War (Swedish band)

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War was a Swedish black metal all-stars band, formed by Jim Berger of Abruptum, David Parland of Dark Funeral and Peter Tägtgren of Hypocrisy.


Country	Sweden
Years active	1995-2001
Genres	Black metal
Labels	Necropolis Records

War was formed in 1995 when David "Blackmoon" Parland of Dark Funeral attended an Abruptum recording session in Peter Tägtgren’s The Abyss Studios. According to Blackmoon, „We decided loaded out of our minds, to form a band that night...a band that should be like a true fist to the face to all the theatrical, keyboards, female vocals, troll singing black metal bands that were coming out at the time“. Unlike those bands, War played primitive black metal with lyrics mostly about Satan and war, but also recorded the racist song "I Am Elite" with lyrics such as "Stand aside for the superior race. You are nothing but worms" and "Niggers and kikes, stay away".

In 1997 the band recorded its first EP "Total War" featuring IT and Blackmoon on guitars, Peter Tägtgren on drums, Mikael Hedlund of Hypocrisy on bass and Jim "All" Berger of Abruptum, Ophthalamia and Vondur on vocals, and released it on Necropolis Records. Two years later they recorded their album "We Are War" with All on vocals, Blackmoon on guitars, David "Impious" Larsson of In Aeternum on bass and Lars Szöke, one more Hypocrisy member, on drums and guitars. IT had left the black metal scene in the meantime.

The band had to change its name to Total War as there was already another band called War and was put on hold in 2001, but released "We Are...Total War", a compilation of material released before. They featured on the Bathory tribute album In Conspiracy With Satan, performing the final song, conveniently (perhaps as a humourous thing) titled War.