Another guest is coming from Canada, Brittney Slayes from Unleash The Archers in the last track ‘The Nine Crusades’. How did this cooperation come into being?
We talked about having a guest for this album, because we never have done anything like that before. We started to look what song could be fitting for it and use for a duet and the last song ‘The Nine Crusades’ is pretty different from the other songs. We started to think and talk about it and said: ‘maybe we should have a girl singing it’ to get that kind of duet mixed into the song. Fredrik had already been talking a little bit with Brittney Slayes. We all think she is a great singer, so he asked her if she wanted to do it and that also turned out very good I think.

You have been in Bloodbound since 2010. How did you get involved in the band?
I have been in the band for fifteen years now. Time flies. It all started with: I was a huge fan of the band for the first two albums and I started to book some metal shows here in my small hometown which is called Finspång. I had a friend and he said: ‘maybe we can book Bloodbound’ and I said ‘no, they are too big for this’ (chuckles), but eventually I wrote them and asked them, telling them I could offer this and that and they said ‘yes’. I was kind of surprised and they played the show. After the show we had a little bit of after-party. We were drinking some beers and I had my band Dawn Of Silence before and I played a song with my band for them. They said: ‘you are a great singer’, because they had already Urban Breed and then they had Michael Bormann and then Urban Breed was back in the band… and they said ‘too bad we did not know about you when we changed our first singer’. After a while – it was maybe after a year or half a year – they called me and asked me ‘we are changing singer again, are you interested in trying?’ I went up to Bollnäs and I tried a couple of songs. We recorded some songs and we just personally matched. We got instantly good friends and now I have been there for fifteen years. And we are still really good friends.

That is nice. Do you only sing or do you know how to play instruments as well?
From the beginning I am a guitar player actually. So in my first band I played guitar. When we did not have a singer, at one rehearsal there was a microphone there and we played an Iron Maiden cover song or so and I started to sing in the microphone and the other guys said: ‘that doesn’t sound bad, can you continue doing that?’ I said okay, but I am only doing this until we find someone else. But we never did and I actually evolved my vocals more than the guitar playing and then Bloodbound asked me to join and then I turned into a singer.

Why did you at a certain point change your name?
I got married, so it is my wife’s name. For her it was her grandfather, together with his brothers who took that name Selleby. So it was only a few people and close relatives to my wife who had that name and she did not want to change it. My previous name was Johansson which is very, very common name in Sweden and my father had died and my mother had remarried and changed her last name, so I did not had any connections left to that. So it was a pretty good choice to change that I think.

Ah that is the reason…
That is the reason I keep the J in my name in the middle, that stands for Johansson.

In Astral Doors there is also a Patrik Johansson. I thought maybe that was the reason you changed it…
Not the reason, but we got mixed up a couple of times (chuckles), someone who wrote to me, thinking it was him… stuff like that… Also the drummer from Yngwie Malmsteen was a Swedish guy called Patrick Johansson. He was also playing in Northtale later on. At some point one guy wrote to me on Messenger and he asked me: ‘how can I book Yngwie Malmsteen?’ (laughs) I was like ‘I have no idea!’ But now I have more of a unique name.

How do you look back at making video clips? Is it something you like to do or a necessary evil?
I think those last two videos turned out great, but honestly, I hate to record them, because you have to kind of ‘act’ in a way that I am not really comfortable with. I love to go on stage to be in front of people and to do a show, I really love that, but do that in front of a camera and you are lip-singing to a song, that is not what I think is the most fun in this.

I see that all the instruments are recorded in different places. I guess you all have home studios then?
Yes, we do. We live – as I said – pretty far from each other. We have the base in Bollnäs and I am 400 kms south from them and Daniel, our drummer, is almost 300 kms south from me. And then we have our bass player who lives even more up north in Sweden than Bollnäs, so we are very spread out. We record in our own studios to save time, because if I record in my home, I can record when I feel up to it, when I have free time. We don’t need to be away for two weeks to record an album. It fits our personal schedules better this way.

What can you tell about touring so far, until now, previous live activities?
We haven’t played a lot for ‘Tales From The North’. I don’t know the reasons, but I got my first child in October last year. She is one year old now. So that is probably one of the reasons, during that time when she was born and after I said ‘I cannot do any shows right now’. We also had some problems changing record label. So that is probably one of the reasons why we did not do so much of touring after that last album.

Now you are on a bigger label: Napalm Records!
Yeah, that feels really good! We always made a new album every two years and we will try to keep doing that. I think it is a good rhythm to have. We always collect material all the time. If I have an idea, I record it in my home studio and we all collect ideas all the time. When a year has passed after the last album, it is almost time to look into what we have and start sending the files back and forth, start to work with this and make an album.

Are there upcoming tour plans?
Yes, we have one tour coming up in the beginning of next year. I cannot tell you about it right now, but I think it is going to be published very, very soon.

If there is something you want to add…
The new album is kind of a fast album. That was not intentional. It was just how it happened, because we collect ideas, we collect songs and then you are really into working with the songs and you don’t have any distance to anything. When the album was ready, we said ‘wow this is kind of a fast album’, very energetic. Maybe the guitars are more in the front of the mix. Well anyways, I think it turned out good.

Less obvious Sabaton influences, to be honest…
I think it has to do a lot with how it is mixed. We said that we wanted the guitars more in the front and not take away the keyboards, but not letting them in the front all the time, only here and there when it is supposed to be loud. I think that kind of mix makes it more how we did sound at the albums in the beginning, maybe a little bit less Sabaton-ish, you know. We don’t try to sound like Sabaton, we just try to write good songs all the time and these days, whatever you do, it is going to sound similar to something. It is hard to do something ‘new’. Surely in power metal, so we just try to focus on writing good songs.

Last week I went to Helloween, you should try to support them…
Yeah that should be really nice for us. Maybe some time. You never know. I have been a huge fan since I was eight years old or something. That would be nice!

I am going to wish you a very nice day and get better from your cold…
Yeah thank you very much, thanks for having me. Bye!

The upcoming EU tour is announced in the meantime. In March 2026 Bloodbound will be accompanied by Brainstorm and Angus McSix in an 11 shows trek. Every band plays a long set (one hour). The tour occludes in the Netherlands on 22/03/26.