Backyard Babies frontman/guitarist Dregen is recovering nicely from his mugging injuries and the band has resumed rehearsals and preparing demos for their upcoming album. In other news, the band has also made their first foray into the world of sports by becoming an official endorser of their local hockey team, Njckey Club. The endorsement consists of the BB skull logo being stenciled onto one of the face-off circles.

Remember to watch Conan O'Brien on November 26 to see The Soundtrack of Our Lives perform.

Sweden student radio top 20:

Leaving the chart:
(10) The Crash "New York"
(11) Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Machine"
(13) Peter Bjorn And John "I Don't Know What I Want Us To Do"
(17) The Distillers "City of Angels"
(18) Marit Bergman "This Is the Year"
(20) Adam Green "Dance With Me"

The Knife (ex-Honey is Cool) has got a new record coming out. The first single and video "Heartbeats" will drop January 7 with the album "Deep Cuts" following on January 27.

After a rare concert appearance on Halloween, Notre Dame frontman Snowy Shaw went straight back to Fredman Studio in Sweden to record the next album from Dream Evil. The planned title is "Evilizer" and Snowy contributed four tunes. Work Notre Dame's next album will continue soon.

Watch the video for "The Band" from Mando Diao:

Real: High / Low   Windows: High / Low

Listen to Peter, Bjorn and John play live on P3 here and here. For those that don't know, the members of PBJ have connections to artists such as Caesars Palace, TSOOL, The Plan, Marit Bergman, and Nicolai Dunger among others.

A new week and some new tunes: Bloodbath is members of Katatonia and Opeth doing that classic Swedish death metal thing. The Flaming Sideburns got that dirty rock n' roll thing going on. The Motorhomes put out one of the best pop records this year. And Mando Diao's got a sound that's a little bit Motown, a little bit garage rock.

Speaking of Opeth, they just recently completed work on their upcoming album "Damnation", hot on the heels of the just-released "Deliverence". Billed as the mellow companion album to "Deliverence"'s heaviness, the album is presently being mixed by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree for a March 2003 release. The band claims it's "nothing like anything we've ever done before" and has a "strong '70s vibe both in material and production." Opeth will be doing some touring in support of the already-released album with dates already confirmed for London and Greece in December. They say there's more to come, so you may wanna check their website for the latest.

Finland's Children of Bodom have completed work on their next album. It's called "Hate Crew Deathroll" and will be released on January 7, 2003. View the artwork here.

Borknager has announced their plans to record the follow-up to "Empiricism". Oystein G. Brun's statement on the matter:

"We estimate to use about 4-6 months to record the album, as we want to use the time needed to get the album as close to perfection as possible. The album will be recorded in the same recording facilities as last time (Fagerborg and Toproom Studios) with Børge Finstad behind the desk. Musically the album will be a continuation of 'Empiricism'. Apart from that, we deem the right to keep the rest as a secret... he,he.... As of yet, there is no title for the album, but some song titles are ready: 'Cyclus', 'The Inner Ocean Hypothesis', 'The Wonder', 'Quintessence', 'Future Reminiscence' and 'Relate (Dialogo)'."

The Swedish Hit Music Awards were this past weekend. Kent and The Sounds won some awards, along with a bunch of international acts that I don't care about. Check out this article for the scoop. (In Swedish, list at bottom)

The Hellacopters are about the release their the next single from the album "By the Grace of God" on December 2nd. The a-side will be "Carry Me Home" with a cover of Rory Gallagher's "Big Guns" on the flipside. Listen to "Carry Me Home" right here.

I was thinking about these guys just the other day and wondering what they were up to. Amorphis has just entered Finnvox studios in Helsinki, Finland to begin work on their next album. Currently label-less as they have finished out their contract with Relapse, they expect the album to be ready for a summer 2003 release. They also plan to do a couple shows in the near future:

Nov. 30 – Skopje, MAC @ Skopje Trade Fair
Dec. 13 - St. Petersburg, RUS @ Youth Place
Dec. 14 – Moscow, RUS @ DK
Dec. 20 – Tampere, FIN @ Pakkahuone

In the spirit of keeping busy, frontman Pasi Koskinen's "black metal" project Ajattara is currently recording their new album, "Kuolema" (Death). Look for it around March 2003.

Kent won the "Best Nordic Act" prize at the 2002 MTV Europe Music Awards in Barcelona. The other acts nominated for the category were The Hives, Saybia, The Crash and Röyksopp. In a short interview with MTV Europe, Markus Mustonen had this to say when asked if they were pleased to be the best band in Northern Europe:

Yeah, extremely pleased actually because the bands in this category are really, really good. We love Röyksopp and The Hives of course, they´re old friends of ours. We´re really pleased and very, very happy!

Mustonen went on to say that the band currently out on the road and will soon hit Stockholm with support acts The Sounds and Melody Club. Watch or read the rest of the interview here.

The (International) Noise Conspiracy have a "Your Choice Live" album out. More info here.

Misconduct have a new MCD entitled "New Beginning" coming out on their own Side by Side Records. A video is being filmed for the title track and the band promises to post it on their website by the end of the month.

Arch Enemy is postponing the first leg of their upcoming European tour, so now the first show will be at Eindhoven on November 29th. Ticketholders are advised to hold onto their tickets, as the shows will probably still happen in January. A full statement on the matter is expected on Monday.

If you didn't already know about it, Export Music Sweden is sponsoring a show in Paris on December 19th with Weeping Willows, Hederos & Hellberg, and The Sounds. It might be H&H's last show, so check it out if you can.

In even more news about The Sounds, they were invited by the Foo Fighters to open for them in Oslo and Köpenhamn in early December. They also got a write up in Aftonbladet (Swedish only). Gee, think someone's on their way up or what? I suspect we'll continue to hear a lot about this band in the future.

The good people over at Flex Your Head and Bad Taste Records have put together a Satanic Surfers contest. Check it out.

Håkan Hellström will headline the Rocktåget tour package next summer. Rocktåget took the year off last summer as the bands Kent, Thåström, The Hellacopters and Mando Diao all had their own smaller, but successful tours. Håkan is no stranger to Rocktåget, having played the tour in 2001 with Magnus Uggla and The Ark.

Speaking of The Ark, they will be making some appearances on Swedish TV in the near future: Ola on SVT 1 on Dec. 5 at 8:45 pm (reruns at 2 pm Dec 6 and 12:15a m Dec. 9) plus the whole band on "Grynets Show" on SVT 1 Nov. 15 at 7 pm.

You probably could care less, but in celebration of 50 years of existance, the British music asked the public to vote for their all-time favourite singles. And of those selected for the top 100, Abba are one of the best represented acts with five entries to their credit. They're also the only Swedish act on the list. Their highest ranking track is "Dancing Queen" at number 8.

A new week and some new tunes to your right. The links page is good to go now, too.

The new issue of Rolling Stone (the one with the Simpsons covers) has a short blurb about the Flaming Sideburns in the 'New Faces' section.

The video for "Cloud Connected" from In Flames has reached the number 2 position on the Swedish video program Spinn (SVT 1). The band is currently taking some time off before they head out on a tour of Asia in December.

The new Håkan Hellström album "Det är så jag säger det" has gone platinum in Sweden, with over 60,000 copies sold. "Don't Stop the Music" from artist Robyn has gone gold with sales of over 30,000. Other big sellers on the Swedish charts include Roxette's "The Ballad Hits" and Kent's "FF/VinterNoll2".

Division of Laura Lee has dropped off the first week of the Burning Heart Records Heart Attack Tour. Labelmates The Peepshows, Bombshell Rocks, and Raised Fist will continue on without them as they proceed across Holland, Belgium and the UK. Here's what guitarist/singer Per Stålberg had to say about the unfortunate situation:

It came to a point where we could not even plug in our guitars without crying in pain, and therefore we have to cancel the shows. We have been having those troubles for a while, but carried on anyway as we hate the idea of cancelling shows. But after the first Heart Attack shows in Gothenburg, Stockholm and Örebro we realized we were not able to carry on as the injuries and illness did not only make us feel bad - it also affected our stage appearance so much that we cant continue doing this in consideration to ourselves and to our audience.

DoLL may rejoin the tour, pending a doctor's diagnosis to come later this week.

Randy finished up with the recording of 6 songs for their as-yet-untitled upcoming album. Jocke Åhlund of Caesars Palace helped out with production on a track, too. They plan to continue rehearsing new material with the goal of getting them recorded in December.

Sahara Hotnights just finished up with the filming of a video for the track "Alright, Alright (Here's My Fist, Where's The Fight?)" in Los Angeles with "Jackass - The Movie" director Jeff Tremaine. Members of the Jackass crew make appearances in the video.

The program "Musikbyrån" on SVT will show "The Hellacopters US Tour" documentary on Friday, December 6th. More info here.

Check out this VH1 Feature on The Soundtrack of Our Lives.

Nicolai Dunger will be making some appearances on Swedish TV coming up soon: 11.12 on Nyhetsmorgon TV4 and 11.15 on Riktig Talkshow SVT2.

In case you haven't noticed, I've been changing a few things around here and there. Check out the brand new links page, for instance.

The new video for the song "All Will Break" from Last Days of April is now online. Check it out: High quality / Low Quality

Swedish major label music sales are up domestically about 1.9%. 35.6% of those sales are from Swedish artists, too. Kent's "Vapen & Ammunition" and Magnus Uggla's "Klassiska Mästerverk" led in the tallies.

"Man or Mouse", the latest single from Millencolin is number one on MTV UpNorth. They will appearing on the air on Monday, November 11th to answer fan submitted questions.

Want to be in the new Turbonegro album insert? Check this out.

The Soundtrack of Our Lives said in an interview with Canadian Jam! Showbiz that their current North America tour is going well and they expect to start work on a new album very soon.

Buddyhead reports that The (International) Noise Conspiracy will be doing their next record under the guidance of American Records guru Rick Rubin. As with anything Buddyhead says, take this news with a large grain of salt. The band will be doing a U.K. tour in December with fellow Swedes Caesars Palace and the band Danko Jones.

Ebbot of TSOOL will be going on the gameshow BumtsiBum on ZTV, Monday November 4th. I think someone from Weeping Willows is supposed to be on, too, but I can't confirm who exactly.

Cadaver Inc. are busy at work on their next album. They promise "The new record is going to be much worse than the first! We're all into old-school Autopsy, Carcass and Inferno, and keeping it brutal and underground." Look for it in 2003 on Earache Records. Maybe they'll do another crafty website, too.

See the video for the new Kent single "FF" here: Real Player or Quicktime

Division of Laura Lee are gathering all sorts of press as they continue to conquer America. Check out this feature from muchmusic.com. There's even more over at burningheart.com.

Nine is set to tour Scandinavia along with Motörhead during the second half of November. After that they'll be going into Dug Out studios in Uppsala, Sweden with Daniel Bergstrand and Örjan Örnklo on December 1st to record a new album.

The Ark got themselves a little boutique of sorts over at Hotstuff.se. Check it out.

Get a preview of Håkan Hellström's new album here. I'm not fully decided about my opinion of it overall, but there are most definitely a couple of outstanding tracks. Aftonbladet gives it 5 stars. The album comes out next week.

Per Sinding-Larsens and Mathias Engstrands' documentary about the band Kent entitled "Så nära får ingen gå - ett år med Kent" gets its premiere on the 27th at the Popcorn Film Festival in Stockholm.

Yet another Swedish rock feature from Rolling Stone. There's also a "Who's who in Swedish rock". Check it out, there's some great quotes from the seven bands profiled.