Richard Sjunnesson

Sveiki!

We announced this on the official The Unguided Facebook earlier but I’d like to underline it here as well! Next month the planets will align for a secret unguided event. I advise you to unsheathe your favorite Sharpie marker, and make a huge red crosshair around the date 20110616! That’s all I will give away at this point. More information about this mysterious happening will be available shortly. So keep yourself updated via Facebook, or on this blog. However, I can already reveal that I’m fully convinced no one will be left disappointed on this glorious day!


"My voice uncovers, reveals your hidden secrets"

Leah Eropkin has been kind to provide us with professional retouch work of our own little amateur photo session we had the other week. Here’s one of the pictures she has been working on:


The Unguided 2011

There will be more of this once her busy schedule clears up a little bit! 616 unguided thanks to Leah for being such an awesome person to us, and always lending out her helping hand!

The huge fan request for tabs to The Unguided – Nightmareland songs have been answered by Roger himself! He spent some intense nightly hours to put together almost complete tabs (rhythm guitar, lead guitar, drums, and keyboard) to both Green Eyed Demon and Pathfinder. You can find them here. Download, and rate them up to show some appreciation for his hard work, hehe.

Really impressive The Unguided fanart has been brought to our attention recently. And I absolutely love the creativity! There’s nothing more flattering for a band than the direct related inventiveness of their fans. I encourage everyone who is doing honorable actions to support the band in this way (even by the smallest means) to please tag us in Facebook with it, or mail it to me. I’ll make sure to give it the recognition it deserves!


The whole "Eyed" family

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Green Eyed Demon

We have officially decided upon the album title for our upcoming long play in Faithful Darkness. It will be nothing less than: “Black Mirror’s Reflection.” I’ve been extremely busy with pre-production of vocals for this effort and I’m about halfway through the album. It’s heavy as FUCK. My neighbors can sign their name on that fact. To save them the headache, I bought Peltor Hearing Protectors to close proximity apartment residents­—very neighborly of me, if I can say that myself. Less than a month to drum recording! Hope you are sweating, Mr. Stranberg Nilsson.


Black Mirror’s Reflection

There have been numerous questions about my shout out in the WRTN booklet and I’d like to examine it here together with you.

WRTN “Rich” printed shout out:
I want to thank my band for putting up with me and letting a no talented ass clown as myself being a part of it! >=) Thanks go out to my family and friends for being an inexhaustible well of support! Julle, Ajje, Fidde, Bäckis, Niklas and Andy (I haven’t forgot about you little fucks and I do want to spend more time with you but unfortunately then I’d have to charge you! :E) Thanks to Jeremy Hanna and the Sullen family for dressing my ass with awesome clothing, Thanks to the Svangren/Almquist family, the Bjelvén family and Double trouble for all the care! And if you are not listed, TRY HARDER! ;) My real friends know who you are! Last I’d like to thank George Lucas, the world would suck without you, Fuck Star Trek in the face!

First off, I intentionally cut the irrelevant girlfriend talk out of this “shout out,” seeing that it turned out to be kind of bullshit from my side anyways. That, together with the fact I’ve successfully credited four different girlfriends in four different albums, made it even more ridiculous. From the first The Unguided album till the… well, end of time(?), I will guarantee you that there will be one name, and one name only, appearing in the shout outs from now on, and that’s my current relation. Then again, it struck me that I rightfully already credited her (the love of my life, that is) as one of the operating members of “Double Trouble” in the WRTN shout out, how inescapably sneaky of me.


The Love of My Life

Anyways! I think it was mostly trekkies that voiced their concerns about the “shout out” being a bit controversial. But just to clear things up, by the time I wrote this I was already utterly fed up by the band and everything that had to do with it. So, I just wrote something unserious, mostly based on irony to see if I could get away with it. Seeing it has been printed and all, I guess I did. The part about that the world would suck without Geroge Lucas, however, came from the heart. And yeah, I guess it’s more entertaining to read bullshit like that than the standard: “Thanks to family and friends for believing in me, I couldn’t do it without you.” Fact is, in most cases, they could do it without them.


Trekkies

The other day, while I was bored sweeping the interwebs by googleing my own name and such in usual manner, I touched down on this “New year’s survey of the events” by Slavestate Magazine. Apparently, I’ve won an award! HURRAY!!! I was rightfully entitled to nothing less than: “The past year’s most bitter ex-member,” with the very creative motivation: ”After eight years in the band one of the Sjunnesson brothers realized what we all did a long time ago – Sonic Syndicate sold their asses out.”


BUUHUUU!!!

Brave words! Coming from a magazine that was so remarkably “successful” four years ago that they had to abandon their printed physical edition to be reduced to… well, a tiny, winy webzine format. With that in mind, I unfortunately can’t find it in myself to give much credit. So now, where can I claim my prize?


"Most bitter ex-member" trophy

That’s that! What else? Well, I set aside some time to level my fearsome blood elf rogue the other day and happily reached level 84! I enjoyed Uldum quite a bit. The “hacking” the mainframe quest part was genius! I guess I’m off to Twilight Highlands next, correct? I also have cut my hair. By brother in arms (and apparently male barber); Julle trimmed it down to 1cm something. I just couldn’t stand another summer with long hair. Also, I currently have my original hair color. Back to how God initially intended me to be, I suppose, hehe.


Summer cut

In Flames - Deliver us

Q: Hey Rich, I’m listening to the pre-production of Blue Eyed Fiend and I think it’s a bit faster than the normal version. Is that right? And when that is right why did you make the album version of Blue eyed Fiend slower?
A: What I think you are listening to is the sped up version of the song on YouTube. The real pre-production you can find here and is exactly in the same tempo as the album version, namely 126bpm.

Q: You released Nightmareland, it was epic but how will you make a full set list of songs on Getaway? Only two songs isn't enough, I guess most bands play on festivals...45min - 1 hour?…
A: Two songs isn’t enough indeed, and it would be hell of a snoozefest if we were to play them over and over again in 45 minutes. Therefore, we intend to play a few The Unguided albums tracks as well as some Sonic Syndicate songs.


Snoozefest

Q: Do you already have a kind of idea for a date for the album release (Thought the original plan was June-July) but since you are sooooo being busy pretending busy (you say) and Nightmareland also was delayed. What would be the new release..date..month..year? Could be that you don't know yet as well of course.
A: Did I EVER say the album was planned to be released for June-July!? Madness! Where did you get that kind of information from? It occurs very suspicious to me, please advise. However, IF we get done with the album in 2011, it will be released towards the end of the year, not earlier. Everything is kind of moving forward according to schedule though.

Q: In one answer you said "I guess one obvious one would be me and Roland both left the band to go after what we thought was more meaningful musically and to do that in a healthy convenient environment." I thought Roland left the band because of being with family most of time and staff like that....but I'm confused right now. Didn't he like the music in LAOD....????
A: That’s right, he didn’t like touring and that’s the reason he left. But there was more to it than that. For example, he always wanted to play guitar and saw himself as a guitarist. However, that was nothing he got to do live with Sonic, nor did his talent as a guitarist penetrate in the song writing. They were simply not written in a format to include solos or technical guitar features. Even if they were, it wouldn’t really be functional or realistic to recreate live. But technical guitar playing was his passion and also his strength as a guitarist. However, In The Unguided he gets free hands to do whatever he wants, which goes for all of us.


Guitar hero

Q: Why does Betrayer of the Code start with Lestat’s words? And what connection is between Fallen Angels first demo or BOTC and Queen of the Damned? <<< That movie is the best... my favourite!
A: Betrayer of the Code on the demo Fallen Angels – Fall from Heaven, was lyrically written after the exact movie which you are speaking of. The new Unguided version of Betrayer of the Code, however, is directly based on Anne Rice’s book Queen of the Damned instead, to avoid unnecessary confusion. Then you ask yourself, is there really a difference? Well, the movie is based on the book. And I must admit the movie has just captured a fragment of the book’s splendor and complexity. After I read the book I came to realize how much they are missing out, got mixed up, or is just utterly wrong in the movie (Marius portrayed as the sire of Lestat for example? It’s pretty fucking fundamental to the story and STILL it’s so erroneous in the movie. What exactly was the director thinking!?) I wanted the new lyrics to be spared of such nonsense. Book > Hollywood screen version, ALWAYS! Then again I think both the movies Interview with the Vampire (which I love by the way) and Queen of the Damned have relayed a lot of attention to the books. With this in mind, I know for a fact Anne Rice herself doesn’t support the Queen of the Damned adaptation for the screen at all. But I’m sure both movies did very beneficial work for her business and her legacy. For me, the movie was what made me pick up the book in the first place.


Queen of the Damned

Q. I heard, Children Of Bodom do their concerts usually drunk. Did you do this during your time in Sonic too, or do you may have the intention to do it at some random gigs in Sweden? :)
A: Now isn’t that a form of misconduct? If so, forgive me father, for I have sinned… plenty. I think in the beginning when we started to tour, I somewhat had the mentality that I always wanted to go on stage sober for various reasons. One reason was to always be able to experience the show in all its glory without a mind under the influence. Another one was to be able to deliver a good show with a somewhat still functional cortex as well. It was important to me to be able to kick ass on stage without alcohol. Those tight reins got more loose as we progressed, though. During the European tour with Deathstars, I can confidently say that I went on stage drunk most—if not every night of the tour. The In Flames tour consisted of pretty heavy drinking as well. This only happened on rare occasions, though. Somewhere I found a balance in having one or two beers before a show, at least where I beforehand got a good vibe about the gig and the crowd. The summer after Roland left, I kind of quit drinking altogether. I can probably count on my left hand’s fingers how many times I was actually drunk after he left the band. It just wasn’t the same atmosphere anymore. For the Scandinavian shows on the “We Rule the Night” tour I didn’t drink one drop of alcohol.

Q: I'm a proud member of the 616, and I was psyched when I got my signed Nightmareland poster, but I couldn't tell which signature was whose!
A: Left = Roger, Middle = Roland, Right = Me.


Signed poster

Q: You probably get this question asked a lot lol I went thru your blog, but only found one question asking about this in particular. I'm having a hard time getting my hair to look the way you had it back in Jack of Diamonds & Denied, I read the blog and even showed my barber a pic and they totally fucked it up because my hair was sticking up in places in shouldn't. Is it just a fauxhawk or could I get a better description to explain to them how to do it, because apparently they don't know wtf they're doing, maybe I should find a new barber? lol any tips? \m/
A: I also had problems with hair swirls, which seams to be the same issue you ran into (with hair sticking up in places it shouldn’t). Evil crowns somewhat makes it problematic to execute the hairstyle, indeed. And they are awfully hard to conquer with short hair, if they are positioned badly. I guess it was somewhat a fauxhawk, yeah. I never really centered the “raised hair” from the forehead to the back of my neck. I tried to somewhat put an angle on it and by doing that passing the swirls.*


Fauxhawk Rich

Q: We can watch your face without makeup?
A: Is that supposed to be English?


Pointing something at me?