Biography

WINTER DAWN was founded in early 2007 by Johan Uvesten (guitar & vocals), Robin Lindblad (guitars), Andreas Lindblad (drums), Johan Olausson (vocals), Kalle Ytterberg (bass) and their new found friend Anders Dahlén (keyboards & vocals). At first things moved really slow and the first gig came more than a year later on May 24th 2008 in Boda Bygdegård (Töreboda). By that time both singer Olausson and bass player Ytterberg had left the band. They were replaced by Henric Johansson on the bass guitar and the singing part was taken over by guitarist Johan Uvesten for the moment. On October 11th we released a new demo called "Beyond Redemption" consisting of 5 tracks and a bonus track. Guest singer on some tracks were female vocalist Hilda Geber who later in November joined the band as lead singer. The time had come to develop and we moved rehearsal place from good old Valla courthouse to Elvärket in Mariestad.

November 27th we appeared on the local radio station P4 Skaraborg with "Angel in the Lake" and an interview with Anders. Hilda had her first gig with us in Gothenburg on January 17th. After that gig we laid low on gigs for a couple of months while working harder on rehearsals and creating new songs. On July 4th we played at Törebodafestivalen in front of our biggest audience so far, and we had a great time! The demo "Wishing Well" consisting of 4 songs was released September 2009. In August 2010 Hilda moved and couldn't continue, and that's when WINTER DAWN found Simon Lindblad (cousin to Robin and Andreas) to fill the empty spot.

Simon brought a new level of stage presence to the band and in the beginning of 2011 WINTER DAWN once again entered the studio in Slätte with producer Christer Sundquist. And so, May 14th 2011 in connection with a gig at Rockfickan (Hova) we released the 4 track EP "Dead Under the Sun". July 5th we uploaded our first official music video with our cover on Lady Gaga's Bad Romance which quickly became a huge "talk about" due to its humoristic approach and Robins nude shock.

Tales from the past

It all started on a sweaty handicraft lesson in the year 2002. Drummer Andreas and former bass player Peter Lanängen had some plans to start a band. Meanwhile, guitarist Johan Uvesten had made a habit of slipping in to those lessons to make fun of the teacher. Since every band needs a guitarist, Johan was brought into the band discussion, and after a while these young guys decided to form a band, by that time named Eternity. After some weeks of struggling in Peter's pantry the band felt that something was missing. This led to the recruitment of guitarist Robin Lindblad, who joined the band without any signs of doubt. He contributed to the creation of hit songs like Breath of Destruction and Gazoline Dragon. Later we moved out of Peter's pantry and into the cottage, which became our new place to rehearse. There the snow laid thick and white on the floor in the winter, and with only a small heat fan as a source of heat, the temperature was close to zero degrees Celsius.

However, the visions in the band and the outer circumstances were different in all kinds of ways, and the inner conflicts started to break loose. After a while the band decided to split up, and the bass player had to leave. The others, Robin, Johan and Andreas, then formed the band Nightfall. Johan Olausson joined as a bass player and singer, but since he lacked simultaneous capacity he decided to stick to singing. So when the gigs started approaching, we had to urgently throw in the bass player Sebastian "Basse/Hleb" Hage (a pet child has many names). He stood in, and kept on playing with the band for about half a year.

During that time, things started happening in the band. We started to get gigs, and fans and groupies rolled in. Then, after a gig in "Boda bygdegård", we decided to get rid of bass player Sebastian, who all the time had been seen as a temporary solution. Mainly because we had a better target in sight, a 14 year old super talent who hadn't even started playing bass by then. We gave him a chance, and Kalle Ytterberg did very well. The band was in a bit of depression around that time, and we didn't really know how to make ourselves develop. Christmas was soon to come and we got a christmas present to lift that depression, keyboardist Anders Dahlén. But we also lost singer Johan Olausson due to lack of motivation and differences in musical taste. After this we changed our name to Winter Dawn and started rehearsing lots of new songs, due to Anders bringing a lot of new options.

Then another year passed by, and we recorded two songs in loftstudio in Grästorp Sweden. This was a great step but unfortunately Winter Dawn had problems with the geographic distance between some members so we did not play so much together. After a while on this road Kalle decided to leave the band. Our fourth bassplayer had left us! It did not take long though before Henric Johansson wanted to give it a try. The turbulence made us stand still for a while but from here it looks really good.