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returntothepit >> discuss >> RIP Tony Särkkä (IT from Abruptum) by susurrate on Feb 14,2017 11:04am
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toggletoggle post by susurrate at Feb 14,2017 11:04am
Date of death: February 14, 2017



bennyhillifier



toggletoggle post by Det. John Kelly from NYPD Blue at Feb 14,2017 11:36am
Did he suffer long or was it...

[David Caruso glasses]

Abrupt?

Um?

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH



toggletoggle post by Jim Carrey at Feb 14,2017 3:09pm
All whitey then.....



toggletoggle post by the_reverend   at Feb 14,2017 3:37pm
It's with a heavy heart i'm typing this text on the keyboard. Tears are falling down my cheek and it hurts in my entire body. In the background i have the song ”Demons” by 8th Sin, and all my memories are coming back in a mess of images inside my head. I feel sick, even though i am actually doing fine physically.

I met Tony Särkkä/IT (or whatever you decide to call him) back in 1987. We were both typical angry teenagers ready to upset the world as much as possible. We had similar taste to heavy music and shared the interest in playing. He regularly came to me with his guitar and asked me to show him how to play different songs. Most of them were by bands like S.O.D, Anthrax, Metallica or any other from the late 80’s thrash wave that were the absolute coolest thing one would listen to at the time. In 1988 i formed a band together with Dan Swanö and a few other friends, and one day i rang his doorbell to ask him to become our lead singer. He accepted immediately and that’s when our common musical journey started that lasted for the rest of our life together. The band was ”Brejn Dedd”, a thrash band with strong influences by any angry-heavy-fast-playing thrash band of the 80’s, with a touch of teenage-humor. We never took the band that seriously, but we had a really good time together. Tony just exploded with new ideas every week and we had many late nights discussing ideas about the band. Many times he ended up sleeping on the couch in my small apartment. I had to call his mum and say he was okay and also make sure he dragged his lazy ass to school the next day before i went to work myself. Brejn Dedd disbanded in 1991 after a few successful years of shows and recordings.

Early 90’s, Tony broadened his musical visions and became interested in more extreme sorts of metal, and formed bands like Abruptum and later on also Ophthalamia and Vondur, among other projects. I went in a completely different direction myself, but as we had found each other on so many different levels, we didn’t have to be in the same band or even listen to the same music to keep our bonds tight. We were like brothers. In 1995 i produced the first Vondur album together with Tony. We recorded it in my living room and he wrote on the album that it was done in ”Helevete Studios”. A typical move from Tony, always with a smile on his face. We had a really good time and loads of laugh creating Stridsyfirlysing, that were done completely in Icelandic. He thought it was the coolest language in the world and really tried to study it as much as he could before recording the album. He was constantly telling me the sound was ”too good” and the songs were ”too slow”. We were laughing together as we speed up the tempo of the programmings and made the sound as bad as we possibly could. We recorded everything right there in my living-room, even Jim was recording the violin there. Neighbours must’ve been terrified. In 1996 we did part of it again as i programmed everything for the second album ”The galactic rock n roll empire” but it was recorded in Abyss studio.
The same year i produced the Ophthalamia album ”To Elishia” (released later in 1997) which were a collection of all early demos remastered and summed up on one album. Tony kept coming over to me every now and then with a plastic bag of cassette tapes he had found in the basement, and wanted to include them all no matter the quality.

The 90’s were a time when we hang out almost daily. But this was also a time when things started to escalate around his person, and in the second half of the 90’s Tony reached a turning point in his life. Things got to its extreme and he decided to make a drastic move from the scene that he was part of creating, and to temporary leave Sweden. He went on a journey around the world to explore new views in life, new places, and new visions. Time to think and to evolve as a person. This is where he turned the page and entered into a new chapter in life. We kept contact all the time, no matter how far he went. Once a week an email popped up with a full report on what was going on, sometimes with pictures, and i had to do the same at my end. He was always the same Tony for me, but for the outside world he was going through changes.

Around 1999-2000 he came back to Sweden again and immediately we found ourselves in my studio throwing ideas at each other again. He was so full of creativity and it was now 10 years since we made music together, and we were both older and had new visions and experiences. I had made lots of electronical/synth stuff since last time and he had made lots of extreme black/death/dark stuff and we agreed we should combine our musical minds. We formed 8th Sin, that was his idea of the biggest sin of all seven sins combined; humanity. We worked really hard writing songs and trying to find our sound for about four years. I was doing the music and production while he was the creative mastermind of lyrics and stories. Just like he had created Ophthalamia that was a fantasy world he invented in the 90’s, now he had a new platform to express himself. We had weekends where we literally lived in my studio until the smell was unbearable. Tony seemed to have endless energy. In 2004 the first 8th Sin album ”Sinners Inc” were finally released, followed up by the second album ”Angelseed & Demonmilk” in 2005 and the third album was planned to be released in 2006.

In time for the release of the first album in November 2004 we put a band together. Johan Husgafvel was Tonys first choice as bass player and he said that Johan was "so cool!". Tony had met him for the first time on my 30th birthday three years earlier. The rest of the band was found by online advertisment and we immediately started to work on the second album all together. Tony was so happy to have a band again, and as none of his previous bigger bands (like Abruptum, Ophthalamia or Vondur) made any live appearances, he was so excited to do shows with 8th Sin. The first show we did was in January 2005 as the opening act for our mutual friend Peter Tägtgren and his band Pain - it was actually through Tony i had got to know Peter in the early 90s. After the release of the second album in November 2005 we started to work on what was supposed to be the third album. Tony loved to rehearse with the boys and i always picked him up in my car and we went there together. He was always so full of energy when we did this, and afterwards in the car back home we discussed how it went.



toggletoggle post by the_reverend   at Feb 14,2017 3:38pm
I think Tony was in his very best shape around this time, and he made new lyrics every week. He was working really hard to fine-tune them into perfection. When recording, i did everything i could to bring out the very best of him in his vocal performances. Sometimes we did hundreds of takes just to get it right, but as close as we were to each other he didn't have any problems when i was extensively pushing him to new limits. He actually thanked me afterwards and said he never thought he could sound like this. My personal opinion is that the 8th Sin recordings were by far the best he ever did; his super-theatrical expression revealed the meaning of his deep lyrics, which most people never understood. The stories were never what you read through the words, and always had a double-edged meaning with a story behind the obvious.

In 2006 the objective was to complete and release the third album but when people left the band and we had to start all over by finding new ones, Tony started to lose his interest. He didn’t finish all lyrics and vocal recordings to all available songs so the third album wasn’t completed even though i had material enough for a full album. Tony told me in early 2007 that he will travel around the world again and didn’t know when or if he would ever come back. The rest of us had to pick up the pieces and disband what was left of 8th Sin. Around the same time i joined Pain and later that year Johan also joined. Tonys musical interest slowly faded away and we found ourselves on different journeys again for a few years. Eventually he came back to Sweden again, but with no intentions of creating new music. His past were still chasing him to some extent and it clearly annoyed him that some people were making stupid comparisons like Abruptum to 8th Sin. He felt like he wasn’t allowed to develop musically without being judged upon what he did 10-15 years earlier.

Next and final chapter about our common journey started in 2010 and could be summed up as the trip down the memory lane combined with the objective to ”make things right as it was supposed to be”.
It started when he asked me to re-master the Ophthalamia album ”Dominion”, as (according to him) the original release from 1998 was made without his approval during his travels. This also gave him the chance to use the cover that was originally intended for the album as well as adding a few bonus tracks. Once again he came over to my place with a plastic bag with old tapes he found in his basement. Dominion was then released in 2011. Then i came up with the idea to bring the old Vondur stuff to life again. This became a really fun project where we were laughing together again like in the old days. As i had all original masters from the first album i could make a completely new mix in 2010 from something that was recorded in 1995. We also added a re-master of the second album to the works, and once again he came to me with his plastic bag with old tapes to add bonus tracks. I started to see a funny pattern. This album was named ”No Compromise” and included everything that exists with Vondur, and was released in 2011. Next idea was to do the same with all old Brejn Dedd recordings from 1988-1991, something that he kept very close to his heart and really wanted to do. I think the reason was that he had very good memories from the time we created those recordings. I worked on this project and were almost finished when another idea came up that took our attention. I digged out the recordings from 2006 originally made for the third 8th Sin album that never saw the light of day back then. We agreed that it was time to release it posthumously even though 8th Sin didn't exist anymore. He thought it was a real shame if the world would never hear what he thought was the best album so far, and maybe most important, his idea was always that the 8th Sin story was a trilogy. The song ”The eight sins” were made in three parts as it was supposed to be the final song on each of the three albums. We just had to finish the third album, no matter what. He really liked the songs and it felt like he had a closer relation to them than anything else from the past. As all vocal tracks for all finished songs were already recorded in 2006, we didn’t have to do it again. Tony came over to my place regularly to listen to my mixing progress instead, always with a smile on his face. We agreed in an early stage that we will not try to finish songs that were not fully finished in 2006, as he didn't want to make any new lyrics or vocals. He thought he couldn't do it anymore and hadn’t been singing for five years. But we added a song that wasn’t there originally; the song ”Cosmogenesis” that also became the title track. As usual i had made the music and he made the lyrics, but this was different in so many ways. First of all, it was more like a poem, but he also performed it like a speech. But the real unique move was when he wanted to do it in Swedish. The Swedish language added a personal touch in a way the audience had never experienced before. This became his last recording ever, recorded in my home studio Sept 28th 2012 with nine different takes. Very few in comparison. We then released Cosmogenesis late 2012 – the final release he was ever involved in. The circle was closed and the trilogy complete.

In 2013 we decided to re-master and release the Ophthalamia album ”To Elishia” again. He wanted me to do what could be done to improve the sound from the original release. I finished the production and made the master ready to go, and at the same time Tony worked on the new cover artwork and sleeve notes before it could be released. For some reason, it was never finished and the album never came out.

Fast forward to January 2017, i met Tony briefly on Sunday the 22nd and he hugged me really hard when i was leaving. It was not the usual hug; he wouldn’t let go and i saw something in his eyes that i hadn’t seen before, like a communication without words. I don’t know what this was all about, but it was different from every other hug i got from him the past 29 years. Today i know that was our final IRL meeting. Four days later we had our last communication on messenger, discussing some old album memories we shared, like Piledriver ”Stay Ugly”, Wehrmacht ”Beermacht”, and Infernal Majesty ”None shall defy”. About two weeks later he was gone.

Tony was a unique character, and held a deep philosophic view on life nowhere near anyone else i’ve met. He was like a brother to me for almost 30 years. We wrote songs together, played together, he slept on my couch in his teens, we were camping together, we were fishing together, played chess together, painted our house together, partying together, i even tried to teach him how to drive a car. Well, that never worked out well though. We experienced so much together and had a big influence on each others lives. He will always live in my heart forever. I know that he now finally got his sought-after peace. Sleep tight brother, darkness it shall be.

//Michael Bohlin, February 2017"



toggletoggle post by susurrate at Feb 14,2017 4:09pm
[In the background i have the song ”Demons” by 8th Sin, and all my memories are coming back in a mess of images inside my head]

Absolute trash music. But hey, Abruptum was fucking cool and Vondur was also enjoyable despite the backlash it created. I like the avant-garde weird shit once in awhile so I always respected the Abruptum material. RIP.



toggletoggle post by Mr. Reasonable at Feb 14,2017 6:29pm
Vondur created backlash?



toggletoggle post by susurrate at Feb 14,2017 7:01pm
from butthurts who thought it was too silly and not true enough apparently.



toggletoggle post by susurrate at Feb 14,2017 7:05pm
I wonder if vondur is the earliest example of black metal troll



toggletoggle post by Mr. Reasonable at Feb 15,2017 10:47am
I'm old enough to remember when it was released, thought the Darth Vader thing was goofy, but the music was just trooly boring. Not enough powel for kvlt. Didn't remember backlash though. People seemed to like WAR just fine.



toggletoggle post by susurrate at Feb 15,2017 2:50pm
Ill take your word for it. I just remember reading it somewhere. Im not the authority on anything, let alone the life story of this guy



toggletoggle post by RTTP Department of Truth at Feb 15,2017 3:17pm
Mr.%20Reasonable said[orig][quote]
Not enough powel for kvlt.


QFT



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