Magnus Karlsson (guitarist)

Magnus Karlsson (born November 26, 1973) is a Swedish heavy metal songwriter, guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and producer. He is currently one of the guitarists of the band Primal Fear.

Biography

Magnus attended school to study classical guitar when he was 10 years old. Later on he was very much into "The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal" of bands such as Iron Maiden, Dio, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. His influences as a guitarist were Steve Morse, Steve Vai and Allan Holdsworth. He has played in various metal and fusion bands early on and developed a style which mixes metal and folk music.^[1]

His first critically acclaimed musical project was with the band Last Tribe, which has released three full-length albums.

In 2004, Magnus started to work as a session musician in a project put together by Frontiers Records, which had the intention to have two acclaimed heavy metal vocalists singing together as a duet. The project ended up featuring powerhouse vocalists Russell Allen (Symphony X) and Jørn Lande (ex-Masterplan) and was simply called Allen/Lande. The project has three albums with all music and lyrics written by Magnus Karlsson, featuring a variety of hard rock and heavy metal songs with a progressive metal touch.

In the same year he also started to write music for a project with singer Tony Harnell (TNT), drummer John Macaluso (Ark, TNT, Yngwie Malmsteen) and bassist Fabrizio Grossi (Steve Vai) that would later on become the band Starbreaker.

In 2008, he worked with Magnum vocalist Bob Catley on his solo album Immortal writing all the songs himself .

Recently, Magnus joined German metal band Primal Fear making a big contribution to the band's songwriting. He also teamed up with the band's bassist and leader Mat Sinner to work in a number of projects released by Frontiers Records, such as Kiske/Somerville (another singer-duet project, featuring ex-Helloween singer Michael Kiske and American singer and vocal coach Amanda Somerville) and the first solo album by Primal Fear frontman Ralf Scheepers.

In 2013, it was announced that Magnus Karlsson would release his first solo musical project called Free Fall on June 11th in North America and June 14th in Europe by Frontiers Records. It features many guest singers who worked with Magnus before, including Russell Allen, Ralf Scheepers, Tony Harnell, Rickard Bengtsson (former bandmate from Last Tribe), Mark Boals (who worked with Magnus in the project The Codex), Mike Andersson (who worked with Magnus in the project Planet Alliance) and some other famous friends like David Readman (Pink Cream 69, Voodoo Circle), Rick Altzi (At Vance, Masterplan) and Herman Saming (A.C.T). Magnus also sings three tracks on the album himself and Daniel Flores recorded the drums.^[2]

Magnus also wrote two songs for the melodic hard rock project Place Vendome, 'My Guardian Angel' from the album Streets of Fire and 'Break Out' from the album Thunder in the Distance.

Discography

Solo

• Free Fall (2013)

Midnight Sun

• Nemesis (1999)
• Metal Machine (2001)

Last Tribe

• The Ritual (2001)
• Witch Dance (2002)
• The Uncrowned (2003)

Starbreaker

• Starbreaker (2005)
• Love's Dying Wish (2008)

Allen/Lande

• The Battle (2005)
• The Revenge (2007)
• The Showdown (2010)

Tony O'Hora

• Escape Into the Sun (2006)

Planet Alliance

• Planet Alliance (2006)

The Codex

• The Codex (2007)

Bob Catley

• Immortal (2008)

Primal Fear

• 16.6 (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead) (2009)
• Unbreakable (2012)
• Delivering The Black (2014)

Kiske/Somerville

• Kiske/Somerville (2010)

Ralf Scheepers

• Scheepers (2011)

Kimball Jamison

• Kimball Jamison (2011)

Phenomena

• Awakening (2012)

Greenhouse

• Glass of Beer

Sources

• http://www.s-rock.info/dontmiss/LTE.htm
• http://www.metalunderground.com/news/details.cfm?newsid=34547
• http://espyrock.com/news/magnus-karlsson-records-guitar-for-ralf-scheepers-solo-album

References