Chapter I

I reckon that the first columns of Opeth were created due to Anders and myself forming Eruption. We had been friends since we were about 5 years old or so, so we were, and still are, the best of friends. During the early and mid-eighties my interests leaned more towards sports than to music, and the same for Anders. But my good taste had developed on an really early stage. I bought my first record when I was 8 years old, a metal record, namely "The number of the beast"/Iron Maiden. Since then I guess it was destined that I would end up in some band of any kind. In 1986 I got my first electric guitar and started immediately practice them "Smoke on the water" licks. The guitar was a pretty cool Les Paul copy in a black finish, actually very similar to the one Peter plays today even though his is the real thing. Anders big-brother had been in a metal band earlier, playing drums, so Anders and me eventually started jamming somewhat in his cellar in Sörskogen where we lived at the time

I think the time for it all was end of 1987 or something when the "Eruption" name was found. In the beginning we did mostly death metal covers like Bathory, Death and other bands whose music was simple enough for us to handle. 1988 we had developed into a full line-up, a 4 piece as we are today.

Myself on guitar/vocals, Anders on drums, Nick Döring on guitars, and a guy called Jocke Horney on bass guitars( even though he couldn´t play at all). The latter, was soon enough replaced with a guy who could play somewhat better, called Stephan Claesberg. Eruption were going strong for a couple of years actually...1987-1990. We never made any gigs, no demos, no nothing. Well, I´ve got a couple of reh-tapes actually. Some titles were: "Abandon life" (The first track I ever wrote), "Walls of dwell"(Quite bad english, huh?), "Obedient souls", "Condemned to hell", "Procreation of maledictions", "Sarcastic reign".

Apart from these tracks we had several more, and we also used to cover bands such as the Misfits, Black Sabbath and other thrash/death bands. At the end of our short-lived "career" we actually were a 3-piece band, and we had to carry all our stuff a rather long way through a tiny forest to get to the rehearsal place, including a fucking heavyweight PA system that had belonged to Swedish punk legends Ebba Grön! Not that we cared that much as we were fucking metal! ***