living after midnight.

i remember quite clearly the first time i met patrik, or at least the first time we jamed together. i'd been playing in arize for a month or two and we hosted yet another party at our rehearsal place a friday night. i even think it might have been an after party, but i'm not sure. why we never got kicked out of that place i cannot tell. anyways, there was quite some people there and patrik was one of them. we started talking about good music (as all musicians do on first date) and we connected at bands such as down and corrosion of conformity (among others) and after a few beers and some talk we decided to jam. as soon as we started playing i felt this instant connection with him. we built riff after riff and added layers to everthing we did. i can't really remember a single riff from the actual event, but i do remember it was magic. patrik must have felt the same because after an hour and a half thomas came in and said the neightbours were complainting about the noise and that was the only reason we stopped. we could have played for at lot longer and almost did after thomas admitted his little hoax to get us out of our intruments and back to the party. instead, we started a band. lifer was quickly joined by thomas and sounded a lot like stoner, except this was way before anyone used the term stoner. we just called it rock. we used to go out at night and record our songs on a four track tape recorder. sometimes i dust of my old collection and listen to the material. it was far from original, but we had some good fun making the songs.
lifer was put to sleep after only a year or so and when we started lingua i hadn't been playing with patrik for years. i wasn't even that keen on playing with him anymore because i was way, way, way deep into my tool-obsession at that time and patrik didn't play that kind of drums. in fact, one of patriks biggest idols is tommy lee and that guy play some mean straight forward drums, but not much else. it took me years to accept his style. we faught like hell over a lot of songs and even though i can't understand why we never just went separate ways i am glad we didn't. because it took me years to see that our strength was the straight forwardness in our songs and not the technical. or, to put it in better words, where i stray in weird beats and odd markings patrik keeps it toghether with a straight beat with litte or no over acting. today, it's what i want and expect from him and i am glad he never changed. i am glad he kept his style and put a very big part to the unique sound and style that is ours.

//misha.