal band. A horrible comparison, I know, but it's the best I've got.

So like I said at the start of this post, I was familiar with Bergqvist's face, but something about that creepy image was shying me away from figuring out who he was. And I'm really disappointed that it did. I was truly missing out on something grand and mysterious.

Jonas Bergqvist, I know I just figured out who you are, but I think after I buy your albums I will genuinely miss you and the fantastic strangeness that you brought to heavy music and I completely missed out on. RIP.