Previous bands:
“Extrude”
«Arch Nemesis»
“Dimension F3h”
«Ashes to Ashes”
“EON”
“Voice of Northwind»
“Greyzone”
“Synkvervet”
Current band:
Northwind
Discography:
Arch Nemesis:
Shadows in the mirror (2002) (Using the alias Nesmoht)
Of Mind and Fantasy (2004) (Using the alias Nesmoht)
Dimension F3h:
A Presentation of Armageddon Demo/EP 2002) (Using the alias Nesmoht)
Reaping the Worldwinds (2003) (Using the alias Nesmoht)
Reaping the Worldwinds (15 year’s anniversary edition 2018)
EON:
Exile (EP 2007)
Synkvervet:
Trollspeil (2014)
Mistborn (2017)
Greyzone:
Release the Madness (2013)
Northwind:
Remarkable Rock (2018)
Biography:
Born in 73` in Norway by a Danish father and a Norwegian mother and early on I started speaking Swedish (fun fact).
I was offered to come to the Norwegian Opera as a kid to receive training as an opera singer by the then director of the Opera (and my neighbor at the time) Bjørn Simensen after being spotted in my garden singing whilst “playing” guitar on a badminton racket. I refused… (Fun fact 2)
I’ve been told that I have been singing since long before I could walk, if that’s true or not I can’t say but there is no doubt that singing has always been a big part of my life though it took almost 18 years for me to actually do it in a band on stage.
I can remember vividly how panic stricken I was before hitting the stage in those early days; I used to ask myself WTF are you doing?
Then I slammed down a shot or two of Jack and all was good…
ROCK N’ ROLL
My father was a truck driver and I spent my younger years crossing Europe with him and that’s where I got my first real taste of music.
Dad was always listening to good old Rock n’ Roll when we were on the road so my earliest musical memories was from great acts like ELVIS, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, The Shadows, Johnny Cash, ABBA and such.
He also liked to listen to Opera and other more obscure stuff but that didn’t attract me until years later, for me it was all about the rawness of the guitars and the melody the voices brought me… there was never a question about what role I should have, despite my shyness I was born to be a front man though it took me many years to actually realize that dream.
HARD ROCK/HEAVY METAL
In my early school years I was introduced to the next step in Rock evolution, The Hard Rock. I still had my love for ELVIS and those guys but then I found KISS… I knew live shows could be big from seeing the King on TV and VHS but here was a band that had that, PLUS explosions, blood spitting, fire breathing and rockets shot from the guitar… I was sold, from there on I knew that no matter what, this was what I wanted to do.
BANDS
Like most kids who were into music I formed loads of bands before I even knew how to play, we rocked along to cassettes with rackets as guitars and thought we were great and even though I always fiddled with every instrument I could find when it was available it took me 16-17 years to actually start learning to play.
I borrowed a classical guitar from a friend along with a beginner’s guitar book and before long I had written my first song (ofc dedicated to some pretty girls visiting from Minnesota, hence the name…Minnesota Girls)
Over the years I formed/joined several bands but the first worth mentioning must be “Extrude” where I first teamed up with Kenneth “Mr. Motvind” Farmen.
We did a couple of gig’s and participated on a sampler with local bands with the song” Is this love” (Or Mayken as it was named by the public) written by myself, the song went on to be sort of a local hit, got some airplay in Norway and Denmark and to this day, nearly 20 years later I still get requests for this one when I’m doing acoustic shows.
Then a local Guitar hero (Johnny Waggestad R.I.P.) asked me to join his band “Jonny Doe” and with me I brought a 16 year old drummer named Hjaran “PUKK” Berge that had amazed me with his skills. We went on to do a lot of local gigs, drink a lot of beers and I learned a lot from Johnny during this time and we thought we were in it for the big time.
But sadly, Johnny passed away while I was in the army and so the band dissolved.
I then joined a few band’s with not much success, even played guitar in a local punk band “, till one day Kenneth and me decided to form another band and start playing together again…”Arch Nemesis” was born.
I called my brother Jesper “JAZ” Winther Thomsen whom I knew like me loved to fiddle with every piano he saw so I thought he could play the keys for us and he agreed.
A few weeks later I met Hjaran and a bass player named Kjetil F. Berge at a party so I asked them to join and then we were a complete band.
Kjetil was later replaced with a young bass player called Andrè “Chain” Trevland (Decay) and with this crew (not naming all the different lead guitar players that came and went) we went on to record two albums, play at Sweden Rock Festival in 2003 and a mini tour in Denmark.
Dimension F3H
During this time I was asked by Mr. Morfeus (Mayhem, Limbonic Art) to do some vocals on a demo he was recording, the project was called “Dimension F3h” and we released one demo and one album together before Morfeus decided to do the vocals on the next album himself since he wanted the vocals to be more extreme and that’s not quite my thing.
Through the years that followed I joined a few other acts like “Ashes to Ashes” and “EON” but due to traveling and me not having the license to drive at that time it soon feel apart.
I still had “Arch Nemesis” but due to problems with rehearsal space and such that was a rather slow going process so I joined a choir together with my father, tried my luck in the Norwegian Idol show and then joined a rock musical/hippie band called “Voice of Northwind”, and had a great time in “LOADED” a cover band doing killer songs from the 70’s to the 90’s.
GREYZONE
Then my old friend Lars Solbakken (whom I knew from his brief time as guitarist in Arch Nemesis) contacted me one day and asked if I would be interested in joining his band “Greyzone”, I had heard some songs and though I must confess to not being overly impressed at the time I thought I could give it a try since not much was happening with my other bands at that time…. I would not regret this….
We went on to play gigs in Spain, Holland (supporting Michael Schenker), Denmark and released our first album in 2014.
That same year Lars decided to leave the band but we continued as a four piece for a while but in the end it was the craziness of all five of us that made the magic so in the end we called it quits.
SYNKVERVET
In 2014 I was asked by Ingemar, my friend from Arch Nemesis to do some vocals on his solo project called Synkvervet (Illusion/mirage in old Norwegian), a folk/black/melodic etc. (hard to classify) sounding unit, but as the recordings progressed we ended up as a six piece band, releasing “Trollspeil” in 2014 and Mistborn in 2017 before I decided to leave to focus on being a vocalist, not a bass player singing a bit.
NORTHWIND
During this time I joined some of my old friends from “Voice of Northwind” in a new band they had started, focusing on the hard rock/70’s prog rock parts and leaving out the more theatrical stuff from the old band. After some brainstorming we decided to use the name Northwind to keep the link from the old days and are as I write ready to release our first album called Remarkable Rock (2018) on our own label.
And that brings us up to date.