Johan and I had no idea that 2013 was going to be a year of many ups and downs for us and the band. We were going to have a lot of decisions to make and many changes coming our way.
Our first decision after the release of The Self-Titled EP was which song would be the single and how we were going to proceed with the band now that we were just a duo without a drummer.
We both settled on Hell House being the single and flagship song, which made sense as we had already chosen it to be the first song on the record and therefor was already the song that people heard first and associated with Our Untold Story from the beginning.
I had a vision of creating an on-going story line for the EP with videos that were all connected making it a concept EP. I envisioned all of the music videos that would go with each song and how they would transition between one another.
I began looking up production companies in Sweden that produced music videos and discovered that there were several. However I also discovered that the quality of the work of the companies that I deemed to be within our price range and budget did not hold up to what I had expected. I thought to myself that for that money I could make something at least as good or at least something I would be proud of creating myself.
So I did as I had done with the release of the EP, I started researching what I would need to be my own production company and make the video ourselves, and little did I know that this was my first project working as a producer.
I signed up for several film forums including filmcafé.se and voodoofilm.org and posted notices on their boards asking for a director and camera person with experience in making music videos. I added a link to the song and a description of my basic idea and concept for the rest of the EP. I also took the opportunity to mention that we already had some people that could help with the process who had been helping us with our behind the scenes and documentary material.
I got a lot of responses and I began meeting people and interviewing them. This was how I ended up meeting Mikael [Johansson] for the first time, we actually didn’t get off completely on the right foot and we didn’t become friends until later that year when I joined UNF (The Swedish Youth Sobriety movement in association with IOGT-NTO).
One application really stood out. Sebastian [Søgård] sent me his resume and an email stating his thoughts on the song and what ideas had popped up into his head when listening to our music. We met up for a coffee at one of my favourite places in Stockholm, Café 60 on Sveavägen. We talked for ages, bouncing ideas back and forth and I just loved his enthusiasm and really felt that he had already taken on the project as his own. He was willing to work with us on his own dime as he saw it as a passion project and asked only in return that he maintained creative control together with me. I gladly accepted and we began to plan the specifics.
We put together a team consisting of Sebastian [Søgård] Directing and on Camera A, Kim [Pettersson] on B Camera, Sebastian [Hiort af Ornäs] and Jesper [Lindahl] helped out with driving, setting up and loaning us lighting and fog machines and we had Martin [Fredriksson] taking behind the scenes photos.
Sebastian [Søgård] managed to organise all of the extras we needed for the video and Kim [Pettersson] got us our location, the basement of his apartment building, which was perfect for the shoot. He also said that I should play the role of the main character that we follow through the story of the video, which ended up being my first proper taste as an actor.
Johan and I spoke and both thought that it would be best to ask Mamud and Oscar to be in the video with us even though they had left the band. We wanted the first video of the first single from our first record to be with the people involved in the making of it.
Mamud thanked us for asking and wished us luck with the project but said he would not have time to be in the video with us. Oscar was already playing in a new musical project with people from his music program at Kulturama. When I spoke to him he was at first unsure, but we talked and as I had done with Johan and Mamud, I apologised for my poor behaviour and asked him to forgive me and said that it would be no strings attached, just do the video, let’s have fun and that’s it. He accepted.
On the day of the shoot Johan and I rented a rusty green VW caravelle van and picked up the music equipment which we were allowed to borrow after promising to return it in time in the same condition we found it. That process in on itself was an adventure.
Finally we got set up and shot the video. We had so much fun making that first music video. The people on the shoot were so amazing, the way everyone pulled together and helped out. It was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. I made friends that day that I still have contact with and of course bonded more with those who I already knew before we began the process.
When Sebastian sent me the final edited video I was so happy with the end result. The first time we uploaded it to YouTube we got almost 100k views and then it was deleted from the YouTube servers for reasons unknown to us. We uploaded it again and also had it uploaded to VEVO via our distribution partner MondoTunes (Now Octiive).
I wrote Hell House in England when I was about 16 or 17 together with my friend Matt O’flynn. Matt and I lived near each other in a small town called Olney and we both had a love for rock music and motorcycles, in fact I bought my first 125cc Old English Racing Green Yamaha motorbike from him.
My mum and step dad were away on holiday and Matt and I decided to Jam and write music together after both of our previous band projects had in one way or another ended for us. We began on acoustic guitars working out riffs and melodies and landed on what became the verse and chorus for Hell House.
The chorus lyric “wake up with no morning sun” was the first line of text that we found ourselves repeating.
We jammed on that and a few other ideas that summer and then nothing really came of our ambitions after that.
Years later when Johan and I were working out original songs for Our Untold Story I stumbled upon my old notebooks and found the unfinished ground work for what then became Hell House and decided to continue working on it and finished the lyrics, adding it to our set list.
Hell House
Written by Xander Turian
Performed by Our Untold Story
Lyrics:
There's a house down the street That's the place where they all meet Everybody knows, that's where they go I've been there once myself before I walked right in and they locked the door
That's when I wake up with no morning sun Darkness shrouding, the day has begun I found no pleasure, in this town.
I wake up in a cold dark room and in my hand I find a spoon I’m feeling rough and my head aint clear I think it's time for me to get out of here All I’ve got is loose change My head is spinning I feel deranged
That's when I wake up with no morning sun Darkness shrouding, the day has begun I found no pleasure, in this town.
I don't remember her Coz my mind is such a blur How did I even get home? Did I even leave that place alone?' Whose was that familiar face? Oh no, I'm such a disgrace
That's when I wake up with no morning sun
Darkness shrouding, the day has begun I found no pleasure, in this town.
Oh no