Martin Hederos and Mattias Hellbergs debut album was embraced by all musiclovers in Sweden. With just a piano and a husky vocal they shed new life into old rock classics and filled them with so much emotions and sadness that it made the critics weep for, well – joy.

Now is the time for a follow up – Together in the Darkness. You can find a little more light here and this time the two rockers also show that they can write music of their own that mathches well with the classics.

Naked, sad, beautiful….not very often are the critics so united in their way of using adjectives as they were after Hederos & Hellberg’s debut album last year. Their interpretations of Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and other heroes lifted far beyond the somewhat mediocre coverhorizon.

The record was elected third best of the year when 60 Swedish daily newspapers coordinated their best-of-lists.

Together in the darkness is a record in the same melancholy mood, but still with a little more hope and light, according to the singer Mattias Hellberg.

It all started on New Years Eve 2000 with a party in the legendary Silence Studio. The following day the recordings started with a concert for the people still hanging around from the party.

Versions of Iggy Pop’s No Fun, Neil Young’s Mellow my mind, Bob Marley’s Concrete Jungle and Kris Kristofferson’s Epitaph so pealed down into the essence that you think you hear them for the first time.

Five songs are signed Hederos & Hellberg and they make a perfect blend with the classics and you start to think of where you heard them before, what cover it is...

Together in the darkness starts as a lullaby and then the mealncholy horn arrangement gives you the feeling of a funuralmarch or a hymn.

It wont grow is one of the most beautiful songs ever written about breaking up and Bless me is about the blessed feeling of beeing alone but not sad.

Way back in 1968 Rob Tyner in MC5 shouted the phrase "Together in the darkness" on the livealbum "Kick out the jams", and that gives a hinch that the background of Hederos & Hellberg is not as quiet and sad as you could guess from the sound of their album.

Martin Hederos is a member of the rockgroup The Soundtrack of our Lives and Mattias used to tour as guitarist with The Hellacopters and Diamond Dogs - all bands with a heavy rocksound.

And just because of their deep knowledge and love for rock’n roll and the songs they pick out of the history of rock, they can make these perfect interpretations.

The melancholy mood is something they have from birth, growing up in the western parts of Sweden close to the big woods and the long dark season up in the north where the night is longer than the day.

But as they sing "Darkness is here, thou shall not fear, we’re on this trip together".

We just light a candle and wait for the darkness in good faith. It is so beautiful.


Written by Ola Sandstig (www.silence.se/hh/)