“These are other kids. This is just an accident—just a couple of wild punks out raising hell.”
So goes the line from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 that opens Supershitty to the Max!, the debut from Sweden’s famous rock sons the Hellacopters, founded in 1994 by Nicke Andersson alongside a couple of his ex-roadies in Entombed. That same year, some other kids who had—almost by accident—started as a bunch of wild punks raising hell after school, were finally releasing their debut album, The Ending Quest, after having recorded it over a year before.
Unlike the relative stardom achieved by their Stockholm and Gothenburg countrymen, these kids from Nyköping with a rather weird band name never really achieved any kind of renown during their trajectory as a band, which unfortunately ended shortly after this widely ignored (at the time) LP was released on the soon-to-be-bankrupt Crypta Records.
However, what could be lost to the ever-shifting sands of time/lesser-visited Encyclopaedia Metallum pages became what can truly be called a “cult classic” as the years went by. It’s generally a stupid term, sure, but this is the kind of album that it was created for: something released with zero fanfare, promotion, reviews, feedback, live shows to back it up or members that went on to other, more famous bands. Nothing. Zilch.
And yet, visit any Reddit thread or read any retrospective review of The Ending Quest and everyone is almost unanimous regarding its revered status. Gorement were distant from the two epicenters of the Swedish scene; generally uninterested in and/or unable to follow the Skogsberg-produced HM-2 crunch that revolutionized extreme metal; and boasted a set of influences that included early Paradise Lost/At the Gates, German thrash and likeminded anomalies Crypt of Kerberos. Throw in a record label that didn’t really know what to do with them and a weird recording session in Germany with an uninterested “dictator,” and for better or worse, Gorement and this album were molded into something truly unique.
It’s not the fastest or the most brutal. It’s also not the slowest or the gnarliest. But just like its atypical artwork (which has a whole story of its own), The Ending Quest still stands in a league all its own to this day. We reunited guitarist and bandleader Patrik Fernlund, guitarist Daniel Eriksson, vocalist Jimmy Karlsson, bassist Nicklas Lilja and drummer Mattias Berglund to reminisce about days long past. But hey, if it’s up to them, those days might not be entirely over. Promoters, take note.
Need more classic Gorement? To read the entire seven-page story, featuring interviews with the members who performed on The Ending Quest, purchase the print issue from our store, or digitally via our app for iPhone/iPad or Android.
