NARNIA

The Lion roars again – The Narnia story so far… the first 20 years.

Friday 24th of October

Vocalist Christian Liljegren and guitarist CJ Grimmark met for the first time in 1993, in Jönköping – a town in the south of Sweden. At this time Christian and his band Modest Attraction were just about to release their first album, The Truth in Your Face, and CJ was active as bandleader, vocalist & guitarist in a local band called Sentinel. They remained in steady contact during the years that followed.

In 1996 Modest Attraction released its second album Divine Luxury. At that time Liljegren phoned Grimmark and asked him whether he was interested in working together on a musical vision Liljegren had in mind. Since the late 80´s Christian had had a huge passion for bombastic, melodic, neoclassical hard rock & heavy metal, which he was not able to explore in the band Modest Attraction. CJ was instantly interested. After having seen the animated movie about the The Witch & The Lion, Christian figured “Narnia” would be great name for the new band.

A few months later, as Modest Attraction guitarist Stephan Mohlin had to turn down a German tour for personal reasons, Christian phoned CJ and asked him to temporarily replace Stephan, which he did. Stephan soon left the band all together, and Grimmark was asked to become a full-time band member. Grimmark accepted.

During the time with Modest Attraction Liljegren and Grimmark kept working on their vision of the new band. They took a few old songs from Borderline, Modest Attraction & Sentinel, altered them to their own preferences, and added a couple of new songs. In September 1996 they settled in Topz Recording Studio to record their debut album.

The recording, the mix, and the mastering of the debut album Awakening was finished in the spring of -97.

Magnus Söderkvist, at that time at MTM Music, became Narnia’s agent and presented their album to 10 different Japanese labels at the MIDEM Festival in France. No less than nine of these labels immediately wanted to sign Narnia. Narnia decided to team up with Pony Canyon Inc., a solid label that worked with Yngwie J. Malmsteen and Joe Lynn Turner among others.

Dörrarna öppnas 19:00

Tunnelbana, Tvärbana, Pendeltåg, Sj, Flygbussarna, alla stannar 50 meter från ENCORES entre. Södra Station-Sundbyberg 13 min T-Centralen-Sundbyberg 8 min Odenplan-Sundbyberg 6 min https://maps.app.goo.gl/s2shZSo4M5qkG8M67