How did you find Dan?

[paradoxile]

I appologize if there was another thread about this.

How were you introduced to Dan's Music?


I'll start.
It all began in high school in 1999 when a friend gave me 2 great CD's
Pink Floyd's Wish You were here and Camel's Snow Goose...which was my leap into prog. In 2000 during my 3 year service I was introduced to some Bands like Tool and Korn. Looking for a musical inspiration for my own music I started visiting the local Record stores searching for unusual music, and there it was. God knows what I was doing in the mall at 11Pm and in the backround of an empty record store I heard something special what turned out to be Opeth's Face of Melinda.I immediaetly bought Still life and Fell in love...a little later when I astablished my Opeth CD collection I saw Dan's name as the guy involved in the early Opeth albums up untill 2004 when I discovered Miakel's involvement in Bloodbath, and there I saw Dan's name on Drums off course by then Mikael was replaced by Tagtgren and Dan moved to guitars but still I was curious so I started looking for everything with the name SWANO on it.
on the way I found Edge of sanity, Arjen's Star One, Bloodbath's second album and this Forum.
and here I found out about NG and Unicorn and Pan-thy-monium and Diabolical Masqurade and the other projects.
so here I am and all because of Melinda...

Yes I know,I'm really boring...

 

[karpsmom]

I found out about Dan from listening to the album Theli by Therion, and seeing that he sang vocals on the album. Then I looked at http://www.ssmt-reviews.com/ and looked up all of Swanö's works, read reviews, then proceeded to download and buy as much as I could possibly find!

 

[Therionized]

Found out about him throught Therion as well. Therion being my favorite band I try to learn everything I can about who is invloved with them

 

[Stilgar]

In 1992 a friend of mine, visited me and he had brought his latest CD, Edge of Sanity - Unorthodox. I instantly fell in love with it. It wasn't like the usual death metal, we used to listen to. It was better. I bought every new album they released.

When Dan released The Breathing shadow in 1995, I instantly bought that one too, and was hooked on Nightingale as well.

When Opeth released Orchid, and Morningrise I also bought those and instantly loved them. I did't make the connection to Dan at once though.

But It wasn't until a few years ago that I started to search for more Swanö related stuff, like Unicorn, etc.

A funny story is the one of my younger brother. In 1992, he used to listen to Vanilla Ice and stuff like that and always told me that he couldn't understand why I was listening to that "noisy" music I used to listen to (Candlemass, Bathory, Entombed, Therion, Unleashed, etc). That particular summer I had a summerjob that was closer to where my parents live, than to where I used to live and study at the time. So I spent a lot of time at my parents, and had left many of my CDs there.

One day when I came home, I heard Unorthodox being played very loudly. I walked into my brothers room and saw that he was recording it to a tape. So I asked him "I thought you didn't like metal.". He looked at me and said something similar to "Yeah. But this is some good shit!". Not long after that, his Vanilla Ice records had been thrown out and been replaced by various metal records. And after that he's actually introduced me to many good metal bands.

 

[paradoxile]

I am kind of like your brother...before 99' I used to listen to some aweful shit on MTV...Teen Idols and stuff...thank God I snapped out of it in time(just before all hell broke loose...)

 

[FUBAR]

Dans like a slut of the metal world, he gets around alot. I'd seen his name mentioned many times in reviews, interviews and cd credits. I researched him on the net and looked into edge of sanity the rest is history...

 

[fireangel]

I
One day when I came home, I heard Unorthodox being played very loudly. I walked into my brothers room and saw that he was recording it to a tape. So I asked him "I thought you didn't like metal.". He looked at me and said something similar to "Yeah. But this is some good shit!". Not long after that, his Vanilla Ice records had been thrown out and been replaced by various metal records.

Some years ago I found a new band named Charon. Their singer is brilliant. I read that he likes Dan Swanö (esp. Moontower) & Nightingale, which I never heard of before. Because I always try to find influences of musicians and bands, like making a network, I just downloaded some things. I had NG, Moontower-songs and some of Dan´s one/off projects which were wrongly labelled (like the Amon-Ra-song). I just burned it all on one CD in no particular order. The first song I heard was Uncreation and until today it´s one of my absolute favourites. A nice thing about the Nightingale-songs is, that to me their "natural" order is the random one (in order just as I liked them, such as The Dreamreader, Deep Inside Of Nowhere, Scarred For Life, Remorse and Regret) from the first CD-burnings and not the original one, so I´m always confused nowadays when I listen to the real CDs
My absolute top favourite song by NG is and will forever be Nightfall Overture, and a song I didn´t really like is "Melissa".

A short while after all this mp3-checking I found ultimatemetal (through the Children Of Bodom-forum) and saw Dan Swanö´s name. I just read the forum silently for many months which gave me a pretty good overview of most of Dan´s works (which is btw, a nice advice for any panicked newbie who wants to have told everything about Dan´s whole works in ten minutes), and so I found all the other bands, too.

 

[Kenneth R.]

I was checking out the "New Releases" on Lasercd.com's store. I often read the descriptions, look at the album covers, and just buy at random if it looks cool. I've come to trust the quality of stuff there. Anyway, I saw Alive Again and it indeed looked cool, so I bought it. WOW was I blown away, it instantly became my favorite album and I could listen to nothing else for months. Of course, at that point I decided to get all the remaining Nightingale albums, and check out what else Dan had done. I picked up Moontower. Blown away again! I got Edge of Sanity - Crimson I. Blown away yet again. At this point, I figured that anything he had a hand in was gold, and I was right. Proceeded to get everything by EoS, Unicorn, and anything Dan played or sang on. Been a huge fan ever since.

 

[AmirH]

After discovering Opeth and getting more and more into the metal scene I kept seeing his name mentioned in reviews so I decided to seek out some of his stuff. First album I got of Dans was moontower which is still one of my favorites- from there I slowly got he EoS discography and then found nightingale and unicorn.

 

[George]

It was probably with Crimson II.

 

[Exothrax]

When I was in high school.
Some random dudes used to play the chorus melody for the EoS song "Twilight" on the acoustic guitars you could use on the lunch breaks.

Then a friend of mine told me what it was, and I borrowed his Eos cd's....the rest is history..

 

[L0bster]

I was in first year in highschool, and this music student recomended "Crimson"

From that point, there was no turning back. Guess I have about 20 Swanö CDs by now.

 

[MECOSARIO]

Unorthodox. Back in '92 that was DIFFERENT

And i remember that was my first impression "This shitt is fucking original !!"

 

[Cerebus]

Twilight was one of the songs that would be played a lot on parties back in the days so I guess I grew more and more curious the more I heard the song... "Popdöds"

 

[madu]

I was really into Opeth and discovered Steel via metal-archives, which I downloaded from my friend. I found Dan's falsetto funny, so I decided to check out Moontower, and bam, I was hooked.

Still haven't heard an album that's better than Moontower.

 

[mylovedenied]

well, I used to be a big nu-metal fan for a year or so in '02 or so, until the summer of '03, when my 2nd cousin played me some Opeth. And I was hooked. It was unlike anything I had heard before, truly beautiful. I set out, looking for everything related to Opeth I could find. I found out Mikael was in Bloodbath, so I tried downloading their stuff. I got 1 song from Kazaa, and thought it was absolutely horrible. (Turns out it was the wrong band! They confused album and artist. It turns out I got a Mortician song)

After a few months more, I kept hearing such good things about Bloodbath, and so I decided to try them out again. I went to their website this time, and heard the 4 30-second audio clips. My jaw literally dropped. I went out the next day and got RTC. I fell in love with it, and played it a bunch. I looked up the band's history, and members, and saw that this Dan Swano guy was in a ton of bands, and used to produce Opeth. Then I got really interested, and so I looked up some of his bands, and hit up Soulseek...and just got blown away.

On my audioscrobbler:
Bloodbath - 3rd most listened-to band ever - over 500 listens.
EOS - 6th most listened-to band - just over 400 listens.

As of right now.

 

[N.Sandoval]

Actually, I never found Dan Swano.
He found me

 

[cenzu]

I bought a metal compilation cd (metalliliitto 1999) that featured Uncreation...
heard the song and was instantly sold!

thanks to the internet found more projects and music by him...
and here we are!

 

[Hertog]

ehhm, I found out that he produced a lot of cd's that I liked. From Millencolin to Dissection. Not many people seem to be into punk here, but Millencolin really changed after Dan closed Unisound. I've always wondered if Dan was somehow more involved in their songwriting. So Millencolin's "For Monkeys" was the first album I bought with Dan involved.
However, I kept on finding his name on good albums. And somewhere in 1998 I borrowed "The Spectral Sorrrows" on tape from my guitar teacher and I really liked it. From then on I either bought or borrowed all the Edge of Sanity cd's. After hearing Crimson thought it would be very nice to have some "all clear vocals" from Dan. So I ordered "The Closing Chronicles" and found Godsend's "as the shadows fall" in a local record store. When Moontower appeared I bought it the day I found it in the shop. During the time I found other cool thing like Pan Thy Monium.:Spin:

 

[mleijzer]

I heard of his name before but I first heard him sing on "Ravendusk In My Heart" by Diabolical Masquerade. This was awesome of course.
Some years later I got my hands on Emotional Wasteland after reading an interview with Dan.
It had been some time since an album had blown me away but this was it. Pure emotion and great songs. It's still one of the best albums I have.
I like the Nightingale stff too but I think Unicorn is one of a kind.